We think it is much to be regretted that, on an occasion like this, Ministers should have avoided the open and manly course. If they do not believe in the actual existence of such distress, but are of opinion that the great agitation which at present is spread over England, is either an unfounded panic or a factious clamour, it would have been well to have met the statements of their adversaries with a broad and unequivocal denial. If, on the contrary, they are convinced that distress actually does exist, and that it is likely to prove permanent, they have placed themselves in a strange and unprecedented position with regard to the class so complaining. For, in that view, the terms of the speech will hardly admit of any other interpretation, than that it is matter of congratulation to find, that one section of the British public is prospering upon the ruin of another. We do not, of course, believe that the Ministry intended to lay down any such principle; for, if once adopted and carried out, it must lead to the entire disorganisation of society. We think that their peculiar position affords us the true key to their language. On the one hand, they cannot deny that distress actually does exist: on the other, they cannot, in the face of the commercial principles which they have adopted, and the precarious nature of their majority, venture to suggest a remedy. Her Majesty is not even allowed to express sympathy, because sympathy implies suffering—and that admission Ministers are by no means, as yet, prepared to make. Turning from the speech itself to the addresses, and the reported subsequent debates, we find this view of the matter sufficiently borne out. The Earl of Essex, the mover of the address in the House of Peers, expressed himself in the following terms:— “Her Majesty had also expressed her deep sympathy with the distress _stated to exist_ in many of our agricultural districts. No man could regret the existence of that distress more than he did; but, in expressing that regret, he must also state his conviction—a conviction which was shared by many wealthy merchants, and by many, he would not say a majority, of landlords—that that distress was not of a permanent, but of a temporary character.” Lord Methuen, the seconder, took nearly the same view. The Earl of Carlisle said:— “The degree of his alarm would be somewhat proportioned to the apprehended nature of the distress. If it were temporary, and produced by special and exceptional causes, not liable continually to prevail or constantly to recur, then it would be plain that agriculture was only subject to that variation which every other pursuit, every other profession and branch of industry, every source of emolument, seemed, by a law of the universe, to undergo—that change from which agriculture, in a marked degree, whether protected or unprotected, had never been exempt.” And again:—