Reminiscences of a Canadian Pioneer for the last Fifty Years: An AutobiographyThompson, Samuel
History
Reminiscences of a Canadian Pioneer for the last Fifty Years: An Autobiography
Thompson, Samuel
Frontier and pioneer life -- Ontario; Thompson, Samuel, 1810-1886; Toronto (Ont.) -- Biography; Toronto (Ont.) -- History
markets, such as wheat and other grains, are only _yielded by
bushels_, while those adapted for the use of the home consumer,
and unsuited for distant transportation, as potatoes, turnips,
cabbages, are yielded by tons. These were facts well worthy the
attention of our agriculturists--eight-tenths of our whole
population--and which could not be too often or too plainly
placed before them. It is essential to the prosperity of every
agricultural country that the consumer should be placed side by
side with the producer, the loom and anvil side by side with
the plough and harrow. The truth of these principles is well
known in England, and practically carried out there by her
agriculturists every day. She possesses within herself unlimited
stores of lime, chalk and marl, besides animal manures, valued
in McQueen's Statistics in 1840 at nearly sixty millions of
pounds, more than the then value of the whole of her cotton
manufactures. Yet England employs whole fleets in conveying
manure, guano and animal bones to her shores; yes, has ransacked
the whole habitable globe for materials to enrich her fields,
and yet, forsooth, her economists and hosts of other writers
would fain persuade all nations and make the world believe, that
all countries are to be enriched by sending their food, their
raw produce, their wheat, their rye, their barley, their oats
and their grains to her market, to be eaten upon her ground,
which thus receives the benefit of the refuse of the food of
man, while that of animals employed in its carriage is wasted on
the road, and the grower's profits are reduced by freight to her
ship-owners and commission to her merchants. Behold the
inconsistency, behold the practice of England and the preaching
of England; behold how it is exemplified in the countries most
closely in connection with her: look at Portugal, "our ancient
ally." By the famous Methuen treaty she surrendered her
manufactures for a market for her wines, and thus separated the
_producer_ from the consumer. From that hour Portugal declined,
and is now--what?--the least among the nations of the earth.
Next, let us direct our attention to the West India Islands.
They do not even refine their own sugar, but import what they
consume of that article from England, whither they send the raw
material from which it is made, in order, he supposed, to enrich
the British ship-owner with two voyages across the Atlantic, and
the British refiner in England, instead of bringing him and his
property within their own islands. Such is their commercial
policy; and with free trade the West India planter has been
ruined, the prospects of the country are blighted, and discord
and discontent pervade the land. Next comes the East Indies:
partial free trade with England has destroyed her manufactures.
He (Mr.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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