We have lately been favoured, from certain quarters, with ingenious disquisitions touching the probable future price of grain in this country—disquisitions to which we by no means object, as, apart altogether from their truth or their falsity, they manifest a growing uneasiness as to the possibility of maintaining the Free-trade system for many months longer. We may perhaps be allowed to take some credit to ourselves for having effected this change in the tone and sentiments of gentlemen who, not long ago, were clamorous in their praise of cheap food and diminished agricultural prices. In our January Number, by the aid of the most intelligent, skilful, and experienced agriculturists of Scotland, we proved, beyond the power of refutation, that no British farmer could stand his ground against the present influx of foreign corn, and that no possible reduction of rent, short of its annihilation, would enable him to meet the deficiency. We were met, as might naturally be expected, by the double weapons of rancorous abuse and deliberate falsification.[6] But these having utterly failed in their purpose, our antagonists have since changed their ground altogether, and are now attempting to argue, against the experience of each successive week, that the present fall of prices is merely temporary, and that wheat must again rise to something like its former level. How long they may continue in their endeavours to propagate this fresh delusion we know not. They cannot mislead the farmers, at whose door ruin is at present knocking with an unmistakeable sound. The only men they can mislead are their unhappy dupes, who have been taught to believe that the prosperity of Britain depends solely upon one of the weakest, most unstable, and most precarious of its manufactures. In the same article from which we have just quoted, Mr Alison wrote as follows:—