Assuming it, then, as certain that, under the free-trade system, the importation of grain is to be constantly from a third to a fourth of the annual consumption, the two points to be considered are, How is the national _independence to be maintained_, or _incessant commercial crises averted_, under the new system? These are questions on which it will become every inhabitant of the British islands to ponder; for on them, not only the independence of his country, but the private fortune of himself and his children, is entirely dependent. If so large a portion as a third or a fourth of the annual subsistence is imported almost entirely from three countries, Russia, Prussia, and America, how are we to withstand the hostility of these states? Prussia, in the long run, is under the influence of Russia, and follows its system of policy. The nations on whom we depend for so large a part of our food are thus practically reduced to two, viz., Russia and America--what is to hinder them from coalescing to effect our ruin, as they practically did in 1800 and 1811, against the independence of England? Not a shot would require to be fired, not a loan contracted. The simple threat of closing their harbours would at once drive us to submission. Importing a third of our food from these two states, to what famine-price would the closing of their harbours speedily raise its cost! The failure of £15,000,000 worth of potatoes in 1847--scarce a _twentieth_ part of the annual agricultural produce of these islands, which is about £300,000,000,--raised the price of wheat, in 1848, from 60s. to 110s.--what would the sudden stoppage of a _third_ do? Why, it would raise wheat to 150s. or 200s. a-quarter--in other words, to famine-prices--and inevitably induce general rebellion, and compel national submission. After the lapse of fifteen centuries, we should again realise, after similar Eastern triumphs, the mournful picture of the famine in Rome, in the lines of the poet Claudian,[19] from the stoppage of the wonted supplies of grain from the two granaries of the empire, Egypt and Libya, by the effect of the Gildonic war. But the knowledge of so terrible a catastrophe impending over the nation would probably prevent the collision. England would capitulate while yet it had some food left, on the first summons from its imperious grain-producing masters.