Although in the meetings where they address the agricultural constituencies, the free traders hold out that their measures would benefit the manufacturers, and not injure the agriculturists; yet nothing can be clearer than that this is a mere shallow pretext, put forth to conceal their real objects and the effect of their measures, and that the result they really anticipate is as different from that as the poles are asunder.  What is the benefit they hold out to the community as an inducement to go into their measures?  Cheap grain.  What is the motive which stimulates all their efforts, and which, among themselves and in private conversation with all men of sense, they at once admit is their ruling object? Reduced wages; the hope of extending our export in foreign countries by taking an additional quantity of their rude produce; and diminishing the cost of production to our manufacturers by lowering the price of food, and with it the wages of labour.  The whole strength of their case rests in these propositions.  Their influence over the urban multitudes arises solely from the continual reiteration of these alluring hopes.  If these effects are not to follow free trade and the efforts of the League, in the name of Heaven, what good are they to do, and why do they agitate the country and subscribe to the League fund?  Sensible men do not throw away L100,000 for nothing, for no benefit to themselves or others.  But these prospects are as fallacious as they are alluring, and so a very few observations will demonstrate.

Considered in a national point of view, if the matter is brought to this issue, the great question is—­Whether agriculture or manufactures are the superior interests in the production of national wealth.  Admitting that the true policy for government is to protect all the branches of national industry, and stoutly contending, as we do, and ever shall do, that the real and ultimate interests of all is the same, and cannot be separated—­the question comes to be, if one fiercely demands the sacrifice of the other, and insists that its interests are so weighty and momentous that all others must be sacrificed to them, which of the two thus placed in jeopardy is the most momentous? which brings in most to the national treasury?  Now, on this point the facts are as adverse to the arguments of the League, as on all other branches of their case.

Take the sum total of manufactures in Great Britain and Ireland, accompanied with the sum total of agricultural production, in order to discover which of the two is the more valuable interest—­in order that it may be discovered, if matters are brought to that issue that one or other must be abandoned, which is to be sacrificed.  The choice of a wise government could not be doubtful, if it were necessary to make the selection.  The agricultural productions of the British islands amount to L.300,000,000 a-year, while the sum total of manufactures of every description