“Such a change of prices might be innocuous, if individuals and the public could begin on a new basis, and there were no subsisting _money engagements_, which must be provided for at a reduced rate of incomes. But how is such a state of things to go on, when individuals and the State are under so many engagements, which cannot be averted without private or public bankruptcy? This is the question which, in a complicated state of society such as we live in, where industry is so dependent on credit, is the vital one to every interest. “There is hardly an individual possessed of property in the country who is not immediately or ultimately involved in money engagements. The landlords are notoriously and proverbially drowned in debt, and it is calculated that _two-thirds_ of the produce of the soil finds its way ultimately into the pocket of the public or the private creditor. Farmers are all more or less involved in engagements either to their landlords or to the banks who have advanced their money; merchants and manufacturers have their bills or cash-accounts standing against them, which must be provided for, whatever ensues with regard to the prices of the articles in which they deal; and private individuals, even of wealthy fortunes, have provisions to their wives, sisters, brothers, or children, which must be made up to a certain money amount, if they would avert the evils of bankruptcy. Now, if the views of the Reformers are well founded, and a great reduction is effected in the price of grain, and consequently in the money-income of every man in the kingdom, through the free trade in corn, how are these undiminished money-obligations to be made good out of the diminished pecuniary resources of the debtors in them? Mr Baring has estimated that the change in the value of money, consequent on the resumption of cash-payments, altered prices about 25 per cent; and everybody knows what widespread, still existing, and irremediable private distress _that_ change produced. What, then, may be anticipated from the far greater change which is contemplated as likely to arise from a free-trade in grain? “But, serious as these evils are, they are nothing in comparison with the dreadful consequences which would result to _public credit_ from the change, and the widespread desolation which must follow a serious blow to the national faith.