French journalists are using at the present moment. Let no Englishman delude himself into the belief that it does not express the true sentiments of the nation. We know something of the men whose vocation it is to compound these patriotic articles. They are fostered under the pernicious system which converts the pennya-liner into that anomalous hybrid, a Peer of France-which makes it almost a necessary qualification to become a statesman, that the aspirant has been a successful scribbler in the public journals. And this, forsooth, they call the genuine aristocracy of talent! Their whole aim is to be popular, even at the expense of truth. They are pandars to the weakness of a nation for their own individual advancement. They have no stake in the country save the grey goose-quill they dishonour; and yet they affect to lead the opinions of the people, and-to the discredit of the French intellect be it recorded-they do in a great measure lead them. In short, it is a ruffian press, and we know well by what means France has been ruffianized. The war party-as it calls itself is strong, and has been reared up by the unremitting exertions of these felons of society, who, for the sake of a cheer to tickle their own despicable vanity, would not hesitate for a moment, if they had the power, to wrap Europe again in the flames of universal war. Such will, doubtless, one day be the result of this unbridled license. The demon is not yet exorcised from France, and the horrors of the Revolution may be acted over again, with such additional refinements of brutality as foregone experience shall suggest. Meantime, we say to our own domestic shrinkers-Is this a season, when such a spirit is abroad, to make ourselves dependent for subsistencewhich is life-upon the chance of a foreign supply? Yes, gentlemen journalists of France -whether you be peers or not-you have spoken out a little too early. The blindest of us now can see you in your genuine character and colours. But rest satisfied; the day of retribution, as you impiously dare to term it, has not yet arrived. Britain does not want your corn, and not for it will she abandon an iota of her system. There can be no doubt, that the news of a famine here would be received in France with more joy than the tidings of a second Marengo. The mere expectation of it has already intoxicated the press; and, accordingly, they have begun to speculate upon the probable conduct of other foreign powers, in the event of our ports being opened. Belgium, they are delighted to find, is in so bad a situation, in so far as regards its crop, that the august King Leopold has thought proper to issue a public declaration, that his own royal mouth shall for the next year remain innocent of the flavour of a single potato. This looks well. Belgium, it is hoped, is not over-abundant in wheat; but, even if she were, Belgium owes much to France, and-a meaning asterisk covers and conveys the remaining part of the inuendo. Swampy Holland, they say, can do Britain no good-nay, have not the cautious Dutch been beforehand with Britain, and forestalled, by previous purchase, the calculated supply of rice? Well done, Batavian merchant! In this instance, at least, you are playing the game for France. Then they have high hopes from the ZOLLVEREIN. That combination has evidently to dread the rivalry of British manufacture, and its managers are too shrewd to lose this glorious opportunity of barricado. There are, therefore, hopes that Germany, utterly forgetting the days of subsidies, will shut her ports for export, and also prevent the descent of Polish cora. If not, winter is near at hand, and the mouths of the rivers may be frozen before a supply can be sent to the starving British. Another delightful prospect for young and regenerated France! Also, mysterious rumours are afloat with regard to the policy of the Autocrat. It is said, he too is going to shut up-whether from hatred to Britain, or paternal anxiety for the welfare of his subjects, does not appear. Yet there is not a Parisian scribe of them all but derives his information direct from the secret cabinet of Nicholas. Then there is Americahave we not rumours of war there? How much depends upon the result of the speech which President Polk shall deliver! He knows well by this time that England is threatened with famine-and will he be fool enough to submit to a compromise, when by simple embargo he might enforce his country's claims? So that altogether, in the opinion of the French, we are like to have the worst of it, and may be sheerly starved into any kind of submission. No thanks to Cobden and Co. that this is not our case at present. The abolition of the corn-duty would be immediately followed by the abandonment of a large part of the soil now under tillage. Every year we should learn to depend more and more upon foreign supply, and give up a further portion of our own agricultural toil. Place us in that position, and let a bad season, which shall affect not only us, but the Continent, come round, and the dreams of France will be realized. Gentlemen of England-you that are wavering from your former faithwill you refuse the lesson afforded you, by this premature exultation on the part of our dangerous neighbour? Do you not see what weight France