pieces. Such is their aim and declared object; and if you entertain any doubts on the matter, I beg leave to refer you to the recorded sentiments of the leading Ministerial and Free-trade organ--the _Times_. It is always instructive to notice the hints of the Thunderer. The writers in that journal are fully alive to the nature of the coming crisis. They have been long aware of the reaction which has taken place throughout the country on the subject of Free Trade, and they recognise distinctly the peril in which their favourite principle is placed, if some violent means are not used to counteract the conviction of the electoral body. They see that, in the event of a general election, the constituencies of the Empire are not likely to return a verdict hostile to the domestic interests of the country. They have watched with careful and anxious eyes the turning tide of opinion; and they can devise no means of arresting it, without having recourse to that peculiar mode of manipulation, which is dignified by the name of Burking. Let us hear what they say so late as the 21st of July last. "With such a prospect before us, with unknown struggles and unprecedented collisions within the bounds of possibility, there is only one resource, and we must say that Her Majesty's present advisers will be answerable for the consequences if they do not adopt it. They must lay the foundation of an appeal to the people with a large and liberal measure of Parliamentary reform. It is high time that this great country should cease to quake and to quail at the decisions of stupid and corrupt little constituencies, of whom, as in the case before us, it would take thirty to make one metropolitan borough. The great question always before the nation in one shape or another is--whether _the people_ are as happy as laws can make them? To what sort of constituencies shall we appeal for the answer to this question? To Harwich with its population of 3370; to St Albans with its population of 6246; to Scarborough with its population of 9953; to Knaresborough with its population of 5382; and to a score other places still more insignificant? Or shall we insist on the appeal being made to much larger bodies? The average population of boroughs and counties is more than 60,000. Is it not high time to require that no single borough shall fall below half or a third of that number?"