How can human wisdom or foresight, the energy of the Anglo-Saxons, or the courage of the Normans, maintain, for any length of time, our independence in the perilous position into which free-trade policy has, during the short period it has been in operation, brought us? The repeal of the Corn Laws has already brought an importation of eight or ten millions of foreign quarters annually upon our people--a full sixth of the national subsistence, and which will soon become indispensable to their existence. A simple non-intercourse act will alone enable Russia or America, without firing a shot, to compel us to lower the flag of Blake and Nelson. Stern famine will "guard the solitary coast," and famished multitudes demand national submission as the price of life. The repeal of the Navigation Laws will ere long bring the foreign seamen engaged in carrying on our trade to a superiority over our own, as has already taken place in so woful a manner with the Baltic powers. Hostile fleets will moor their ships of the line across our harbours, and throw back our starving multitudes on their own island for food, and their own market for employment. What will then avail our manufacturers and our fabrics,--the forges of Birmingham, the power-looms of Manchester, the iron-works of Lanarkshire,--if the enemies' squadrons blockade the Thames, the Mersey, and the Clyde, and famished millions are deprived alike of food and employment, by the suicidal policy of preceding rulers? Our present strength will then be the measure of our weakness; our vast population, as in a beleaguered town, the useless multitude which must be fed, and cannot fight,--our wealth, the glittering prize which will attract the rapacity of the spoiler. With indignant feelings, but caustic truth, our people will then curse the infatuated policy which abandoned the national defences, and handed them over, bound hand and foot, to the enemy, only the more the object of rapacity because such boundless wealth had accumulated in a few hands amongst them. Then will be seen, that with our own hands, as into the ancient city, we have admitted the enemies' bands; we have drawn the horse pregnant with armed men through our ramparts, and our weeping and dispersed descendants will exclaim with the Trojans of old-- "Fuimus Troës, fuit Ilium, et ingens Gloria Teucrorum." _Printed by William Blackwood and Sons, Edinburgh._ * * * * * Transcriber's note: Minor typographical errors have been corrected without note. Irregularities and inconsistencies in the ext have been retained as printed. Mismatched quotes are not fixed if it's not sufficiently clear where the missing quote should be placed. The cover for the eBook version of this book was created by the transcriber and is placed in the public domain.