evidently attaches to the repeal of our protection duties-how anxiously she is watching-how earnestly she is praying for it? If you will not believe your friends, will you not take warning from an enemy? Would you hold it chivalry, if you saw an antagonist before you armed at all points, and confident of further assistance, to throw away your defensive armour, and leave yourselves exposed to his attacks? And yet, is not this precisely what will be done if you abandon the principles of protection? Are you afraid of that word, PROTECTION? Shame upon you, if you are! No doubt it has been most scandalously misrepresented by the cotton-mongering orators, but it is a great word, and a wise word, if truly and thoroughly understood. It does not mean that corn shall be grown in this country for your benefit or that of any exclusive class-were it so, protection would be a wrong-but it means, that at all times there shall be maintained in the country an amount of food, reared within itself, sufficient for the sustenance of the nation, in case that war, or some other external cause, should shut up all other sources. And this, which is in fact protection for the nation-a just and wise security against famine, in which the poor and the rich are equally interested-is perverted by the chimneystalk proprietors into a positive national grievance. Why, the question lies in a nutshell. Corn will not be grown in this country, unless you give it an adequate market. Admit foreign corn, and you not only put a stop to agricultural improvement in reclaiming waste land, by means of which production may be carried to an indefinite degree, but you also throw a vast quantity of the land at present productive out of bearing. Suppose, then, that next year, all protection being abolished, the quantity of grain raised in the country is but equal to half the demand of the population; foreign corn, of course, must come in to supply the deficiency. We shall not enlarge upon the first argument which must occur to every thinking person the argument being, that in such a state of things, the foreigner, whoever he may be, with whom we are dealing, has it in his power to demand and exact any price he pleases for his corn. What say the Cobdenites in answer to this? Oh, then, we shall charge the foreigner a corresponding price for our cottons and our calicoes!" No, gentlementhat will not do. We have no doubt this idea has entered into your calculations, and that you hope, through a scarcity of home-grown corn, to realize an augmented profit on your produce-in short, to be the only gainers in a time of general distress. But there is a flaw in your reasoning, too palpable to be overlooked. The 66 foreigner can do without calico, but the British nation CANNOT do without bread. The wants of the stomach are paramount-nothing can enter into competition with them. The German, Pole, or Frenchman, may, for a season, wear a ragged coat, or an inferior shirt, or even dispense with the latter garment, if it so pleases him; and yet suffer comparatively nothing. But what are our population to do, if bread is not procurable except at the enormous prices which, when you abolish protection, you entitle the foreigner to charge? Have you the heart to respond, in the only imaginable answer-it is a mere monosyllable-STARVE ? But suppose that, for the first two years or so, we went on swimmingly -that there were good and plentiful seasons abroad, and that corn flowed into our market abundantly from all quarters of the world. Suppose that bread became cheaper than we ever knew it before, that our manufactures were readily and greedily taken, and that we had realised the manufacturing Eden, which the disciples of Devil's dust have predicted, as the immediate consequence of our abandoning all manner of restrictions. How will this state of unbounded prosperity affect the land? For every five shillings of fall in the price of the quarter of wheat, fresh districts will be abandoned by the plough. The farmer will be unable to work them at a profit, and so he will cease to grow grain. He may put steers upon them; or they may be covered with little fancy villas, or Owenite parallelograms, to suit the taste of the modern philosopher, and accomodate the additional population who are to assist in the prospective crops of calico. The cheaper corn then is, the smaller will become our home-producing surface. The chaw-bacon will be driven to the railroads, where there is already a tolerable demand for him. The flail will be silent in the barn, and the song of the reaper in the fields. Let us suppose this to last for a few years, during which Lord John Russell-the Whigs having, in the meantime, got rid of all graduating scruples and come back to power-has taken an opportunity of enriching the peerage by elevating the redoubted Cobden to its ranks. But a change suddenly passes across the spirit of our dream. At once, and like a thunderbolt-without warning or presage -comes a famine or a war. We care not which of them is taken as an illustration. Both are calamities, unfortunately, well known in this country; and we hardly can expect that many years shall pass over our heads without the occurrence of one or other of them. Let us take the evil of man's creating-war. The Channel is