This Table exhibits an alarming decline in the importation of all the materials for our staple manufactures, except raw silk, which has considerably increased. That increase has not arisen from any increased sale of articles of clothing, viewed as a whole, in the nation since 1845, but solely from the great extent to which, since that time, the fashion of ladies' dress has run in favour of silk attire. And, accordingly, the decline in wool and cotton imported is so very considerable, that it amounts, since 1845, to fully a fourth. We are aware how much the price of cotton rose in 1845; but it has since rapidly declined; and yet, even at the present low prices, Lord George Bentinck stated in his place in the House of Commons, in the course of the debate on bringing up the address in this session of Parliament, without contradiction from the practical men there, that so miserable were the prices of export markets just now, that cotton manufactured goods were exported cheaper than the raw material from which they are formed could be imported to this country. It is a poor set-off to these facts demonstrating the declining state of our foreign manufactures, to say that the exportation of iron and machinery has greatly increased during the same years, and that we have imported enormously all kinds of foreign subsistence.[10] So it has been; but what does that indicate? The first, that foreigners, under our liberal system of free trade, even in the articles vital to our manufacturing wealth, are largely importing the machinery which is to enable them to rival our staple manufacturing fabrics; and the iron rails which are to give them the means of bringing their establishments, for practical purposes, nearer each other, and compensating the immense advantages we have hitherto derived from the narrowness and compact nature of our territory, and our insular and highly favourable maritime situation. The last, which undoubtedly has risen in so short a time to a height which the most decided and gloomy Protectionist never ventured to anticipate,[11] only demonstrates that free trade is even more rapidly than was anticipated by its opponents, working out the downfal of our agricultural industry, and reducing us to the pitiable condition of the Roman empire, when, instead as of old sending supplies of provisions to the legions from Italy into distant provinces, they were entirely fed by them, and the life of the Roman people was committed to the chances of the winds and the waves.