No doubt, if the potato crop shall prove to be very generally affected, the price of corn will rise yet farther, and may be for a long time maintained. But this is a very different thing from a scarcity of that article, which we believe is merely visionary. We must be fed with corn if we cannot get the potato in its usual plenty; and it is the certainty, or rather the expectation, of this, which has raised the price of the former. In the course of last month (October) we met with an admirable article on this subject, in the columns of Bell's Weekly Messenger, which we do not hesitate to adopt, as clear in its views, hopeful in its tone, and strictly rational in its argument.
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.