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appointed by the Duke of Roxburgh, refused the use of the Town Hall, and no other suitable building being to be had, the opening meeting only was held, and to this the farmers were invited, and many most respectable and influential farmers attended. A letter was read from Sir Thomas M. Brisbane, expressing his hearty concurrence in the objects of the meeting and his regret that he could not attend, his delicate health alone keeping him away. The Earl of Buchan and agreed to take the chair, but being culled off suddenly to Edinburgh on business which admitted of no postponement, he was compelled to be absent, and a note from his lordship was read stating his full agreement with the object of the meeting. Mr. George Thomson was called to the chair. This gentleman is a large farmer, and the condition of his farm proves that ke has not relied upon an act of parliament for his success as an agriculturist. Mr. Prentice first addressed the meeting, and speaking as the son of a Scotch farmer, his speech evidently produced a good impression. Mr. Bright followed in a long speech, in which the deadening effects of protection on the prosperity of agriculture were forcibly exposed, The chairman asked if any person had any questions to put to the deputation, when Dickinson, a Chartist from Manchester, mounted a forin and proceeded to speak in the usual strain of the men who have been hired to support the monopolists under the garb of friends of the working classes. The chairman requested Dickinson to keep to the subject, and to confine himself to questions. He then asked Mr. Bright if he did not think that machinery was the cause of the distress of the country? Mr. Bright then entered on the machinery topic, and demonstrated the fallacy of the miserable pretences on which the dislike to machinery was founded. Ho showed, by reference to the condition of Ireland and the agricultural counties of England, how foolish it is to suppose that the comforts of the people are greatest where no machinery exists. He enforced his arguments by a reference to the cotton trade, showing how the numbers employed in it hare increased thirty fold since the discoveries of Watt and Arkwright, whilst the wages of those employed have been also greatly increased during that period. He alluded to the fact that the democratic countries of Switzerland and America encourage machinery as much as possible, and finally, he asked Dickinson if he had not attempted to introduce his anti-machinery claptraps at a meeting held in the theatre, Rochdale, last November, at the close of Mr. Buckingham's lecture, when the working men they assembled refused to hear him, and he was turned out of the meeting. To this Dickinson had nothing to reply. Mr. Prentice then asked him if the Corn Lay was a just law? After a pause, Dickinson replied, "No!' At this the meeting laughed and cheered, and the degraded tool of the bread taxers, the pretended working man who will not work,
