2-888-142 - The Print Collector/Heritage Images

Protectionist Meeting at Lincoln, 1850. 'A county meeting was the only legitimate mode of making known to the Crown the present grievances of agriculture'. Various resolutions were proposed, including: 'That, by the abrogation of the duties on corn and cotton, the tenant farmers of the United Kingdom have been most cruelly treated and wronged. It was on the faith of Protection being continued they invested their capital in the soil; and, unless Protection be speedily restored, thousands of them must inevitably be reduced to a state of pauperism...That, as the tenant-farmers require immediate relief, their interest will be better promoted by landlords immediately reducing their rents, and by the Government immediately abolishing the malt duty, than by any address to the Queen, or by any petitions to Parliament for a renewal of protective duties'. From "Illustrated London News", 1850.