filled with French shipping, and all along the coast, from Cape Ushant to Elsinore, the ports are rigidly shut. Mean time American cruisers are scouring the Atlantic, chasing our merchantmen, and embarassing communication with the colonies. Also, there is war in the Mediterranean. We have fifty, nay, a hundred points to watch with our vessels-a hundred isolated interests to maintain, and these demand an immense and yet a divided force. Convoys cannot be spared without loss of territory, and then-what becomes of us at home? Most miserable is the prospect; and yet it does appear, if we are mad enough to abandon protection, perfectly inevitable. With but a portion of our land in tillage-an augmented population-no stored corn-no means of recalling for two years at the soonest, even if we could spare seed, and that is questionable, the dormant energies of the earth!--Can you fancy, my Lord Ashley, or you, converted Mr Escott, what Britain would be then? We will tell you. Not perhaps a prey-for we will not even imagine such degradation—but a bargainer and compounder with an inferior power or powers, whom she might have bearded for centuries with impunity, had not some selfish traitors been wicked enough to demand, and some infatuated statesmen foolish enough to grant, the abrogation of that protection which is her sole security for pre-eminence. What are all the cotton bales of Manchester in comparison with such considerations as these? O Devil's-dust-Devil'sdust! Have we really declined so far, that you are to be the Sinon to bring us to this sorry pass? Is the poisoned breath of the casuist to destroy the prosperity of those "Quos neque Tydides, nec Larissæus Achilles, Non anni domuere decem, non mille carina!" It may be so-for a small shardbeetle can upset a massive candlestick; and it will be so assuredly, if the protective principle is abandoned. The first duty of a nation is to rear food for its inhabitants from the bosom of its own soil, and woe must follow if it relies for daily sustenance upon another. We can now form a fair estimate of the probable continuance of the supply, from the premature exultation exhibited in the foreign journals, and we shall be worse than fools if we do not avail ourselves of the lesson. INDEX TO VOL. LVIII. ACCOUNT of a Visit to the Volcano of Agriculture round Lucca, 619. Alas, for her! from the Russian of Alpine scenery, sketches of, 704. American war, causes which fostered Andes, description of the, 555. André Chenier, from the Russian of Carlist war, sketches of the, 210. Pushkin, 154. Anti-corn-law League, strictures on Apparitions, &c., letter to Eusebius on, Armfelt, Count, 59. Arndt, notices of, 332, 333. Caserta, palace of, 491-silk manufac- Caucasus, the, from the Russian of Celibacy of the clergy, effects of the, in Chamouni, valley of, 707. Art, causes of the absence of taste for, Chatham, Lord, 717. Barclay de Tolly, from the Russian of Churchill, see Marlborough. Pushkin, 40. Baron von Stein, 328. Barri, Madame du, 730, 733. Bazars of Constantinople, the, 688. Betterton's version of Chaucer, remarks Bettina, sketch of the life, &c., of, 357. Black shawl, the, from Púshkin, 37. Boas, Edward, sketches of Sweden, &c. Bossuet's Universal History, character- Bottetort, Lord, anecdote of, 724. Brabant, conquest of, by Marlborough, 665. Bread, causes of the present dearness Bremer, Miss, the Swedish novelist, 62. Clairvoyance, remarks on, 736. Clytha house, &c., 477. Col de Balme, pass of the, 707. Colour in painting, remarks on, 419. Constable the painter, sketch of the life, Constantinople, Three Years in, 688. Cooper, characteristics of, as a novel- Copenhagen, description of, 68. Corn-laws, proposed suspension of the, Corporations of Constantinople, the, 696. Coxe's Life of Marlborough, notice of, 3. Dalarna or Dalecarlia, sketches of, 64. Dalin, Olof von, 62. Dancs, national character of the, 69. Days of the Fronde, the, 596. De Burtin on pictures, 413. Dendermonde, capture of, by Marl- Despatches of the Duke of Marlbo- Domestic manners of the Turks, the, Downes, Joseph--David the Telynwr, Dreams, &c., letter to Eusebius on, 735. Dryden on Chaucer, 114--his Mac- Dumas' Margaret of Valois, extracts Dunciad, the, critique on, 234, 366. Dutch school of painting, the, 426. Echo, from the Russian of Pushkin, Education, state of, in Turkey, 692— Edward, Duke of York, character of, Egyptian market at Constantinople, the, English landscape painting, on, 257. Esprit des Lois of Montesquieu, the, Eusebius, letter to, on omens, dreams, Failure of the potato crop, extent, &c. Feast of Peter the First, the, from Forsen, Count, murder of, 61. Few passages concerning omens, dreams, Few words for Bettina, a, 357. Flemish school of painting, the, 426. France under Louis XIV., 12—preva- lent feeling in, towards England, 781. Garden of the Villa Reale, the, 486. German school of painting, the, 427. 453. Goethe and Bettina, the correspon- Goethe's Torquato Tasso, translations Gotha canal, the, 68. Grafton, the Duke of, Walpole's cha- Grain crop, quantity, &c., of the, in Scotland, 769-and its quality, 770. Grand general junction and indefinite Guamos of South America, the, 554. Hahn-Hahn, the Countess, 71. Hamilton, the Duchess of, 726. Harvest the Scottish, 769-quantity of |