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PROTECTIONIST DODGES. ; f…

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PROTECTIONIST DODGES. f OUR old friends, the Protectionists, arc determined that they will not let well alone. Somehow or other, the fact is we are, as a nation, on the whole, in a tolerably flourishing condition. We have managed to survive the railway mania —the potato rot—and the famine in Ireland; and find, if there be truth in COCKER-if facts and figures may be de- pended on-that we are in a fair way of realising that peculiarly good time, which JOHN Buu. so highly deside- rates, and for which we has so repeatedly and involuntarily been compelled to wait a little longer. But this golden age C, el 0 restored, the Protectionist's oratory and occupation will alike be gone. The farmer's friend—that stock piece in every agrarian fared-will have to vanish into thin air. This is a sore grievance, and one for which a remedy must 0 y be provided. Hence Protectionist sagacity has been at work, and the result is worthy of the brains from which it sprang, the child is a fitting offspring from the parent. Free-trade has ruined the country to save it, according to the SOLOMONS of the Ripon District Protection Association, is to carry the curse yet further. You have pains in your arm; Well then, cry these gentlemen, let the pain extend through the whole frame and you are a sound man at once. Five of your ten toes rejoice in gout; let the gout extend itself to tIe remaining five and you immediately become infinitely better for it. Possibly our readers may think this reasoning neither very sagacious nor very profound but it is one, incredible as it may appear, Protectionists, many of them at least, are wenk enough to be ready to adopt it. In the address of the highly respectable body, to which we have already referred, we find its writers calls on Lord STANLEY and their leaders in Parliament" to assist in producing this general conviction (i. e. of the misery produced by Free-trade) by the general application of Free-trade to labour in other than agricultural pursuits; they invite you to carry out the principle by the removal of protective duties on silk and other manufactures, and the general reduction of import duties on all finished manufactures to the rate now levied on the import of the manufactured article of flour." This advice has one questionable iiierit- it is certainly cool enough. If we are ruined let us all be ruined together is now the chorus of the Protectionist cry. If JONES, farmer, become- bankrupt, we question whether the best way to retrieve him would be by making a bankrupt of JENKINS, the general dealer, as well. We fail to perceive in the bankruptcy of the one any antidote for that of the other; nor is it altogether clear to us that any amount of manu- facturing distress-any wide-spread want and woe among the 0 In toiling millions of London, and Manchester, and Birming- ham, and Sheffield, and I,erds-will in any degree com- pensate the. farmer who undertakes engagements beyond his capital and skill, and who finds himself engaged in a competition which he is not man of business enough to be prepared to meet. Even granting—an evident untruth— that the duties at present levied on the import of manufac- tured articles are protective, cannot even a; protectionist understand that it is better for the working man that lie should have bread cheap, than the products of foreign looms. A navvy" can very well dispense with French kid gloves-, or Brussels lace, or Bohemian glass, or Dresden china, but he has grown so used to his daily bread that it would be rather a dangerous experiment to deprive him of it. Evidently then the Itipon manifesto is a somewhat foolish affair, drawn up not by heads at all but by, logger- heads yet these wise men need not despair—they are not alone in their glory-there are other men equally foolish as themselves. Lord STANLEY, as he told them in his address, is extremely unwilling to rest the principles of protection to agriculture upon a conflict between different classes;" but the firm of BOOKER, JOWLER, and Co. are by no means guilty of any such good sense. The richest thing in this way lately has been the formation of an Anti-Cotton League under the title of the British Flax and Wool Association. The leaders of this league are an Irish peer and the notorious Mr. FERKAND. At a meeting held at Reading, last Saturday, the Irish luminary alluded to-the Marquis of DOWNSHIRE —stated the object of the association. After dinner his lord- ship thus treated the Heading yeomanry with a bit of his mind:—" I," said the noble peer, did not come here to do things by halves; no, I came here to speak out, and to call things by their proper names (loud cheers). And I now declare that I wish this agitation to be considered as a war a V outrance on the part of the farmers against the Manchester cotton manufacturers. In a gentleman and a peer this is pretty well-about as good in its way as the cry of the first French Revolution: War to the palace, peace to the cottage." His lordship's coadjutor was equally passionate and inspired. He spoke thus And here, in the presence of GOD, I declare that there is no man who wears a cotton shirt woven out of slave-grown cotton who does not wear one that is steeped in the tears and dyed in the blood of his fellow- creatures." Having utterred this very obvious truism, Mr. FERRAND then went on to denounce the very men who had been most active in putting down the slavery he so abhors, Where are those canting whining hypocrites, the Quakers? (cheers and laughter): they who branded the West India slave owners as monsters in human shape, for keeping their fellow men in bondage Where arc the canting whining hypocrites 1 say ? Why in Lanceshire, spinning blood-stained cotton and coining gold out of the blood of the slaves." This is very fine when we remember that the j cotton-spinning Quakers of Lancashire, only a few weeks since, endeavoured to get Parliament to take steps for the growth af cotton in India. There are men, who it is said should have good memories. We do not say Mr. FERRAND is one of that unenviable class, but we do say he should be a little less severe in his denunciations of whining hypo- crites, since there are no men greater hypocrites than those who, under the plea of humanity, try to excite indignation against Lancashire cotton spinners. What could be more hypocritical than for Mr. FERRAND to talk about the blood of the slaves, as if humanity were the object of the meet- ing, when Lord DOWNSHIRE had slipped the cat out of the bag, and stated that they were come there to war with the cotton manufacturer. This is the real object—British Flax Associations—societies for the protection of native industry, are palpable hypocrisies, and the men who belong to these hypocrites, the real animus of them all is hatred to Man- chester nianufactui-ers and now the British Flax and Wool Association is to drive the cotton manufacturers from our midst. We arc all to be sent wool-gatliering cotton in no shape is to be permitted. There is wisdom in a whig-but in wool there is salvation for the country. There is one little objection to the plan which we tear its enthu- siastic supporters may overlook its impracticability. Woollens in the dog-days are unendurable. Witney blan- kets are all very well in winter. Then again, we,fear the members of the British Wool Association are reckoning on support they will never secure. They will fail in getting Women of England on their side. It is no use mincing the matter, in the female heart there is a weakness for ginghams and calicoes. Already the British Wool Associ- ation has thrown the apple of discord on the domestic hearth. We have heard of more than one case in which the lady has purchased cotton dresses notwithstanding the express injunctions to the contrary of her lord and master. We shall have a rebellion in petticoats. We shall have the ladies rising as one. We trust the members of the British Wool Association will remember these things—they may annihilate our commerce if they will. They may exile our Cobdens and Brights-they may hang any man who can read and write and cast up accounts if they will—but we conjure them to beware how they create a social war, and to pause before they commence a crusade, from which even our hearths and houses will not be free.

TOWN LETTERS.—Ko. 59. ♦

CARDIFF.

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