rchase of our
manufactures. Here again the facts come decisively to disprove the
theoretical anticipations. So far has the increase of our importations
been from being sudden, and come last year for the first time on foreign
nations, it has been _remarkably gradual_, and has gone on for years,
having received only a great impulse in the articles on which the duty
was lessened or removed last summer. Our general imports have steadily
advanced for the last three years; and in particular articles the same
progress has been conspicuous.[9] How, then, has it happened that this
general, continued, and steady _increase_ of imports has issued only in
a _diminution_ to an alarming extent of exports? And observe, the
countries from which we have imported so largely last year of grain and
articles of subsistence, have not only not suffered by the scarcity
general on the Continent, but have profited immensely by it. America has
been blessed with a splendid crop of every species of grain; and, in
consequence of the famine in Ireland and severe scarcity in France,
prices of grain have risen to triple their former amount in the United
States. It has risen so much in the southern states of Russia, that the
Emperor of Russia has prohibited the farther exportation of it from the
Black Sea. But all these floods of wealth flowing into the great grain
states from the failure of the crops in France and Ireland, have been
unavailing to produce any increased activity in our manufactures. On the
contrary, they are all declining; and our immense importations of food
are almost all paid for in direct exportations of the precious metals.

In truth, the general depression of manufactures in all the chief seats
of our fabrics is so serious, that it is evidently owing to a much more
general and stringent cause than the decline, considerable as it is, in
our exports. It is not a decrease of two millions out of fifty-three
millions--in other words, of less than a _five-and-twentieth_
part--which will explain the general putting of mills in Lancashire and
Lanarkshire on short time, the fall in the value of all kinds of stock
and general decline in the vent for all kinds of manufactured produce.
It is in the _home markets_ that the real and blighting deficiency is
experienced. And what is the cause of this decline in the home market?
The Free-Traders are the first to tell us what has done it. It is the
famine in Ireland. The total manufactured produce of