possessions—the baronial hall no longer distributing its hospitality to thousands, and pinching poverty and thrift marking the household arrangements, where of old there was plenty, a cup for the needy, and consolation and succour for the afflicted; with the middle classes in our towns forced down in the social scale, and hovering over the gulf of insolvency and ruin, and the labourer turned out, a desperate man, to wrest with the strong hand the food which we deny him the means to purchase, whilst we mock him with its cheapness—the manufacturing body will strive in vain for the consummation of that object which, in their selfishness, they proposed to themselves as the result of the boasted Free-trade policy—viz. the setting up of their houses over those of the time-honoured names of the land. Blindly and madly they have detached the handful of snow from the summit of the mountain; with mocking jeers of hideous and idiotic glee, they have seen its gathering bulk, and watched its progress as it rolled, prostrating the cottage and the farmstead, and spreading devastation over the vineyard and the waving corn; and they stand now shuddering at the mighty avalanche which is thundering above the tall chimney and the smoky town, and will shortly involve themselves in the general calamity and devastation. Yes, the fears of these men are at length beginning to be effectively roused by the contemplation of the work of their own hands. I say _beginning_, because the day of retribution is only now coming upon them, and making itself felt. The philosophers of the loom and spindle talk now “with bated breath” of the efficacy of their universal specific. There are doubting anxious faces on ‘Change, gloomy greetings as they meet in the streets, and idle hands in the once busy salerooms and warehouses. Many, whose voices were lately loud in cheering the flattering tales and sophistries of their Cobdens and Brights—some of those even whose subscriptions enabled the former to buy his Woodland farm, and whose votes and influence hoisted the blustering Quaker into a seat in the Legislature, are now ready to acknowledge, in private, that “there is some mistake;” that they have, perhaps, gone too far; and that, after all, Free Trade is “only an experiment.” Alas! it is one whose fatal effects will have to be deeply deplored, and from which the country will not recover for years to come. A quarter of a century of toil will scarcely replace the capital which has been swept away, up to the present period. More remains to be swept away; but now it will be the capital of the authors of the calamity.