Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol. 67, No. 416, June 1850Various
General
Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol. 67, No. 416, June 1850
Various
England -- Periodicals; Scotland -- Periodicals
the Thames, which separated the two counties; and he spoke advisedly
and decidedly when he said that these insane laws had already
produced great distress amongst the agricultural classes generally
in these counties, and, he regretted to add, had also shaken those
constitutional feelings and that attachment to the Crown which were
once their boast. (Cheers.) Now, if he asked a brother farmer how he
felt upon certain points of great importance connected with these
matters, he would answer him thus--"I thought it was the duty of a
government to uphold and protect every individual who is called on
to pay taxes for the support of that government. I thought that we
owed our fealty upon certain conditions, and that we had a right to
demand protection, in the exercise of our skill and industry, against
unfair competition." I am not enamoured of the word Protection,
but I certainly thought we had a right to live and to say to any
government--"You shall not, and you dare not, put your hand into my
pocket and rob me." (Loud cheers.) Reference had been made to the
statement of Mr Charles Villiers--that L.90,000,000 sterling had been
saved to the country through the operation of Free Trade, and that
therefore the country was the richer to that amount. He (Mr Allnatt)
denied that proposition. He admitted that the agricultural interest
had been robbed of L.90,000,000, but the country was not the richer
for the transaction. (Hear, hear.) And if it were a fact that from
a depreciation in the value of agricultural produce the country
was gaining L.90,000,000 a-year, the agricultural interest had had
taken from them to that extent their capability of paying the taxes
of the country; and if so, truly did the resolution he was about to
propose express one important fact, that the national faith was in
danger. (Cheers.) Was it to be supposed that if they were still to
be robbed of 90,000,000 a-year of their income, they would not look
to the public funds and say, "It is impossible that we, the working
bees, having been plundered of our honey, can continue to support the
drones." This consideration was of great importance, and ought to
sink deeply into the minds of those who, because they possessed fixed
incomes, must of course feel a certain degree of temporary prosperity
on account of the depreciation in the value of agricultural produce;
but he warned those gentlemen not to put too much faith in that
temporary prosperity. If the agricultural interest were to be
thus treated--if they were to be thus robbed--for he could find no
other expression that would accurately describe their treatment--he
warned the fundholders that their time of trial and suffering would
speedily arrive, and that shortly the term "national faith" would
not be found in the vocabulary of the farmer. (Great cheering.)
With regard to public establishments, he was as much disposed to
support just and useful establishments as any man; but there were
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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