“It is well known with what difficulty the payment of the annual charge of the National Debt is provided for, even under the present scale of prices; and how much those difficulties were increased by the change of prices, and the general diminution of incomes, consequent on the resumption of cash-payments. Indeed, such was the effect of that change that, had it not been counterbalanced by a very great increase, both of our agricultural and manufacturing produce at the same time, it would have rendered the maintenance of faith with the public creditor impossible. Now, if such be the present state of the public debt, even under the unexampled general prosperity which has pervaded the empire since the peace, and with all the security to the public faith which arises from the stable, consistent, and uniform rule of the British aristocracy, how is the charge of the debt to be provided for under the diminished national income arising from the much hoped-for change of prices consequent on the Reform Bill and repeal of the Corn Laws, and the increased national impatience, arising from the consciousness of the power to cast off the burden for ever?—Great and reasonable fear may be felt, whether, under any circumstances, the maintenance of the national faith inviolate is practicable for any considerable length of time: no doubt can be entertained that, under a Reform Parliament, and a free trade in grain, it will be impossible.” We forbear quoting the picture which our author has drawn of the awful consequences which must instantly follow on a crash of the national credit—not because we consider it in any degree overcharged, but because we are now satisfied that the country is alive to its danger. We are too well accustomed to the braggadocio of modern journalism to attach much weight to the expiring vociferations of men who have done their utmost to lead us into the present dilemma; and who now, finding themselves powerless to advise, are vainly attempting to keep up a delusion which the experience of each succeeding week is dissipating with extraordinary rapidity. The most talented of the Free-trading journals virtually confess that the experiment has altogether failed. They are not able to point out one single iota of advantage which has resulted from it, beyond the purely supposititious one that, for a time, it secured the tranquillity of Great Britain. This is at best an ignoble argument in behalf of a bad measure; but we believe it to be utterly without foundation, inasmuch as there probably never was a great question agitated in which less interest was evinced by the masses of the nation than in that of the Corn Laws. But we should be sorry, indeed, to rank the loyalty of the British people so low, or to suppose that the crown of these realms rested upon so weak a foundation, as the adoption of such a view as this must necessarily infer. The journals to which we