is only L.180,000,000.  Nor can it be said, with any degree of truth, that the agriculture of the country is dependent for its existence on its manufactures, and would decline if they were materially injured; for the example of modern Italy and Flanders proves, that three centuries after a country has ceased to be the chief in manufacturing or commercial industry, it may advance with undiminished vigour and success in the production of agricultural riches.

But this is not all.  The statistical documents which have now been prepared with so much care by Parliament, and published by the accurate and indefatigable Mr Porter, himself a decided free trader, demonstrate that, of the manufacturing productions, nearly three-fourths are taken off by the home market, and four-fifths by the home and colonial market taken together, leaving only ONE-FIFTH for the whole foreign markets of the world put together—­

“The total amount of British manufactures annually produced is about L180,000,000 worth, of which only L47,000,000 is taken off by the whole external trade of the world put together, while no less than L133,000, 000 is consumed in the home market; and of the foreign consumption, fully a third is absorbed by the British Colonies, in different parts of the world.  So that the home and colonial trade is to the whole foreign put together as 5 to 1.  And, whle the total produce of manufactures is L180,000,000 annually, and of mines and minerals L13,776,000, the amount of agricultural produce annually extracted from the soil is not less than L300,000,000; or a half more than the whole manufactures and mines put together.”

Further, if we compare the proportion purchased of our manufactures, which is taken off by foreign nations, for the export to whom we are required to make the sacrifice of our domestic agriculture, with what is consumed by our own native population, whether in the British islands or in our colonies of British descent, the difference is prodigious, and such as might well, even for their own sake, make the Anti-corn-law League pause in their career of violence.  From the tables compiled from Porter’s Parliamentary Tables, and the population of the different states to whom we export, taken from Malte Brun and Balbi, it appears, that while the British population, whether at home or abroad, consume from L3 to L5 a-head worth of our manufactures, the foreign nations to whom we are willing to sacrifice the British agriculturists, take off per head ONLY AS MANY PENCE.  In preferring the one to the other, therefore, we are, literally speaking, penny wise and pound foolish.