ation is "given a
mouth speaking great things and blasphemies;" and out of this mouth
issues "fire," it is true, against all that is excellent in the land,
but also "smoke"--as the consummation of its overtures. During many
reigns of the Caesars, a race of swindlers infested the Roman court,
technically known as "sellers of smoke," and often punished under that
name. They sold, for weighty considerations of gold, castles in the
air, imaginary benefices, ideal reversions; and, in short, contracted
wholesale or retail for the punctual delivery of unadulterated
moonshine. Such a dealer, such a contractor, is the Anti-Corn-Law
Association; and for such it has always been known amongst intelligent
men. But its character has now diffused itself among the illiterate:
and we believe it to be the simple truth at this moment, that every
working man, whose attention has at any time been drawn to the
question, is now ready to take his stand upon the following
answer:--"We, that is our order, Mr Cobden, are not very strong in
faith. Our faith in the Association is limited. So much, however, by
all that reaches us, we are disposed to believe--viz. that ultimately
you might succeed in reducing the price of a loaf, by three parts in
forty-eight, which is one sixteenth; with what loss to our own landed
order, and with what risk to the national security in times of war or
famine, is no separate concern of ours. On the other hand, Mr Cobden,
in _your_ order there are said to be knaves in ambush; and we take it,
that the upshot of the change will be this: We shall save three
farthings in a shilling's worth of flour; and the _honest_ men of your
order--whom candour forbid that we should reckon at only twenty-five
per cent on the whole--will diminish our wages simply by that same
three farthings in a shilling; but the knaves (we are given to
understand) will take an excuse out of that trivial change to deduct
four, five, or six farthings; they will improve the occasion in
evangelical proportions--some sixty-fold, some seventy, and some a
hundred."

This is the settled _practical_ faith of those hard-working men, who
care not to waste their little leisure upon the theory of the
corn-laws. It is this practical result only which concerns _us_; for
as to the speculative logic of the case, as a question for economists,
we, who have so often discussed it in this journal, (which journal, we
take it upon us to say, has, from time to time, put forwa