sue, with increased advantages, his long-meditated designs against the prosperity of this country and the independence of Europe? What will they gain by crippling the agricultural resources of England, and impoverishing, more or less, five sixths of its inhabitants, who now depend, directly or indirectly, upon the two hundred and fifty millions' worth a year of wealth created by its agricultural labourers? What but that they will essentially weaken and depress every branch of the community; diminish the best and most profitable market for their own industry; augment the weight of the national and parochial burdens, which, in default of the landed interest, must be borne by themselves, as the producers of its manufacturing wealth; and disable the state from maintaining that contest for its own, and the general independence of Europe, with the Colossus of northern ambition, which every one sees is fast approaching?

In truth, more momentous considerations than even those of national wealth or prosperity depend upon the vital question which is now at issue between the manufacturing and agricultural classes. The national independence the national existence-is at stake. It requires little penetration, indeed, to perceive that the general peace which we have so long enjoyed is not destined to be of very long endurance, and that a contest, possibly as serious and protracted as that with Napoleon, awaits us with the power which has already arrayed more than half of Europe under its influence. The revolutionary party at least will not contest the reality of this danger, since the aggressions and ceaseless strides of Russia are the subject of their endless and frequently just invectives. What, therefore, can be so hazardous, it may almost be added so insane, as to forfeit the national independence at so critical a moment, by throwing ourselves upon the mercy of foreign states for the purchase of bread? It was a maxim with the Romans, "Salus populi Suprema lex." Every consideration must yield to the paramount necessity of providing for the subsistence of the people. At present that subsistence is amply provided for, as the unparalleled low prices of the last six years demonstrate, by the efforts of our own agriculturists, secured and protected by the operation of

the Corn Laws. Having secured, then, this inestimable blessing from a source within ourselves, and independent of the caprice or jealousies of extraneous powers, what can be so imprudent as to risk it again to the mercy of foreign states, the chances of the winds and the waves, or the still more uncertain results of political combinations?

But the folly of such a proceeding becomes still more apparent, when it is recollected that the power at whose mercy we are so desirous to place ourselves, in this vital article of national subsistence, is the very power whose hostility, at the same time, we have so much cause to apprehend-against whom the national passion is at this time so strongly arousing, and between whom and this country a more permanent cause of variance is to be found in the opposite tendency of their national interests. Poland, Prussia, the Ukraine, are all, in fact, provinces of Russia-they all equally take the law from the Cabinet of Saint Petersburg. Odessa, Dantzic, Memel, and Riga, are alike Russian harbours. Yet these are precisely the ports from which our supply of grain must inevitably be obtained if we throw open our ports to foreign competition. The provinces from which we will almost exclusively obtain our food will be those that wait at the beck of the Emperor Nicholas. To the insatiable and undying ambition of the Russian Cabinet the British possessions in India afford a perpetual object of desire; to the jealousy and apprehensions of their despotic Government our Liberal institutions and unrestrained press are a constant subject of disquietude. Every thing, therefore, both in political combination and national interest, conspires to indicate that the seeds of permanent rival hostility between the British and Muscovite empires have not only been sown, but are already fast springing to maturity. And yet it is at the very moment that this fact has become clearly apparent to the inhabitants of both countries, that the infatuated manufacturers of England propose to place their necks under the feet of their formidable rival, by placing in his hand the keys of the granary from which they are to be fed. With what joy would the measure be hailed in the salons of St Petersburg! How rapidly would alla vprehensions of the

British power vanish before the effects of this one suicidal act! Vain, then, would be the prowess of the British arms-vain the recollections of their former glory! Without fitting out one ship of the line-without raising one hostile banner, the Emperor of Russia would easily beat down the once dreaded power and independence of England. By simply closing his harbours, by shutting up the granaries of Dantzic and Hamburg, he would speedily starve us into submission. The populace of Great Britain, deprived of their wonted supply of bread, would become ungovernable, and submission soon be felt to be a matter of necessity. Can we, who, with our eyes open, propose to do such things, blame the Carthaginians who first surrendered their galleys and arms to the Roman generals, and then, when the legions were encamped around their walls, found themselves without weapons to withstand their inveterate enemy, and perished through the impotence they themselves had created?

