I have, I believe, in the preceding pages, established beyond contradiction the historical fact, that the Conservative party, whatever their other faults may have been, are not justly chargeable with making use of the Protection cry as a mere political manoeuvre, only adopted immediately prior to the general elections of 1878.

I have mentioned, that when I was about eighteen years of age, the Corn-Law League was in full blast in England. I was foreman and proof-reader of the printing office whence all its principal publications issued, and was in daily communication with Col. Peyronnet Thompson, M. P., and the other free-trade leaders. I was even then struck with the circumstance, that while loudly professing their disinterested desire for the welfare of the whole human race, the authors of the movement urged as their main argument with the manufacturers and farmers, that England could undersell the whole world in cheap goods, while her agriculturists could never be under-sold in their own markets. This reasoning appeared to me both hypocritical and fraudulent; and I hold that it has proved so, and that for England and Scotland, the day of retribution is already looming in the near future. As righteously might a single shop-keeper build his hopes of profit upon the utter ruin of all his trade competitors, as a single country dare to speculate, as the British free-trader has done, on the destruction of the manufacturing industries of all other nations.

The present troubles in Ireland, are they not the direct fruit of the crushing out of its linen industry? The Scindian war in India, was it not caused by the depopulation of a whole province of a million and a half of people, through the annihilation of its nankeen manufacture. And if Manchester and Birmingham had their way, would not France and Germany, and Switzerland and America--including Canada--become the mere bond-slaves of the Cobdens and the Brights--et hoc genus omne?

But there is a Power above all, that has ordered events otherwise. I assume it to be undeniable, that according to natural laws, the country which produces any raw material, must ultimately become its cheapest manipulator. England has no inherent claim to control any manufactures but those of tin, iron, brass and wool; and with time, all or most of these may be wrested from her. Her cotton mills must ultimately fade away before those of India, the Southern States, and Africa. Her grain can never again compete with that of Russia and the Canadian North-West. Her iron-works with difficulty now hold their own against Germany and the United States. Birmingham and Sheffield are threatened by Switzerland, by the New England States, and--before many decades--by Canada. And so on with all the rest of England's monopolies. Dear labour, dear farming, dear soil, will tell unfavourably in the end, in spite of all trade theories and ex parte arguments.

Yet more. It would not be hard to show, I think, that the tenant-right and agrarian agitations of the present day are due to Free Trade; that the cry, "the land belongs to the labourer," is the direct offspring of the Cobden teaching; and that the issue will but too probably be, a disastrous revulsion of labour against capital, and poverty against wealth. They who sow the wind, must reap the whirlwind! God send that it may not happen in our day!