hich sweeping through the Atlantic enriches every country
it touches, he would have a golden circuit established in Canada--the
farmers would sell to the manufacturers and the money paid them would
continue to flow backward and forward to the enrichment of both. The
flowing of gold from our midst would be stopped, and the farmers, with a
home-market for all they could raise, would become rich and view with
delight factories rising on every hand. All this could be accomplished
by enacting a judiciously-framed tariff and delay in doing so was not
only keeping Canada poor but endangering her future as a British
dependency. Applause followed Mr Snellgrove's sitting down, and the
chairman praised him as a gentleman who had carefully thought out his
proposals, which commended themselves to every patriotic mind. We wanted
diversity of occupation and retention of the earnings of the farmers in
Canada; here was a method of effecting both these desirable ends.

The master got on his feet and begged permission to be heard in reply.
He was invited to the platform and, with his usual directness and force,
at once assailed what Mr Snellgrove had advanced. He says, let us have a
law that will compel us to cease buying goods abroad, for thereby the
money now sent away will be kept in Canada. What right has any
government to pass such a law? With the money I get for my wheat may I
not buy what I need where I see fit? Such an arbitrary law as he pleads
for would undoubtedly help the manufacturer, but would it help me, who
am a farmer? The question I ask, is not will the money stay in Canada,
but will the money I have justly earned stay in my pocket? I will be
none the richer if the money goes into the pocket of the owner of a
factory. In the Old Country the farmers carry the aristocracy who own
the land on their backs, are the laws of Canada to be so shaped that the
farmers here are to carry the manufacturers? It may not be plain to you
city gentlemen, but it is to me, that under the system you have heard
advocated, factories would increase and their owners grow rich while
the farmers would become poor, for they would have to pay more than they
now do for the goods necessity makes them buy. My family needs about
$300 worth of store-goods in a year. That is what I pay now. Under
Protection these same goods would cost me $400, perhaps more. The
Canadian manufacturers would be the richer by the hundred extra dollars
I would pay, and I would