274 FREE TRADE VERSUS PROTECTION. 



ing features of the Society's proceeding, and that no expen- 

 diture of time or funds upon yearly entertainments, or any- 

 thing foreign to the direct object, be allowed." 



I am, &c., 



John Warnes, Jun. 



Trimingham, Norfolk, 

 Feb. mh, 1845. 



No. XIX. 



Sir, 



The serious reduction of farm produce, and the alarm- 

 ing prospects for the future, render it incumbent on all who are 

 interested in the management of the soil, to unite in counter- 

 acting the impending evil. *^'In union is strength." Com- 

 prised in the agricultural community is a power, which during 

 years of unparalleled difficulties the world was not able, either 

 by force or treachery, to subdue ; but which, under the pre- 

 sent emergency, is overawed by the machinations of a compa- 

 rative handful of cotton-spinners. This power can no longer 

 lie dormant. It must be roused from the sleep of apathy, into 

 life and action, or it will soon be too late. Destruction, in the 

 garb of Free Trade, is at our very doors. But, unlike their 

 clamorous opponents, who vainly compass sea and land to find 

 a remedy for our national distress, the landowners, agricul- 

 turists, and friends of home commerce must hold fast the bar 

 of protection, and be guided by the finger of an all-bountiful 

 Creator, Avhich invariably points to our own soil whence the 

 remedy can alone be derived — to a soil that abounds in other 

 resources besides turnips, grass, and corn, of which the most 

 important, at the present crisis, is the flax crop ; because, if 

 cultivated to the extent required by our spinning- mills for the 

 fibre, and by our agriculturists for the seed as a substitute for 

 oil-cake, it would aflford employment to the redundant and 

 rural cotton-manufacturing population of the whole kingdom, 

 and at once put a stop to the cry for employment, and the rage 

 for Free Trade. 



