to the conversion of Sir Robert Peel, cautiously abstained from arguing their case on the ground of permanent cheapness. We have on this point the valuable testimony of Mr Cobden, who repeatedly declared his conviction that the farmers, and even the landowners, would derive a large and direct advantage from the repeal of the corn laws. We have the treatises of Mr Wilson, Secretary of the Board of Control, pathetically pointing out the positive detriment to the country which must ensue from a long continuance of low prices of grain. And finally, we have Sir Robert Peel's distinct admission that 56s. per quarter is the average price for which wheat can be raised with a profit in Great Britain. It was not until all rational hope of a rise was extinguished--until the amount of importations poured into this country demonstrated the fallacy of all the calculations which had been made as to the amount of surplus supply available from the Continent and from America--that any section of the Free-traders ventured to proclaim the doctrine that cheapness, ranging below the level of the cost of home production, was a positive advantage to the nation. It is true that this monstrous fallacy is now maintained by only a few of the more unscrupulous and desperate of the party; and that the Ministry have as yet abstained from committing themselves to so fatal a dogma. They would have us rather cling to the hope that present prices are only temporary, though they cannot assign a single plausible reason to account for the continued depression. They talk, in vague general terms,--the surest symptoms of their actual incapacity and helplessness--of "transition states of suffering," of "partial derangement inseparable from the formation of a new system of commercial policy," and much more such pompous and unmeaning jargon; whilst, at the same time, they refuse to commit themselves to any decided line of action, if it should actually be found that they were wrong in their calculations, and that prices so low as to be absolutely ruinous are _not_ temporary in their operation, but must hereafter prevail as the rule. How often have we heard, on the part of their organs, even within the last two months, joyous assertions that the markets were again rising, and foreign supplies diminishing! Within this last fortnight, the _Times_, emboldened by the continuance of cold easterly winds, and the backward state of the vegetation, prophesied, with more than its usual confidence, a rapid rise and a consequent diminution of cheapness. On the 13th of May, our prospects were thus described:--"Happily just now corn is rising, and we are quite as likely to see wheat at 60s. as 30s. in the course of the year." On the 14th, the journalist again returned to the charge--"Just now the market is rising all over the world, and it seems likely enough that the farmer will soon have, in the natural course of things, what Mr G. Berkeley wants to obtain by a return to Protection....