-relief must be sought in every direction, save in the landlord quarter the stronghold of exorbitant unyielding rents! D'Israeli, the talking as well as writing romancer, consumes three mortal hours in prattling upon every topic under the sun, except the one, practical, common-sense theme of a rational reduction of rents— and the bewildered clod-hoppers of England are almost led to believe that one of D'Israeli's protectionist speeches, price five pence in the Times-will secure a receipt for rent on the next audit day -instead of the usual fob of dirty bank notes, or current coin of the realm!

But it is full time that these follies should have an end. The poor gulled and gullible farmers must be told the stern, funereal fact, that protection is dead and buried, and that no factious clamour—no oratorical sorcery, can evoke even the phantom of the sinful sleeper! Whatsoever changes may be in reserve for Great Britain-trying and terrible as may prove her future ordeal of reform or even revolution-one thing is certain, no ministry or legislature will have the hardihood or the power to revive the corn-laws, however declaimers may spout, or farmers may stare. High rents must come down in merry England, as well as in bonny Scotland, and every evasion of this equitable necessity will only serve to sink proprietors and farmers in a common gulf of irretrievable ruin.

PLAIN TRUTHS REGARDING PROTECTION :-ESPECIALLY ADDRESSED TO OUR AGRICULTURAL FRIENDS.

In some brief notices which recently appeared in this journal, we emphatically expressed our conviction that all attempts to restore the system of so-called protection were quite futile, and would eventually prove abortive-and to these conclusions we unalterably adhere. As honest journalists we desire to soar above the suspicion of pandering to any popular delusion, and therefore we frankly told our readers, what we now as unreservedly repeat, that let bustling agitators declaim as they may, it is a clear, stern certainty, that the protective principle of the corn laws cannot be revived. But while we firmly hold, and conscientiously press this persuasion upon our readers, it must not be imagined that we are insensible to the distress which palpably prevails throughout

the important range of agricultural interests. We are sure that great privation and perplexity are experienced by very many industrious farmers; and for this, among other reasons, we wish to save them from the additional difficulties into which they will inevitably be drawn, if they give heed to the beguiling statements unscrupulously put forward by ignorant and impudent deceivers. To seduce the hard-working classes from their proper pursuits, and to plunge them in a vortex of political turbulence, is the main, though concealed drift of all scheming agitators, who hope to derive gain, of some sort or other, from the credulity of perturbed multitudes. Now with the view of weakening the influence of all such mischievous demagogues, we propose to lay before our readers some sound and cogent considerations, which we trust will have due weight with minds open to truthful thought, and which, if cordially received, may prove peculiarly serviceable to our farming friends.

The present agitation on the subject of protection may be chiefly ascribed to two individuals, who, in point of professed opinions, (for principles are altogether out of the question) are in total antagonism to each other, but who, nevertheless, being members of the same family of faction, cleverly combine to create and augment confusion. Mr D'Israeli is a literary politician-smart of pen and voluble of speech-and possessing a strange nondescript sort of mind, filling an intellectual space between the Jew and the Gentile. His position in the Senate is not one of dignity, importance, or influence, but he commands attention by his biting sarcasms-by his elaborate prose epigrams-and lastly, by the penury of high talent and genuine eloquence which vapidly characterises the reformed House of Commons. Mawkish mediocrity is stamped upon all they say, or do, or fail to perform. A party styling itself protectionist being sadly in want of a head, Mr D'Israeli sticks himself between the vacant shoulders, and assumes the action usually appertaining to that part of the body which contains the brain; but, strange to say, the members give no sign of acknowledgement, as to the supremacy of this obtrusive head, so that poor D'Israeli's primary function, as to parliamentary exercise and eminence, is very much of a sinecure. To make amends for this lack of real leadership in the House of Commons, Mr D'Israeli has of late betaken himself to meetings of distressed and discontented agriculturists, where, according to agreement,

nobody is suffered to speak but the monopolising orator himself, who goes about very much after the mode (though infinitely short of the amusing talent), of the late Charles Matthews, making himself "at home" wherever people can be convened to listen to him. Several plans for the relief of the agricultural interest-all of them utterly irreconcileable with each other-have been brought forward by Mr D'Israeli, and to the great credit of the common sense of the country, universally scouted. But although Mr D'Israeli has failed as a projector, he has succeeded as an agitator, and the movement which he commenced at Aylesbury has spread sympathetically through the corn-growing districts of England, and even invaded Ireland, where it threatens to suspend all the operations of every branch of industry.

