Fifth Monarchy men when expelled the House of Commons by the Ironsides of Cromwell, or the Girondists when led to the scaffold by the Jacobins, chanting hymns in honour of their principles when perishing from their effects:

"They are true to the last of their blood and their breath,
And, like reapers, descend to the harvest of death."

But this constancy of individuals when suffering under the measures they themselves have introduced, however curious and respectable as a specimen of the unvarying effect of fanaticism, whether religious or social, on the human mind, cannot permanently arrest the march of events; it cannot stop the effect of their own measures, any more than the courage of the Highlanders in 1745 could prevent the final extinction of the Jacobite cause. Let them adhere to free trade and a fettered currency as they like, the advocates of the new measures are daily and hourly losing their influence. Money constitutes the sinews of war not less in social than in national contests. No cause can be long victorious. which is linked to that worst of allies, INSOLVENCY. In two years the mercantile classes have destroyed one-half of their own wealth; should two such years again occur, onehalf of what remains will be gone. Crippled, discredited, ruined, beat down by foreign competition, exhausted by the failure of domestic supplies, the once powerful mercantile body of England will be prostrate in the dust. All other classes, of course, will be suffering from their fall, but none in the same degree as themselves. It is not improbable that the land may regain its appropriate influence in the state, by the ruin which their own insane measures have brought upon its oppressors. No one will regret the lamentable consequences of such a change, already far advanced in its progress, more than ourselves, who have uniformly foretold its advent, and strenuously resisted the commercial and monetary changes which, amidst shouts of triumph from the whole Liberal party, were silently but certainly inducing

these results.

Confounded at such a series of events, so widely different from what they anticipated and had predicted from their measures, the Free-traders have no resource but to lay them all on two external causes, for which they are not, as they

conceive, responsible: these causes are, the French and German revolutions, and the potato famine in Ireland.

That the revolutions on the continent of Europe have materially affected the market for the produce of British industry, in the countries where they have occurred, is indeed certain; but are the Liberals entitled to shake themselves free from the consequences of these convulsions? Have we not, for the last thirty years, been labouring incessantly to encourage and extend revolution in all the adjoining states? Did we not insidiously and basely support the revolutions in South America, and "call a new world into existence to redress the balance of the old ?" Was not the result of that monstrous and iniquitous interference in support of the rebels in an allied state, to induce the dreadful monetary catastrophe of December 1825, the severest, till that of 1847, ever experienced in modern Europe? Did we not, not merely instantly recognise the French revolutions of 1830 and 1848, but lend our powerful aid and countenance to extend the laudable example to the adjoining states? Did we not join with France to prevent the King of the Netherlands from regaining the command of Flanders in 1832, and blockade the Scheldt while Marshal Gerard bombarded Antwerp? Did we not conclude the Quadruple Alliance to effect the revolutionising of Spain and Portugal, and bathe both countries for four years with blood, to establish revolutionary queens on both the thrones in the Peninsula ? Have we not intercepted the armament of the King of Naples against Sicily, by Admiral Parker's fleet, and aided the insurgents in that island with arms from the Tower? Did we not interfere to arrest the victorious columns of Radetsky at Turin, but never move a step to check Charles Albert on the Mincio? Did we not side with revolutionary Prussia against the Danes, and aid in launching Pio Nono into that frantic career which has spread such ruin through the Italian peninsula? Have we not all but lost the confidence of our old ally, Austria, from our notorious intrigues to encourage the furious divisions which have torn that noble empire? Nay, have we not been so enamoured of revolution, that we could not avoid showing a partiality for it in our own dominions-rewarding and encouraging O'Connell, and allowing monster meetings, till by the neglect of Irish

industry we landed them in famine, and by the fanning of Irish passions brought them up to rebellion ;-and establishing a constitution in Canada which gave a decided majority in Parliament to an alien and rebel race, and, as a necessary consequence, giving the colonial administration to the very party whom, ten years ago, the loyalists put down with true British spirit at the point of the bayonet? All this we have done, and have long been doing; and now that the consequences of such multifarious sins have fallen upon us, in the suffering which revolution has at last brought upon the British empire, the Liberals turn round and seek to avoid the responsibility of the disasters produced by their internal policy, by throwing it on the external events which they themselves have induced.

