Why are we evidently and undeniably losing the empire of the seas, by the rapid and portentous increase of the foreign and decline of the English shipping, in carrying on our own trade? Only because freights must, it is thought, be cheapened as well as everything else; and the independence of the country is a trifling consideration to a fall of a farthing in the pound, in the transport of some articles, for the benefit of the Manchester trader. Why are the West Indies utterly ruined, and the annual importation of slaves into Cuba and Brazil doubled,[17] and discontent so universally spread through our colonies, that beyond all doubt, in the first reverse, they will break off from the mother country, if not previously thrown off by it? Merely to carry out the dogma of Free Trade, and lower sugar, watered by the blood of the slaves, a penny or twopence a pound to the British consumer. Why have we brought 7,000,000 of our people, in three years, to depend for their daily food on foreign supplies, and put ourselves entirely at the mercy of the _two states_ from which nearly all that food comes? Only to enrich the Manchester manufacturers, and appease the cry for cheap bread, by enabling them to beat down the wages of labour from 1s. 6d. to 1s. a-day. Why are poor-rates--measured in the true way, by quarters of grain--heavier in this year of boasted prosperity than they were in any former year of admitted adversity? Because, in every department of industry, we have beat down native by letting in a flood of foreign industry. Why are 300,000 industrious citizens annually driven into exile, and Ireland threatened with a depopulation the most rapid and extraordinary which has been witnessed in the world since the declining days of the Roman empire? Because we would lower wheat from 56s. to 39s. a quarter; and thereby we have extinguished the profits of cultivation in a portion of our empire containing 8,000,000 of inhabitants, but so exclusively agricultural that its exports of manufactures are only £230,000 a-year. It is one principle--the cheapening system--devised by the moneyed and manufacturing oligarchy, and calculated for their exclusive benefit, which has done the whole.