To combat this protectionist convulsion, the great leader of the free trade faction deems it necessary to put forth his strength in adverse addresses delivered to congenial hearers, who delight in the violent vulgarity of their chief; and Mr Cobden, by his supercilious abusiveness, contrives to exasperate the protectionist party into a still more vehement reaction. Cobden is the sharp, fluent, uneducated spokesman of a section of society whom he has inflated with the notion that free trade will bring about a millenium of happiness, peace, and probity, totally independent of any Christian considerations or scriptural agencies! These misguided people chiefly grow in the manufacturing districts, and it might fairly be supposed that their doctrines would be most beneficially tested in their own localities and special pursuits. But no assumption can be more fallacious. The English manufacturing districts, so far from being the scene of the boasted felicities of free trade, constitute the most terrific display of bondage that the world has, perhaps, ever witnessed; for the tendency of the manufacturing system being to create, at times, a vast demand for labour, which, after an interval, deplorably diminishes; a hunger-bitten horde of wretched surplus operatives is always in the market seeking employment, which they can only obtain on the most grinding conditions. The dreadful exactions practised on these poor creatures by the rapacity of many master-manufacturers in Lancashire and elsewhere, would startle the sensibility of negro-drivers. Advantage is taken of the necessities of competing workmen, not only to screw down wages to the lowest compulsory standard, but to wring compliances as the condition of being employed, which, in fact,

leave wages in the hands of the employer. It was in these regions of restraint and extortion that the cry of Free-trade was first raised-not with the intent of liberating the manufacturing districts, but in the expectation that cheap bread would enable hiring masters to reduce still more starvingly the miserable pay of their work people. Here we have the true origin of the clamour against the corn-laws-which was the voice of trading covetousness, seeking additional gains for opulent manufacturers, but wholly regardless of those public benefits, which, however, were lyingly assumed as a sort of patriotic pretext. We have all of us fresh in our recollection the story of the Manchester League-the Cobdens and Brights of the new school of universal freedomtheir tons of tracts-their mammon-moving speeches! But all the efforts of the League would have been unavailing, if it had not suited the sinister purposes of Sir Robert Peel to seize upon the scheme which the leaguers spent their strength upon, and to make it his own ministerial plan, in the expectation that success would conduce to the perpetuity of his premiership. Therefore, reader, still clinging to the simplicity of former times, cast from thy credulous thought the barest supposition that one particle of public principle actuated the fiery zeal of Cobden, or the subtle statesmanship of Sir Robert Peel! The Corn Laws were unjust laws, forasmuch as they were designed to give a monopoly of the home market to the producers of food; and the injustice was doubled by rendering this monopoly utterly unprofitable, save to proprietors of the soil and a few wealthy farmers. But, still, where large interests have been allowed the long enjoyment of special advantages, equity demands that those advantages should not be too suddenly withdrawn; but that, on the contrary, timely and sufficient warning of the coming changes should be honestly afforded to all interested parties. Such, we happen confidently to know, was the conviction entertained regarding the Corn Laws by the late illustrious Canning, whose lucid judgment and purity of principle were even more to be admired than his incomparable eloquence. Mr Canning was thoroughly aware that to abolish the Corn Laws was to disturb, if not destroy, innumerable interests which had been nourished into improper importance by a system of undue protection. But Sir Robert Peel is not a statesman of the noble-minded, high-hearted class in which Canning was eminently enrolled. Void of fixed principle-guileful in ex

pedients-conversant with the small expertness of official details, but incapable of blending with business that intellectual mastery which betokens genuine superiority of mind-Sir Robert Peel is a man of ambitious mediocrity, who, when shoved into supremacy, has not wisdom or integrity to uphold himself in the position he has aspired and attained to. It is by examining Sir R. Peel's character that we shall find ourselves enabled to solve the mystery of his measures. He was the pillar of Protestantism, and yet, in avowed contrariety to his most cherished convictions, he carried the great question of Roman Catholic Emancipation. He was the most devoted of all the partisans of protection, and yet he caused the social system of Great Britain to tremble to its foundations by his sudden and successful efforts to abrogate the Corn Laws! Why, it may be asked, these violent renunciations, these unprincipled anomalies? The answer is-Sir Robert Peel could not preserve his premiership by an upright perseverance in a sage system of government, so he purloined a popular cry from the ranks of his political opponents, and by dint of ministerial influence, acting upon parliamentary corruption, he managed to obtain a majority which overthrew the settled legislation almost of ages. Having personal-not public ends in view-Sir Robert Peel hurried on the total repeal of the corn laws with pernicious precipitancy. No breathing time was interjected between alteration and abrogation-no annual diminution of duties, so as to soften the severity of eventual abolition, was wisely and considerately provided for; but, with reckless and unprosperous energy of transformation, Peel the protectionist became Peel the free-trader.

Our conscientious opinion prompts us to proclaim that the hasty legislation so pressed by Peel, and so cordially commended by Cobden, contained much of the elements of those evils now complained of by the sorely impoverished agriculturists of Great Britain; but nevertheless we deem the change to be a final one, and that no efforts of the corn-cultivators can ever regain for them a monopoly of the home market. Instead, therefore, of stimulating them to pursue a course which we plainly perceive to be erroneous and hopeless, we earnestly recommend them to look for relief, where practical succour can be found. Farmers, taken as a body, cannot be expected to find relief in high farming, for what, in plain English, is high farming, but the expenditure of considerable capital in experiments to increase the productive powers of the