features. That, however, which has justly attracted to it incomparably
the greatest share of public attention and discussion, is the
introduction of foreign cattle. This topic is one requiring to be spoken
of in a diffident spirit, and most guarded language. Whether it will
effect its praiseworthy object of lowering the price of animal food,
without being overbalanced by its injurious effects upon our
all-important agricultural interests, we shall not for some considerable
time be in a condition to determine. At present, it would appear, that
the alarm of the farmers on this score was premature and excessive, and
is subsiding. The combined operation of this part of the new Tariff, and
of the reduction in the duties on the importation of foreign corn, may
ultimately have the effect of lowering the rent of the farmer, and of
stimulating him into a more energetic and scientific cultivation of the
land; and generally, of inducing very important modifications in the
present arrangements between landlords and tenants. In some of the most
recent agricultural meetings, speeches have been made, from which many
journalists have inferred the existence of rapidly-increasing
convictions on the part of the agricultural interest, that a sweeping
alteration in the Corn-Law is inevitable and immediate. They are,
however, attaching far too much weight to a few sentences uttered,
amidst temporary excitement, by a few country gentlemen, in some eight
or ten places only in the whole kingdom. Let them _pause_, at all
events, till they shall have more authentic _data_, viz. what the
agricultural members of Parliament will say in their places, in the
ensuing session. Much of the sort of panic experienced by the country
gentlemen alluded to, may be referred to a recent paragraph in the
_Globe_ newspaper, confidently announcing the intention of Ministers to
propose a fixed duty on corn. The glaring improbability, that even
_were_ such a project contemplated by Ministers, they would (forgetting
their characteristic caution and reserve) agitate the public mind on so