158 APPENDICES. 



as the most recent and satisfactory argument is 

 quite against him, as indicated in the foregoing 

 figures relating to the corn duties of 1902. 



III.— MR. CHAMBERLAIN AND THE 

 RURAL POPULATION. 



We give below the first speech* which Mr. 

 Chamberlain delivered before an agricultural 

 audience in support of his proposals. That 

 audience was the largest, of an agricultural 

 character, ever got together under one roof to 

 listen either to Mr. Chamberlain or to anj other 

 statesman or politician. It numbered between 

 10,000 and 12,000 persons, of whom a very 

 large proportion v\-ere agricultural labourers. The 

 foregoing part of this book was written before the 

 speech was delivered. There is nothing, we 

 think, in the latter, outside the proposals 

 already discussed by us ; but the rural public 

 would — we venture to urge — do w,dl to read and to 

 consider well Mr. Chamberlain' s own words and 

 to dishelieve ahsoJutely the statements and opinions 

 of his ojjjtonents where those statements and 

 opinimis conflict with tlie speech. The speech is 

 the thing : and not what opponents say regarding it. 



Mr. Chamberlain, on rising to speak, had a 

 great reception, the audience rising and cheering 

 enthusiastically. When the cheering had sub- 

 sided, Mr. Chamberlain said: — 



" I am liore to-day, as the cliairman has told you, in pur- 

 suance of a promise made during the last autumn, that 

 when I had placed my proposals for a change^ "^ ^^^ 



*Sj^RecJi~d('livered in the Vuh- of Portland's Biding School, 

 Welbeck, on August 4,th, 1904. 