Nor is there the slightest foundation for the opinion which is sometimes entertained, even by well-informed persons, that, such is the magnitude of our manufacturing population, that the supply of the country with foreign grain has been, or soon will become a matter of necessity, and that the evils which have now been described, however great, are unavoidable. It appears, from the table quoted below,* that there were, in 1827, 46,500,000 arable acres cultivated in Great Britain and Ireland, and 15,000,000 uncultivated, but capable of improvement, being, as nearly as possible, two acres under cultivation to each inhabitant. The average produce of each cultivated acre may be taken in grain, or other subsistence equally or more nutritious than grain, at two quarters.

The total amount of the subsistence that might be raised in the forty-six millions of acres would be ninety-two millions of quarters. A considerable proportion of this produce doubtless is consumed by the horses, which, by the latest return, amount to nearly fifteen hundred thousand in the United Empire; and Arthur Young calcu lates that each horse consumes as much food as eight men, or about eight quarters, a quarter to each human being forming the average consumption for the whole year. At this rate the horses would consume subsistence to about the amount of twelve millions of quarters a-year; and supposing that double this amount, or twenty-four millions of quarters, is required for the cows, butcher-meat, &c., there would still remain land capable of producing nearly sixty millions of quarters a-year, at the very moderate rate of two quarters, or sixteen bushels, an acre. This would maintain nearly three times the present population of five-and-twenty millions in the United Empire, without taking into view the probable cultivation of the fifteen millions of acres of waste lands not yet reclaimed, or the probable improvements in agriculture, which, especially by the introduction of draining, may be reasonably expected to add at least a half to the assumed estimate of two quarters, or four bolls to an acre. Nothing, therefore, seems more reasonable than to hold that the British Islands contain within themselves the means of maintaining in comfort at least triple their present population; and, consequently, all arguments drawn from the supposed impossibility of adequately maintaining our population from our own agricultural produce, or of the inhabitants soon approaching the limits assigned to the increasing subsistence,

are perfectly chimerical and absurd. While, on the other hand, these facts demonstrate that at least triple the amount of subsistence may be extracted from the soil of the British Islands which is at present obtained, and, consequently, triple the vent for our manufactures obtained in the home market from that which is at present afforded, and which even now, in its comparatively infantine state, takes off a hundred millions sterling worth of our manufactures, being double the amount of our whole foreign exports. What, therefore, can be so unwise as to run the risk of injuring an interest capable of such prodigious extension, and on which such enormous classes are dependent, which is, withal, entirely within ourselves, and beyond the reach of foreign jealousy or attack, for one of far inferior amount, held by an infinitely more precarious tenure, and susceptible of a much less considerable extension?

But, almost boundless as is the capability of increase in British agriculture, it cannot be denied that it is necessarily liable to considerable variations of price, and that the vicissitudes of the seasons, incident to a wet and unpropitious climate, must frequently occasion years of scarcity, and possibly, at times, bring about longcontinued want, which may border upon famine if the resources of domestic agriculture alone were to be relied on by the people. It is of essential importance, therefore, that some means should exist to provide against the severe vicissitudes of price peculiarly severe to a dense population, to which all latitudes, and more especially all northern latitudes, are subject. It is here that the admirable wisdom of the present Corn Law becomes apparent; and it is by its operation that a permanent granary is provided for the subsistence of the people in periods when the home supply has, from unfavourable seasons, proved deficient, and, when but for its operation, no such resource could have existed. Under the existing law, by which the duty on foreign grain, so heavy as to amount to a prohibition when wheat is between fifty and sixty shillings a quarter, declines rapidly, till at seventy-two shillings a quarter it becomes merely nominal, a certain reserve of foreign grain is provided in the bonded warehouses of

the kingdom, which at once becomes available in the event of prices rising to that level, and renders it almost impossible, at least when the foreign harbours are open, for them to rise much above it. Speculators purchase up grain largely on the Continent during years of plenty, and store them in the British bonded warehouses, in anticipation of the rise of prices on the first unfavourable season. There the ample store lies innocuous to the British farmer during seasons of prosperity, when its aid is not required by the British consumer; but no sooner does the expected period of adversity arrive than it issues forth in vast quantities to avert the calamity, and diffuse the stream of plenty through every village and hamlet in the realm. Decisive proof was afforded of this highly important effect of the Corn Law during the last three months, in the commencement of which the prices rose to seventy shillings a quarter, from the continued rains and bad harvest of last autumn, but were immediately checked by the overflow of foreign grain from the bonded stores, and rapidly reduced, first to sixty-six and subsequently to sixty-two shillings a quarter.

