The figures are given from memory, but they are in round numbers correct. Now we do say, that here is a decisive proof of a destruction of property which would be unexampled in history if the simultaneous ruin of the West Indies may not be considered as a parallel instance. Here is property, which must have been worth, when the debt was contracted, at least £30,000,000 (for £2,000,000 is a very small margin to leave for so huge a mass of debt) sold for less than £6,000,000, being A FIFTH PART OF ITS FORMER VALUE. The prices which the land fetched, the commissioners tell us, varied from _four to fourteen years’ purchase_, the average being ten years. We question if the history of the world prior to 1846 will afford a parallel instance of ruin of property by pacific legislative measures. It is in vain to ascribe this to the Irish famine: that was over six years ago. Equally vain is it to ascribe it to the savage and lawless character of the Irish peasantry. They were as lawless when creditors advanced £28,000,000 on these estates as they are now, and far more formidable, because not weakened by the loss of 2,000,000 of their numbers; and if changed at all, it should have been for the better, because they have, for the last twenty-two years, been under the government of the Liberals and Free-Traders, such decided friends in principle and practice to the interests of labour, and the welfare of the poor. The frightful decline in value can be ascribed to one cause, and only one—_Free Trade in grain_—which has laid waste the Emerald Isle as completely in many places as _Free Trade in sugar_ has devastated the West Indies.