the consumers of these kingdoms had been materially injured by their imprudent dalliance with scrip. There was no tightness in the money market; no external cause to interfere with the successful operation of industry, capital, or enterprise. Yet still there was distress; and, what was more remarkable, the complaint was universal. The value of produce had fallen, effecting thereby a corresponding decline in rents, and every kind of uncertain profit. Employment grew scarcer every day, whilst the number of applicants increased. The burden of taxation, however, still remained undiminished. The creditor could still exact the stipulated amount of money from his debtor, without deduction, although the labour of the debtor was reduced in point of value by at least a third. Such were, and are, the leading phenomena, to account for which the ingenuity of the Free-traders has been exercised. They have, we are bound to say, cut an exceedingly sorry figure in explanation. They have got in their mouths a few cant phrases, which, when assailed, they repeat over and over again, without the slightest reference to their meaning. One of these, and perhaps the most favourite, refers to the "transition state"--a peculiar phase of suffering, which they maintain to be the necessary consequence of every considerable change in the fiscal regulations of the empire. This "transition state," in politics, would appear to correspond to that which, in medicine, was favoured by Mr St John Long. In order to become better, it is necessary to make the patient, in the first instance, materially worse--to inflict artificial wounds and promote suppuration, in the hope that these may afterwards be healed. It is rather remarkable that none of our political doctors have as yet ventured to specify the nature of the curatory process. They leave us woefully in the dark as to the means which are to be adopted for remedying the evil; and they obstinately refuse to predict what kind of state is to follow upon this of transition. In truth, they are utterly at sea. They cannot shut their eyes to the extent of the mischief which they have wrought; they cannot find or invent an extraneous excuse, which will avail them, in the opinion even of the loosest thinker, to maintain the delusion that the present distress and stagnation are attributable to any other cause than that of low prices, occasioned by foreign competition; and they are attempting to conceal their chagrin and disappointment at the disastrous issue of their experiment under the cover of general terms and vague ambiguous phrases--a rhetorical expedient which is not likely to have much weight with those who have been made the victims of their rashness or vacillation.