To give only one example of the way in which, under the system of free importation, the balance of trade has been turned against this country, we subjoin the official returns of the progress of our trade with America since Sir Robert Peel's tariff was introduced in 1842, and for five years previously.[20] From that it appears that the trade with that country, which in 1830 was £8,000,000 on each side, has now so immensely changed, especially since the tariff of 1842, that, while our exports to it in 1845 were £10,000,000, our imports from it were £22,000,000! How was the balance of £12,000,000 paid? The answer is, _in money_; and that money it was which enabled them to conquer the Mexicans. We shall look with anxiety for the returns of our exports to, and importations from America for the last two years. When they appear, it will at once be seen where the money, the want of which is now so severely felt, has gone, under the fostering influence of free trade. Sir Robert Peel says that the Americans have tried the system of paper money, and they have had enough of it. We thank the Right Honourable Baronet for having reminded us of this example of the effects of a contracted currency. It appears that in 1836 the imports of English manufactures into the United States were £15,116,300. In the next year they were only £5,693,094 official value; and the declared or real value in that year was only £4,695,225; and the declared value of the imports from Great Britain in 1842, was only £3,528,807.[21] What occasioned this extraordinary defalcation, we shall inform the Right Honourable Baronet. In spring 1837, the metallic system was introduced by General Jackson, then President of the United States, (by his refusal to take any thing but specie in payment of government claims,) the country being at the time engaged in vast railway and other undertakings, with the concurrence and by the authority of government. Thence the prodigious falling off in the imports from this country, under which our own manufacturers suffered so severely, and from which they have scarcely yet recovered. Thence the destruction of three-fourths of the mercantile capital of the United States. May heaven avert a similar catastrophe, resulting from the same policy, in this country! The causes, then, to which the present dreadful crisis is owing, are as plain as if the proofs of them were to be found in Holy Writ. We shall simply record what Sir Robert Peel and the bullion party have done for the last five years, and then ask whether under such a system it was possible a catastrophe could be averted.