profited where we meant they should not, and suffered where we meant they should be permitted to profit. Our Government has suffered a diminution of revenue; our rich men have drunk adulterated wines; our middling classes have been obliged to put up with dear port-wine or none; our working classes have been debarred from having wine at all, and have been shut out for more than a hundred years from one of the largest markets where their labour might have found its recompense. Such are some of the consequences of the famous Methuen treaty, which was, for a considerable length of years, extolled as a model of commercial negotiation. These consequences, and others which followed similar blunders, wrought at length their natural effect upon the minds of those primarily interested in the principles and methods of commercial policy. On the 8th of May, 1820, the following petition from the merchants of London was presented to the House of Commons. It was signed by all the principal merchants of London;—a class whose opinions on this question could not but be respectfully regarded, if they had been announced with less dignity and precision than we find in this memorable address. The time may and will come when its propositions will be regarded as a set of truisms scarcely worthy of announcement under such circumstances of formality; but it should in fairness be remembered in those days that it was drawn up at the very period when silk and tobacco were being smuggled into hundreds of creeks along our shores; when bread and wine were taxed for purposes of unjust protection at home, and wicked oppression abroad; and when our houses and ships were being built of bad wood at a higher cost than need have been paid for the best, in order to favour a colony which, after all, would flourish much more through our prosperity than at our expense. No change of times and convictions can impair the honour due to those who concurred in the following petition:— "To the Honourable the Commons, &c., the Petition of the Merchants of the City of London. "Sheweth, "That foreign commerce is eminently conducive to the wealth and prosperity of a country, by enabling it to import the commodities for the production of which the soil, climate, capital, and industry of other countries are best calculated, and to export, in payment, those articles for which its own situation is better adapted. "That freedom from restraint is calculated to give the utmost extension to foreign trade, and the best direction to the capital and industry of the country. "That the maxim of buying in the cheapest market, and selling in the dearest, which regulates every merchant in his individual dealings, is strictly applicable, as the best rule for the trade of the whole nation. "That a policy founded on these principles would render the commerce of the world an interchange of mutual advantages, and diffuse an increase of wealth and enjoyments among the inhabitants of each state.