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

leixina

LONDON, WEDNESDAY, DECEMBER 19, 1849.

Verily the Protectionists must be bard 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 in 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 unfortunate crack-brained farmer, who,
although his affairs were in a remarkable state of
prosperity, committe d suicide through a terror of
possibly falling into a state of actual destitution.
If we arc to take the farming gentry cf 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 iastance 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 nutaber assieted 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 -
'ion 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,
nourished 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 been 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 for the purpose of telling the
claquers of Mr. CHRISTOPHER 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 be 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. His 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. Ile beards the British Lion in
its den —to wit, a hall Lull of Lincolnshire
Protectionists. He shows up successively the
folly of Air. CHRISTOPHER, the falsities of
Mr. CH=l'ol'llEll, 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 'ern," 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 MacHELL, or the humanity of 'airman.
Throughout the whole of the daring speech deli-
vered by Mr. NORTON 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 learqed 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 COWPER terminated his ballad
commemorative of JOHN Gurises 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 I"

Instead of acknowledging 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 txposure of one slander by the
promulgation of another. Proved in the lice
of the whole country to have publi,hed fallacies in
reference to the great but unfortunate leader of the
Magyars, the "foreign correspondents" of the I.:-
aotionary newspapers of London are endeavouring
to bolster up their dilvidated reputations by dissemi-
nating other atrocious and equally baseless rumours :s
to the character of the illustrious adrniniArator now in