parallel to it has yet been presented in the annals of modern Europe. If we thought that this long and portentous catalogue of disasters was unavoidable, and could not be remedied by human wisdom, we would submit to it in silence, and we trust with resignation, as we do to the certainty of death, or the chances of plague, pestilence, or famine, arising from the dispensations of Providence, for wise and inscrutable purposes, but over which we have no control. But this is very far from being the case. We believe, as firmly as we do in our own existence, that they are _entirely of our own creation_,--that they are the result solely and exclusively of false principles diffused through our people, and false measures in consequence forced upon our Government; and that, though the consequences of these false principles must be long and disastrous, yet it is still possible to remedy the evil, to convert a land of mourning into a land of joy, and restore again the merry days to Old England. The retreat from the ways of error never was to nations, any more than individuals, by any other path but the path of suffering; but if the retreat is made, and the suffering borne, we trust in the good providence of God, and energy of the British character to repair all that is past. The distress which prevails in the nation, and, most of all, _in the commercial districts and cities_, being universal and undeniable, the supporters of the present system, which has led to such results, are sorely puzzled how to explain so decisive and damning a practical refutation of their theories. The common theory put forth by the free traders and bullionists is, that it is the railways and Irish famine which have done it all. This is the explanation which for months has been daily advanced by the _Times_, and which has been formally adopted by the leaders of government in both Houses. We are a miserably poor nation; we have _eaten up our resources_; the strain upon our wealth has been greater than we could bear. This, of having eaten up our resources, has, in a peculiar manner, got hold of the imaginations of the able writers in the _Times_; and, forgetting that a great importation of food was the very thing which they themselves had held forth as the great blessing to be derived from free trade, they give the following alarming account of the food devoured by the nation in the first nine months of 1847:--