condescending to inquire whether such exportation has been attended with any profit at all to the manufacturers, that the prosperity of the country is advancing at a railway pace—you may indeed be gratified by the statistical information, but you will fail to discover in what way the public are benefited thereby. It is pleasant to know that there are fifteen millions of gold in the vaults of the Bank of England, and that, so long as this hoard remains undiminished, there is little chance of a commercial crisis, or a violent contraction of credit. But we take it you would be infinitely better pleased to know that sovereigns were circulating freely from hand to hand amongst the people, and that your customers had their pockets so well filled as to enable them to purchase largely, and to pay their accounts when due. To you any depression whatever is a serious matter—a depression which assumes a permanent appearance cannot be much short of ruin. Therefore you ought most especially to take care that no false representation is made regarding your circumstances, which may be the means of perpetuating a system that has already proved detrimental to a large body of your customers.

Were we to take for granted the ministerial statement of prosperity—which no doubt will be repeated next February—your Whig minister being an incorrigible cuckoo—this paper would certainly not have been written. But, having had occasion early to doubt the truthfulness of this vernal note, and having taken some pains to examine the statements which from time to time are issued by the great houses engaged in commercial and manufacturing industry, as also the accounts of the present condition of the poor, which have excited so much public interest, we have really been unable to discover any one influential class, beyond the money-lenders and creditors, or any one large and important branch of industry, which can, with truth, be described as prospering, or will confess to the existence of such prosperity. Shipmasters, manufacturers, merchants, iron-masters, and agriculturists, all tell the same tale. This is very strange. You may possibly remember that Mr M'Gregor, once Secretary to the Board of Trade, and now member for Glasgow, the great commercial city of Scotland, estimated the additional amount of wealth which was to accrue to Great Britain, in consequence of the repeal of the Corn Laws, at two millions sterling per week! Upon what data that profound gentleman, who thus enunciated the prophecy and assumed the mask of Midas, proceeded in his calculation, we know not, and perhaps it would be superfluous to inquire. It certainly was a good round sum; for, by this time, without insisting upon compound, or even simple interest, it should have amounted to rather more than one-half of the national debt; but unfortunately nobody will own to having fingered a farthing of the money. In recalling to your memory this little circumstance, it is by no means our intention to offer any disrespect to the intellectual powers of M'Gregor, for whom, indeed, we entertain a high degree of veneration, similar to that which is manifested by the Mussulman when he finds himself in the company of a howling derveesh. We merely wish to reproduce to you one phantom of the golden dream, which, five or six years ago, when the fever of gain was epidemical, possessed the slumbers of so many; and having done so, to ask you, now that the fever is gone, whether it was not indeed a phantom? We are wiser now—at all events, we have had more experience—and the producing classes tell us very distinctly, and quite unanimously, that they have derived no benefit whatever from the commercial changes which have taken place. Capital, whether invested in ships, factories, mines, or land, is less profitable, and therefore less valuable, than it was before; and in some instances, where the depression has been most heavy, it has been almost annihilated.

These are not our statements, but the statements of the several interests, as put forward by their own representatives. They are statements which emanate alike from the Free-Trader and the Protectionist. Men may differ as to the cause, but they all agree as to the grand fact of the depression. So that, when we hear ministers congratulating themselves and the country upon its general prosperity, and, pari passu with this congratulation, find the accredited organs of each of the great branches of productive industry vehemently asserting that they are exceptions from the general rule, an anxious believer in the probity of all parties has his faith somewhat rudely shaken.

We believe that, collectively, you are the best judges as to this disputed matter. As the real wealth of the country depends upon the amount and value of its yearly produce—as from that annual creation, when measured by the monetary standard, and circulated through a thousand channels, all our incomes are derived—you, who supply the whole population with the necessaries and luxuries of life, (fabricated by others, but passing through your hands,) must necessarily have the best means of knowing whether the circumstances of that population have, on the aggregate, been bettered or made worse. When Napoleon in the bitterness of his heart declared that we were a nation of shopkeepers, he uttered no terms of reproach, though he intended to convey a taunt. Your position in the community is such that you cannot flourish independent of its general prosperity. The exporting manufacturer, and even the foreign merchant, may multiply their gains, and realise fortunes, whilst other classes, whose wellbeing is far more important to the stability of the empire, are hastening to decay. Such phenomena are common in old states, when the process of dissolution has begun. The parasite lives and thrives, while the tree round which it has wound its tendrils is crumbling into rottenness. But such is not your case. Your interests are identical with those of the productive classes, for without them you could not exist. Ill-remunerated labour—unproductive capital—lessened means—deteriorated property—are things which affect you as deeply as though you were the direct sufferers or losers. Upon the wealth of your customers depends your own. And therefore, in such an important crisis as the present, when the existing commercial system of the country is vigorously assailed by one party, and as obstinately defended by another—when facts and statements apparently of much weight are adduced on either side, to serve as arguments for the overthrow or the maintenance of that system—when some cite statistical tables to prove that the country must be prosperous, and others adduce real evidence to show that the reverse is the case—you cannot afford to sit idly by, without throwing the weight of your testimony and experience into one or other of the scales. You have had admirable opportunities of noticing the working of the Free-Trade system. It matters not what were the original prepossessions of any of you, or what might have been your opinion with regard to the merits of this or that scheme, while it was still in embryo and untried. A more complex question than that of Free Trade, as affecting the importation of corn, probably never was presented to the public consideration. Many excellent, judicious, and thoroughly patriotic men, relying upon the truth of statements which were regarded by others as mere plausible theories, were willing to submit to the experiment. And when, by the grossest act of political perfidy that was ever perpetrated—an act which future times, if not the present, will stigmatise with deserved opprobrium—the last and most important change, save that which subsequently assailed our maritime interest, was suddenly effected, it was the declared opinion of the majority that the new system must at least have a trial, until its real results were developed, and until it became apparent to the nation whether or not Free Trade would