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COLONEL THOMPSON.
I not take charge of a foraging party, if asked, as well as of any other? Cheers and laughter.) Strange things have been proposed for our foraging party; singular figures should we have made had we been obliged to appear here bringing them all tacked to our horses quarters. Some promised linen, some yarn, some bedticking, some minerals—by which at Neweastle they meant coals, and we engaged that they should be sold by sample, and that tickets should be provided bearing this inscription, 'Pay to the bearer 10 chaldrons of coals? (Cheers.) Why a lady should not sell those tickets at a stall is more than I can understand. Depend upon it our genius shall go along with any thing they will bestow upon us. One merchant at Leith stated, he had gent to Shetland for a horse only forty inches high; and we promised he should appear at the Bazaar, and over him there should be written: 'This is what man and horse come to, when they cannot get corn.' (Loud cheers.) But there is more than jest hangs by that horse and his country. You know, or might have known, that the inhabitants of the Shetland Islands maintain themselves principally by the produce of their fisheries, which they convey to Spain and Portugal; and, if they were permitted to bring home corn in return, their families might eat bread during the winter season, and they might sell it to their country. men who would enjoy the same. Now that case is deemed so pre-eminently hard, that it has been suggested that it might be possible, if the thing were gone about quietly, to obtain for the Shetland Islands, being small, the same privileges as the Channel Islands possess; or, as in some degree, I believe, through the interference of our friend and your friend, Dr. Bowring (cheers), have been obtained for the Isle of Man. But what I want to invite the attention of the citizens of London to is, the consideration whether the case of the Shetlanders be in reality one whit harder than their own? Are not the interests of such of you as are engaged in mercantile and maritime pursuits just as much destroyed by the existence of these restrictions, as the interests of the inhabitants of Shetland? Does it not tell as bitterly in London as in Lorwick; at Manchester where 500 pairs of hands are crowded perhaps in one factory, 28 in the Shetland cottage where the fisherman's wife knits solitarily the shawl which may not be sold abroad to procure her family bread? It is only the difference between a large case and a small one. You then, being the larger, use your greater strength, and take advantage of the opportunity offered to you to make your contributions in the way which for the moment is most useful. Aid the Bazaar to be held in your own metropolis: make foreigners go away and say, that never before was there such an exposition of British products, industry, and genius. You that are here, know these things well; but we have not yet succeeded in persuading all the outside barbarians that
