A return to protection may be bad, or it may be good; it may make us poorer or richer; it may involve us in new difficulties, or it may free us from those which confessedly exist at present. All that is matter of opinion. But has Lord John Russell so far forgotten his old constitutional creed, as to maintain that, if the majority of the constituencies should declare in favour of protection, and the majority of the House of Peers adopt the same view, the present commercial system is not to be reversed? And if he does not mean that, why all this empty bluster and ridiculous vapouring upon a point which has not yet been mooted? There is no Guy Fawkes' conspiracy going on in the cellars to blow the Treasury benches, with their occupants, into the air; there is no intention on the part of the Protectionists to call the yeomanry of England together, and march them upon Westminster, to see their wrongs redressed by force of arms. If the noble lord dreads anything, it is a moral reaction on the part of the people--on the part of the voters throughout the country, who hold the franchise, and return members to the House of Commons; and if he denounces the acts of a majority so obtained,--why, we must even seek out a new interpreter of the mysteries of the British Constitution! In sober sadness, we could almost find it in our heart to be sorry for Lord John Russell. For years past he has had it in his power very materially to strengthen his position, by acting up to the tenor of those letters which we referred to in the commencement of this article. We do not say that any such arrangement would or could have satisfied the agricultural interest; for the vicissitude which they have experienced has proved so tremendous, that no adjustment of taxation could act as a remedy for the evil. Nevertheless, it was perfectly open to the Premier to have freed himself at once from the trammels of party--to have taken a high, honourable, and bold position--and to have insisted that the interest which was made the subject of experiment should be placed as nearly as possible, in so far as regards taxation, on an equal footing with the other interests of the country. To that line of conduct, indeed, his credit, if not his honour, was pledged; and we confess that we cannot fathom the motive which has led him first to delay, and then directly to refuse, what he once acknowledged to be an act of simple justice. What ulterior views the Whig Cabinet may entertain, we have no means of guessing; but if it should be, as has already been surmised, that they calculate on maintaining their supremacy through the ruin of the most important branch of the producers of the United Kingdom, they may look for a struggle not less desperate than that which Lord John Russell has predicted as the consequence of a constitutional return to the protective system.