As our greater cheapness once smothered the indigenous industry of British India, so its yet greater cheapness may now smother our artificial industry. The great cotton manufacturies, the new Manchesters, Salfords, Stockports, are henceforth, as they have been before, in Bengal, in the Mysore, the Carnatic, or the Deccan. Now old Manchester is in my present condition. In the presence of fearful natural odds against her, she now complains of the burthen of taxation direct and indirect, from which her Indian competitors are free, and cries for relief, or else a proportionate protection. Is it any solid answer to her just complaints, to say, "You bear no more than the Birmingham or Sheffield people do?" Certainly not. Their situation is entirely different."

The genuine Political Economist indeed, cuts short this strife between agriculturists and manufacturers, by an appeal to what he calls principle. According to him, if agriculture can be carried on cheaper elsewhere, than in the United kingdom, let agriculture migrate thither if manufactures can, let them go too. But a cosmopolitan policy which would turn England into a desert, is not the policy which either the Crown or the people will eventually adopt.

The GREAT EXHIBITION, and some other recent incidents have disclosed the mortifying truth, that in some things, where we fondly imagined ourselves

far before foreigners, we are really far behind them. While we have been standing still, and complacently contemplating our attainments, they have been inquiring, doubting, examining, correcting, improving, inventing. So it is in Political Economy. Economical positions here considered elementary and above dispute, have abroad been doubted, attacked, sifted, and canvassed with a freedom and fulness of discussion and illustration, unknown in England. The result is, that the immense majority of educated men, as well as senators and statesmen in France, Germany, and the United States, are on the side of protection to domestic industry. In different degrees, it is true, but still they are for protection. They have come round to the opinion of President Jefferson, that mutual vicinity is essential to the producing power of agriculture and manufactures that they must be laid side by side. And in the United Kingdom itself, if all the educated men, who have formed any opinion at all of their own, could be polled, it is very doubtful on which side the majority would even here be found. There is, indeed, a large class able to judge for themselves, but too indifferent, too lazy, or too busy to undertake the investigation. These last, content to swim with the stream, have given and will give, the sanction of their indolent acquiescence to the economical faith for the time in fashion, whatever it be.

But there are moreover vast multitudes of practical

men opposed to the new Policy. Many are discouraged and dissatisfied that their political chiefs shew, as they think, little disposition to attack it.

It sounds indeed, like heartless mockery, to exhort to patience broken-hearted men, who without any fault of their own, are drifting every year nearer to irretrievable ruin. But what seems to them a long time, is in the life of a nation, nothing. Those statesmen who in the event of a change, would be responsible for the tranquillity of the country and the safety of property, well know, that a safe and permanent change of policy cannot be brought about by a single class, but must come from the majority of the nation. Those who want statesmen in this country to act, must confer on them the power of acting. That power can come now from one quarter only-public opinion. The events of the last twenty-five years have here laid all other power prostrate in the dust. It is therefore the duty of every man, even the humblest, who entertains strong opinions on such momentous topics, to profess them openly, and to do every thing in his power to diffuse them. This is the excuse which the writer has to offer for devoting his intervals of leisure from a laborious and engrossing profession to such a book as this. He did not indeed presume to obtrude his name on the public, till the anonymous continuance of the publication might seem to savour of affectation, or to betray a doubt of doctrines that he firmly believes.

Ere long it will be plain, that public opinion has veered about. A storm of disappointment and vexation will follow. It will then be easy enough to change our recent policy, indeed impossible to resist a change; but not so easy to repair the ruin that will have been occasioned.

Inner Temple, Nov. 1, 1851.