The meeting immediately separated, Mr G. F. Young informing the delegates that the National Association was anxious for their presence at their rooms, at the South Sea House, on the following morning, at eleven o'clock.
PRESENTATION OF THE MEMORIAL TO LORD JOHN RUSSELL.
The delegates re-assembled in considerable numbers at the South Sea House on Saturday morning, when they agreed to the following address to the Prime Minister, which had been prepared, in conformity with the resolutions passed at the great aggregate meeting at the Crown and Anchor on Tuesday last:--
"TO THE RIGHT HONOURABLE LORD JOHN RUSSELL, M.P., FIRST LORD OF THE TREASURY, &C.
"May it please your Lordship,--We are deputed to address you in the name and at the desire of a public meeting held in this metropolis on the 7th inst., which, consisting of a considerable number of members of both Houses of Parliament, merchants, shipowners, tradesmen, and others connected with the most important interests of the nation, and comprising nearly 500 owners and occupiers of land, specially delegated by the agriculturists of every part of the United Kingdom, to represent the present condition of their respective localities, and to express their opinion on the public policy of your lordship's administration, presents a just claim to the serious attention of her Majesty's Government.
"On the authority of this meeting, unanimously expressed, it is our duty to declare to your lordship that intolerable distress now almost universally pervades the British agricultural interest; that many branches of the colonial interest are fast sinking into ruin; that the shipping and other great interests of the country are involved in difficulty and deep depression; and that large masses of the industrial population are reduced to a state of lamentable deprivation and suffering.
"It must be obvious that such a condition of affairs is fraught with consequences disastrous to the public welfare; and if not speedily remedied, it is the conviction of the meeting that it will endanger the public peace, prove fatal to the maintenance of public credit, and may even place in peril the safety of the State.
"It is our duty further to declare to your lordship that the dangerous evils we have thus described are, in the deliberate judgment of the meeting, attributable to the recent changes made in those protective laws by which the importation of articles of foreign production had long been regulated, which changes it regards as most rash and impolitic. It considers the ancient system of commercial law to have been based on the most just principles, and dictated by the soundest views of national policy. It cannot forget that, under that system, Great Britain attained an unexampled state of prosperity and a proud pre-eminence in the scale of nations; and it is its firm conviction that if the principle of fostering and protecting British industry and British capital be abandoned, many of the most important interests of the State will be utterly and cruelly sacrificed, and the national prosperity and greatness be ruinously impaired.