_me_ and printed calicoes." "The British government and legislature"--exclaims Friend Bright--"'tis I and Rochdale flannel." It is a strange, and, with our qualified and not exclusive opinions, not less a discouraging complication of affairs with which we have to deal, that, look among the great nations where we will, we find, to a great extent, that the protective system of commerce, where in force, or where it has superseded a _quasi_ free-trade system before in force, has conduced, in no small degree, to the advancement of material interests. The Germanic Customs' Union, that peculiar handicraft creation of Lord Palmerston, is there to confirm the fact, no less than Russia, than France, than Belgium, and other lands. The League themselves ostentatiously proclaim it, whilst pretending to impugn the retention of the very shadow of a shade of the same principle, for the country, above all others, which has grown to greatness under it--the very breath of whose nostrils it has been, during the struggles of infancy and progress to that full-blown maturity, when assuredly it seeks, (and need seek only,) willingly proffers, and readily accepts, equality of condition--reciprocity of interchange, with all the world. "The Manchester manufacturer"--the false _nom-de-guerre_ of a calico printer, who was not a manufacturer at all, and could scarcely distinguish a calico from a cambric at the time of writing, who erst was, is yet, perchance, the trumpeter of Russian policy, Russian principles, and Russian progress in the East and elsewhere--must be grateful for the information we have already afforded on the full careering ascendency of Russian material interests also. His gratitude will expand as he accompanies these pages.