Zbe iirobinces.

The Free Trade movement continues in the provinces. Public meet- ings have been held in Liverpool, Salford, Bilston, Beverley, West Bromwich, Hastings, Deal, Morriston, Neath, Swansea, and Llauidloes. To this list Nottingham may be added. The Salford meeting was dis- turbed by Chartists ; one party, indeed, calls it a failure ; but the reso- lutions originally proposed seem to have been carried.

The Liverpool meeting was a very important one. It was convened, -on the evening of Wednesday week, by the Committee of the Operative Anti-Corn-law Association, and was held in Clayton Square. A little before the hour appointed, the Anti-Bread-tax-cart of the Association was placed a few yards in front of the Clayton Arms Hotel, furnished -with a seat for the chairman, a desk for the reporters, and a place for the speakers. The cart had several texts of Scripture, denouncing the oppression of the poor, painted on its sides. But what excited most attention was a large loaf stuck upon a pole, and apiece of beef similarly exalted. Under the first was this inscription— This loaf, if we had no bread tax, would cost Is. Od.

Landlord's tax 0 6 The price paid for this loaf today 1 6

Under the beef was written " Hamburg beet 3id. per pound." There was also a substantial rib of Buenos-Ayrean beef exhibited. The meeting was one of the most numerous ever assembled in that place, the square being filled on all sides, with exception of the space behind the chair ; and the condemnation of the Bread-tax was unanimous. Besides the members of the Operative Anti-Corn-law Committee, some leading men -of the town were present, and took part in the proceedings. The chair- man was Mr. Kelly, a working-man. He dashed at once into the Cogent part of the question with his hearers— The major part of the speakers would belong to the working-classes; and in his humble opinion, the question was one which required very little considera- tion, because the question of the Corn-laws was one which came home to the feelings and interests of every poor man. As a working-man, he had no objec- tion to state in that large assembly that he could not afford to give his children sufficient food. If he could procure it cheaper, he could increase the consump- tion of food in his family by at least a third more. He appeared there in an- other capacity also : he was not one of those to whom their opponents could say, " Lay out your money to the best advantage, and you will have enough for your family to eat." He had done so : for the last five years and a half he had not spent a farthing in intoxicating driuk; and yet, with all his exertions, and notwithstanding his total abstinence for five years and a half; he had not one shilling to spare. He formally announced that the Chartists abstained from opposing the meeting— He had authority for saying, that a deputation from the Chartist Committee had waited on the Operative Corn-law Committee, for the purpose of coming to a fair understanding and setting themselves right with the public ; and they ,declared that they had no hand whatever in the factious opposition offered of late by an individual at the Amphitheatre meetings; and that they not only discountenanced that opposition, but were decidedly opposed in principle to the Corn-laws.

Mr. Ambler, another working-man, moved the following resolution- " That the misery at present existing among the masses of the people in

this country is clearly traceable to the operations of the Corn-laws, the effects

-of which are to lessen the demand for labour and increase the price of food." This Anti-Corn-law agitator avowed himself a Chartist— He was himself a Radical or Chartist ; he was one in heart and mind: he himself was on the bloody field of Peterloo, and had a bullet shot through his bat when the people were assembled to petition for the repeal of this very law. Yet he was told by individuals who were with him on that field, that because the middle classes, who had now come forward to support them in obtaining a repeal of this law, did not support them then, he was now to stand against that right for which he contended on that day ! Now, if they were right then in petitioning for the repeal of the Corn-law, were they not right in doing so now ?

Another working-man, Mr. Robert Jones, who made a very clever

speech, could not read : the Chairman read the resolution which he was to move for him. A fourth, Mr. William Hind, gave fresh accounts of the misery in Bolton— The article which he manufactured now, and sold at 6ifd. or 7d. per lb., in 1814 cost 6d. per lb. in wages alone; and the beautiful protection of the Corn- law had protected it down to 3d per lb. There was protection for them! He could tell them, that in Bolton, at the present day, there were people gathering potato-peelings out of the streets and washing them and eating them ! That was a fact, as true as that hand belonged to his body. And he had seen people running after the cart as they came from the breweries, and stealing the grains out of them and eating them.

A subsequent account describes the meeting as having been riot- ously disturbed, after Mr. Jones's speech, by some ship-carpenters; and dissolved in a hurry at last, to save the peaceably-disposed from injury by the rioters.

