“No one can have forgot the terror and dismay which, from this cause, spread through our usually quiet and peaceful rural districts a few years ago, when the agricultural interest was severely depressed; the awful and mysterious midnight fires, which frequently lighted up a whole district at the same moment, consuming the very means of subsistence; anonymous letters followed up by all their threatenings; secret societies to fan and inflame the worst passions; highway robberies and personal attacks; outrages of every description; and all perpetrated by men whose ignorance and misery (from causes over which they had no control) were really much more apt to excite our pity than our blame. But how insensibly all these evidences have vanished with a return to prosperity, although it is impossible that they have not left behind a population of a lower and more debased standard of morals! They are now as quiet as ever, _but the return of distress to their employers will not fail to reduce them once more to a similar condition_. “It should also be remarked, _that this distress cannot fail naturally to increase the poor-rates_, and the charges of maintaining good order, which must act as a distinct cause of reducing the rents and income of farmer and landlord. In some instances these charges have pressed so heavily at particular times, as to consume the whole rent, and to render land of little or no value, which would otherwise have let at a fair average rate.” We also learn from Mr Wilson, that extreme cheapness is the reverse of a benefit to the manufacturing operative, inasmuch as it induces habits of luxury which are by no means suited to his welfare. It is not impossible that this view may have led to that salutary reduction of wages, which seems, at the present moment, to be taking place throughout the manufacturing districts of England, and that the diminished supply of money is intended to check that inordinate appetite for cheap loaves and bacon, which is naturally enough engendered by the foreign untaxed supplies pouring in to supersede the production of the home labourer, and to drive him gradually to the workhouse. The member for Westbury says:—