Mr Cobden, we shrewdly suspect, has served his turn, and must now submit quietly and gradually to lapse into the obscurity out of which he was borne by the force of circumstances. He can afford to do it; and the nation, we believe, will not think the less of him for retiring under the cover of his former victory. On his part the contest was strenuously, and we believe honestly, conducted. The principles he advocated became triumphant, not through the will of the nation, or the conviction of the majority of its representatives, but through a singular combination of craft, weakness, and ambition. How those principles, when reduced to practice, and in full operation, may work, is the problem which all of us are trying in our different spheres to solve. Hitherto the results of the experiment have been a palpable national loss, with extensive individual suffering, and a diminution of employment to the labouring classes; and though other causes may for the present be adduced as tending to these calamitous circumstances, time, the great expositor of human affairs, must soon decide in favour of the one party or of the other. We have thought it our duty of late to speak out so strongly and so fully on the subject of the internal commercial state of Great Britain, that we need not, on the present occasion, resume the argument, although that is far from exhausted. Indeed, our intention in the present article is to entreat the attention of the people of this country, and of Parliament, to a case which will brook no delay,—which is of imminent and paramount interest to us all; and which, if not now considered as justice and humanity demand,—if not speedily adjusted, without the interposition of those formalities and delays which are the last refuge of a tottering ministry,—must not only entail the ruin of our oldest, our fairest, and our most productive colonies, but sacrifice British capital already invested, on the faith of public honesty, to an enormous extent, and finally leave a blot upon our national honour. It is after the most careful review of the whole circumstances and evidences of the case,—after the perusal of almost every document of authority which could throw light upon the subject,—after personal communication with parties whose means of knowledge are unequalled, and whose high character places them beyond the suspicion of any thing like self-interest or dissimulation,—that we deliberately state our opinion, _that not only are our West Indian and sugar growing American colonies at this moment in imminent danger of being abandoned; but, through the course of reckless legislation pursued by her Majesty’s present Ministers_, THE SLAVE TRADE, _in all its horrors, has received direct and prodigious encouragement_.