either resigning her own agriculture, by the free and unrestricted importation of foreign corn, or of obliging her inhabitants to eat their bread at double the price which it cost before the commencement of the first revolutionary war: to this necessity she is reduced by the immense load of debt, which in the cause of Europe, rather than in her own, she has contracted in little more than twenty years. In our present volume, we have adverted to the subject of the corn laws, and the continuance of the property tax: the latter, notwithstanding some objections to the principle of it, and several to the details of its management, we cannot but consider as having one of the best characteristics of a tax; viz. that it is levied on the income, and not on the expenditure, of the people: the subject of the corn laws we shall again have occasion to discuss; since, now that our pages will not be filled, we hope, with warlike exploits, the economical and financial history of our country, and.of the other countries of Europe, must claim a larger portion of our volumes.
In the present volume,.besides those subjects connected with Britain, we have also detailed the particulars of the trial of Lord Cochrane, and of that arrangement with the Princess of Wales, which induced or enabled her to leave the country. In our remarks on Lord Cochrane's trial, we have endeavoured to show that it has more than a temporary interest; and that it ought to give rise to some important amendments in our criminal code: the subject of the Princess of Wales we have adverted to, principally, because it seemed necessary to bring to a proper conclusion what we had formerly recorded respecting her.