The shackles and pitfalls in which men involved themselves in their chase after the illusive idea of universal protection were as numerous, and more fatal than those with which Louis the Eleventh garnished his castle at Plessis-le-Tours. It was impossible to move without stumbling into some of them. British ship-builders were allowed to ply their trade exclusively for British ship-owners; but, in return, they were compelled to buy the dear timber of Canada, instead of that of the Baltic. British ship-owners had exclusive privileges of ocean carriage, but had to pay tribute to the monopoly of British ship-builders and Canadian lumberers. British sailors were exclusively to be employed in English ships, but in return they were at the mercy of the press-gangs. Dubious advantages were bought at a price unquestionably dear and ruinous. The condition of our country while possessed by the fallacy of protection, can be compared to nothing so aptly, as to a man under the influence of a nightmare. One incongruity pursues another through the brain. There is a painful half-consciousness that all is delusion, and a fear that it may be reality—there is a choking sense of oppression. The victim of the unhealthy dream, tries to shake it off and awaken, but his faculties are spell-bound. By a great effort the country has awakened to the light of day, and a sense of realities. The way in which the rural population, great and small, were protected against one another, may be well illustrated by an extract from the third of James the First, chapter fourteen. This act was in force so lately as 1827, for it was only repealed by the seventh and eighth of George the Fourth, chapter twenty-seven. The fifth clause of this precious enactment made a man who had not forty pounds a year a “malefactor” if he shot a hare; while a neighbour who possessed a hundred a year, and caught him in the fact, became in one moment his judge and executioner. After reciting that if any person who had not real property producing forty pounds a year, or who had not two hundred pounds’ worth of goods and chattels, shall presume to shoot game, the clause goes on to say—“Then any person, having lands, tenements, and hereditaments, of the clear value of one hundred pounds a year, may take from the person or possession of such malefactor or malefactors, and to his own use for ever keep, such guns, bows, cross-bows, buckstalls, engine-traps, nets, ferrets, and coney dogs,” &c. This is hardly a comic leaf from the statute book. Indignation gives place to mirth on perusing it. Some portions of the game-laws still in force could be enumerated, equally unreasonable and summary.