of woe, and want, and fearful deprivation, which are forced upon the public ear. And yet few of them appear to have traced the evil to its source, which lies simply in the legislative discouragement of production, for the sake of a system of conversion which can offer no means adequate to the wants and numbers of the competing population. Our exports, when we deduct the value of the raw material, constitute in reality an insignificant item in the account of our annual creation of wealth. The greatness and prosperity of Britain never did, and never will, depend upon the amount of her foreign trade, though that is now regarded by our statistical quack-doctors as the sole criterion. What we must depend upon is the home trade, and that can only be prosperous by maintaining the value of production. For how else, save from production, are the labouring population, or indeed any of us, high or low, rich or poor, as we may call ourselves, to be maintained? All of us derive our subsistence from the earth, and beyond what is reaped or redeemed from its bosom we have nothing. If, for example, there is no market for iron, the furnaces will be blown out, and the ores left unworked; if there is no market for agricultural produce--that is, a remunerative market--the fields will be left untilled. What, then, becomes of the converters?--for whom do they work?--or how do they acquire the wherewithal to purchase the food which the foreigner may chance to send them? Let Ireland answer. That unhappy island is at this moment paying the last penalties of Free Trade. It stands before us as a beacon and warning of what we must expect, and cannot avoid, if we continue to discourage production, in the insane hope of thereby stimulating conversion; and perhaps we cannot do better than quote an American opinion as to the cause of its wretchedness and ruin:--