dent on the comparative value of the
highest and lowest grades of the land in tillage; and if prices fall,
those lands that barely pay at the present rates must cease to be
cultivated. Read any of the more open and outspoken repealers. Take up
the little tales of Miss Martineau, one of the most able and honest of
her sect, and see how completely the object is to get rid of the expense
attending the cultivation of inferior land. If that object is not
attained by total and immediate repeal the whole discussion is a
delusion. But if Lord John's proposed measures _will_ throw lands out of
cultivation, to a large extent, what provision is to be made to avert
the inevitable evils that must ensue? How is the surplus population to
be supported that will thus be thrown loose on the market of labour? How
are the burdens to be provided for that the land thus disabled has
hitherto borne? Are the imposts on agriculture to increase while its
returns are to diminish? or is the old Whig expedient to be resorted to,
of raising that very tax which they have resisted and denounced? Are all
customs-duties to be abolished, and is the deficiency to be supplied by
having the property-tax aggravated to whatever multiple the account may
require? What safeguards or palliatives are to be devised to prevent the
PANIC likely to ensue from so vast and so sudden a revolution; in which,
under the instant diminution of rents and precariousness of prices,
every mortgagee will be driven in desperation to recur upon his debtor,
and every landlord upon his tenant; while the whole landed interest,
high and low, though chiefly, no doubt, the middle and smaller
proprietors and tenants, will be compelled to curtail their expenses to
the lowest sum, and those who have already but a narrow margin of
surplus, be reduced to beggary and ruin.

But would this confusion and distress affect the landed interest alone?
No; the same alarm which involved that interest in ruin, would soon
extend to manufactures, by striking at their foundation, CREDIT.
Already, from a singular and unhappy combination of causes, a period of
restricted circulation and of high interest for money, has begun to
follow on one of unlimited accommodation: distrust seems ready to take
the place of confidence: gigantic schemes in progress are paralysed or
threatened with abandonment: the country appears to be trembling on the
brink of one of those commercial crises which from time to time, and
unavo