What are considerations of sanatory reform or of public instruction compared to these? Will men thank you for soap and tracts, even should these articles be gratuitous, if you take their labour away from them, and legislate for one class alone, as has been the case of late years? Can you expect to make them loyal and peaceable, whilst you deny them the means of obtaining a fair day’s wage for a fair day’s labour—whilst you not only encourage, but convert into an actual fact the idea that a large portion of the poor are oppressed, and drive them to seek a remedy in attempts to procure a more popular representation? Free trade has been the great incentive to Chartism, and, unless men return speedily to their senses, it may chance to be the terrible promoter of revolution. But what is to be the real amount of the deficit? No man living can tell. Lord John Russell estimated it at about three millions, and subsequently Sir Charles Wood announced that, by sundry savings and sales of old stores—which latter source of revenue very much resembles the case of a gentleman parting with his body clothes to make up for his annual expenditure—it might be reduced to a million and a half. Since then we have received the official accounts of the trade of the kingdom for the six months ending 5th July 1848; and we very much fear, from a perusal of these, that the Chancellor of the Exchequer has understated his difficulties. Our exports, for the sake of which every other interest has been sacrificed, have fallen off to an alarming extent. During the corresponding six months of last year the declared value of our exports was £25,395,243: the whole amount for this period is £21,571,939, or very nearly FOUR MILLIONS less on the half year! Here is another staggering instance of the utter futility of free trade. The decrease of export for the year 1846, as compared with 1845, was about two millions—and now it is going on at the rate of four millions for half the time! Was there ever a more pregnant proof of the impossibility of forcing markets? Looking to the imports, we find some very curious results. Lord John Russell took great credit for the increased consumption of sugar consequent on his West Indian experiments, which we shall presently have occasion to notice more minutely; and predicted a still further consumption and increase to the revenue. Let us see how that matter stands. The following is the total of sugar imported to this country for the first six months of the last three years respectively.