The most decisive proof of the universality and general sense of this reduction of income and general distress, is to be found in the efforts which Mr Cobden and the free-trade party are now making to effect a great reduction in the public expenditure. During the discussion on corn-law repeal, they told us that the change they advocated could make no sort of difference on the income of the producing and agricultural classes, and that it would produce an addition to the income of the trading classes of £100,000,000 a-year. Of course, the national and public resources were to be greatly benefited by the change; and it was under this belief adopted. Now, however, that the change has taken place, and its result has been found to be a universal embarrassment to all classes and interests, but especially to the commercial, they turn round and tell us that this effect is inevitable from the change of prices--that the halcyon days of high rents and profits are at an end, and that all that remains is for all classes to accommodate themselves the best way they can to the inevitable change. They propose to begin with Queen Victoria and the Chancellor of the Exchequer, from whom they propose to cut off £11,000,000 a-year of income. But they consider this perfectly safe, because, as the aspect of things, both abroad and in our colonial empire, is so singularly pacific, and peace and goodwill are so soon to prevail among men, they think it will be soon possible to disband our troops, sell our ships of war, and trust the stilling the passions and settling the disputes of nations and races to the great principles of justice and equity, which invariably regulate the proceedings of all popular and democratic communities. We say nothing of the probability of such a millennium soon arriving, or of the prognostics of its approach, which passing and recent events in India, Canada, France, Germany, Hungary, Italy, Sicily, and Ireland, have afforded, or are affording. We refer to them only as giving the most decisive proof that the free-traders have now themselves become sensible that their measures have produced a general impoverishment of all classes, from the head of the state downwards, and that a great reduction of expenditure is unavoidable, if a general public and private bankruptcy would be averted.