Then as to the Irish famine of 1846, it is rather too much, after the lapse of three years, to go on ascribing the general distress of the empire to a partial failure of a particular crop, which, after all, did not exceed the loss of a twentieth part of the annual agricultural produce of the British Islands. But if the Free-traders' principles had been well founded, this failure in Ireland should have been the greatest possible blessing to their party in the state, because it immediately effected that transference of the purchase of a part of the national food from home to foreign cultivators, which is the very thing they hold out as such an advantage, and as likely in an especial manner to enlarge the foreign market for our manufactures. It induced the importation of £30,000,000 worth of foreign grain in three months: that, on the principles of the Free-traders, should have put all our manufacturers in activity, and placed the nation in the third heaven. Disguise it as you will, the Irish potato-rot was but an anticipation, somewhat more sudden than was expected, of the free-trade rot, which was held out as a certain panacea for all the national evils. And now, when free trade and a restricted currency have not proved quite so great a blessing as they anticipated, the Free-traders turn round and lay it all on the substitution of foreign importation for domestic production in Ireland, when that very substitution is the thing they have, by abolishing the Corn Laws, laboured to effect over the whole empire.

Then as to the state of Ireland, which has at length

reached the present unparalleled crisis of difficulty and suffering, the conduct of the Liberals has been, if possible, still more inconsistent and self-condemnatory. For half a century past, they have been incessantly declaiming on the mild, inoffensive, and industrious character of the Irish race; upon their inherent loyalty to the throne; and upon the enormous iniquity of British rule, which had brought the whole misfortunes under which they were labouring on that virtuous people. Nothing but equal privileges, Catholic emancipation, parliamentary reform, burgh reform, and influence at Dublin Castle, we were told, were required to set everything right, and render Ireland as peaceable and prosperous as any part of the British dominions. The conduct of James I. and Cromwell, in planting Saxon and Protestant colonies in Ulster, was in an especial manner held up to detestation, as one of the chief causes of the social and religious divisions which had ever since distracted the country. Well, the Liberals have given all these things to the Irish. For twenty years, the island has been governed entirely on these principles. They have got Catholic emancipation, a reduction of the Protestant church, national education, corporate reform, parliamentary reform, monster meetings, ceaseless agitation, and, in fact, all the objects for which, in common with the Liberal party in Great Britain, they have so long contended. And what has been the result? Is it that pauperism has disappeared, industry flourished, divisions died away, prosperity become general? So far from it, divisions never have been so bitter, dissension never so general, misery so grinding, suffering so universal, since the British standards, under Henry II., seven centuries ago, first approached their shores. A rebellion has broken out; anarchy and agitation, by turning the people aside from industry, have terminated in famine; and even the stream of English charity seems dried up, from the immensity of the suffering to be relieved, and the ingratitude with which it has heretofore been received. And what do the Liberals now do? Why, they put it all down to the score of the incurable indolence and heedlessness of the Celtic race, which nothing can eradicate, and cordially support Sir R. Peel's proposal to plant English colonies in Connaught, exactly similar to Cromwell's in Ulster, so long the object of Liberal hatred

and declamation! They tell us now that the native Irish are irreclaimable helots, hewers of wood and drawers of water, and incapable of improvement till directed by Saxon heads and supported by the produce of Saxon hands. They forget that it is these very helots whom they represented as such immaculate and valuable subjects, the victims of Saxon injustice and Ulster misrule. They forget that English capitalists and farmers would long since have migrated to Ireland, and induced corn cultivation in its western and southern provinces, were it not that Liberal agitation kept the people in a state of menacing violence, and Liberal legislation took away all prospect of remunerating prices for their grain-produce. And thus much for the Crowning of the Column of Free Trade, and Crushing of the Pedestal of the Nation.