And it is particularly worthy of observation, that this admirable effect could not possibly have taken place if an unrestricted trade in corn had existed; and that it is the creation of the Corn Law, and the Corn Law alone. If a free importation of grain were to exist between Great Britain and the Continent, these great bonded reservoirs of grain in the British harbours would not exist. Food would be provided for a large part of our population by the foreign, instead of the British cultivators; the temptation of sale, at a present profit, would prove irresistible to the foreign importer; and the British warehouses of Dantzic wheat would be emptied as rapidly upon the first rise of prices as the barn-yards of the British cultivators. The home supply being greatly diminished, and the foreign proportionally augmented, the average supply would just be about equal to the aver age demand, and no reserve store would exist in any quarter to supply the wants of the people in seasons of scarcity. But, while a free importation of grain could not provide such a reserve store, for the same reason

that it cannot be provided by the domestic growers in the British Islands, it is effectually secured by the present Corn Law; which, prohibiting importation in ordinary seasons, yet permits any quantity of foreign grain to be stored up in our bonded warehouses, and thus permits the surplus produce of the Continent, in years of plenty, to be set apart as a reserve store for the British population in periods of scarcity. We are enjoying the full benefit of this wise provision at the present moment; scarcity, perhaps famine, were staring us in the face, when they were averted by the fund which legislative wisdom had provided; and, while the blind and misled manufacturers are clamouring for a repeal of the Corn Laws, they are indebted to those very laws, and to them alone, for the rescuing of themselves and their families from want during the next twelvemonths. The Roman

Emperors, aware of the danger arising from the destruction of Italian agriculture, under the effects of unrestrained foreign importation, were careful to provide, at the public expense, vast granaries for the support of the people in periods of scarcity; but great as were the resources at the command of the Imperial government, they often proved inadequate to the Herculean task of purveying to the wants of a numerous population. That which the power of the Emperors strove in vain to effect, the wis. dom of the British Legislature has effectually obtained; the resources of the state are no longer required for the mighty undertaking, but the certain purveyor, even for five-and-twenty millions of human beings, is found in the enterprising body of merchants whom the desire of private gain has led into the paths of public good.

Ir was on the afternoon of a summer day that Arthur Edmonstone, a young barrister, left his chambers in the Temple, and walked to the northeastern part of London, where exists a whole region of human life, never heard of in fashionable society. He reached, at last, an obscure and squalid street, where the doors of most of the houses stood half open for the convenience of the several lodgers. Through one of these entrances he passed, and mounted three flights of stairs till he reached a small closed door, at which he tapped. A low voice said, " Come in," and he entered the room. It was small and dim, and was nearly filled by a pallet-bed, on which lay a woman. She was covered with a loose and tattered wrapper, through which her wasted figure was plainly to be traced. Her small and pleasing features were flushed with a deep red. She raised her blue eyes as Arthur entered, and said she was sorry to have given him the trouble of coming to see her; but she added that she was too unwell to go to him.

"I am very glad to come to you. But tell me who you are, and what you want of me?"

"I am a farmer's daughter. Your old schoolfellow, Henry Richards, became acquainted with me in the country, and at last he persuaded me to go away with him and be privately married, for his friends would give him no encouragement in such a matter, any more than mine would help me. Ah! sir, that disobedience of mine was the root of all our misery! We came to London, and he tried to support himself by writing things to be printed; and so we managed pretty well for some time. But, at last, too much confinement and overwork made him ill, and I beg pardon, sir, for crying-he died just before my baby was born. He told me, at the last, that he did not know any one who would help me, unless it were my own friends, or an old schoolfellow of his; and then he wrote your name and direction. It was three months ago, and I have gone on as well as I could, ever since. But it is a hard thing to live, sir, in