be the poorer by a hundred dollars. The point
at issue, is not keeping money in the country, but of keeping it in the
pockets of the men who first earned it by cultivating the soil. Canada
is a farming country and always will be, and taxing each farmer's family
on an average of say a hundred dollars a year is going to discourage the
farmer. Let every tub stand on its own bottom. If any commodity can be
made in Canada at a profit under present conditions, I wish all success
to the man who undertakes to make that commodity, but to tax me to give
the man a bonus to do so is to rob me of my honest earnings. We have
been told we want more population. Yes, if it be of the right kind, of
people who will go, as I did, into the bush and carve out farms. These
will add to our strength, but hordes drawn from cities who cannot and
will not take to the plow, will prove in the long run a weakness. If you
knew the poverty and misery that exists among the factory operatives of
the Old World you would not entertain a project to bribe them to come
here and reproduce the same conditions. Today you have not a beggar on
Toronto's streets; adopt Protection and you will have thousands of
paupers. This is a new country and our aim should be to make it one
where honest industry can find a sure reward in its forests and not be
creating factories by artificial means. As an Old Countryman, I take
exception to the land I came from being treated as foreign and a ban
placed on the goods it has to export. When I go into a store I like to
think what I am buying is helping those I left behind, and when I pay
for the cloth and other goods they made, do they not in return buy the
grain, the butter and cheese, and the pork I have to sell? I protest
against our government abusing its power to tax the farmers to benefit
the manufacturers. That is tyranny, and when farmers understand that
Protection is one of the meanest forms of despotism, they will revolt.
This must be a free country, with no favor shown to any class.

We saw gentlemen on the platform urging the chairman to stop the master;
he seemed reluctant to make a scene. Finally he did pull him down,
stating he was not speaking to the subject before the meeting. The best
reply to the disloyal outpouring to which they had listened he
considered was contemptuous silence. After votes of thanks the meeting
ended. The master advanced towards Mr Snellgrove to renew his
acquaintance. Mr Snellgrove turned his