It was not until sinking markets, and continued foreign importations, showed as clearly as facts could do that the depression of value was permanent, and not temporary--until the farmers of England found that they were absolute losers in their trade, and that their stock had become unprofitable--until wages were beginning to fall in many important districts, and the means of employment for thousands were gradually taken away--not until all this was seen, and felt, and known, that the suffering interests awoke from their presumed lethargy, and commenced that system of active agitation which, in an incredibly short period of time, has become universal over the face of the country. We shall not particularise the language which was used by men of the opposite party during the first period of the movement. All that insolence, bluster, and menace could do, was attempted by the former leaders of the League, to intimidate those who knew that they were performing their duty to their country and themselves, by making head against the most monstrous system of tyranny which ever yet was devised for the oppression of a free and prosperous people. Mr Cobden had the consummate folly--we need not call it wickedness--to threaten that, if one iota of the free-trade policy were reversed, he would raise up such a storm as would shake England to its centre and thoroughly revolutionise society. And, to the eternal disgrace of the Government be it spoken--the name of the demagogue who had dared to hold such language was allowed by the first Minister of the Crown to stand on a list of public commissioners! Then the landowners were emphatically warned to beware of originating a struggle, from which they might chance to emerge with something worse than a mere depreciation of their property. The warning, though doubtless well meant, was almost wholly unnecessary. The marked and characteristic feature of the new agitation is, that the landlords, as a body, have kept themselves so far aloof from it that their apathy has more than once been made a topic for the severest censure. It was among the tenant-farmers and yeomen of England--we say it to their praise and glory--that this mighty movement began. They saw how they had been deceived and betrayed by those to whom they had intrusted their cause; and the gallant Saxon spirit, never so greatly shown as when roused by a sense of oppression, was exerted to vindicate and champion the rights of their insulted order. The men of almost every county of England spoke out manfully in their turn. By a wise and timely system of organisation, skilfully planned and energetically carried into effect, their isolated efforts were directed into one grand channel of action. The National Association for the Protection of Industry and Capital, under the presidency of that high-minded and patriotic nobleman, the Duke of Richmond, and the energetic direction of Mr George Frederick Young, whose services to the cause can never be