What I would like to sink in the minds of our opponents, the opponents of freedom in industry, is that their system is fighting against nature itself and against the laws that govern the universe.

George William Frederick Howard, translated by Frédéric Bastiat
Complete Works, Volume 3, pages 236 to 246 (in French)
Wakefield, January 31st 1844

I do not extract any quote from the second weekly meeting at Covent Garden from February 1st because pages 236 and 237 do not translate any speech but short minutes of the meeting. The speech from Lord Morpeth (George Howard) in Wakefield (at the heart of his parliamentary constituency) is important because it marks the rallying of this eminent politician and member of the nobility (he was then Viscount Morpeth before becoming the Earl of Carlisle) to the cause of the League.

His speech is rather prudent in the sense of him embracing the cause of the League with reservation but we can consider that, to his credit, he does not hesitate to announce it to the assembly in front of which he is speaking. Today’s quote marks his rallying to the cause to the extent that he associates himself with the League to identify its opponents. The other interesting point of the quote is that it shows why the League is fighting, viz. the conviction to support the natural truth against artificial policies that are necessarily detrimental in their opposition to the laws of nature.