Where is the agricultural interest represented? From what phase of
our social life has it not been driven, to the undue setting up of
its false rival?
Are the police agricultural? The watchmen were. They wore woollen
nightcaps to a man; they encouraged the growth of timber, by
patriotically adhering to staves and rattles of immense size; they
slept every night in boxes, which were but another form of the
celebrated wooden walls of Old England; they never woke up till it
was too late--in which respect you might have thought them very
farmers. How is it with the police? Their buttons are made at
Birmingham; a dozen of their truncheons would poorly furnish forth a
watchman's staff; they have no wooden walls to repose between; and
the crowns of their hats are plated with cast-iron.
Are the doctors agricultural? Let Messrs. Morison and Moat, of the
Hygeian establishment at King's Cross, London, reply. Is it not,
upon the constant showing of those gentlemen, an ascertained fact
that the whole medical profession have united to depreciate the
worth of the Universal Vegetable Medicines? And is this opposition
to vegetables, and exaltation of steel and iron instead, on the part
of the regular practitioners, capable of any interpretation but one?
Is it not a distinct renouncement of the agricultural interest, and
a setting up of the manufacturing interest instead?
Do the professors of the law at all fail in their truth to the
beautiful maid whom they ought to adore? Inquire of the Attorney-
General for Ireland. Inquire of that honourable and learned
gentleman, whose last public act was to cast aside the grey goose-
quill, an article of agricultural produce, and take up the pistol,
which, under the system of percussion locks, has not even a flint to
connect it with farming. Or put the question to a still higher
legal functionary, who, on the same occasion, when he should have
been a reed, inclining here and there, as adverse gales of evidence
disposed him, was seen to be a manufactured image on the seat of
Justice, cast by Power, in most impenetrable brass.
The world is too much with us in this manufacturing interest, early
and late; that is the great complaint and the great truth. It is
not so with the agricultural interest, or what passes by that name.
It never thinks of the suffering world, or sees it, or cares to
extend its knowledge of it; or, so long as it remains a world, cares
anything about it. All those whom Dante placed in the first pit or
circle of the doleful regions, might have represented the
agricultural interest in the present Parliament, or at quarter
sessions, or at meetings of the farmers' friends, or anywhere else.
But that is not the question now. It is conspired against; and we
have given a few proofs of the conspiracy, as they shine out of
various classes engaged in it. An indictment against the whole
manufacturing interest need not be longer, surely, than the
indictment in the case of the Crown against O'Connell and others.
Mr. Cobden may be taken as its representative--as indeed he is, by
one consent already. There may be no evidence; but that is not
required. A judge and jury are all that is needed. And the
Government know where to find them, or they gain experience to
little purpose.
THREATENING LETTER
TO THOMAS HOOD
FROM AN ANCIENT GENTLEMAN
MR. HOOD. SIR,--The Constitution is going at last! You needn't
laugh, Mr. Hood.
