untry must depend, should the sliding-scale be abrogated and
all import duties abolished. The most infatuated Leaguer will hardly
deny, that if the corn-law had ceased to exist three years ago, and a
great part of our poorer soils had in consequence been removed from
tillage, our present position with regard to food must have been
infinitely worse. In fact, we should then have presented the unhappy
spectacle of a great industrial community incapable of rearing food
for its population at home, and solely dependent for a supply on
foreign states; and that, too, in a year when the harvests throughout
Europe, and even in America, have suffered. And here, by the way,
before going further, let us remark, that the advocates of the League
never seem to have contemplated, at all events they have never
grappled with, the notorious fact, that the effects of most
unpropitious seasons are felt far beyond the confines of the British
isles. This year, indeed, we were the last to suffer; and the memory
of the youngest of us, who has attained the age of reason, will
furnish him with examples of far severer seasons than that which has
just gone by. What, then, is to be done, should the proportion of the
land in tillage be reduced below the mark which, in an average year,
could supply our population with food--if, at the same time, a famine
were to occur abroad, and deprive the continental agriculturists of
their surplus store of corn? The answer is a short one--_Our people
must necessarily_ STARVE. The manufacturers would be the first to feel
the appalling misery of their situation, and the men whom they would
have to thank for the severest and most lingering death, are the
chosen apostles of the League!

Is this an overdrawn picture? Let us see. France at this moment is
convinced that we are on the verge of a state of famine. Almost all
the French journalists, believing what they probably wish for, and
misled by the repealing howl, and faint-hearted predictions of the
coward, assume that our home stock of provision is not sufficient to
last us for the ensuing winter. That is just the situation to which we
should be reduced _every_ year, if Messrs Cobden, Bright, and Company
had their will. What, then, says our neighbour, and now most
magnanimous ally? Is he willing--for they allege they have a
superfluity--to supply us in this time of hypothetical distress--to
act the part of the good Samaritan, and pour, not wine and oil, but
corn int