CONTRADICTION OF MR. VAN IMSCHOOT's ASSERTION. 215 



No. XL 



SIR, 



THE extraordinary manoeuvre to which Mr. Gower has 

 resorted to avert the force of my strictures, shows how unwill- 

 ing he is to quit the field, though defeated at every turn. 



As a last resource, my persevering opponent sent a despatch 

 across the German Ocean to obtain a foreign ally an ally too 

 from a " Flax Commission House, at Ghent," whose interests 

 are intimately connected with the overthrow of the flax cause 

 in Great Britain ; an ally, upon whose bare assertion, that he 

 never said one of my fields of flax was worth 257. per acre, Mr. 

 Gower would persuade the world that I ought to be convicted 

 of falsehood; an ally, who has the effrontery to assert that he 

 scarcely ever saw "badder crops," in opposition to men of 

 experience who said they never saw better ; an ally, who has 

 also the impudence to declare, that his sudden departure from 

 England hindered him from contradicting my statement, 

 although he could easily have done so while on a visit a 

 few days after at his "esteemed" friend's house at Dilham. 

 Nor did young Van Imschoot depart so suddenly as he would 

 have us believe : for he remained in Norfolk several weeks 

 afterwards, located in the old workhouse at North Walsham, 

 within six miles of Trimingham. Mr. Editor, you are doubt- 

 less aware that human nature is encompassed with many infir- 

 mities, of which conceit is not the least. Those who are better 

 acquainted with Mr. Gower than I am, are astonished that this 

 prominent defect should have led him to suppose that " Norfolk 

 farmers and the British public" would place any reliance upon 

 his imported evidence from the Flax Commission House at 

 Ghent ; a house that is engaged, with others, in sending " five 

 millions' worth of flax every year to Great Britain." 



That young Imschoot, in reply to my question, said 257., I 

 positively aver. But whether he did or not is a question un- 

 important to the agriculturists of Norfolk, and to the British 

 public. But the accuracy of the report contained in the letter 

 of the Hon. Mr. Rous, President of the Norfolk Flax Society, 

 written at the suggestion of Mr. Atlee, the secretary, and of Mr. 



