The reply to the complaint of impending "agricultural dis- tress,"
which we 'noticed lately, haii come from a high authority, —Mr. Jam Grey of Dilston ; a practical farmer, who has the letting of many farms great and small, and is Commissioner for the Greenwich Hospital Estates in Northumberland. Mr. Grey declares agriculture to be prospering, and recommends as the cause of prosperity consolidation of farina and the use of machinery ; and he reconciles the farmer to the competition of foreign wheat by pointing to the improved market for wool, and for meat, in which latter the foreigner scarcely competes. Under free- trade, says Mr. Grey/etre have a more thriving population, and in the village we see the butcher's cart stopping "at every, cottage door." When they are told of villages in such a romantic state of affluence, the agricultural complainers certainly have a right to cry " Name ! name ! " But no doubt, metaphors apart, Mr. Grey is right: he belongs to the class of free-trade farmers who prophesied hopefully of free-trade ; and the Protectionists may console themselves for being "in the wrong," by not suffer- ing as they once expected.
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