desperate in regard to their own and their country's fortunes, from the scenes of suffering and distress which they perpetually see around them; the selfish feelings acquire a fatal preponderance, from the general experienced impossibility of indulging in the generous. Meanwhile the national income melts away under the effects of the general cheapening of the remuneration of industry—all steady or foreseeing system of finance is abandoned, and every successive Government, like a needy spendthrift, deems itself happy if it can get through the year without a financial crisis, never bestowing a thought on the future, either as regards the national security, its finances, or its means of defence. One memorable instance of the way in which, under the cheapening system, the public revenue has been recklessly and needlessly thrown away, is to be found in the Penny Postage. It is well known that, prior to the change, the post-office income, after paying the whole charges of the packet service, yielded a clear surplus revenue to the nation of £1,500,000 or £1,600,000 a-year. The postage of letters, however, was decidedly too high; a reduction was loudly called for by the public; and, if cautiously and judiciously applied, the increase of letters might have compensated the reduction of rates of postage, and a boon have been conceded to the community, without any detriment to the public service. A uniform 2d., or 3d., or even 4d. postage, would have been hailed with unmixed satisfaction by the people, who had been paying 10d. or 1s. for their letters, and no material diminution of that important branch of the revenue experienced. Instead of this, what did the Government, urged on by the cheapening party, actually do? Why, they reduced the postage at once to a penny for all letters, from all distances within the two islands. We were told, that not only would there be no loss, but a certain gain, after a few years had elapsed, from the vast and certain increase in the number of letters that would be transmitted. How have these expectations been realised? The revenue set down as coming from the PostOffice, immediately after the change, was only £500,000 or £600,000 a-year; and, after having been nine years in operation, it has only risen, in the year ending 5th April 1850, to £803,000; much less than half of what it would have been under the former system, when the increased population and transactions of the country are taken into consideration, if either the old rates had been continued, or a reasonable reduction to 2d. or 3d. had taken place. It is to the embarrassment produced by this great defalcation that we are mainly indebted for the renewal of the income tax. But this defalcation, great and serious as it thus appears on the face of the public accounts, was little more than a half of what really occurred in consequence of the change. To conceal the effects of this great innovation, the Free-Trade party, who had now got entire possession of the Government, had the address both to get the expense of the Packet Service, previously borne by the Post-Office, thrown upon the Navy, and to keep that important change a secret among the Government officials. In this way a double object was gained. The disastrous effect of the reduction was kept out of view, and the increased charges of the Navy afforded a plausible ground for demagogues to assail the Government for alleged extravagance in that department. But that which one demagogue had done, another demagogue brought to light. Mr Cobden made so violent a clamour about the increase of expenditure in the Navy since 1835, when it had been reduced, under the pressure of the Reform mania, to its lowest point, that the Admiralty, in its own defence, let out the important fact, that, since the penny-postage system began, the navy estimates had been saddled with the whole cost of the Packet Service, which they never had been before; and, in the debate on the estimates, Lord John Russell stated that this cost now amounted to £737,000 a-year. Thus the real Post-Office accounts stand thus : Apparent surplus for year ending 5th April 1850, Real Post-office revenue, £803,000 737,000 £66,000 And it has been raised to this level only during a year of extraordinary manufacturing activity, which is boasted of as one when our exports turned £60,000,000. We know the expense of the Packet Service has greatly increased within the last ten years; but be it recollected that it is all borne by the Navy, while the undiminished postage to the colonies goes to the Post-Office, and swells the apparent amount of the penny post receipts. On the whole, since the postage was reduced in 1841, the Post-Office has not yielded a farthing to the country, but, on the contrary, has occasioned a loss of some hundred thousand pounds. We have heard enough from the Free-Traders of the disasters which accumulated on the years 1847 and 1848, when a monetary crisis, the Irish famine, the European revolution, the Irish rebellion, and the Chartist sedition, combined to reduce the revenue to an unprecedented degree. We have heard enough, also, of the alleged unexampled prosperity of the year 1849, when these extraneous disasters had ceased, and the blessings of Free Trade and the cheapening system were still in undiminished lustre. Be it so. Let us compare the public revenue of that year of unprecedented disaster with that obtained in the next year of unexampled prosperity, as appearing from the finance accounts