To all these disasters, present and future, the Free-traders have one set-off to apply, and that is the increased consumption of food, which they suppose has taken place in the country in consequence of their measures. Sir R. Peel contended strongly that the five million quarters of wheat alone imported in 1849, afforded decisive evidence of the increased wellbeing of the working classes. If the right honourable Baronet will take the trouble to travel through any of the grain districts of the country, he will perceive at once how fallacious this argument is. The barnyards never were so full at this season in any former year. Every farmer has held his stock who was not forced to sell. The nation has, since the last harvest, been fed by foreigners to an unprecedented extent. Ten millions has been sent out of the country to buy foreign wheat, and, of course, lost to British industry. The five million quarters of wheat imported have been less an addition to the national consumption, than a _transference_ of that consumption from British farmers to foreigners. At least a half of the present harvest will be rolled over to next year. If we are blessed with another fine harvest, there will be the crop of a year and a half, besides ten or twelve millions imported in 1851, to stock the market. Prices in all probability will be much lower than they are at present. We are always reminded that in 1835 prices were 39s. 5d. on an average of the year for wheat. True, and why was that? Because we had had _four_ fine harvests in succession; so fine that the importation of wheat, on an average of five years ending with 1835, had been only 398,000 quarters a-year. _Now_ one fine harvest and the importation have done the whole. But we are indebted to the Free-traders for so often reminding us of the low prices of 1835. They demonstrate that the nation in good seasons can feed itself in the most affluent degree. Foreign importation, therefore, except in bad years, is unnecessary; and all the destruction of domestic industry it produces is as unnecessary as it is short-sighted.