the value of its produce is reduced from the effects of importation. But even if we admit that a great reduction in the value of the agricultural produce in Britain would not make it more difficult to collect the immense revenue required by this country, still the debt is considered to press with sufficient weight on the energies of the country as it is. As a permanent reduction in the value of the agricultural produce of Britain would give the national creditor the power to purchase a much larger quantity of it than he now enjoys, to that extent it would increase the pressure of the debt, by adding most materially to its real value. In short, the British labourer consumes, or has the power of consuming, at least double the quantity of wheat that a Prussian or Polish labourer has. The soil of Britain, in proportion to its cultivated surface, produces double the quantity of grain, and maintains four times the number of cattle that is maintained by the land in Prussia or Poland. Taxation is admitted by all to raise the money price of grain; and, according to Colonel Torrance, taxation will even produce artificial sterility in land. The amount of the population engaged in British agriculture is less in proportion to the amount engaged in trade and manufactures than in any country in the world, yet this small proportion of the people of Britain raises a larger supply of food for the whole population than is enjoyed by any nation of similar magnitude: the whole population consume, or has the power of consuming, double the quantity of food that the Poles or Prussians have. From these facts it is evident that the food of Britain is produced by much less labour than the food of Poland or Prussia. Indeed, if this was not the case, how could the immense population engaged in manufactures, and concentrated in the large cities of the empire, be supported? I hold, therefore, that I am justified in asserting that the higher rate of taxation in Britain, and the higher rate of real wages, have a very powerful influence in maintaining the higher average price of grain in Britain as estimated in money; that the theory of the cultivation of poorer land in Britain than in the countries from which it is proposed we should obtain our supplies of grain, is utterly without foundation in fact; and that, on the contrary, the agricultural produce of Britain is the result of less labour than in the neighbouring countries of Europe; that labour in Britain produces more grain, and also exchanges for more. It therefore follows, that the mode of introducing foreign corn into this country ought to be regulated so as not to interfere with the extension of cultivation in Britain, or to prevent the produce from increasing, as it has hitherto done, in proportion to the increase of the population. EDINBURGH: Printed by ANDREW SHORTREDE, Thistle Lane.