“This may therefore be called the rate which is fixed by our own internal competition and resources; 52s. 2d. per quarter may be called the prime cost of wheat to the consumer, and that sum, reduced by the charges enumerated, may be called the remunerating price to the landed interest to the exact extent to which they have been remunerated.”—p. 53. Again:— “As we shall afterwards show, we take 52s. 2d. to be the proper price for wheat, at which an exactly sufficient amount of production would be kept up, it having been the average price for the last seven years; we therefore take it as the standard price at which wheat can be sold to the consumer. It must be clear that whatever average annual price the farmer receives in any year above that price, he obtains so much profit beyond the average rate; _and that whatever average annual price he receives in any year less than that standard price, he makes so much distinct loss_; and therefore the difference between the profit derived from the higher prices and the loss from the lower prices must show the balance in favour or against the home grower.”—p. 41. Mr Wilson’s argument we leave for the present untouched; we merely found upon his statement that 52s. 2d. is the proper standard price for British wheat, and that any lower rate of price must entail a loss on the grower. So far, therefore, his views are utterly irreconcilable with those of the Chancellor of the Exchequer. Lord John Russell, who addressed the House last, on the Ministerial side, was not very distinct in his admission as to the existence of distress. If there was any, he seemed to think it was caused by corn speculation, and he rang the changes on the old topic of periods of transition and depression. The division was in entire accordance with the debate, for it resulted in the rejection of the amendment on the address, proposed in the following terms, “But humbly to represent to her Majesty that, in many parts of the United Kingdom, and especially in Ireland, the various classes of her Majesty’s subjects connected with the cultivation of the soil are labouring under severe distress, mainly attributable, in our opinion, to recent legislative enactments, the operation of which is aggravated by the severe pressure of local taxation.”