British pasture farming was to be annihilated, and an immense stimulus given to that of our continental rivals.  Hereat the farmers pricked up their ears, and began to consider for a moment whether they should not join in the outcry against the new tariff.  But the poor beasts that have come, doubtless much to their own surprise, across the water to us, looked heartily ashamed of themselves, on catching a glimpse of their plump, sleek brother beasts in England—­and the farmers burst out a-laughing at sight of the lean kine that were to eat up the fat ones!  The practical result has been, that between the 9th of July 1842, and the present time, there have not come over foreign cattle enough to make one week’s show at Smithfield.  But mark, the power of admitting foreign cattle and poultry, (on payment, however, of a considerable duty,[24]) conferred by the new tariff, is one that must be attended with infinite permanent benefits to the public, in its moderating influence upon the prices of animal food.  Its working is in beautiful harmony with that of the newly modeled corn-laws, as we shall presently explain.  In years of abundance, when plenty of meat is produced at home, the new tariff will be inoperative, as far as regards the actual importations of foreign cattle; but in years of scarcity at home, the expectation of a good price will induce the foreigner to send us a sufficient supply; for he will then be, and then only, able to repay himself the duty, and the heavy cost of sea-carriage.  As prices fall, the inducement to import also declines.  In short, “the inducement to importation falls with the fall, and rises with the rise of price.  The painful contingency of continued bad seasons has thus, in some measure, been provided against.  The new tariff is so adjusted, that when prices threaten to mount to an unfair and extravagant height, unjust to consumers, and dangerous to producers, in such contingencies a mediating power steps in, and brings things to an equilibrium."[25] These great and obvious advantages of the new tariff, the opponents of Ministers, and especially their reckless and discreditable allies called the “Anti-corn-law League,” see as plainly as we do; but their anxious aim is to conceal these advantages as much as possible from public view; and for this purpose they never willingly make any allusion to the tariff, or if forced to do so, underrate its value, or grossly misrepresent its operation.  But we are convinced that this will not do.  Proofs of their humbug and falsehood are, as it were, daily forcing themselves into the very stomachs_ of those whom once, when an incompetent Ministry was in power, these heartless impostors were able to delude.  “A single shove of the bayonet,” said Corporal Trim to Doctor Slop, “is worth all your fine discourses about the art of war;” and so the English operative may reply to the hireling “Leaguers,” “This good piece of cheap beef and mutton, now smoking daintily before me, is worth all your palaver.”