The Sun.
London, England, 1866-10-16 00:00:00

The Shropshire Chamber of Agriculture.

On Saturday afternoon a large and influential
meeting of farmers and agriculturists was held•; at
the George Hotel, Shrewsbury, for the purpose of
establishing a Chamber of Agriculture for the county
of Salop, the preliminary steps towards the forma-
tion of which were taken at a meeting held a few
weeks ago. The chair was occupied by Air. 11. Jasper
More, M.P. for the southern division of Shropshire,
and vice-president of the Central Chamber in
London.

Mr. MORE, in introducing the business to the
meeting, said it was necessary to point out the
ground intended to be occupied by the chambers of
agriculture which wt,re being established all over the
kingdom in connection with the Central Chamber,
and to define their reference to politics. The gather-
ings of farmers and landowners at agricultural
dinners were, as they all knew, useless as far as the
discussion of political questions bearing upon agri-
culture was concerned. There were many excellent
farmers' clubs, which did good service by the discus-
sion of the theory and practice of agriculture ; but
by their rules these and similar associations were
specially prohibited from discussing political matters.
Now, the principal aim of cham')ers of agriculture
would be the unrestricted discussion of everything
connected with agriculture in any way affected by
the action of the Legislature, and to promote their

Favourable consideration in the House of Commons.

(Cheers.) The connection of the chambers with
politics would not, however, be a party connection.
Each party in the State had a common interest in
the soil, and those who tilled the soil had a political
creed peculiarly their own, its leading tenet being to
get the greatest possible amount of good out of
whatever party happens to be in power, whether
they be Whig or Tory, Radical or Conservative.

(Cheers and laughter.) The exclusion of the dis-
cussion of all political topics from farmers' dinners
suggested the reason that farmers were either too
stupid or too quarrelsome to be permitted to open
their mouths upon state questions, or that a class
which annually expended upon the cultivation of the
soil one-eighth of the national capital had not suffi-
cient interest in the management of its finances and
arrangement of its taxes to entitle them to express
an opinion thereon. The value of the opinions of
farmers as a class was, however, he ventured to say,
as important as that of any other department of
trade. (Cheers.) In the question upon which, last
session, the late Government was defeated, as to
whether the franchise should be based upon a rating
or a rental qualification, the question as to what
figure the county franchise should be fixed at, and
in the question of the repeal of the malt tax—
(cheers)—few men w ere better able to give an opinion
than the farmers and landowners were. (Cheers.)
With respect to the malt tax he might tell them that
Mr. Disraeli had told a depqtation which lately

waited upon him that, as regards dealing with the
repeal of the malt tax, he should be guided entirely
receiveby the amount
from t
the
eocf 0
us unptrpyo rptahr
tey.
that party did not give him th.seallwdeehgee was
degree
he
when
hen he proposed the reduc-
tionThat
libiknseel e:
le
PnlyP °t
been
case then, but he (Mr. More) was prepared
Mr. Disraeli that if he now brought in a bill pro-
posing to repeal the tax on malt and to put it upon
beer, there were a sufficient number of Liberal
members in the House of Commons who would not
hesitate to vote with him, and, if necessary, against
their own party, in order to ensure tlie passage of
such a measure. (Loud cheers.) With respect to
the business arrangements of the chamber they were
met to form, he would suggest that they should adopt
the rules of the Hereford Chamber of Agriculture,
with such slight alterations as the committee might
think it necessary to introduce. And he would fur-
ther suggest that at some early date the members
cha
l
should have au
pmoene,titnhge or
meetingt
public discussionll
oowf
ead tboypiac
ptobieic agreed
dinner,
either on thee
same
m
ir dapa n o
brought
r duringou the
folAlowvointge wofeetkh.ank(Cs hteoertsh.)
proceedings to a close. 0t the

thorough
AT L NT
0I
ne
e-CsidAeßdLnEes.s
of Mr
ah
re.
needed ANDTHE e
following appears in the Lynn Advert'
tser :—" If any
illustrationl‘in. BmG I
be o f h
Bright's mind, and of his practical
need only turn to one sentence
In his speech in the evening
meeting of a manhood suffragedemonstration at Leeds on
Monday. Speaking of the Atlantic cable, and praising the
institutions of America, he A friend of mine, Cyrus
Field, of New York, is the Columbussa.d—'
f
less than 40 our
in
time,
u forrsu i at f t
o after
r theno
passages across the Atlantic
great aim of his life ho has at length by his cablep moored the
New World close alongside the Old.' Now, in this shortsen-
tence there are as many misstatements as Mr. Bright could
possibly have crushed into a single sentence. I speak from
facts—for I know Cyrus Field as well as Mr. Bright knows
him. It is not true that the cable is Cyrus Field's; it is
not hue that Cyrus Field laid the cable; it is not true that
Cyrus Field had anything to do with the laying of the
cables of 1865 andlB66 further than writing endless corres-
pondence, offering endless and equally futile suggestions,
boring the life out of engineers and electricians aboard the
Great Eastern, and finally taking all the credit—" alone I
did it"—when lie got to Niiwfoundl•ind, the troth being
that lie had done nothing in the matter except with Yankee
pertinacity hold on to English Capitalists till they produced
the money which was to lay the cable, which was to make
profitable the concession Mr. Cyrus Field had obtained for
landing cables on the shores of Newfoundland. This is Mr.
Blight's Columbus ; this is Mr. Bright's accuracy. No on,
need grudge Mr. Cyrus Field his reward for what he did ;
but it is a little too much, though perfectly consonant to
Mr. Bright's want of truth, to assert that Mr. Cyrus Field
laid the cables. Glass, Canning, Clifford, Smith, Gooch,
I Anderson, all these did more than Field; but they are
Englishmen; Mr. Bright reserves his admiration for
t Yankees.