The Rising Price of Wheat and Flour.
"What we predicted in one of our recent papers is daily becoming realised to an extent which is now exciting general attention, and, with some classes of the people, has already produced great alarm and anxiety for the future. We stated at that time, that though the return of fine weather, about the middle of last month, had saved the harvest, and given us a crop much more than had been anticipated, still there were causes in operation which would keep up the prices of wheat and flour; and that, at least for many weeks to come wheat would not fall in the British Market.
"It should be borne in mind that the getting in of the harvest is very closely followed by the wheat seed-time, and that two causes are then always operative to maintain and raise the price of wheat. There is, first, a large call on the stock in hand for seed wheat; and, secondly, the farmers are too busy to carry their corn into market, and accordingly the market is ill supplied. A third cause is also in operation to produce the same effect—that of an unreasonable alarm always resulting from an ill-supplied market.
"It would seem astonishing and even incredible to men who argue only theoretically, that though year after year the same uniform causes operate, and produce exactly the same effects, yet that this aspect of the market should continue to delude and mislead the public mind, but so it is in the corn-market, and with the British public in general; for though they see through a long succession of years that wheat and flour invariably rise in the market immediately after harvest and during seed-time, and though they ought to understand that this rise is produced by the quantity required for seed, and by the busy occupation of the farmers, they still perversely attribute it to another cause, existing only in their own apprehensions, namely, that the recent harvest has been deficient, and that the market is ill supplied because there is
an insufficient stock with which to supply it.
"As it is the inflexible rule of our paper to apply itself on the instant to correct all popular errors and to dissipate all unreasonable panics, we feel ourselves called upon to say, that the present rise in the price of corn results only from the very serious failure of the potato crop in many of our own counties, and still more materially in Belgium and other foreign kingdoms. From the mere circumstance of their numbers only, to say nothing of their habits and necessities, an immense quantity of this food is required for the sustenance of many millions of the community; and when the crop fails to such an extensive degree as it has done in the present case, this vast numerical proportion of every state must necessarily be chiefly maintained from the stock of corn. If the potato crop fail at home, the poor are directly thrown upon the corn-market, and the price of corn must necessarily rise in proportion to the increased demand. Where the potato crop has failed abroad, the supply of foreign corn must necessarily be directed to that quarter, and therefore less corn will be imported into the British market.
"Now, it is the expectation of this result, which, together with the wheat seed-time and the full occupation of the farmers, is producing the present rise in the British corn-market, and these causes will probably continue to operate for some time longer.
"In some parts of the country, such as our northern and eastern counties, we understand the current judgment to be, that though the harvest has produced more bushels than in an average year, the weight per bushel is less than last year, and that the deficiency of the quality brings the produce down in such districts to less than an average crop. But if we set against this the happier result of the wheat harvest in our southern and western counties, we must still retain our former opinion, that there is at least no present ground for any thing like a panic, either amongst the public in general or amongst the farmers themselves. The public as yet have no cause to dread any thing like that very serious scarcity which some of our papers have announced, and the farmers themselves have no cause to apprehend such a sudden and extraordinary state of the market, as would involve them in the general suffering of the community."
We shall now close our remarks on the subject of the Scottish Harvest. In thus limiting our remarks to the harvest in Scotland, we have been actuated by no narrow spirit of nationality, but have judged it right, in treating a subject of such importance, to confine ourselves to that portion of the United Kingdom in which we possessed means of obtaining information which positively could be relied upon. Indeed, were it not for the paramount importance of the question, which will soon be founded on as a topic for political discussion, we should hardly have addressed ourselves to the task. But we have noticed, with great disgust, the efforts of the League to influence, at this particular crisis, the public mind, by gross misrepresentations of our position and prospects; and, being convinced that a more dangerous and designing faction never yet thrust themselves into public notice, we have thought it right, in the first instance, to collect and to classify our facts. This done, we have yet a word or two in store for the members of the mountebank coalition.
