grain of all sorts will be left with the nominal protection of a
shilling a quarter; and many branches of manufactures already find
themselves with a protecting duty so small that, keeping in view the
difference of the value of money in England and the continental states,
it amounts to nothing. If the classes thus left without any protection,
or a merely nominal one, exposed to the effects of foreign competition,
are not indemnified for their losses by the diminished price of the
articles which they themselves purchase, they must grow poorer every
day. Amidst the general cheapening of the articles _sold_, which
constitute the income of the productive classes, if there is not a
proportional cheapening of the articles _bought_ which compose their
_expenditure_, they must inevitably be destroyed.

This truth is so obvious that it is adapted to the level of every
capacity, and accordingly we already see it producing agitation for the
farther repeal of indirect taxes, which it does not require the gift of
prophecy to foresee will, in the end, though perhaps after a severe
struggle, prove successful. It may not do so in this session of
Parliament or the next; but, in process of time, the effect is certain.

A squeezable ministry, a yielding premier, will ere long be found, who,
in a moment of difficulty, will be glad to buy off one set of
assailants, as we did the Danes of old, by giving up what they desire.
The separate agitations which must, in the end, produce this result, are
already manifesting themselves. The West India planters allege, with
reason, that, exposed as they are, when burdened with costly and
irregular free labourers, to the competition of slave labour in Cuba and
Brazil, without, in a few years, any protection, it is indispensable
that the market of the mother country should be thrown open to them for
all parts of their produce, especially in distilleries and breweries.
The farmers, exposed to this attack in flank, while the corn laws have
been repealed in their front, have no resource left but to clamour
incessantly for the repeal of the malt-tax. In this attempt it is
probable they will, in the end, prove successful, not because their
demands are either just or reasonable, for as power is now constituted
in this country that affords no guarantee whatever for being listened
to, but because their claims are likely to be supported by the
_beer-drinkers in towns_, a numerous and influential class of the
c