large part of the
world's surface. 'We should have purchasers for our goods,' remarks Mr.
Froude, 'from whom we should fear no rivalry; we should turn in upon
them the tide of our emigrants which now flows away.' But at present,
and with the fiscal system of 1846 still regarded as sacred and
inviolable, nothing can be done. When we are prepared to acknowledge
that the world has moved since 1846, and that we must move with it,
there may be a possibility of widening the field of our
commerce--unless, indeed, we delay too long. Public opinion in England
is beginning to stir upon the subject. The demand for a great and
radical change will come, when it does come, from the working men, and
they are already showing signs of deep interest in a matter which
concerns the very means of their livelihood. They are in advance of
Parliament and Ministries on this subject. Mr. Froude is well within
bounds in asserting that 'those among us who have disbelieved all along
that a great nation can venture its whole fortunes safely on the power
of underselling its neighbours in calicoes and iron-work, no longer
address a public opinion entirely cold.' What, perhaps, has tended as
much as anything else to open our eyes is the discovery, that other
nations begin to be able to undersell us, not only in foreign markets,
but even in our own--here in England, at Sheffield, Birmingham, and
Manchester. Carlyle usually defined the Free Trade theory as the system
of 'cheap and nasty.' As we have never had Free Trade, and therefore as
it has never been properly tested, it is impossible to say what effects
it was capable of producing, properly worked out. The great fact which
confronts us to-day is that no other nation in the world, and not even
our own colonists, will have anything whatever to do with it on any
terms. This fact, at least, the English workingmen are beginning to see
and to understand, and results will flow from it at present not
anticipated by 'statesmen,' who know little or nothing about the hard
matter-of-fact conditions under which trade is carried on, and who are
assiduously primed by underlings with statistics which they repeat by
rote, and as to the real value or signification of which they are
completely and hopelessly in the dark.

According to Baron Huebner, the Australian colonists have not abandoned
the hope of forming a customs' union with the mother country, and they
are far from regarding the proposals for giving them rep