No evil is unmixed with good. The murmurs of the alarmists at home, unfounded as we believe them to be, have brought out, more clearly than we could have hoped for, the state of foreign feeling with regard to British enterprise, and the prospects of future supply upon which this country must depend, should the sliding-scale be abrogated and all import duties abolished. The most infatuated Leaguer will hardly deny, that if the corn-law had ceased to exist three years ago, and a great part of our poorer soils had in consequence been removed from tillage, our present position with regard to food must have been infinitely worse. In fact, we should then have presented the unhappy spectacle of a great industrial community incapable of rearing food for its population at home, and solely dependent for a supply on foreign states; and that, too, in a year when the harvests throughout Europe, and even in America, have suffered. And here, by the way, before going further, let us remark, that the advocates of the League never seem to have contemplated, at all events they have never grappled with, the notorious fact, that
the effects of most unpropitious seasons are felt far beyond the confines of the British isles. This year, indeed, we were the last to suffer; and the memory of the youngest of us, who has attained the age of reason, will furnish him with examples of far severer seasons than that which has just gone by. What, then, is to be done, should the proportion of the land in tillage be reduced below the mark which, in an average year, could supply our population with food—if, at the same time, a famine were to occur abroad, and deprive the continental agriculturists of their surplus store of corn? The answer is a short one—Our people must necessarily STARVE. The manufacturers would be the first to feel the appalling misery of their situation, and the men whom they would have to thank for the severest and most lingering death, are the chosen apostles of the League!
Is this an overdrawn picture? Let us see. France at this moment is convinced that we are on the verge of a state of famine. Almost all the French journalists, believing what they probably wish for, and misled by the repealing howl, and faint-hearted predictions of the coward, assume that our home stock of provision is not sufficient to last us for the ensuing winter. That is just the situation to which we should be reduced every year, if Messrs Cobden, Bright, and Company had their will. What, then, says our neighbour, and now most magnanimous ally? Is he willing—for they allege they have a superfluity—to supply us in this time of hypothetical distress—to act the part of the good Samaritan, and pour, not wine and oil, but corn into our wounds? Is he about to take the noblest revenge upon a former adversary, by showing himself, in the moment of need, a benefactor instead of a foe? Oh, my Lord Ashley! you and others, whose spirit is more timid than becomes your blood, had better look, ere you give up the mainstay of your country's prosperity—ere you surrender the cause of the agriculturist—to the animus that is now manifested abroad. We have reason to bless Heaven that it has been thus early shown, before, by mean and miserable concession to the clamours of a selfish interest, we have placed Britain for the first time absolutely at the mercy of a foreign power. Scarce a journal in France that does not tell you—loudly—boldly—exultingly—what treatment we may expect from their hands. "At last," they say, "we have got this perfidious Albion in our power. Nature has done for us, in her cycle, what for centuries the force of our arms and concentrated rancour could not achieve. The English newspapers in every column teem with the tidings of failure. The crop of corn is bad beyond any former experience. It cannot suffice to feed one half of the population. The potato crop also, which is the sole subsistence of Ireland, is thoroughly ruined. Scarce a minute fraction of it can be used for the purposes of human food. The British Cabinet are earnestly deliberating on the propriety of opening the ports. The public, almost to a man, are demanding the adoption of that measure—and doubtless erelong they will be opened.
"What, then, are we to do? Are we to be guilty of the egregious folly of supplying our huge and overgrown rival, at the moment when we have the opportunity to strike a blow at the very centre of her system, and that without having recourse to the slightest belligerent measures? Are we, at the commencement of her impending misery, to reciprocate with England—that England which arrested us in the midst of our career of conquest, swept our navies from the seas, baffled our bravest armies, and led away our Emperor captive? The man who can entertain such an idea—be he who he may—is a traitor to the honour of his country. Let England open her ports if she will, and as she must, but let us at the self-same moment be prepared to CLOSE our own. Let not one grain of corn, if possible, be exported from France. We have plenty, and to spare. Our hardy peasantry can pass the winter in comfort; whilst, on the opposite side of the Channel, we shall have the satisfaction of beholding our haughty enemy convulsed, and wallowing like a stranded Leviathan on the shore! We pity the brave Irish, but we shall not help them. To do so would be, in fact, to exonerate Britain of her greatest and primary burden."
This is the language which the
French journalists are using at the present moment. Let no Englishman delude himself into the belief that it does not express the true sentiments of the nation. We know something of the men whose vocation it is to compound these patriotic articles. They are fostered under the pernicious system which converts the penny-a-liner into that anomalous hybrid, a Peer of France—which make it almost a necessary qualification to become a statesman, that the aspirant has been a successful scribbler in the public journals. And this, forsooth, they call the genuine aristocracy of talent! Their whole aim is to be popular, even at the expense of truth. They are pandars to the weakness of a nation for their own individual advancement. They have no stake in the country save the grey goose-quill they dishonour; and yet they affect to lead the opinions of the people, and—to the discredit of the French intellect be it recorded—they do in a great measure lead them. In short, it is a ruffian press, and we know well by what means France has been ruffianized. The war party—as it calls itself—is strong, and has been reared up by the unremitting exertions of these felons of society, who, for the sake of a cheer to tickle their own despicable vanity, would not hesitate for a moment, if they had the power, to wrap Europe again in the flames of universal war. Such will, doubtless, one day be the result of this unbridled license. The demon is not yet exorcised from France, and the horrors of the Revolution may be acted over again, with such additional refinements of brutality as foregone experience shall suggest. Meantime, we say to our own domestic shrinkers—Is this a season, when such a spirit is abroad, to make ourselves dependent for subsistence—which is life—upon the chance of a foreign supply?
