But, first, let us consider who this gentleman is that comes forward, unsolicited, to tender his advice, and to preach agitation to the tenantry of Great Britain. He is one of those persons who rose with the League--one of those unscrupulous and ubiquitous orators who founded and reared their reputation upon an avowed hostility to the agricultural interests of the country. Upon this point there can be no mistake. John Bright, member for Durham, is a child of the corn, or rather the potato revolution, as surely as Anacharsis Clootz was the _enfant trouvé_ of the Reign of Terror. With the abstract merits of that question we have nothing to do at present. It is quite sufficient for us to note the fact, that he, in so far as his opportunities and his talents went, was amongst the most clamorous of the opponents to the protection of British agriculture; and that fact is a fair and legitimate ground for suspicion of his motives, when we find him appearing in the new part of an agricultural champion and agitator. It is not without considerable mistrust that we behold this slippery personage in the garb and character of Triptolemus. He does not act it well. The effects of the billy-roller are still conspicuous upon his gait--he walks ill on hobnails--and is clearly more conversant with devil's-dust and remnants than with tares. Some faint suspicion of this appears at times to haunt even his own complacent imagination. He is not quite sure that the farmers--or, in the elegant phraseology of the League, the hawbucks and chawbacons--whom he used to denounce as a race of beings immeasurably inferior in intellectual capacity to the ricketty victims of the factories, will believe all at once in the cordiality and disinterestedness of their adviser; and therefore he throws out for their edification a specious bit of pleading, which, no doubt, will be read with conflicting feelings by some of those who participated in the late conversion. "You have been taught to consider me, and those with whom I have acted, as your enemies. You will admit that we have never deceived you--that we have never TAMELY SURRENDERED that which we have taught you to rely upon as the basis of your prosperity--that we have not pledged ourselves to a policy you approved, and then abandoned it; and as you have found me persevering in the promotion of measures, which many of you deemed almost fatal to your interests, but which I thought essential to the public good, so you will find me as resolute in the defence of those rights, which your own or your country's interests alike require that you should possess."