Mr. Dawson, editor of the Kelso Chronicle, gave some painful details of the suffering which was experienced in the agricultural districts represented by him, and assured the meeting that the farmers, although they were kept silent by the aristocratic landlords, were fully alive to the mischiefs inflicted by the Corn Law, and of its uselessness in the way of protection to them. He mentioned one individual, a relative of his own, who, paying a rental of from £200 to £300 a-year for land on the banks of the Tweed, not only entertained those views, but was of opinion that, under present leases, it would be for the general advantage of the farmers that the trade in corn were freed from the unnatural shackles by which it was beset.
But the most important testimony to the enlightened opinions of the Scottish tenantry was borne by Mr. William Hope, an East-Lothian farmer, who declared that as a grower of grain, a feeder of sheep and oxen, he wished to proclaim to the public, that he had no reason to fear for the ruin of his order from the pale-faced working classes of our manufacturing towns being permitted their just right to exchange the produce of their industry for food raised in foreign lands. He proceeded to show that low prices of corn would have no effect in throwing out of cultivation large tracts of land, and thus bring ruin, by depriving of employment both farmers and ploughmen, as had often been asserted by the advocates of the present law. He said:—