Yes, gentlemen journalists of France—whether you be peers or not—you have spoken out a little too early. The blindest of us now can see you in your genuine character and colours. But rest satisfied; the day of retribution, as you impiously dare to term it, has not yet arrived. Britain does not want your corn, and not for it will she abandon an iota of her system.
There can be no doubt, that the news of a famine here would be received in France with more joy than the tidings of a second Marengo. The mere expectation of it has already intoxicated the press; and, accordingly, they have begun to speculate upon the probable conduct of other foreign powers, in the event of our ports being opened. Belgium, they are delighted to find, is in so bad a situation, in so far as regards its crop, that the august King Leopold has thought proper to issue a public declaration, that his own royal mouth shall for the next year remain innocent of the flavour of a single potato. This looks well. Belgium, it is hoped, is not overabundant in wheat; but, even if she were, Belgium owes much to France, and—a meaning asterisk covers and conveys the remaining part of the inuendo. Swampy Holland, they say, can do Britain no good—nay, have not the cautious Dutch been beforehand with Britain, and forestalled, by previous purchase, the calculated supply of rice? Well done, Batavian merchant! In this instance, at least, you are playing the game for France.
Then they have high hopes from the Zollverein. That combination has evidently to dread the rivalry of British manufacture, and its managers are too shrewd to lose this glorious opportunity of barricado. There are, therefore, hopes that Germany, utterly forgetting the days of subsidies, will shut her ports for export, and also prevent the descent of Polish corn. If not, winter is near at hand, and the mouths of the rivers may be frozen before a supply can be sent to the starving British. Another delightful prospect for young and regenerated France!
Also, mysterious rumours are afloat with regard to the policy of the Autocrat. It is said, he too is going to shut up—whether from hatred to Britain, or paternal anxiety for the welfare of his subjects, does not appear. Yet there is not a Parisian scribe of them all but derives his information direct from the secret cabinet of Nicholas. Then there is America—have we not rumours of war there? How much depends upon the result of the speech which President Polk shall deliver! He knows well by this time
that England is threatened with famine—and will he be fool enough to submit to a compromise, when by simple embargo he might enforce his country's claims? So that altogether, in the opinion of the French, we are like to have the worst of it, and may be sheerly starved into any kind of submission.
No thanks to Cobden and Co. that this is not our case at present. The abolition of the corn-duty would be immediately followed by the abandonment of a large part of the soil now under tillage. Every year we should learn to depend more and more upon foreign supply, and give up a further portion of our own agricultural toil. Place us in that position, and let a bad season, which shall affect not only us, but the Continent, come round, and the dreams of France will be realized. Gentlemen of England—you that are wavering from your former faith—will you refuse the lesson afforded you, by this premature exultation on the part of our dangerous neighbour? Do you not see what weight France evidently attaches to the repeal of our protection duties—how anxiously she is watching—how earnestly she is praying for it? If you will not believe your friends, will you not take warning from an enemy? Would you hold it chivalry, if you saw an antagonist before you armed at all points, and confident of further assistance, to throw away your defensive armour, and leave yourselves exposed to his attacks? And yet, is not this precisely what will be done if you abandon the principles of protection?
