Already it has become painfully evident that this effect is taking place in this country. Ministers boast of the exports having increased above £10,000,000 in 1849 over what they were in 1848, and of their having now turned £60,000,000 a-year. Let it be supposed that this is all to be put down to the account of Free Trade, and that our Indian victories, the pacification of Europe, the crushing of revolution in France, and the impulse given to American purchase by Californian gold, had nothing at all to do with the matter. Is the country prosperous?--are the railways prosperous?--are poor-rates declining?--is labour in request either in the rural or urban districts? The facts are _notoriously the reverse_. At this moment we happen to know that above ten thousand looms in Manchester are preparing to put their mills upon the short time of forty hours a-week. The railways never were so low: at an average, their stock is worth little more than _a third_ of what it was three years ago. Much was said in Parliament of the decrease of poor-rates by £300,000 or £400,000 a-year. That is _entirely owing_ to the fall in the price of provisions, which at once, and materially, lessened the cost of maintaining the paupers. Had the rates fallen really in proportion to the decline in the price of provisions, they would have gone down fifty per cent, or above £2,000,000 annually. A decline of a few hundred thousand pounds a-year only, in such circumstances, was in reality not a fall, but a rise. And in Scotland, the poor-rates for 1849, despite the fall in the cost of maintaining the paupers, were higher than in 1848, or than in any preceding year: they rose from £544,000 a-year to £576,000. As to Ireland, it is admitted on all hands that its condition was never worse, even during the worst periods of the famine.