Your Right Hon’ble Ruler rises after a public dinner, and holds forth with matchless eloquence, pointing out the blessings and prosperity Free Trade has brought to the country. His statements are received with thunders of applause, and the Right Hon’ble Orator and his audience disperse mutually satisfied with each other. I wonder whether it ever occurs to the orator, in the quiet of his chamber, that to use his own words, he “has resorted to the simple but effectual plan of pure falsification.”[40] Can he possibly be so ignorant of current events, and of the subjects with which he ought to be acquainted, as not to know that other nations--_protectionist nations_--_have made greater relative advance_ than ourselves; that the increase of wealth is _universal_; that it is shared by all civilized nations in common with us; and that it is due to improvements in science, art, and manufacture--to improved communications by railways, steam navigation, telegraphs, &c., which have made such enormous strides since the date at which Free Trade was adopted. Even Mill admits that-- “So rapid had been the extension of improved processes of agriculture, that the average price of corn had become decidedly lower even before the repeal of the Corn Laws.”[41] There have been short periods of temporary prosperity in agriculture, and your Right Hon’ble Free Trader has been jubilant in hailing them as triumphs of Free Trade; but Adam Smith says:-- _Improvements in manufacture tend to raise the value of land._[42]