It is difficult, indeed, to observe the limits of conventional decorum while commenting on conduct like this. Had Mr Disraeli demanded the re-imposition of a duty, whether fixed or variable, we should of course have expected that, however strong his case, he would be met by strenuous opposition. The Whigs have committed themselves so far that, were it proved to them that in the course of a single year, the whole agricultural interest must perish unless their whole system of commercial policy were changed, we should not expect them to step in and offer to stay the calamity. In this line of dogged inaction and obstinacy they would probably receive the congenial support of the small rump of Conservative renegades, who follow them rather through the necessity of their degraded position, than from any abstract love they bear to the Whig dominant faction. But Mr Disraeli asked nothing of the kind. He simply pointed out the fact, which could brook no denial, that certain burdens and restrictions were still imposed upon the agriculturists, which prevented them from entering on anything like, equal terms, into that course of competition which is the glory and essence of Free Trade. He demanded the removal of these, or, at all events, all impartial adjustment of them, in order that the British agriculturist might have fair play, and not be brought into the field loaded and oppressed by a weight which no other class of the community is called upon to bear. It was no question of countervailing duties to put the British on a level with the foreign producer: it was simply a question of home taxation between class and class, and between man and man. Under the system of protection, burdens had been laid largely upon the land, and the land alone; restrictions had been laid upon the occupiers, forbidding them to grow certain valuable crops, in order that the revenue might be maintained by fixed custom-duties, levied on the same articles when imported from foreign countries; and certain other produce was placed under the fetters of the Excise. The system of protection fell, but the burdens and restrictions remain. Apart altogether from the foreign question--apart from considerations whether the owner and occupier of land in Britain can compete with foreigners in his own market on equal terms whilst the burden of British taxation remains undiminished--lies the question of fair and equal adjustment of taxation among ourselves. It may be that this is difficult--it may even prove to be impossible. The state of the public revenue may be such, that no Government can accord to the occupiers of land their natural right of producing what crops they please, or abrogate the laws which have the effect of restricting certain kinds of produce to very narrow limits. It may be that human ingenuity cannot devise a method for setting agricultural industry free in all its branches, and allowing that open competition which is not withheld from any kind of