anticipated, it might run uncontroverted for months to come until another session, and, through Anti-Corn-Law circulars and tracts of the League, do the dirty work of the time for which concocted, when no matter how consigned and forgotten afterwards among the numberless other lies of the day, fabricated by the League.  Unluckily for the crafty combination, Blackwood was neither slow to detect, nor tardy in unmasking, the premeditated imposture, the crowning and final points of which we now propose to deal with and demolish.  Betwixt the relative importance in the cost, and in the profit and loss sense, of foreign and colonial trade, on which the question of the advantages or disadvantages attending the possession or retention of colonies is made exclusively to hinge, with a narrow-mindedness incapable of appreciating the other high political and social interests, the moral and religious considerations, moreover, involved—­we shall now proceed with the task of arbitrating and striking the balance.  If that balance should little correspond with the bold and unscrupulous allegations of Mr Cobden—­if it should be found to derogate from the assumed super-eminence of the foreign trading interest over the colonial, let it be remembered that the invidious discussion was not raised by us, nor by any member of the Legislature who can rightfully be classed as the representative of great national and constitutional principles; that the distinction and disjunction of interests, both national, with the absurd attempt unduly to elevate the one by unjustly depreciating the other, is the work of the League alone, which, having originated the senseless cry of “class interests,” would seem doggedly determined to establish the fact, per fas et nefas, as the means of funding and perpetuating class divisions.

 In our last number, we left Mr Cobden’s sum
   total of army expenditure for colonial
   account charged by him, at L.4,500,000

 Reduced by deductions for military and other
   stations, maintained for the protection
   and promotion of foreign trade, for the
   suppression of slave dealing, and as penal
   colonies, in the total amount of—­ 1,550,000
          
                                        ----------
 To apparent colonial charge, —­ L.2,950,000

We have, however, to reform this statement, so far as Mr Cobden’s basis upon which founded.  Accustomed to his blunders undesigned and mistatements intentional as we are, it is not always easy to ascertain their extent at the moment.  Thus, the army estimates for 1843, amounting to L.6,225,000 in the whole, as he states, include a charge of, say about L.2,300,000 for “half-pay, pensions, superannuations, &c.,” for upwards of 80,000 officers and men.  This fact it suited his convenience to overlook.  Now, of this number of men it is not perhaps too much to assume, that more than one-half consists of the noble