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THE CENTRAL 
so far as they bore upon the agricultural question. The tithe 
bill formed a prominent object, aud the average of the last seven 
years’ produce was pronounced to be unjust and oppressive. All 
this was fair, and the matter deserves serious inquiry ; yet the 
language of sarcasm and contempt, of menace and abhorrence, 
which was resorted to, was at least in bad taste, and would be 
adopted by an enemy to the agricultural cause, in order to ensure 
its defeat : and when, coupled with this, the invidious distinction 
was drawn between the agriculturist and the commercial man, 
and the capitalist and the fundholders were held up as ob- 
jects of detestation — when the old visionary project, the alte- 
ration of the currency, was studiously placed in the foreground, 
and broadly stated to be that without which “they would not be 
satisfied, and the refusal of which would be followed by revolu- 
tion,” the honest and considerate well-wisher to their cause 
began to be alarmed and disgusted. The depreciation of the 
currency ! the virtual destruction of every contract that has been 
entered into for the last seventeen years, and the robbery and 
destruction of at least one of the parties — the robbery (scarcely 
denied even by the currency man) of the public creditor — the 
commencement of injustice in every department and in every 
form, without the reparation of any one former injury ; when this, 
at length, is brought forward as an object, not of consideration, 
but as “a demand which must and shall be granted,” why then 
it behoves the prudent man, and the well-wisher to the agricul- 
turist and to the country, to look around him. 
But why, ask some of our readers, why this in a veterinary 
periodical ? Because the agricultural question is one with which 
the veterinarian has much to do — because, in all but our large 
towns, and there too in a considerable degree, he is identified 
with the weal and the woe of the agriculturist — because he has 
to do with the usefulness and the very existence of the most 
valuable part of the property of the agriculturist — because, as was 
stated in a former number, this very society has plainly and 
fully recognized the association between the farmer and the vete- 
rinarian, and has talked of adopting means to render that associa- 
tion closer, and more beneficial. We therefore have a right to 
mingle with this society, and to concern ourselves with all those 
questions which implicate its prosperity, or its utter uselessness 
and downfall. 
The veterinarian is no uninterested spectator of the present 
contest ; and if he can aid in the accomplishment of the ostensible 
object of the agricultural society, he will be honourably employed. 
If he has the power to direct and to confine the efforts of 
the farmer to the accomplishment of the objects which lie 
within his reach, and to warn him from those on which all his 
