allude are by no means unconscious of the loss which we have incurred, or of the danger in which we presently stand. The insane boast of Mr Villiers, at the opening of the session, that a depreciation of ninety-one millions had taken place in the annual produce of British labour, found no echo in the columns of our more sharp-sighted contemporaries. They are now attempting to show that this calculation was an utter mistake; that importations are gradually diminishing; and that prices must necessarily rise. Most glad should we be if their views upon this subject were sound; but, unfortunately, stern experience points to a different result. We complain, and that with perfect justice, that they will not face the difficulty, and tell us what is to be done, supposing prices remain as they are. Agricultural quackery has done its utmost, and has been extinguished by the shout of general derision. No man in his senses believes that production can be artificially stimulated, or the earth so manured as to yield double crops to supply the frightful deficiency in the annual balance-sheet of the farmer. Both arms of husbandry are shattered. Cattle-feeding has been made, by Sir Robert Peel’s tariff, as profitless as tillage; and all countries have been invited, and are availing themselves of the invitation, to inundate our markets with their produce. Under such a state of things, what hope is there of recovery—what chance of manufactures reviving, so long as the best customers for manufactures are borne down? Are they not borne down? Let us see. The depreciation of food was stated by Mr Villiers at £91,000,000. The whole land rental of the United Kingdom is, according to a late statistical authority, £58,753,615. Let us suppose that rents are reduced by one-third—a reduction which, considering that mortgages and public burdens still remain undiminished, will cripple the means of most of the proprietors in the kingdom—and the rental will fall to about £39,169,000. Still there will remain a loss of nearly £52,000,000 annually, to be borne by the tenantry; in other words, low prices will have to that extent affected their power of purchase. The real case is even stronger than the hypothetical one, because the farmers, who constitute the larger consuming body, are at present receiving no such remission of rent. Of £178,000,000, the estimated amount of British manufactures, we export £58,000,000, and there remain for home consumption goods to the value of £120,000,000. Upon the sale of these depends not only the prosperity, but the existence of the manufacturers; and yet people are astonished that their wares do not go off as formerly! How, in the name of common sense, can they be expected to go off, when no margin of profit is left, in his own trade, to the great consumer? What these reasonable gentlemen anticipate is this—that the proprietor shall have no surplus from his rent, or the farmer any remuneration from his toil and capital; and yet