of April 5, 1850: So that the increase in a year of extraordinary and unprecedented prosperity, as we are told, over one of unexampled and overwhelming suffering, is only £185,000, for £128,000 of which we are indebted to an excess in the repayment of advances in 1849 over 1848. We care not to what this extraordinary fact is to be ascribed, whether reduction of duties, the continuance of distress, or any other cause. We rest on the act that Free-Trade finance and the cheapening system have brought the revenue of the country, in a year of what the Free-Traders call its highest prosperity, to a level with what it had been in a year of its greatest adversity. History cannot, and will not, overlook these facts. The leaders of the Free-Traders say they live for posthumous fame. Let them not be afraid. Posterity will do them full justice. The financial problem of the Free-Traders is "Given a cheapened nation, to extract an adequate revenue out of its unremunerated industry." We recommend this problem to the study of the Free-Trade Chancellor of the Exchequer. If he solve it, we shall assign him a place superior to Archimedes in physical, to Bacon in political science. It will appear the most extraordinary of all phenomena to future ages, that a nation which has, like the British, successfully resisted the attacks of external enemies, and incessantly grown and prospered, though with occasional disaster, during more than a thousand years-and which has, in our own recollection, repelled the attacks and overthrown the powers of the greatest coalition ever formed against a single state, directed by the most consummate ability which has appeared in modern times—should in this manner voluntarily descend from its high position, surrender its power, starve down its armaments, and drive headlong on the road to ruin, for the supposed advantage of a limited class in its bosom. But the marvel ceases when the composition of its society, and the prevailing feelings of the section of the people in whom supreme power is now vested is taken into consideration. That class is the mercantile, or rather shopkeeper class; and with them the money power is all-powerful. Three-fifths of the seats in the House of Commons, let it ever be recollected, are for boroughs; and two-thirds of the constituents of every borough are shopkeepers, or those whom they influence. This is the decisive circumstance which has changed the whole policy of England since the Reform Bill, and in its ultimate consequences is destined, to all appearance, to produce the national disasters which many of its warmest supporters now so feelingly deplore. To the modern rulers of the British nation, to the constituents of the majority of the House of Commons, to buy cheap and to sell dear is the great object of ambition. They have gained the first; let them see whether they will secure the last. Let them see whether, amidst the ruin of the agricultural interest, and the declining circumstances of all trades which are exposed to the effects of foreign competition, they, the sellers of commodities, will make their fortunes. If they do, it will be a new era in society; for it will be one in which the trading class amass riches in consequence of the ruin of their customers. There is no monitor, however, to nations as to individuals, like suffering. Let Free Trade, therefore, by all means have a fair trial. Let the shopkeepers see what benefit they are likely practically to gain by the ruin of their customers. They have the Government in their hands, because they have the appointment of a majority in the House of Commons. The agricultural interest, the colonies, the shipping interest, the small manufacturing interest, are to all practical purposes disfranchised. Let the trading classes, then, feel the effects of their own measures. These will be such that they cannot continue. Ere long, a change of policy, and probably of rulers, will be forced upon Government by the universal cry of suffering. But let them recollect that it is their measures which are now upon trial; that theirs will be the responsibility if they fail; and that, if the empire is dismembered and the national independence lost, theirs will be the present loss, and theirs the eternal infamy. What a contrast to this mournful decay of the national resources, and ruin of the national strength, from the effects of a theory acted upon by the Legislature under the influence of a class majority in Parliament, would a truly catholic and national policy, protective alike to ALL interests, have afforded! An adequate but not redundant currency, cautiously administered, and relieved. from the fatal liability to abstraction from a great increase of imports in any particular year, would at once have afforded free scope to national industry, and avoided the frightful vicissitudes in the demand for labour, which the opposite system of making the currency entirely dependent on the most evanescent of earthly things-gold-of necessity occasioned. The terrible monetary crises of 1825, 1839, and 1847, would have been unfelt. They would have been surmounted, as that of 1810 had been, by an extended issue of paper when the gold was for a time abstracted, without the existence of any particular danger being known to the nation. Industry, protected in every department by adequate but not oppressive fiscal duties, would have generally and steadily flourished. Periods of extravagant speculation and exorbitant wages, followed by |