and 1810--when the whole metallic currency was drained out of the country by the demands for the war in the Peninsula and Germany, but no distress was experienced, and the national strength was put forth with unparalleled vigour, and, as it proved, decisive effect--proves how easily such a crisis might be averted by the extended issue of a paper currency not liable to be withdrawn, when most required, by a public run for gold. In the third place, to crown the whole, and as if to put the keystone in the arch of public distress, Free-Trade in every department was forced upon the country by Sir Robert Peel and his successors in 1846, 1847, and 1849, under the dictation of the Manchester school, and to promote the interest of master-manufacturers by lowering the wages of labour and of realised capital, by cheapening the price of everything else, and raising the value of money. We see the effects of this already evinced in every department to which the system has applied; and we see the commencement only of the general ruin with which it is fraught. In agriculture, Great Britain and Ireland, which were, practically speaking, in ordinary seasons self-supporting, have come already to import from _nine to ten millions_ of foreign grain for the support of the inhabitants, besides sheep and cattle in an equal proportion. At least fifteen millions yearly is sent out of the country, for the most part in hard cash, to buy food, which formerly was nearly all spent in it, and enriched all classes of its people. The exchangeable value of what remains has been lowered by at least £75,000,000 annually, and of course so much taken away from the means of supporting domestic labour, and paying the national defences and the interest of public and private debt. The West Indies, formerly the right arm of the naval strength of England, and no small source of its riches, have been _totally ruined_; and, as a necessary consequence, the exports of our manufactures to those once splendid settlements, which, prior to the commencement of the new measures in 1834, had reached £3,500,000 a-year, had sunk in 1850 to £1,821,146! Canada has been so much impoverished by the withdrawing of all protection to colonial industry, which has annihilated its intercolonial trade with the West Indies, and seriously injured its export trade in grain and wood to this country, that the British exports to that country, which in 1839 amounted to £3,047,000, had sunk in 1850, notwithstanding the subsequent addition of above 50 per cent to its population, to £2,280,386. EXPORTS TO Canada. West Indies. 1839 L.3,047,671 L.3,986,598 1840 2,847,970 3,574,970 1841 2,947,061 3,504,004 1850 2,280,386 1,821,146