The Sun.
London, England, 1849-12-19 00:00:00

Otrienino

I.ONDON, WEDNESDAY, DECEMBER 19, 1849.

Verily the Protectionists must be hard up indeed
in regard to arguments in favour of their principles,
when they resort to cudgelling and bullying, the mo-
ment they find themselves worsted in discussion. A
report of the proceedings which took place in the
new Corn Exchange at Lincoln, on the occasion of
the large meeting convened in that edifice as recently
as Monday, will be found i❑ another portion of this
evening's impression, and will eminently repay
perusal, affording, as it does, some slight indication
of the gentleness as well as enlightenment of those
very barbarous and cloudy-headed individuals who
are alternately whining over their imaginary
grievances and bellowing against their supposed
wrong-doers. Not very long since we recollect the
circumstance of a coroner's inquest sitting upon the
case of some unfortuiate crack-brained farmer, who,
although his affairs were in a remarkable state of
prosperity, committed suicide through a terror of
possibly falling into a state of actual destitution.
If we are to take the farming gentry of Lincolnshire
as fair specimens of the agricultural class throughout
Great Britain, the whole of that section of the corn-
munity must be similarly affected. A more extraor-
dinary instance of monomania we cannot call
to recollection. No matter how well stocked may
be the granaries, the cereal produce of the land is de-
clared to be deplorably deficient. No matter how
propitious may be the weather, the skies are repro'
bated as pouring down nothing but blight, and causing
nothing but scarcity. The number of persons
relieved in the different workhouses may be noto-
riously less than the nuu.ber assisted in the same
parochial establishments during last December—yet
in spite of the fact the country is pronounced to be
degenerating into an enormous district of pauperism.
Preposterous speculations in bubble railways
may have drained the loose capital of the
shopkeepers and minor speculators—the diminu-
tion of the incomes is nevertheless at-
tributed, by the farmers in the vicinity, to the
deleterious and even destructive influence of free
trade, and all its disastrous concomitants. The agri-
cultural mind, indeed, can compass but one idea,
and even that idea one so marvellously minute, as to be
absolutely microscopic. Their belief in protection
has sprouted forth in such miraculous luxuriance,
❑ourished by the guano of their stupidity, that, as
in the instance of Master Jack and the Bean Stalk,
they fancy that by its branches they may ascend to
the seventh heaven of wealth and happiness. By
universal agreement, it has been long acknowledged
by the multitude that the intellectual faculties of per-
ception in the agricultural class are of dimensions
sufficiently narrow to admit of their being surveyed
at a glance, and without much call for the employ-
ment of any sort of metaphysical theodolite. Small
as they have been, small as are their moral powers of
hearing and seeing, every particle of those same powers
has of late been engrossed exclusively by one only
object, they have bee❑ entirely impinged upon one
idea, the lonely examination of which has rendered
the farmers deaf and blind to everything else—blind
to the most glaring facts, deaf to the most cogent
and unanswerable reasoning.

In testimony of the artificial stupidity engrafted
on the natural stupidity of the agricultural intellect,
nothing more striking or more conclusive could by any
possibility have been adduced than the report of
the occurrences which transpired at Lincoln on Mon-
day last, in a numerous assemblage of the intel-
ligent and amiable farmers of Lincolnshire. After
Mr. CHRISTOPHER, one of their most oracular sym•
pathisers, had chaunted a Jeremiad of unusual length
and tediousness—according to which some would
have assuredly regarded England as going to the
dogs, inasmuch as "the flag that braved a thousand
years," &c., is, from his account of it,
being little better then draggled in the
kennel—an honest draper of the good old city of
Lincoln, one JOHN NORTON, makes his appearance
on the platform fur the purpose of telling the
claques of Mr. CIIRISTOPHE2 one or two
very home truths. It would seem from the passion
of ferocity in which the meeting indulged itself by
yells and other discordant vociferations immediately
Mr. NORTON was recognised as a claimant for atten-
tion, that he is already tolerably well known in that
neighbourhood for his plain-speaking. Howbeit,
known or unknown before, he cannot henceforth in
that locality be so very readily forgotten. Like
CORIOLANUS at Corioli, " Alone he fluttered the
Volscians" of Protectionism ! 'With this generation
at least the draper•orator of Lincoln must rank as the
boldest man in the United Kingdom. Ilis gallantry
is little short of being insanity, and altogether the
man stands before his fellow-countrymen as affording
a rare and incomparable example of the " pluck" of
a regular Britisher. He beards the British Lion in
its den—to wit, a hall-full of i Lincolnshire
Protectionists. He shows up successively the
folly of Mr. CHRISTOPHER, the falsities of
Mr. CHRISTOPHER, and the mingled dogmatism and
sophistry of Mr. CHRISTOPHER. How are these "home
truths received" by the agricultural intellect ? Mr.
NORTON says he has a few facts to tell them. "We
won't hear 'em," is the plump response of the dunder-
heads. Mr. 'NORTON shows them that the union work
house of the locality, instead of being overstocked
with paupers, has a lesser number of inmates than it
had this time twelve months. " Ironical cheers and
laughter" greet the announcement ; though the irony
of the reply is as invisible to us as the delicacy of
Billingsgate, the rhetoric of Cockaigne, the judgment
of Colonel Miami, or the humanity of Harreau.
Throughout the whole of the daring speech deli-
vered by Mr. N ORTON the same complacent pig-
headedness was displayed by his auditors; until
driven at last to the very verge of madness by the
stubborn and crushing descent of his overwhelming
arguments, the farmers drew forth their cudgels and
made a simultaneous rush at the one man, almost
sacrificing the unfortunate reporters in the blind
precipitation of their onslaught. A downright
scrimmage" was the result of the simple logic ad-
dressed to the agricultural intellect the only
conclusions arrived at by their discussion, as
to the truth or fallacy of certain prin-
ciples, were broken tables, dusty garments,
scattered pencils, spattered ink, and broken heads.
One blessing in regard to the last mentioned frac-
ture is this, that not many brains can have been spilt
among such learned and sagacious disputants. As
far as Mr. NORTON was concerned
.throughout the
transaction we cannot but consider him as having
been guilty of a most wild and extravagant act of
heroism ; while, with reference to his audi-
tors, it is impossible not to recognise
their bewitching suavity, exemplary fairness, and
incomparable intelligence. For ourselves, we close
our allusions to the transaction in a spirit like that
with which WILLIAM CowrEE terminated his ballad
commemorative of JOHN GILPIN'S ride through
Edmonton ; alluding to the redoubtable draper of
Lincoln, instead of to the famous draper of London,
we utter our final aspiration, that

"When he next doth speak that way,
May we be there to hear 1"

Instead of acknowledgic g themselves in error, after
the indignant and conclusive rebuttal of their charges
by one of the aides-de-camp of the ex-Governor of
Hungary, the calumniators of Louis KOSSUTH are
following up the exposure of one slander by the
promulgation of another. Proved in the face
of the whole country to have published fallacies in
reference to the great but unfortunate leader of the
Magyars, the "foreign correspondents" of the re-
actionary newspapers of London are endeavouring
to bolster up their dilapidated reputations by dissemi-
nating other atrocious and equally baseless rumours as
to the dander of the illustrious administrator now in