that, in spite of increased exports—which, be it remembered, do not by any means imply increased demand—their reasonable hopes have been disappointed; and that in regard to the countries from which we now derive the largest supply of corn, their exports have materially decreased. That is a symptom of no common significance; for it shows that, simultaneously with the increase of their agriculture, those countries are fostering and extending their own manufactures. As for the other—the home trade—it is, by the unanimous acknowledgment of our opponents, daily dwindling; and the income of the country—as the last returns of the property-tax, which do not by any means disclose the whole amount of the deficit, have shown us—has fallen off six millions within the last two years. Were we to add the diminution on incomes under £150 per annum, we have no doubt whatever that the loss would be found to amount to more than three times that sum. All that is so much lost to the retailer and home manufacturer. For a time, even yet, cheapness may serve to palliate and disguise the evil; but it cannot do so long. Many important branches of industry, such as the iron trade, are in a state of extreme depression. The evil is not confined to the mother country; it is impoverishing the fairest parts of our colonial empire. Some of the sugar-growing colonies are on the verge of abandonment. Unless a very different policy from that adopted by the Liberals is pursued and sanctioned by the people of this country, the catastrophe cannot long be delayed; and then, perhaps, the British public, though too late, may be instructed as to the relative value of colonial possessions of our own, and those belonging to states which do not recognise reciprocity. Years ago, when the Free-Traders were in the first blush of their success, and the minds of men were still inflamed with the hot fever of speculation, the advocates of the new system were requested to state in what way they proposed to employ that mass of labour which must necessarily be displaced by the substitution of so much foreign produce instead of our own. They answered, with the joyousness of enthusiasm, that there would be room enough and to spare in the factories for every man who might so be thrown out of employment. It was not until an after period that the stern and dreary remedy of emigration was prescribed and enforced—not until it had become apparent from experience that all their hopes of increased profit from foreign trade and expected reciprocity were based upon a delusion. Then indeed the misery which had been created by reckless legislation was exalted into a cause for triumph, and the Exodus of the poor from the land of their birth, wherein they no longer could find the means of labour, was represented as a hopeful sign of the future destinies of the country.