In truth, the chasm made in the finances of the country by this incessant, uncalled for, and ruinous reduction of the indirect taxes, in pursuance of the mania to cheapen everything, under which the nation has been labouring during the last thirty years, has been far greater and more disastrous than the preceding figures, formidable as they are, would lead us to suppose. The taxes repealed are of course set down at the amount they were _at the time of their repeal_. But that is very far from what they would have produced if they had been kept up; because, in that case, of course they would have shared in the vast increase of wealth and population which has since taken place. At the time when a large part of these taxes were repealed, the British isles did not contain above from 20,000,000 to 24,000,000 of inhabitants—now they contain 29,000,000. Our exports and imports have more than doubled in amount since the income-tax was taken off in 1816. Beyond all doubt, at its original rate of ten per cent, it would now have produced, at the very least, £20,000,000 a-year. The duty on spirits, so fatally lowered in 1826, would now have produced, not £2,000,000, but £3,000,000 or £3,500,000 annually. There cannot be a shadow of doubt that the taxes, which in 1815 produced £72,000,000 a-year, would, if continued at the same rates, have been now producing 50 per cent more, or £110,000,000. There is no man in his senses who would think that the nation either could have borne, or ought to have borne, such a load of taxation. Relief, on the return of peace, was indispensable. But it is one thing to give relief in a reasonable and prudent degree; it is another, and a very different thing, to throw away the public revenue with a reckless prodigality, without either principle or foresight, and for no other reason but to win a temporary popularity for wasteful Administrations. Indeed, the inevitable effect of the cheapening system, and especially of the repeal of the Corn Laws, in rendering the taxes unproductive, and payment of the interest even of the public debt ere long impossible, was distinctly foreseen and foretold not only by ourselves in this Magazine, but by the most decided apostles of the opposite set of opinions. Hear Mr Cobbett on the subject, in Vol. LI. of his _Register_, No. 2, July 10, 1824—a quotation for which we are indebted to that able and consistent journal, the _Standard_. “‘The commercial world’ will, I believe, find it rather difficult to persuade the landlords to ‘modify and alter the Corn-laws,’ much less to ‘do away’ with those laws: but what now is to become of all the pretty doctrine about the inseparable interests of manufacture and agriculture? I trust we shall hear no more of that soft nonsense....