Very little can be done to improve the condition of the people till the Corn Laws are repealed. All practicable retrenchments, all ordinary reduction of taxation, all reforms in the organization of Church and State, important as they are, are trifles compared with this. The only measure of equal consequence is the reduction of the Debt; and this ought to accompany or immediately precede the establishment of a free trade in corn. Day and night, from week to week, from month to month, the nation should petition for a free trade in corn, urging how landlords, when freed from fluctuation of their revenues, will be able to bear their fair proportion of the national burdens; how the farmer, no longer tempted to a wasteful application of capital, will cease the so-called ungrateful clamour with which he repays legislative protection; how the manufacturing class will prosper and will multiply our resources when they are allowed the benefits of the free competition in which their ingenuity qualifies them to hold a distinguished place; and how our labourers will be, by one comprehensive act, raised, every man of them, a grade higher than any laborious, partial legislation can raise any one of their classes. An act which must, at once, prevent the waste of capital and the misapplication of labour, unclog the system of manufactures and commerce, and obviate the main distresses of our agriculturists, must do more for the improvement of our revenue, and the union of our nation than all less comprehensive measures put together. To untax the prime necessary of life is to provide at once a prospective remedy for all the worst evils of our social arrangements. This will scarcely be disputed by those who admit the principles of the following summary. It is important that such results of these principles should be traced out and made familiar to the mind, as it is certain that the days of free trading in corn are at hand. ------- As exchangeable value is ultimately determined by the cost of production, and as there is an incessant tendency to an increase in the cost of producing food, (inferior soils being taken into cultivation as population increases,) there is a perpetual tendency in the exchangeable value of food to rise, however this tendency may be temporarily checked by accidents of seasons, and by improvements in agricultural arts. As wages rise (without advantage to the labourer) in consequence of a rise in the value of food, capitalists must either sell their productions dearer than is necessary where food is cheaper, or submit to a diminution of their profits. Under the first alternative, the capitalist is incapacitated for competition with the capitalists of countries where food is cheaper: under the second, the capital of the country tends, through perpetual diminution, to extinction. Such is the case of a thickly-peopled country depending for food wholly on its own resources.