a clergyman, universally beloved, has been thus cut down from £600 a-year, to little more than half; and this is far from being a solitary case. The result of this state of things is already being felt in a strong reaction, amongst those once the loudest in its advocacy, against the system of Free Trade. Doubts are freely hazarded with respect to the soundness of a policy which has produced such fruit; and the question is upon the lips of numbers,—“Where is the prosperity which was promised to us?” If Mr Cobden or Sir Robert Peel were to present themselves in Liverpool at the present moment, they would have to answer this question, not to the uninquiring crowds who would have cheered their fallacies three years ago, but to men who have reflected deeply, and had deep cause for such reflection. The Right Hon. Baronet, in particular, would perhaps have to reply to another question, and to go a little back in the history of his political life. He would be asked not only, Who had benefited by his Free-trade measures?—a difficult one enough to answer—but what class of the community had been aggrandised _by his currency measures of 1819 and 1844_. To this vital subject the minds of the intelligent mercantile community of Liverpool, of all shades of politics, are being rapidly directed. The Free-trader sees, in the operation of our monetary laws, one leading source of the evil brought upon the country by the carrying out of his favourite measure. He is prepared to acknowledge that Free-trade and a Restricted Currency are incompatible things. And the mercantile body of all political parties still remember the disasters of 1847 and 1848; and the insulting manner in which their prayer, in the October of the previous year, for relief from the unexampled money pressure, which was then prostrating the most extensive and solvent firms, was denied by a flippant and shallow Chancellor of the Exchequer, although at that moment the nation was within a few days of bankruptcy. These things are not forgotten; and, from the impressions which I have been able to form, from a close examination of popular opinion, I should not be surprised to see the influential community of Liverpool throwing politics and party to the winds, and uniting their efforts to procure a relief from the monstrous system which at present withers and strangles in its grasp the industry of England—which tempts us one day, by its lavish kindness, to erect vast structures of commercial enterprise and usefulness; and the next day dashes them into wrecks before our eyes, to be scrambled for by greedy extortioners and selfish usurers.