Are you afraid of that word, Protection? Shame upon you, if you are! No doubt it has been most scandalously misrepresented by the cotton-mongering orators, but it is a great word, and a wise word, if truly and thoroughly understood. It does not mean that corn shall be grown in this country for your benefit or that of any exclusive class—were it so, protection would be a wrong—but it means, that at all times there shall be maintained in the country an amount of food, reared within itself, sufficient for the sustenance of the nation, in case that war, or some other external cause, should shut up all other sources. And this, which is in fact protection for the nation—a just and wise security against famine, in which the poor and the rich are equally interested—is perverted by the chimney-stalk proprietors into a positive national grievance. Why, the question lies in a nutshell. Corn will not be grown in this country unless you give it an adequate market. Admit foreign corn, and you not only put a stop to agricultural improvement in reclaiming waste land, by means of which production may be carried to an indefinite degree, but you also throw a vast quantity of the land at present productive out of bearing. Suppose, then, that next year, all protection being abolished, the quantity of grain raised in the country is but equal to half the demand of the population; foreign corn, of course, must come in to supply the deficiency. We shall not enlarge upon the first argument which must occur to every thinking person—the argument being, that in such a state of things, the foreigner, whoever he may be, with whom we are dealing, has it in his power to demand and exact any price he pleases for his corn. What say the Cobdenites in answer to this? "Oh, then, we shall charge the foreigner a corresponding price for our cottons and our calicoes!" No, gentlemen—that will not do. We have no doubt this idea has entered into your calculations, and that you hope, through a scarcity of home-grown corn, to realize an augmented profit on your produce—in short, to be the only gainers in a time of general distress. But there is a flaw in your reasoning, too palpable to be overlooked. The foreigner can do without calico, but the British nation CANNOT do without bread. The wants of the stomach are paramount—nothing can enter into competition with them. The German, Pole, or Frenchman, may, for a season, wear a ragged coat, or an inferior shirt, or even dispense with the latter garment, if it so pleases him; and yet suffer comparatively nothing. But what are our population to do, if bread is not procurable except at the enormous prices which, when you abolish protection, you entitle the foreigner to charge? Have you the heart to respond, in the only imaginable answer—it is a mere monosyllable—Starve?
But suppose that, for the first two years or so, we went on swimmingly—that
there were good and plentiful seasons abroad, and that corn flowed into our market abundantly from all quarters of the world. Suppose that bread became cheaper than we ever knew it before, that our manufactures were readily and greedily taken, and that we had realised the manufacturing Eden, which the disciples of Devil's-dust have predicted, as the immediate consequence of our abandoning all manner of restrictions. How will this state of unbounded prosperity affect the land? For every five shillings of fall in the price of the quarter of wheat, fresh districts will be abandoned by the plough. The farmer will be unable to work them at a profit, and so he will cease to grow grain. He may put steers upon them; or they may be covered with little fancy villas, or Owenite parallelograms, to suit the taste of the modern philosopher, and accomodate the additional population who are to assist in the prospective crops of calico. The cheaper corn then is, the smaller will become our home-producing surface. The chaw-bacon will be driven to the railroads, where there is already a tolerable demand for him. The flail will be silent in the barn, and the song of the reaper in the fields.
Let us suppose this to last for a few years, during which Lord John Russell—the Whigs having, in the meantime, got rid of all graduating scruples and come back to power—has taken an opportunity of enriching the peerage by elevating the redoubted Cobden to its ranks. But a change suddenly passes across the spirit of our dream. At once, and like a thunderbolt—without warning or presage—comes a famine or a war. We care not which of them is taken as an illustration. Both are calamities, unfortunately, well known in this country; and we hardly can expect that many years shall pass over our heads without the occurrence of one or other of them. Let us take the evil of man's creating—war. The Channel is filled with French shipping, and all along the coast, from Cape Ushant to Elsinore, the ports are rigidly shut. Mean time American cruisers are scouring the Atlantic, chasing our merchantmen, and embarassing communication with the colonies. Also, there is war in the Mediterranean. We have fifty, nay, a hundred points to watch with our vessels—a hundred isolated interests to maintain, and these demand an immense and yet a divided force. Convoys cannot be spared without loss of territory, and then—what becomes of us at home?
Most miserable is the prospect; and yet it does appear, if we are mad enough to abandon protection, perfectly inevitable. With but a portion of our land in tillage—an augmented population—no stored corn—no means of recalling for two years at the soonest, even if we could spare seed, and that is questionable, the dormant energies of the earth!—Can you fancy, my Lord Ashley, or you, converted Mr Escott, what Britain would be then? We will tell you. Not perhaps a prey—for we will not even imagine such degradation—but a bargainer and compounder with an inferior power or powers, whom she might have bearded for centuries with impunity, had not some selfish traitors been wicked enough to demand, and some infatuated statesmen foolish enough to grant, the abrogation of that protection which is her sole security for pre-eminence. What are all the cotton bales of Manchester in comparison with such considerations as these? O Devil's-dust—Devil's-dust! Have we really declined so far, that you are to be the Sinon to bring us to this sorry pass? Is the poisoned breath of the casuist to destroy the prosperity of those—
"Quos neque Tydides, nec Larissæus Achilles,
Non anni domuere decem, non mille carinæ!"
It may be so—for a small shard-beetle can upset a massive candle-stick; and it will be so assuredly, if the protective principle is abandoned. The first duty of a nation is to rear food for its inhabitants from the bosom of its own soil, and woe must follow if it relies for daily sustenance upon another. We can now form a fair estimate of the probable continuance of the supply, from the premature exultation exhibited in the foreign journals, and we shall be worse than fools if we do not avail ourselves of the lesson.