A LETTER TO THE ELECTORS OF WESTMINSTER. 23 FROM A PROTECTIONIST. MR ELLIOT, Pimlico-Todge "Ridiculum acri Fortiùs et meliùs magnas plerumque secat res." HORATIUS. Sat. I. 10. JOHN HEARNE, 81, STRAND. 1848. ELECTORS OF WESTMINSTER. GENTLEMEN, About a twelvemonth ago I did myself the honour of addressing a "Letter from a Conservative"* to to you, the Electors-the 14,000 Electors of Westminster. I might just as well have written to the 11,000 Virgins of Cologne! Conscious, however, of my own integrity, and more dismayed at the perils that surround us, than depressed, my friends, by your indifference, I once more venture to resume my pen, in the earnest hope of arousing your attention to the dangers that beset us, which are impressed so vividly on my own imagination, and which I would fain make apparent to you. * "A Letter to the Electors of Westminster from a Conservative." Third Edition. Hearne, 1847. B 6 "And pray, Sir, who are you, giving yourself all these fine airs and graces, and daring to disturb our beatific visions of Free Trade,' based on the soundest principles ? Are you a disappointed D.C.L., or an ill-requited barrister, or a ruined grazier, or an insolvent merchant-prince, or a military misconceptionist'? What! none of these ? Then what, in the name of wonder, can you be?" Gentlemen, I am simply a poor devil of a manufacturer, calmly awaiting my ruin, within three years from the present time, from cheap bread and low wages. How to avert the impending calamity has been for some time the chief occupation of my mind; and, "Egad," thought I-on Christmas eve; "if Peel and Graham found the experience of their last three years, preferable to the experience of the previous thirty, may not the experience my last three months be superior to that of the previous thirty months too? and may not I have been jabbering political economy all this while, as Monsieur Jourdain spoke prose all his life, without being aware of it?" So here am I too-a Political Economist: anche io son pittore: and pretty thickly I mean to lay it on, as soon as I find all my colours prepared. of But, Gentlemen, I have not the vanity to imagine for one moment, that I shall be able to convert any one amongst you to the cause of "Protection." In truth, I am not so ambitious; I merely venture to warn you. It is not only in the presence of Napoleon that we Britons never know when to feel |