"With this vast increase in the importation from abroad has come the ruin of the people of Ireland. Deprived of manufactures and commerce, her people were driven to live by agriculture alone, and she was enabled to drag on a miserable existence, so long as her neighbour was content to make some compensation for the loss of labour, by paying her for her products higher prices than those at which they might have been elsewhere purchased. With the repeal of the Corn Laws that resource has failed; and the result is a state of poverty, wretchedness, and famine, that has compelled the establishment of a system which obliges the landowner to maintain the people, whether they work or not; and thus is one of the conditions of slavery re-established in that unhappy country. From being a great exporter of food, she has now become a large importer. The great market for Indian corn is Ireland--a country in which the production of food is almost the sole occupation of the people. The value of labour in food throughout a population of eight millions, is thus rapidly decreasing." To every word of this we subscribe, and we beg to say, further, that this is not the only instance. A large portion of Scotland has been absolutely pauperised by Free Trade. The condition of the western Highlands and Islands is most appalling; and unless Ministers and members of Parliament are prepared to do their duty to the children of the soil, they are utterly and execrably unworthy of the trust which has been committed to their charge. It is with a feeling nearly akin to loathing that we peruse accounts of Brobdignag glass-houses, and sham exhibitions of the industry of nations, reared at an enormous cost, when we know that the men who ought to be the producers of our national wealth--and who might be so, were they not made the victims of a heartless and senseless system--are being driven in hundreds from their hearths and homes, and cast upon the wide world, without a roof to shelter them, or a rag to give them covering! All this, and more--for every day brings its fresh tale of woe and wretchedness--is the consequence of free imports. And how stands the account the other way? Where is the counterbalancing advantage? It may be that the ruin and prostration of Ireland and the Highlands is no great loss to the indwellers of the towns, the men of the factories and counting-houses. It may be that they are not at all affected by such misery, or that they care to listen to it, notwithstanding that the victims are in the sight of God as valuable beings as themselves. It may be that, in consequence of such suffering, or rather by creating it, they have derived some advantage large enough to compensate for the havoc, by enabling them to give a livelihood to thousands who would otherwise have been unemployed and destitute. If so, where is it? Has America reciprocated? NO! AND AMERICA WILL NOT.