Speech #500103024

In fortunate years they might make a livelihood upon their own land. if their rice cold produce 4 cents a pomd and if they were able to keep te property in repair. but constant disaster from floods and storms happen to ric planting. and your petitioners know that it will be impossible for them to procure money for the repair of banks. floodgates. and all the other expensive necessaries to the planting of a single acre of rice on tidewater lands. Te other laIds adjacent are so poor and so far from market that they will not yield a hare support. and your petitioners see clearly that if the present duty on rice be diminished to any real extent the inevitable result will be that the lands will re thrown out by the owners. and that your petitioners can not make a support upon them. either as laborers tenants. or owners. Your petitioners will then be forced to emigrate and to cast their lot with strangers. without money or property. or to die of starvation at home. They earnestly beg you to spare them these misfortunes. and to make such provision by duty on rice as eilt permit them to remain ini bumble and honorable labor in the places which are the only ones that they know. And your petitioners will ever pray. etc.