What wonder, then, if the panic has materially increased, since the history of free trade, for the last three years, has revealed such a fearful addition to this estimate: for how stands the fact? In place of 2,000,000 quarters of wheat annually, from the passing of the Corn-Law Repeal Act (26th June 1846) until the 5th November 1847, a period of little more than sixteen months, we imported 7,229,916 quarters of wheat--while the total of all kinds of grain entered for consumption amounted to 16,331,282 quarters! Some idea may be formed of the effects of such an augmented importation, if we bear in mind that, from 5th July 1828 to 1st Jan. 1841, a period of nearly thirteen years, the whole quantity of foreign wheat and flour entered for home consumption was 13,475,000 quarters. But lest it should be argued that this was a supply produced by extraordinary circumstances, and which could only be furnished from accumulations of former seasons--as was, indeed, said at the time--the further history of the trade has shown us that our foreign supplies continue to pour in at precisely the same rate. The total of all kinds of grain and flour entered for consumption in the last nine months, ending 5th September 1849, as exhibited by the Board of Trade returns, shows an amount of 9,870,823 quarters, the quantity of wheat being for this period 3,821,292 quarters; and of wheaten flour--besides frightening the farmers, bearing ruin to our own millers--3,236,993 cwt.--together equivalent to quarters of wheat, 4,746,147. And all this, be it observed, has been imported while the average price per quarter has been _one sixpence only_ above that named as likely to exclude the approach of more than 1,500,000 or 2,000,000 quarters from our shores! Formerly--in the first years of the century, up to 1842--the farmer had to contend against a foreign supply of grain amounting to little more than 1,000,000 quarters _per annum_--now, in some cases, under obligations contracted on the faith of protection to native industry, he is called upon to make the vain struggle against an inundation of foreign corn amounting to upwards of 1,000,000 quarters _per month_! He cannot, it is evident, maintain the contest long. Such were the facts assumed as the basis of our legislation, and already they stand forth to the public eye as gross and palpable blunders. The British agriculturist has, beyond all question, been injured to an extent infinitely greater than was anticipated by any one--an extent so vast, that, could it have been predicted as a certainty, the rashest theorist would have recoiled from the danger of such an experiment.