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Below is a list of all the articles and advertisements which appeared in the first issue of the Bridgnorth Beacon, dated 1st October 1852. The transcriptions can be viewed by clicking on the titles.
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Letter Box.
To the Editor of the Bridgnorth Beacon.
Sir.—The sickle has ceased to "glance among the stalks."—The Harvest labourers have departed to their potatoe-growing home,—and Agriculturists are calculating gains and losses, the latter it is to be feared fearfully predominating. Even Mechi the experimentalist has found a rather considerable deficiency in his crops this autumn I "calkilate," if he would but confess the unprejudiced truth; notwithstanding his irrigators and reapers and other adjuncts of farming operations. But he is a sanguine man and deceives himself and others, quite unintentionally, as to the state of Agriculture. I am not alluding to Protection, but what I mean is, that Farmers generally have not like Mechi, the income of a toy shop to fall back upon, in an enormous expenditure of capital about Drains and Machinery. If their landlords would undertake these things for them, it might be that in a few years, they would be the gainers in improved rents, as the tenants would be in improved crops. But now that their incomes and capital are so greatly diminished by free trade it is quite impossible for them to reap the benefits of high-farming, unless they obtain help from other quarters; and then, though they cannot expect to get "ten quarters of wheat from an acre of land" like "Mr. Richard Dinniss of Alford, Lincolnshire," they will be in a better position to compete with the other great interests of the country, than they now are. In many cases such assistance has been most generously afforded them. Perhaps in no other country would landlords have shewn so much sympathy with tenants as English landlords have. But much yet remains to be done that Agriculturists may occupy their proper position once more. I am not among those who think the British Yeomenry a "clodhopping race." They are the strength and sinews of this country, and as infinitely superior to the demagogues of the Manchester School in honesty, good sense, loyalty, and honor, as these last are their superiors in strategy and craft. It is to be hoped that landlords will not desert them, that English people generally will unlearn their prejudices respecting Farmers’ fancied gains, and that Farmers themselves will acquiesce in the present state of things with that manly good sense and independence which is their especial characteristic; notwithstanding the losses they must have sustained in the recently gathered-in harvest, from mildew and other causes—losses which would have set Cobden and his revolutionary followers "agitating", and threatening us with a Revolution if they had experienced them.
I shall send you occasional notes and notices, if they are worth publication, and am, Sir, Your obedient Servant,
Caractacus.
(Our space will always be a name and open to Tories, Whigs, &c., not consequently identifying ourselves with the opinions of our correspondents.—Ed. B. B.
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