tible, and overwhelming imports of French flour,-flour better than ours can be made-grown and ground in a better climate. Hence the industry not only of our cultivators, but even of our millers, English and Irish, is being rapidly superseded, or more properly speaking, transplanted. It is as if large bodies of our farmers and millers fled with their all, to Russia and France.

But Russia and France are only two out of twenty competitors. And what do you get in return? So far from that complete reciprocation, which we have seen to be essential, you have not even partial reciprocity. What practically happens here is this.

You import from abroad an immense quantity of corn and meal of all sorts. And although (as we have shewn) a corresponding and equivalent increase in your exports would be no shadow of compensation to the nation, for growing and grinding corn abroad instead of growing and grinding it at home or in the colonies, you have not even that shadow of a shade. Nay you think yourselves fortunate, if you have an increase of your exports much less than the increase of your imports. England prefers to her own sons the farmers and millers and labourers of Russia, America France, Denmark, Holland, Germany. She is gradually endowing them with huge masses of her own agricul tural capital. She nurses in foreign soils, an agricul ture which will be the strength and riches, no longer of England, but of those foreign lands. No national resources are half so valuable or permanent as the improvement of our common and grateful mother earth

But what is done to England's own children? The price of corn falls to such an extent, that agriculture, the first and greatest of arts, can no longer be conducted on the same extensive improved and productive scale as formerly. With the prices of a hundred years ago, you may scratch the ground as you did a hundred years ago, but you cannot have the modern agriculture of the Lothians.

The loss first lights on the greatest of all producers on the tenant-farmers throughout the land. In England they have to bear tithes, poor-rates, churchrates, highway and county-rates, and a load of indirect taxation. All these taxes are really national burthens. A moderate import duty on corn, throws them on the nation at large, who ought to bear them; the removal of that duty throws them back on the occupiers of land. The tenant-farmers throughout the land, from Plymouth to Thurso, from St. David's to Norwich, are at one fell blow crushed and ruined. Paley truly says, "The greatest misfortune of a country is an indigent tenantry." We are moreover to remember, that the capital here in jeopardy, is a capital in comparison with which the capital of such trades as the glove-trade, or even the cotton trade itself is a trifle. A capital of hundreds of millions is at stake.*

* The agricultural capital, fixed and circulating, of the United Kingdom independently of the land) has been estimated at THREE HUNDRED AND FORTY MILLION STERLING. The capital, fixed and circulating, engaged n the cotton manufacture, at forty millions.

The nation is now eating up that vast capital, and recklessly scattering it abroad. Like a family of unnatural children, carousing on the slaughter and plunder of the authors alike of their existence and their wealth.

Through the diminution of the farmers' means of employment, the curse settles next on the innocent and helpless agricultural labourers, with their wives and children. Landlords, shopkeepers, manufacturers, artisans in their turn, successively suffer, and spread the loss.

Nor does the mischief stop here. Other commodities which have lost their market will to that extent cease to be produced. And by that cessation not only will the subsistence of the people disappear, but other markets will be injured, and so the mischief will go on and be felt through every grade of society, and in every department of industry.

One-sided free

Nor does the evil stop even here. trade raises the value of money and sinks prices, even in the face of California. The public creditor, the public servant, the mortgagee, the private creditor, for every bushel of wheat he received before, receives now a bushel and a half, and all other things in proportion. The national debt and the taxes are really augmented, at the very crisis when men are least able to bear them. In vain will the price of bread have declined, the means of purchase possessed by the producing classes, will have declined infinitely more.

The mischief will go on, not only to the impoverish

ment, but if this suicidal policy be persevered in,-to the very depopulation of the country.*

Men will find, that for some mysterious and unaccountable reason, they cannot get a living. They will, with the present facilities of locomotion, be tempted to desert their native country. But it is the healthy, the industrious, the thrifty, the enterprizing, that will go ; the halt, the old, the debauched, the pauper, will be left behind, not to bear, but to swell, the national burthens, and ensure the national degradation.

This sort of emigration re-acts again on the national wealth, and still further diminishes it. For such emigrants take out not only their industry and skill, but their property. Ireland has already reached this point. England and Scotland are approaching it.

And all this mischief and ruin are perpetrated, while there exist in England, Scotland, Ireland, and the Colonies and dependencies, the neglected means of producing within the empire supplies of food of all kinds at a moderate rate, superabounding and all sufficient, not only for the existing population, but for an infinitely larger one. Means, not only ample to fill every mouth, but to employ every idle pair of hands in the most natural, healthy, virtuous, and contenting of occupations. Means, not only of procuring plenty of cheap bread, but (what is much more important) of putting into every man's hand wherewithal to buy it.

* The returns of the last census were made long after this passage was penned.

It is said, that all the capital and labor displaced by the invasion of foreign industry will necessarily find other and more profitable employment.

Let us dissect this bold assertion, and compare each portion of it with the FACTS.

The

Take first the displaced capital. Unhappily the wretched condition of capital, seeking employment and finding none, is not only not uncommon in this country, but it is one of our notorious social miseries. The competition of capital for employment is here so intense, that the profits of trade are already every where driven down below a living standard. anxious father is afraid to place his son in trade. His experienced eye descries, through the low profits and the bad bebts, the vista that conducts straight to bankruptcy. Want of employment for capital, and the consequent low rate of profit, necessarily next superinduce a low rate of interest. Accordingly we find capital lent on discounts at the rate of 14 per cent. per annum; and the 3 per cent. consols sometimes at par. Ever and anon the impatience of the capitalist, to find at least some employment for his idle capital, bursts through the restraints of prudence. Now you have loans, (many of which turn out to be gifts) to foreign states, and little bankrupt republics; next you have jointstock companies, not only ruining their projectors, but engulphing the public and their property. Such is the want of employment that awaits any circulating capital displayed by the invasion of foreign industry. Much