The sum of twenty millions lost by the failure of the potato-crop--a single event, not one of annual occurrence--was taken from the country's power of produce; and _therefore_, said the Free-Traders, there was stagnation. But they, of course, could not help it. Of course they could not; but what about the ninety-one millions of _annual_ loss, which is equally deducted from the internal expenditure of the country? About _that_ we do not hear a word. And yet ask yourselves, and that most seriously--for it is time that we should get rid of all such pitiful paltering--whether there is any difference whatever between the two cases, except that the one was an isolated casualty, and that the other is an annual infliction to which we are subjected by statute? Weigh the matter as you will, you cannot, we are satisfied, be able to detect any difference. If the grower of grain at present prices has no remuneration for his toil, or return for his capital, he cannot buy from you, any more than could the farmer whose crop perished by the potato disease. What caused the stagnation? The failure of the power to purchase, because there was no return for produce. What causes the stagnation? Precisely the same thing perpetrated by Act of Parliament. Do not, we beseech you, allow yourselves to be fooled any longer by the jesuitry of these political economists, but apply your own reason to discover the cause of the present depression. Do not believe them when they talk about exceptional causes, affecting temporarily the industry of the nation, but certain immediately to disappear. If you were to live as long as Methusaleh, no one year would elapse without furnishing those gentlemen with a special and exceptional cause. One year it is the potato disease; another the French Revolution; another the Great Exhibition. Heaven only knows what will be their excuse next year--perhaps the new Reform Bill, or some other similar godsend. You are the particular class upon whom the deception is to be played, and for whose especial benefit the fraud is concocted. The producers know very well how they stand, and what they have to expect. They can be no longer cajoled by assurances of higher prices, by vague promises of profit after the disappearance of "the transition state," or by impudent averments that, by an entire change of system and the expenditure of more capital, they will be able to maintain themselves in affluence. To do the Free-Traders justice, they have for some time desisted from such attempts. They now address their victims, through their organs, in a fine tone of desperado indifference, telling them that, if they do not like the present arrangement, the sooner they go elsewhere the better. And the people are taking them at their word and going. Hundreds of thousands of tax-payers are leaving the country as fast as possible, carrying with them the fragments of their property, and bequeathing to those who remain behind their share of the national burdens.