We observe that Mr William Ewart Gladstone, in an address delivered at the late meeting of the Fettercairn Farmers' Club, has taken a different line of argument; and if his views should prove to be correct, we must necessarily admit that the British agriculturist has no ground for complaint at all. We are, it seems, making a vast deal of noise without anything to justify it. We are clamouring about an imaginary evil, when we ought to be deeply grateful for natural benefits vouchsafed to us. So thinks Mr Gladstone, or at least so he speaks; and as his undeniable talents, and the high official position which he formerly occupied, entitle him to an attentive hearing, we shall briefly recapitulate his views. These are not new, for, if we recollect right, they were enunciated so early as last spring by the Hon. Sydney Herbert, a gentleman belonging to the same political section as Mr Gladstone, and they were then triumphantly refuted by Mr John Ellman, in his letter addressed to the Duke of Bedford. Since that time, however, another harvest has intervened, and Mr Gladstone now takes up the argument of his friend under better auspices, and with a greater show of plausibility. Foreign competition, according to Mr Gladstone, is not the cause of low prices. "This is not," says he, "the first time that we have had difficulties. We have had many periods when low prices prevailed. Certainly, at present, prices are extremely low; but, in many parts of the country, there is a sort of compensation for these low prices arising from great abundance--the result of improved processes of growing the crop, and, of consequence, an improved yield. With regard to the cause of declining prices, I cannot adopt the line of argument of those who look only to importations as the chief cause. I do not pretend to speak so accurately of Scotland, but, as to England, _the wheat crop this year was the largest ever known_. Upon one single acre of land, of average quality, no less than sixty-eight bushels of wheat have been taken from the crop of this year. I must also point out the fact to you, that, although the crop is the largest, the prices are by no means the lowest we have seen--for instance, in the year 1835, when the sliding-scale was in full operation, we had wheat at 35s. per quarter, _and this not only for a short time, but for the whole year_. If it be true, therefore, that, at the present time, we have prices 5s. per quarter higher than they were in 1835, with a corn-law prohibitory till wheat rose to 70s. per quarter, then I cannot see that we have any such great cause for alarm as many imagine."