of the last year (he continued) I received a letter from
one of mv tenants, in which he said, "When I took my
farm from your predecessor, it was upon the calculation
of wheat being 66s. a quarter, but it is now little more
than 40s., and I should like to have a new arrangement
with regard to the terms;" I wrote to him in reply—
"The proposition you make is reasonable, and we will
have a new bargain. I am willing to enter upon it on
the principle of estimating the future price of wheat at
40s.; but whilst I am willing to take all the advantage
of low prices, I must have the benefit of good cultivation;
therefore we must estimate the produce of the
land to be such as can be grown by a good farmer upon
that quality of land." Now, I say, from that very
moment—from the instant I had made that
proposition to this farmer—I was not under the slightest
anxiety; for I knew there would not be the least
diificulty in his carrying on the farm just the same
under free trade as under protection. From that
moment the farmers upon my small estate no longer
felt themselves interested in the question of free trade
or protection; the labourers felt they had just as
good a prospect of employment as they had before,
and they likewise felt no longer interested in the question
of protection.

After disposing of the doctrines and projects put forth
by Mr. Disraeli and other Protectionists, Mr. Cobden
gave it as his advice to the tenant-farmers, that, on the
subject of the corn-laws, they ought to meet together,
exclusively as one community. "Do not," he said, "let me
be misunderstood. I am not going to be misrepresented
in this matter. I do not say that upon other questions
the small squire and the tenant-farmer ought to be
separated, or that landowners and farmers should not go to
the same church together, and that they should not meet
as friends upon all other questions; but whenever they
meet to talk upon the subject of protection and free-
trade, tenant-farmers, and tenant-farmers only, ought to
meet together. They ought to exclude every landlord
from their counsels. Mind, I repeat it, it is only when
they have to talk about the subject of protection, or
when they have an interest totally distinct and opposite
from that of the person who lets the land. They ought
to exclude not only the great landed proprietor who lets
the land to tenants, but they ought to exclude men
whose predominant interest is that of the landlord,
though they may be tenant-farmers to an inferior extent.
The occupying tenant-farmer is the man who employs
his capital in buying the raw material. The land is the
raw material, loaned to him for that purpose by the
owner of the soil; and the tenant-farmer, in this matter
of protection, landlord and the small squire or the land-
agent. And until they meet together in a body in
their several localities, totally distinct and apart from all
other classes, they never will have a chance of arriving
at a just appreciation of their own position and their
difficulties, and they never will be able to combine
together to obtain such terms and conditions as are necessary
to enable them to carry on their business under the
system of free trade."

The first Metropolitan Meeting of the National
Charter Association was held on the 14th at the London
Tavern. The principal speaker was Feargus O'Connor,
who said, among many other things, that he was against
all descriptions of poor laws—he was for labour, and for
labour's rights. They were all made by God; they
were all a devilish deal better-looking fellows than these
dukes. If the land were not tilled according to political
expediency instead of state necessity, the people would
be able to export corn. He proposed to alter that, and
to enact that every man who occupied land should have
a lease for ever, at a corn rent, and that the landlord
should not be able to oust him. Whenever machinery
with a hop, step, and jump, came amongst them, and
made paupers, he would provide that all such paupers
should be enabled to live out of the workhouse by their
own labour. He concluded by reciting some verses of his
own composition, and his poetry as well as his prose was
received with loud cheers. After the meeting had been
addressed in advocacy of the Charter by Mr. Reynolds,
Mr. M'Grath, Mr. Vernon, Mr. Harney, and Mr. Kydd,
a man with a red beard rushed to the platform shouting,
"I'm told to hold my tongue! Chartists, will you
allow it? I 'm insulted. Here is the flag of the Charter.
Liberty or death!" Some confusion took place, and
Mr. O'Connor, after addressing a few words to the
angry gentleman beside him, and having appealed to
his good sense not to make a disturbance, quickly
announced that he must vacate the chair, as he had eight
miles to go. He then left the room, and his example
was followed by a majority of those present.

On the 18th a meeting, called by Mr. Cobden, was
held in the London Tavern, in consequence of Messrs.
Baring's advertisement for a Loan of £5,500,000 to
Russia, to complete the railway between St. Petersburg
and Moscow. Mr. Charles Gilpin presided; and Mr. J.
B. Smith, M.P., Mr. Joseph Sturge, and a number of
dissenting ministers were on the platform; the body of
the large room was crowded. Mr. Cobden moved a
resolution, declaring that the real object of the loan was
to replenish the Russian treasury, exhausted by the
Hungarian war; and that to lend the money for such a
purpose would be virtually to sanction the deeds of blood
in Hungary, and tempt to future aggression and
conquest. He supported this resolution at great length,
depreciating the security of the loan, attacking the
morality of the lenders of it, and defending the economical
principles of his own course of action. The meeting
was addressed by Mr. Sturge and others, and the
resolution was carried with acclamations.

A memorial on the subject of the Dolly's Brae Affair
has been addressed by the Roman Catholics of Ulster to
the Lord-Lieutenant. They set forth the facts of the
case, and the subsequent course taken by government,
and petition Lord Clarendon to take further steps to
bring to justice all the wrongdoers in the transaction.
They pray Lord Clarendon "to prove to the Catholic
people of this empire, that creed is no distinction where
justice is concerned, by superseding in the commission
of the peace those Magistrates who, at a Petty Session
held in Castlewellan on the 9th of October last, refused
to take information against persons proved to have
formed a portion of an avowedly illegal assembly."—A
deputation of the Ulster Catholics waited on the Lord-
Lieutenant on the 17th, to present their memorial. He
declared, in reply, that he was fully sensible how
important it is that in the administration of justice distinctions
of creed and party should be unknown, but said he
did not feel that he could properly recommend to the
Lord Chancellor the prayer for the dismissal of the
Magistrates. The Magistrates were not personally
implicated in the transactions impugned; they acted on
their own judgment and responsibility in rejecting the
informations; and they should not be removed merely
because they declined to abide by the opinion of the
law-officer of the Crown.

NARRATIVE OF LAW AND CRIME.

A RESPECTABLE-LOOKING woman, who described herself
as Mrs. Anna Maria Jones, a novel-writer, complained
at Guildhall that another person had Assumed her Name
in applying for relief from the charity-box. Mrs. Jones
handed up a list of her works, which, she said, were
well-known works of fiction. Sir P. Laurie, looking
over the list, said: Did you write the whole of these?—
She replied that she did. (They made 38 volumes.)—
Sir P. Laurie said: But you are not the authoress of
"The Scottish Chiefs," for that is the work of Anna
Maria Porter.—The applicant replied, that one work
was called "The Scottish Chiefs," and the other "The
Scottish Chieftains." She was not answerable for this
seeming piracy; for it was the bookseller's device, to
which, perhaps, she weakly yielded. The taste of the
public had so completely altered since she began novel-
writing, at 19 years of age, that she could get nothing
by such labour now.—Sir P. Laurie said she was not the
only literary character who was complaining of the entire
change in the public taste, and had been thereby reduced
to straitened circumstances.—She said that was unhappily
her case. She could no longer support herself in comfort
by her pen; and, to increase her distress, her husband,
to whom she had looked for support, had become of
impaired intellect.—Sir P. Laurie asked what her husband's
name was?—She replied it was Lowndes, and that he