The Sun. — 1849-12-19 (London, England)

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 moment 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 cornmunity must be similarly affected. A more extraordinary instance of monomania we cannot call to recollection. No matter how well stocked may be the granaries, the cereal produce of the land is declared 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 notoriously 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 diminution of the incomes is nevertheless attributed, by the farmers in the vicinity, to the deleterious and even destructive influence of free trade, and all its disastrous concomitants. The agricultural 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 perception in the agricultural class are of dimensions sufficiently narrow to admit of their being surveyed at a glance, and without much call for the employment 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 Monday last, in a numerous assemblage of the intelligent 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 attention, 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.