Sorely perplexed with results so diametrically opposite to all their doctrines as to an increase of importation being necessarily attended with a proportionate increase of exportation, and of all apprehension of an undue pressure thence arising on the money market being chimerical, the Free-Traders lay it all upon the famine at home or abroad. The potato-rot, it is said, has _concealed_ the effects of free-trade: distress in foreign nations has disabled them to purchase our manufactures in return for their rude produce; the increase of British importation has come too soon to operate as yet on their purchase of our manufactures. Here again the facts come decisively to disprove the theoretical anticipations. So far has the increase of our importations been from being sudden, and come last year for the first time on foreign nations, it has been _remarkably gradual_, and has gone on for years, having received only a great impulse in the articles on which the duty was lessened or removed last summer. Our general imports have steadily advanced for the last three years; and in particular articles the same progress has been conspicuous.[9] How, then, has it happened that this general, continued, and steady _increase_ of imports has issued only in a _diminution_ to an alarming extent of exports? And observe, the countries from which we have imported so largely last year of grain and articles of subsistence, have not only not suffered by the scarcity general on the Continent, but have profited immensely by it. America has been blessed with a splendid crop of every species of grain; and, in consequence of the famine in Ireland and severe scarcity in France, prices of grain have risen to triple their former amount in the United States. It has risen so much in the southern states of Russia, that the Emperor of Russia has prohibited the farther exportation of it from the Black Sea. But all these floods of wealth flowing into the great grain states from the failure of the crops in France and Ireland, have been unavailing to produce any increased activity in our manufactures. On the contrary, they are all declining; and our immense importations of food are almost all paid for in direct exportations of the precious metals.