A second Anti-Corn-law meeting, in Clayton Square, at which Mr. C. Holland was appointed Chairman, was again interrupted by the ship-carpenters ; but they were worsted. Some rioting took place at night, but the police repressed it.

The Tory papers publish an address issued by some Chartists at Nottingham recommending a coalition with the Tories. A subsequent account, dated June 8th, in the Whig papers, gives an instance of a re- action. We quote a report of the Sun- " On Monday night, Walter's friends called a meeting to condemn the Ministers, and hear Mr. E. P. Cox, who had presented a petition to the House of Commons, deliver a philippic against the Whigs for attempting to bribe one who had himself at the last election bribed numbers. They prepared a waggon, and had every thing right to speak ; but at the time appointed, an immense party of Liberals, with band playing, banners, and rosettes, marched down in the Market-place, took possession of the waggon, and there carried resolutions, unanimously, to support the Ministers, and to support Liberal candidates at the next election. Many thousands agreed to it amidst tremendous cheering; and the Tories retired from the field, leaving it in their undisturbed possession. The Chartists then made a motion that they had more confidence in Ministers to help ;hem to political freedom, and to release their friends, than in the Tories ; and they therefore agreed to vote for and support them. This was likewise carried unanimously. The meeting then quietly dispersed."

There seems to be rather a high Ministerial tinge given in this ac- count, which is needless. According to a report in the Nottingham Mercury, the following were the resolutions carried- " That this meeting deeply sympathizes with the feeling throughout the country at large, in favour of the enlargement of all persons now confined for political offences in this kingdom ; inasmuch as the further detention of them cannot be productive of any good, but may rather be conducive of evil in the present circumstances of the country ; and that the release of them to their wives and families would be received as a boon of clemency by the country at large. " That this meeting believes that the measures brought forward by the pre- sent Ministry are calculated to afford some relief to the manufacturing and commercial interests of this country, inasmuch as it is establishing a principle of action which, if carried out, will lead to the destruction of all those mono- ‘polies which cripple the energies of this mighty nation, and thereby afford re- lief to hundreds of thousands of the human family, who are now enduring a complication of suffering and wretchedness, which, if not arrested, will en- tirely destroy the moral and physical energies of the industrious portion of society : and this meeting pledge themselves to support the principles of those measures to the utmost of their power. "That this meeting highly disapproves of the principle of Toryism in the most direct sense of the term. That in a country situated and circumstanced as this is, a conservation of all the corruptions, abuses, usurpations, and de- gradations of the many for the emolument and power of the few, thereby mak- ing a distinction in the order of society, ought no longer to be tolerated in this once happy but now oppressed land."

One of Mr. Walter's late supporters spoke thus-

" How is it possible for any Chartist—and I am here an uncompromising one—to support Mr. Walter, who voted against extending the franchise in Ire- land, and against the Ballot, and who would oppose every point of the Charter ? I did take an interest in his election—not on principle, but expediency : that has answered ; but I am told I am bound to support him again. ("Nn, nor) Mr. Walter himself told me I was not : he asked me for my support at the last election, but said he should not consider me bound to support him at the next election."

On the 31st, the railways from Cirencester to Swindon, and from Exeter to Bridgewater, were opened to the public throughout. The further extension of the Great Western to Chippenham also took place; directly counecting London with Bristol by railway, with the exception of the thirteen miles between Chippenham and Bath.

At Dunstable, in Hertfordshire, twenty-one houses were burnt down on Friday night, by a fire which originated in the house of Mr. T. Fossey, a confectioner, on the West side of the High Street. Mr. Fos- sey's house was built of wood ; and the fire was not discovered till all the lower story was in flames. From the dilapidated state of the town- engine, many hours elapsed before the good supply of water could be made available ; and the flames spread rapidly to the other buildings. Beginning near the corner of Church Street, the fire consumed eight houses in High Street, seven in Church Street, and six in a court. The cause of the fire has not been discovered. Between five and six thousand pounds worth of property has been destroyed. The houses in Church Street and High Street were insured; but those in the court, the inhabitants of which are humble straw-plaiters, were not insured. No lives were lost. While the fire blazed the country was lit up for many miles around.