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market for our agricultural surplus has proved, and will 

 still prove, utterly fallacious and delusive. There is at 

 least one principle, in this connection, which may be con- 

 sidered as settled by the whole current of experience, and 

 by all the deductions and dictates of reason and common 

 sense. No large or considerable kingdom or country will 

 ever be habitually dependent on the soil of other countries 

 for the food of its inhabitants. Why, where would be the 

 power of Great Britain, were she compelled to look abroad 

 for the daily bread of her people ? What a mockery would 

 be her boasted dominion over the seas! What a farce 

 her world-encircling chain of colonial possessions and mili- 

 tary posts ! With what face would she venture to interfere 

 with our fishing-grounds, or even to maintain her own, were 

 she liable to be starved out at any moment by our embar- 

 goes! We should soon learn how to bring her to terms, 

 as her own parliaments have so often brought her monarchs 

 to terms, by a simple refusal of supplies, a simple stopping 

 of rations. 



I never think, Mr. President, of this dream of some of 

 our American farmers, that they are to raise food for all the 

 world, without associating it with the dream of Joseph of 

 old, or rather with his two successive dreams, as related to 

 his brethren, and recorded in Holy Writ : — 



" Hear, I pray you," said he, " this dream which I have 

 dreamed: For, behold, we were binding sheaves in the 

 field, and lo ! my sheaf arose, and also stood upright ; and, 

 behold, your sheaves stood round about, and made obei- 

 sance to my sheaf. And his brethren said to him, Shalt 

 thou indeed reign over us? Or shalt thou indeed have 

 dominion over us ? " 



" And he dreamed y^ another dream, and told it to his 

 brethren, and said : Behold, I have dreamed a dream more ; 

 and, behold, the sun, and the moon, and the eleven stars, 

 made obeisance to me." 



