So much for the foreign trade; but there still remains the home trade, in which by far the largest portion of our manufacturing capital is embarked, and which furnishes a much greater amount of employment to British labour than the other. You see what is the state of that trade, notwithstanding the savings which may have been effected by the lowered price of food, and also notwithstanding that partial protection which several branches of it are still allowed to retain. One word as to that incidental point. Mr Cobden is reported to have said, that he did not care how soon these remnants of protection were abolished. Let him be as good as his word, and, IF HE DARES, rise up in his place in the House of Commons, and make a motion to that effect. We shall then have an opportunity of testing the exact nature of his principles. To what cause can such a depression as this, so long and continuous, be attributed, except to a general curtailment of demand on the part of the consumers, arising from the insufficiency of their means to make purchases as before? You are probably aware that what is called strict economy in families is not favourable to the interests of manufacture or of trade. Of manufactures of all kinds there must be a certain yearly consumption, based upon the necessities of the people. Besides food, men require clothes to cover them, and houses in which to dwell, and those houses must be more or less furnished. But between the bare supply of such necessities, and that point which is considered by persons, according to their tastes, education, or habits, as constituting comfort, there is a wide interval. Nothing is a more sure criterion of the wealth and income of a people than the ordering of their homes, and the manner of their living; and the traveller who passes from one country into another can at once form an estimate, from such appearances, of their respective wealth or poverty. Diminish income, and a reduction is immediately made. All superfluities are lopped off and renounced. The broker, who deals in second-hand articles, drives a larger business than the man who is the vendor of new ones; and even in domestic labour there is a large economy practised, by reducing establishments. That this must be so, will be evident on the slightest reflection. Reduce a man's income from £1000 to £800 or £600, and he will, if he has any wisdom or prudence, cut down his expenses to meet the fall. It is upon the home manufacturer in the first place, and upon the shopkeeper secondly, that these reductions tell. The one finds that his amount of production is much greater than the demand; the other does not turn over his capital nearly so rapidly as before. Add to this that the home manufacturer, in many branches, is exposed to strong foreign competition. Sir Robert Peel, in his last alterations of the tariff, did indeed continue Protection--more largely than is generally understood, for the mere amount of revenue-duty drawn from