2-888-289 - The Print Collector/Heritage Images

Scene at the Castle Gate, Lincoln, 1850. '...what was the cause of their present distress? It was simply this - that the tenant-farmers and those engaged in cultivating the land were not able to make money enough to employ the labourers. (Cries of " Lower your rents.")...Within the last twenty years the population of the country had increased by 100,000 men, and how could that population have been supported if the cultivation of the soil had not increased? (Cheers.) If Government, however, allowed foreigners, who had little or no taxation and no poor-rates, to come here and undersell the farmers, a great part of the land would go out of cultivation; and then what would become of the labourers ? (Cheers.) The foreigner would soon glut the markets of this country with his produce, but he would have his own price'. From "Illustrated London News", 1850.