The matter is, therefore, very materially simplified. We are justified in holding that henceforth, under the system of free ports, the average price of the quarter of wheat in England will not exceed 40s., and may possibly be much lower when the resources of the Continent and America, both aware of their market, are fully developed. In Scotland, the average must necessarily be two or three shillings less. A corresponding fall has taken place, and will continue, in all other kinds of cereal crop and of provisions. If these data are admitted--and a very short period will now suffice to establish or refute their accuracy--the agricultural question may be discussed without any specialities whatever. Every man throughout the country will have the means of forming his judgment upon the actual working of the measure, and its effect, both direct and indirect, upon all branches of British industry. It is most desirable, on every account, that there should be no mistake as to this. Our opponents--perhaps naturally enough exasperated at the prolongation of a combat in which they have been uniformly worsted when the weapons of argument were employed, and being moreover aware, from symptoms which are everywhere, manifested, that the period of delusion is nearly gone by--have over and over again charged the country party and its chiefs with a desire to cut short the experiment, before its results were sufficiently apparent. We need hardly say that the charge is utterly unfounded. We have no wish to precipitate matters, or to effect by a _coup-de-main_ that alteration which never can be permanent unless based on the conviction of the majority of the constituencies of the Empire. We have no desire to take a leaf from the book of recent statesmen, and to induce members of Parliament to act contrary to those declarations on the faith of which they were returned. But we are entitled--nay, we are bound--to watch the experiment as it proceeds, and ever and anon to declare our honest and sincere opinion as to the nature of its working. We cannot shut our eyes to the vast injury which it is causing, and has already caused, to a most important and numerous class of our fellow-countrymen; we cannot reconcile ourselves to the operation of a system which has undoubtedly disappointed the expectations even of its founders. We have, therefore, whenever that was needful, expressed our opinion without any reservation whatever; and we shall continue to do so, not the less confidently because the views which we entertain are now openly adopted and received by many who were heretofore unwilling to disturb a course of legislation which had been deliberately sanctioned by the State.