How this operates on a large scale will now be seen on an examination of the following facts:-- The declared or actual _value_ of exports of British produce in manufactures in 1815 was.. £51,632,971 And the _quantity_ of foreign merchandise retained for consumption in that year was....... £17,238,841 [147] This shows, of course, that the prices of the raw products of the earth were then high by comparison with those of the articles that Great Britain had to sell. In 1849, the _value_ of British exports was..... £63,596,025 And the _quantity_ of foreign merchandise retained for consumption was no less than....... £80,312,717 We see thus that while the value of exports had increased only _one-fourth_, the produce received in exchange was _almost five times greater_; and here it is that we find the effect of that _unlimited_ competition for the sale in England of the raw products of the world, and _limited_ competition for the purchase of the manufactured ones, which it is the object of the system to establish. The nation is rapidly passing from the strong and independent position of one that produces commodities for sale, into the weak and dependent one of the mere trader who depends for his living upon the differences between the prices at which he sells and those at which he buys--that is, upon his power to tax the producers and consumers of the earth. It is the most extraordinary and most universal system of taxation ever devised, and it is carried out at the cost of weakening and enfeebling the people of all the purely agricultural countries. The more completely all the world, outside of England, can be rendered one great farm, in which men, women, and children, the strong and the weak, the young and the aged, can be reduced to field labour as the only means of support, the larger will be the sum of those _differences_ upon which the English people are now to so great an extent maintained, but the more rapid will be the tendency everywhere toward barbarism and slavery. The more, on the other hand, that the artisan can be brought to the side of the farmer, the smaller must be the sum of these _differences_, or taxes, and the greater will everywhere be the tendency toward civilization and freedom; but the greater will be that English distress which is seen always to exist when the producers of the world obtain much cloth and iron in exchange for their sugar and their cotton. The English system is therefore a war for the perpetuation and extension of slavery. On a recent occasion the Chancellor of the Exchequer congratulated the House of Commons on the flourishing state of the revenue, notwithstanding, that, they had