Page:Notes on the Anti-Corn Law Struggle.djvu/90

 means of passing an unfordable river. There is one sentence which I will venture to transcribe from General Thompson's letter, dated London, 3rd February, 1838, to the Secretary of the Hull Working Men's Association:—

"'I assume nothing but the same faculty of judging of consequences from appearances, that makes one of your sailors take in a top-gallant sail, when he sees the squall chasing him astern.'"

This sentence could not have been written, but by a man who had been a sailor as well as a soldier; as some of Erskine's best speeches could only have been spoken by a man who had been a sailor as well as a soldier.

In answer to the plea that the farmers were entitled to compensation for wet harvests, Colonel Thompson said that the farmers and owners of land are bound to make their reckonings on an average of seasons, and carry their cultivation of land just so far and no farther. "If they do not know how to do it," he continued, "that is their business and not other people's. Suppose an underwriter was to make his calculations on all his ships coming home safe, and then was to run to the landed