It is no wonder that the working-classes, whether in agriculture or manufactures, are hiving off in such multitudes from the land of Free Trade, and settling in that of Protection, for the disasters which have overtaken industry under the action of Free Trade, in those quarters where it has first been fully felt, have been absolutely appalling. Look at the West Indies. Lord Derby has told us in the House of Peers—and every post from those once flourishing and now ruined realms bears witness to the fact—that not only are the estates in Jamaica nearly all going out of cultivation, but the inhabitants themselves, ruined by Free Trade, are either leaving the island in quest of employment, or relapsing into barbarism. It is not surprising that this terrible effect is taking place, for a Parliamentary paper lately published gives us the following astounding return of the refined sugar imported into Great Britain and Ireland in the year 1851:— Cwt. British Colonies, 31,490 Foreign States, 417,051 ——————— 448,541 Here is a result worked by Free Trade, in less than four years after its introduction into the colonies, sufficient to make us hold our breath, and far exceeding what the most gloomy Protectionist ever predicted as the result of Free Trade policy upon the best interests of productive industry in the empire. And the Free-Traders think that they will be vindicated in the eyes of God and man for their frightful devastation, by the reflection that, _while it is going on_, sugar has fallen to 5d. a pound. We say advisedly, “while it is going on;” for can there be a doubt that, when the work of destruction has been completed, and, by having ruined our own colonies, we are left entirely in the hands of the foreign growers, prices will rise again, not merely to their former, but even a far higher level? Turn again to Ireland. We shall say nothing of its 2,000,000 labourers who have disappeared from the land in the last five years, or its 1,500,000 quarters of wheat, being half the amount of that cereal it produced, which has gone out of cultivation during the same time. We refer to the report of a Parliamentary commission, a favourite measure of Sir R. Peel’s and the Free Trade party, which demonstrates in the most decisive manner the almost incredible amount of devastation which Free Trade has worked in a few years in the Emerald Isle. It appears from the Report of the Encumbered Estates Commissioners that estates have been sold by them charged with Debts amounting to £28,000,000 The price received for the lands burdened is only 5,400,000 Of which has been paid to the creditors 3,400,000