text: 10 072 000! Symptoms of social disorganization visible on the very surface of society: ruin bestriding our mercantile interests palsied every where by the long pressure of financial misrule: credit vanishing rapidly: the working-classes plunged daily deeper and deeper into misery and starvation ready to listen to the most desperate suggestions: and a Government bewildered with a consciousness of incompetency and of the swiftly approaching consequences of their misrule at the eleventh hour--on the eve of a general election-- suddenly resolving (in the language of their own leader) to stir society to its foundations by proposing a wild and ruinous alteration in the Corn-Laws declaring that it and it only would bring cheap bread to the doors of the very poorest in the land:--after the manner of giving out ardent spirits to an already infuriated mob