hanks to Cobden and Co. that this is not our case at present. The
abolition of the corn-duty would be immediately followed by the
abandonment of a large part of the soil now under tillage. Every year
we should learn to depend more and more upon foreign supply, and give
up a further portion of our own agricultural toil. Place us in that
position, and let a bad season, which shall affect not only us, but
the Continent, come round, and the dreams of France will be realized.
Gentlemen of England--you that are wavering from your former
faith--will you refuse the lesson afforded you, by this premature
exultation on the part of our dangerous neighbour? Do you not see what
weight France evidently attaches to the repeal of our protection
duties--how anxiously she is watching--how earnestly she is praying
for it? If you will not believe your friends, will you not take
warning from an enemy? Would you hold it chivalry, if you saw an
antagonist before you armed at all points, and confident of further
assistance, to throw away your defensive armour, and leave yourselves
exposed to his attacks? And yet, is not this precisely what will be
done if you abandon the principles of protection?

Are you afraid of that word, PROTECTION? Shame upon you, if you are!
No doubt it has been most scandalously misrepresented by the
cotton-mongering orators, but it is a great word, and a wise word, if
truly and thoroughly understood. It does not mean that corn shall be
grown in this country for _your_ benefit or that of any exclusive
class--were it so, protection would be a wrong--but it means, that at
all times there shall be maintained in the country an amount of food,
reared within itself, sufficient for the sustenance of the nation, in
case that war, or some other external cause, should shut up all other
sources. And this, which is in fact protection for the nation--a just
and wise security against famine, in which the poor and the rich are
equally interested--is perverted by the chimney-stalk proprietors into
a positive national grievance. Why, the question lies in a nutshell.
Corn will not be grown in this country unless you give it an adequate
market. Admit foreign corn, and you not only put a stop to
agricultural improvement in reclaiming waste land, by means of which
production may be carried to an indefinite degree, but you also throw
a vast quantity of the land at present productive out of bearing.
Suppose, then, that next year, all protect