APPENDICES. 159 



taxation before the populations of the great towns I wonld 

 take the earliest and the most convenient opportunity of 

 submitting them to an agricultural audience. (Cheers.) 

 And now to-day, by the kindness of your chairman, there 

 are gathered together in this hall a larger number of 

 persons interested in agriculture and living by the cultiva- 

 tion of the soil than have ever been gathered before under 

 one roof. (Cheers.") Before I sit down I hope to make clear 

 to you what it is that I propose, and what will be the 

 effect of my proposals upon those who have to gain their 

 living by the cultivation of the land ; but I should think I 

 paid you a very poor compliment if I did not remember that 

 you are not only farmers and labourers, but that you are 

 also Britons (cheers), citizens (cheers) of a great Empire, 

 and that I may as readily appeal to your patriotism and 

 to your national sentiments as to those who live in the 

 towns. (Cheers.) 



"The first object that any statesman must have in pro- 

 posing reform — his first object — must be the good of the 

 country as a whole. (Cheers.) Nothing that interferes 

 with that can properly be submitted to a British audience ; 

 and let me say that anything which is for the good of 

 the country as a whole is good for all its parts. (Cheers.) 

 You cannot confer a benefit upon the manufacturing popu- 

 lation without helping forward the agricultural popula- 

 tion at the same time. The artisans in the towns and the 

 labourers in the villages are, after all, closely connected. 

 They are the best customers one to another, and the 

 benefit of one is the benefit of both. (Cheers.) 



The Geneeal Position. 



" Now what is the general position with which we have 

 to deal? For 60 years we have been living under a system 

 proposed to our fathers and grandfathers xmder totally 

 different circumstances from those in which we live. Tliis 

 system was supported by promises which have never been 

 fulfilled (cheers), and it has pirodiiced results which 

 nobody anticipated. It seems to me that in these circaim- 

 stauces it is not unreasonable that we should ask that this 

 system should be reconsidered. (Cheers.) What is it? 

 W'^ allow foreigners to send to us everything they make 



