of imitating the burning of Moscow, or renewing the sacrifice of Numantia. The feeling among the vast majority of the manufacturing and mercantile classes would be--"What is the use of fighting and prolonging so terrible a crisis? Our workmen are starving, our harbours are blockaded, our trade is gone, we are evidently overmatched; let us on any terms get out of the contest, and sit quietly on our cotton bags, to make money by weaving cloth for our conquerors." We have said enough, we think, to make every thoughtful and impartial mind contemplate with the most serious disquietude the prospect which is before us, under our present system of cheapening everything, and, as a necessary consequence, reducing the national armaments to a pitiable degree of weakness in the midst of general hostility, and the greatest possible increase of available forces on the part of all our neighbours, rivals, and enemies. But let us suppose that we are _entirely wrong_ in all we have hitherto advanced--that there is not the slightest danger of an invasion or blockade from foreign powers, or that our home forces are so considerable as to render any such attempt on their part utterly hopeless. There are three other circumstances, the direct effects of our present Free Trade policy, any one of which is fully adequate in no distant period to destroy our independence, and from the combined operation of which nothing but national subjugation and ultimate ruin can be anticipated. The first is the extraordinary and appalling increase which, since Free Trade was introduced, has taken place in the proportion of the daily food of our population which is furnished by _foreign states_. Before the great change in our policy began, the nation had been rendered, practically speaking, self-supporting. The importation of wheat, for the five years from 1830 to 1835, was only 398,000 quarters; and even during the five bad years in succession, from 1836 to 1841, the average importation was only 1,700,000 quarters. From 1830 to 1840, the average importation of wheat and flour was only 907,000 quarters.[10] But since the great change of 1846, the state of matters has been so completely changed that it is now notorious that, in ordinary years, the importations cannot be expected to be ever less than 9,000,000 or 10,000,000 quarters of grain, about 5,000,000 quarters of which consists of wheat.[11] The importation in the single month of July last, in the face of prices about 42s. the quarter, was no less than 1,700,000 quarters of all sorts of grain;[12] and in the month ending November 5, with prices about 39s. 9d. the quarter of wheat, the importation was:-- Quarters. Wheat, 309,162 Other grain, 181,753 Indian corn, 36,412 Flour and meal, 194,700 ------- 721,657 --Price, 39s. 9d. quarter of wheat.