then, we shall charge the foreigner a corresponding price for our cottons and our calicoes!" No, gentlemen--that will not do. We have no doubt this idea _has_ entered into your calculations, and that you hope, through a scarcity of home-grown corn, to realize an augmented profit on your produce--in short, to be the only gainers in a time of general distress. But there is a flaw in your reasoning, too palpable to be overlooked. The foreigner _can do without calico_, but the British nation CANNOT _do without bread_. The wants of the stomach are paramount--nothing can enter into competition with them. The German, Pole, or Frenchman, may, for a season, wear a ragged coat, or an inferior shirt, or even dispense with the latter garment, if it so pleases him; and yet suffer comparatively nothing. But what are our population to do, if bread is not procurable except at the enormous prices which, when you abolish protection, you entitle the foreigner to charge? Have you the heart to respond, in the only imaginable answer--it is a mere monosyllable--STARVE? But suppose that, for the first two years or so, we went on swimmingly--that there were good and plentiful seasons abroad, and that corn flowed into our market abundantly from all quarters of the world. Suppose that bread became cheaper than we ever knew it before, that our manufactures were readily and greedily taken, and that we had realised the manufacturing Eden, which the disciples of Devil's-dust have predicted, as the immediate consequence of our abandoning all manner of restrictions. How will this state of unbounded prosperity affect the land? For every five shillings of fall in the price of the quarter of wheat, fresh districts will be abandoned by the plough. The farmer will be unable to work them at a profit, and so he will cease to grow grain. He may put steers upon them; or they may be covered with little fancy villas, or Owenite parallelograms, to suit the taste of the modern philosopher, and accomodate the additional population who are to assist in the prospective crops of calico. The cheaper corn then is, the smaller will become our home-producing surface. The chaw-bacon will be driven to the railroads, where there is already a tolerable demand for him. The flail will be silent in the barn, and the song of the reaper in the fields.