It is extremely remarkable, too--and to this point we in an especial manner request the attention of our readers--that the distress is felt _much more strongly in the commercial than the agricultural classes_. Indeed, were it not for the increased weight of poor-rates, owing to the manufacturing distress, the multitude of railway labourers thrown idle by the stoppage of their lines, and the number of land-holders who have had their finances crippled by the universal fall of railway and other shares, it may be doubted whether there would now be any agricultural distress in the empire at all. Where it exists, it is entirely the reflexion or re-echo, as it were, of commercial ruin. This is the more remarkable, that the only serious and real disaster which has affected the country since the depression began, has been the failure of the potato crop in 1846, which of course blasted, in the first instance at least, the labours of the cultivators only; and that the distress now felt as so poignant has been continued only, not created, by the French and German revolutions. Down to February last, no class had suffered by real external calamity but the farmers: and yet the distress which has become so extreme, has arisen not among them, but among the merchants and manufacturers. This, too, has occurred at a time when a great change has been made for the interest, and at the desire, of the commercial classes, in our foreign mercantile policy,--when free trade has been introduced, to cheapen bread, lessen the cost of production, and facilitate exchanges; and when the ruin which was anticipated from the measure was not to the commercial but the landed interest. This is one of the most remarkable circumstances in our present condition, and one on which it most behoves both our legislators, and all interested in their country's welfare, to ponder.