We shall commence our review by the fewest possible words on the paramount nuisance of the day--viz. the corn-law agitation. This is that question which all men have ceased to think sufferable. This is that "mammoth" nuisance of our times by which "the gaiety of nations is eclipsed." We are thankful that its "damnable iterations" have now placed it beyond the limits of public toleration. No man hearkens to such debates any longer--no man reads the reports of such debates: it is become criminal to quote them; and recent examples of torpor beyond all torpor, on occasion of Cobden meetings amongst the inflammable sections of our population, have shown--that not the poorest of the poor are any longer to be duped, or to be roused out of apathy, by this intolerable fraud. Full of "gifts and lies" is the false fleeting Association of these Lancashire Cottoneers. But its gifts are too windy, and its lies are too ponderous. To the Association is "given a mouth speaking great things and blasphemies;" and out of this mouth issues "fire," it is true, against all that is excellent in the land, but also "smoke"--as the consummation of its overtures. During many reigns of the Cæsars, a race of swindlers infested the Roman court, technically known as "sellers of smoke," and often punished under that name. They sold, for weighty considerations of gold, castles in the air, imaginary benefices, ideal reversions; and, in short, contracted wholesale or retail for the punctual delivery of unadulterated moonshine. Such a dealer, such a contractor, is the Anti-Corn-Law Association; and for such it has always been known amongst intelligent men. But its character has now diffused itself among the illiterate: and we believe it to be the simple truth at this moment, that every working man, whose attention has at any time been drawn to the question, is now ready to take his stand upon the following answer:--"We, that is our order, Mr Cobden, are not very strong in faith. Our faith in the Association is limited. So much, however, by all that reaches us, we are disposed to believe--viz. that ultimately you might succeed in reducing the price of a loaf, by three parts in forty-eight, which is one sixteenth; with what loss to our own landed order, and with what risk to the national security in times of war or famine, is no separate concern of ours. On the other hand, Mr Cobden, in _your_ order there are said to be knaves in ambush; and we take it, that the upshot of the change will be this: We shall save three farthings in a shilling's worth of flour; and the _honest_ men of your order--whom candour forbid that we should reckon at only twenty-five per cent on the whole--will diminish our wages simply by that same three farthings in a shilling; but the knaves (we are given to understand) will take an excuse out of that trivial change to deduct four, five, or six farthings; they will improve the occasion in evangelical proportions--some sixty-fold, some seventy, and some a