"Of live animals and provisions imported in 1847, there is an excess over last year of more than 100 per cent., of butter (duty paid) 35 per cent.; of cheese 15 per cent.; of grain and flour 300 per cent.; of coffee (duty paid) between 8 and 9 per cent.; of sugar (duty paid) 15 per cent., and of spirits (duty paid) 25 per cent. _This has all been eaten and drunk._ But how, it will be said, is it possible it can have been paid for? and what a splendid export trade the nation must have carried on, when all this has taken place, and only six millions of bullion have disappeared! Unfortunately, however, the explanation lies deeper. Although we have been extravagant in our living, we have starved our manufactories. We have sold our goods wherever we could find a market for them, and we have abstained from purchasing the materials out of which we may make more. We have not increased our export trade. It shows, in fact, a diminution as compared with last year; but in our avidity to consume luxuries, we have foregone, as we could not sustain the expenditure of both, keeping up the stock by which our mills and manufactories are to be fed."--_Times_, November 24, 1847. So that the free traders have at last discovered that the unlimited importation of food is not, after all, so great a blessing as they had so long held forth. They have found to their cost that there is some little difference between sending _thirty millions_ in twelve months in hard cash to America and the Continent for grain, and sending it to Kent, Yorkshire, Essex, and Scotland. They have discovered that there is such a thing as a nation increasing its imports enormously and beyond all example, and at the same time its exports declining in the same proportion, from the abstraction of the circulating medium requisite to carry on domestic fabrics. All this is what the Protectionists constantly predicted would follow the adoption of free trade principles; and they warned government in the most earnest manner two years ago, that no increase of exports, but the reverse, would follow the throwing open our ports to foreign grain; and that, unless provision were made for extending the currency when our sovereigns were sent abroad for foreign grain, general ruin would ensue. Two years ago Mr Alison observed:--