wages; then they will
have none. What must be the condition of Ireland, wholly agricultural,
and ruined by a flood of foreign corn, at half the price for which the
Irish farmer can bring it to market? These consequences are so
notorious, that nobody attempts to dispute them. They are coolly taken
as inevitable things; and the whole dependence, even of the mob
advocates, is upon chance: "Oh, something will turn up! Things won't be
so bad as you think!"

But the true conspirators see deeper. They know, that a revolution in
the food of the people is the immediate forerunner of a revolution in
the state. From the moment when foreign corn is admitted free of
restraint, the confidence of the farmer must be shaken. From the farmer,
the shock will instantly reach the landlord; his rent must be
diminished. To one-half of the great proprietaries of the kingdom, a
diminution of rent, even by a third, would make their possessors
personally bankrupt. Their mortgages and loans must be repaid; and
nothing would remain. The landlord now pays the Church. If he is ruined,
the whole Church income, independent of the small portions of glebe
land, must perish with him.

Then will come the agitation for a still more daring purpose. It will be
asked why must the system of English life be artificial?--Because we
have twenty-eight millions sterling of interest to pay, and for this we
must have taxes. But, why not sweep the national debt away, as France
did in her day of royal overthrow? A single sitting of the Convention
settled that question. Why not follow the example? Then will come the
desperate expedient, and all will be ruin on the heads of the most
helpless of the community; for the national debt is only a saving bank
on a larger scale, and nine-tenths of its creditors are of the most
struggling order of the empire.

Of course, we do not anticipate this frightful catastrophe under the
existing government, nor, perhaps, under its immediate successors, nor
under any government which knows its duty. But, let the "pressure from
without" be once an acknowledged principle; let agitation be once
suffered as a legitimate instrument of public appeal; let the clamour of
the streets be once received with the slightest respect, and the game is
begun; property is the chase, the hounds are in full cry, and the prey
will be torn down.

We believe that the majority of the empire are honest and true, but we
know that faction is active and unscrupul