the Government has rushed enormous stores of food at the public
expense into the country. In a very few months the new harvest will
have appeared. On the whole we can face the immediate future without
undue depression, though there remain some causes for anxiety. These
will no doubt be energetically handled by this new and efficient
Government, which has taken the place of those discredited politicians
who led us into a war without having foreseen how helpless we were
against an obvious form of attack.

"Already the lines of our reconstruction are evident. The first and
most important is that our Party men realize that there is something
more vital than their academic disputes about Free Trade or
Protection, and that all theory must give way to the fact that a
country is in an artificial and dangerous condition if she does not
produce within her own borders sufficient food to at least keep life
in her population. Whether this should be brought about by a tax upon
foreign foodstuffs, or by a bounty upon home products, or by a
combination of the two, is now under discussion. But all Parties are
combined upon the principle, and, though it will undoubtedly entail
either a rise in prices or a deterioration in quality in the food of
the working-classes, they will at least be insured against so terrible
a visitation as that which is fresh in our memories. At any rate, we
have got past the stage of argument. It _must_ be so. The increased
prosperity of the farming interest, and, as we will hope, the
cessation of agricultural emigration, will be benefits to be counted
against the obvious disadvantages.

"The second lesson is the immediate construction of not one but two
double-lined railways under the Channel. We stand in a white sheet
over the matter, since the project has always been discouraged in
these columns, but we are prepared to admit that had such railway
communication been combined with adequate arrangements for forwarding
supplies from Marseilles, we should have avoided our recent surrender.
We still insist that we cannot trust entirely to a tunnel, since our
enemy might have allies in the Mediterranean; but in a single contest
with any Power of the North of Europe it would certainly be of
inestimable benefit. There may be dangers attendant upon the
existence of a tunnel, but it must now be admitted th