We are now in the course of enduring that precise phase of suffering, arising from the repeal of the Corn Laws, which was predicted by Mr Alison more than eighteen years ago; and it is solely from the extent of that suffering that we are inclined to form a better augury for the future than we could have ventured to have done in the course of the bygone year. Three months have not passed since, at the opening of Parliament, the Whig Ministry with unparalleled audacity ventured to congratulate the country on its general prosperous condition! Themselves indeed they might congratulate, that, by means of an income and property tax, imposed under false pretences by a former Premier, the public revenue was still sufficient to meet its ordinary engagements; but what other ground of congratulation there was, no host of witnesses could tell. Could they venture to congratulate the country _now_ on the state of the manufacturing districts? Has this little interval of three months, at a time of universal peace and unparalleled cheapness, sufficed to change universal prosperity into widespread and acknowledged depression? Not so. The depression had begun long before—it commenced so soon as falling prices warned the agricultural consumers of the fate which was in store for them; and if Ministers did not know this, they are utterly unfit to retain their places longer. The continuance of that depression can be only measured by the existence of the Free-trade system. If that is allowed to go on, and if there be indeed, as is now the common cant of the Liberal journalists, no possibility of retracing our steps, the next move will be one of plunder. No foreign trade can compensate for the tithe of the loss sustained by the depreciation of property at home. That cheapness which means nothing else than curtailment of individual profits, from the highest to the lowest, cannot possibly coexist with expensive government and enormous taxation. The public creditor will be marked for the next blow; and his situation is the more precarious from the peculiar monetary history of the country, and the first important measure—pity also that it had not been the last!—which Sir Robert Peel was instrumental in carrying through the House of Commons.