"All these," says the Free-trader calmly, "are exploded fallacies!" Are they so, most excellent Wiseacre? Then tell us, if you please, where, when, and by whom they were exploded? Admirable Solon as you esteem yourself--and we admit that you are qualified for the Bass--it would puzzle you, with the aid of all the collective wisdom you can gather from the speeches or writings of Cobden, Bright, Wilson, Peel, or your daily organs of information, to refute one single proposition which has been here advanced, or to negative a single conclusion. Do you deny that the burdens we have specified exist in Britain? You cannot. Do you deny that the wheat-growing countries from which we now receive our principal supplies are exempt from similar charges and taxation? You cannot. Do you deny the truth of the economical proposition, that all burdens and taxes imposed by the State upon any kind of produce are proper elements of the cost of production, and ought to be paid by the consumer? You do not. Well, then, will you venture to aver that, at present prices, wheat being at 42s. 2d. per quarter, according to the average of England, or at any period which you may choose to specify within the last eighteen months, the purchaser of British wheat has repaid the grower of it the whole cost of its production, comprehending the full amount of its direct and indirect taxation? If you venture to say Yes, then you are at issue, in point of fact, with your own vaunted authorities, Sir Robert Peel, Wilson of the _Economist_, and every writer of the best ability on your side, none of whom have supposed that wheat can be grown in this country with a profit at a lower rate than 52s. 2d. per quarter, whilst others assume the minimum rate to be 56s. If you answer No, the whole question is conceded. The fact is, that our opponents, if they had the least regard for common decency, ought to be chary of talking about exploded fallacies. We should like to know on which side the burden of the fallacy lies? Have we not, even within the last six months, seen long and elaborate articles in the leading Free-Trade journals, assuring us that wheat was rising, and must rise to a profitable point? Was not this argued over and over again in the columns of the _Economist_, with such an array of statistical authorities as might have overcome the conviction of the most desponding farmer? Where are the assurances now, and the arguments to prove that a free importation of foreign corn would simply have the effect of steadying, and not of permanently depressing prices? And yet these men, as miserably detected and exposed as Guy Fawkes when dragged from the cellar, have the consummate assurance to talk about "exploded fallacies!"