Our second reason for drawing your attention to the cheerless prospect of manufactures, has reference to the sacrifices, not only indirect but direct, which the other classes of the community were called upon to make in order to prop them up. In the first place, the Property and Income Tax, which we are still called upon to pay, was imposed by Sir Robert Peel expressly for the object of effecting "such an improvement in the _manufacturing interests_ as will react on every other interest in the country." He admitted that it was an unjust and partial impost, and therefore promised that it should be only temporary--however, we have endured it for ten years, and the Whigs will no doubt make an effort to continue it still longer. Here, then, you have a sum of five millions and a half annually confiscated for the benefit of the manufacturers, who were relieved from taxation to that amount. So far for sacrifice the first. Then came sacrifice the second, in the shape of Free Trade, mulcting the productive classes of this country to the extent of at least five-and-thirty per cent of their annual returns. Then came sacrifice the third, which handed over the carrying trade to the foreigner. Now, considering that all these sacrifices have been made for the encouragement of manufactures, or at least with that professed object, is it not, to say the least of it, extraordinary that they have not thriven? How are we to account for a result so wholly contrary to the avowed anticipations of our statesmen? The explanation is, after all, not very difficult. All these sacrifices have been made, not for the great body of the manufacturers, but for a mere section of them. We possess no authentic official information as to the amount of manufactures consumed at home; but we have records, more or less trustworthy, of the amount of our exports, and these are used to mislead the minds of the multitude as to the actual extent and relative importance of our trade. England has no more title than France has to the character of the workshop of the world. We are driven from the markets of civilised countries by the protective duties imposed by their governments for the righteous and prudent purpose of fostering native industry, and we are compelled to seek our marts among people who are not yet so far advanced in political economy as to detect the enormous discrepancy between our principles and our practice. Listen to Mr Harvey's sketch of our foreign trade:--