* The ease with which the body of the people--the consumers-- are deceived by statements and arguments such as are given in the text is remarkable. The principal reason, perhaps, is, that men are disposed at first to regard themselves as producers rather than as consumers. They imagine that the advantages of Protection, if applied to their own case, would be incontestable; and, being unable consistently to deny that their neighbours are equally entitled to the same favour, a general clamour for Protection against foreign competition arises. While they fail to perceive the absurdity of universal Protection and its fallacy, or that it would be more for their interests to be able to dispose of a larger quantity of their productions, though perhaps at a reduced cost, than a smaller quantity in a market narrowed, as it must be, by the Protection which it receives. However, the true position of the case is now, we hope, firmly established in England, and this is chiefly due to the recent able, full, and free discussions which have resulted in our existing Free-trade system. And we confidently anticipate the day when the people of the Continent, and of America, will, through the same processes of reasoning and reflection, and influenced by our example, arrive at the same result as ourselves. But the prejudices of proprietors and labourers do not change the nature of things. The result will be, a population miserable, destitute, ignorant, ill-conditioned, thinned by want, illness, and vice. The result will then be, the melancholy shipwreck, in the public mind, of all correct notions of right, of property, of liberty, and of the true functions of the state. And what I should like much to be able to show here is, that the mischief will soon ascend to the proprietors themselves, who will have led the way to their own ruin by the ruin of the general consumer, for in that island they will see the population, more and more debased, resort to the inferior species of food. Here it will feed on chesnuts, there upon maize, or again upon millet, buckwheat, oats, potatoes. It will no longer know the taste of corn or of meat. The proprietors will be surprised to see agriculture decline. They will in vain exert themselves and ring in the ears of all,--'Let us raise produce; with produce, there will be cattle; with cattle, manure; with manure, corn.' They will in vain create new taxes, in order to distribute premiums to the producers of grass and lucern; they will always encounter this obstacle--a miserable population, without the power of paying for food, and, consequently, of giving the first impulse to this succession of causes and effects. They will end by learning, to their cost, that it is better to have competition in a rich community, than to possess a monopoly in a poor one.