Latterly, indeed, some portions of the public press have shown symptoms of being more specific, and very glad should we be if Ministers would follow that example. We are told that present prices are merely exceptional, and that they must shortly improve. The mere adoption of this argument shows that such writers dissent from the doctrine that cheapness is an unqualified blessing--that they still believe in their hearts that it is impossible altogether to separate the interests of the producer and the consumer--and that they are still alive to the fundamental political axiom, that the wealth of a country depends mainly upon the value of its produce. Were it otherwise, they would be supporters of the most astounding paradox that was ever advanced. The price of the loaf must rise correspondingly with that of the quarter of wheat: beef and mutton are sold by the stone or by the pound, in proportion to the market value of the living animal. If wheat were to rise to 56s., which is said to be the average cost of its production in this country, bread would become so much dearer, and, in that case, the working-man could be no better off than he was before the corn laws were repealed. We have heard it said, and we firmly believe it to be the case, that many of the public men, of both parties, who voted with Sir Robert Peel, did so under the full conviction that there could be no material decline--that they were misled by the onesided, imperfect, and fallacious reports as to the state, quality, and extent of the Continental harvests, which were laid before Parliament--and that they never would have consented to such a measure, had they foreseen the results which are now unhappily before us. We gather this, not merely from rumour, but from the tenor of the speeches delivered in the House of Commons in 1846. Sir James Graham and Lord John Russell both treated as visionary the notion of any material decline--Lord Palmerston went further; and we think it useful to lay before our readers the following excerpt from his speech, delivered on the occasion of the second reading of the Corn Importation Bill. Referring to the surplus quantity of Continental grain, he said--