the Netherlands presents also a striking illustration of the fate which must finally overtake every country which, even under the most favourable circumstances, habitually submits to depend upon a foreign supply for the subsistence of any large portion of its population. The whole quantity of corn exported from Great Britain alone between 1697 and 1771, inclusive, amounted to about thirty-four millions of quarters, being an average of exports amounting to about 450,000 quarters annually. Most of this corn was sent to the Netherlands, in exchange for wrought commodities. While this species of commerce continued, the Low Countries flourished greatly; an immense manufacturing population was created, depending for food upon the corn obtained from England and other countries. About the middle of the last century, however, the manufactures of this island took a start; and from a corn-exporting we became a corn-importing people. We consumed in domestic manufactories the corn which we had been in the habit of sending away to be converted into broad-cloth and linen, in the Low Countries; and other nations sent their corn to be turned into wrought goods, not in the Low Countries, but here. The distress into which this change of their commercial relations plunged the inhabitants of the Netherlands was terrible. Multitudes of the manufacturing population were, year after year, deprived of employment. Many of them, relinquishing the hearths of their fathers, emigrated into England and other foreign countries; and more became the victims of want and starvation at home. The dreadful scenes of misery and distress which the Low Countries presented at this crisis will not be lost upon those whose passions or interest do not render them blind to the instruction to be derived from history and experience. If we be wise, we shall take warning from the misfortunes of others. The Flemings of the eighteenth century will not have suffered in vain, if their fate should have the effect of deterring the legislature of this country from falling into the error which proved fatal to that industrious people, while pursuing, with impolitic and ill-regulated eagerness, the acquisition of uncertain and instable gain.

Nothing, indeed, seems to us to form a more singular feature of the clamour recently excited against the Corn-laws, than the blind zeal with which the manufacturing workmen have joined in the cry. It is alleged that the repeal of the Corn-laws would reduce the price of bread; and it is on this ground that the poor weavers have been prevailed upon to bellow for their abolition. But granting that this effect should result from the repeal of these laws, how would that benefit the labouring mechanic? Does he not know that it is a law of political economy, as unchangeable as any even of nature's laws, that the wages of labour must, upon an average

average of years, bear an exact proportion to the market-price of corn? We will suppose that, for the last seven years, the average price of corn amounted to 60s. per quarter, and the average earnings of a manufacturing labourer, during the same period, to 20s. per week: the weekly earnings of the labourer would thus purchase the third part of a quarter of corn. Let us now assume, that the most sanguine expectations of those who advocate the total repeal of the Corn-laws should be more than realized; and that the price of wheat should, on an average of the next seven years, be reduced from 60s. to 30s. per quarter: the labouring mechanic should not be suffered to remain in ignorance of the inevitable consequence-viz., that his wages would sustain a corresponding reduction, from 20s. to 10s. per week. That his average wages would fall in exact proportion to the average fall in the price of the necessaries of life, is proposition as true as an axiom in mathematics: it is a consequence of the fall of prices, against which he can contend with no more success than he could resist the ebb or the flow of the tide.*

The cry of cheap bread' has imposed upon the understanding of our labourers. An extensive permanent importation of foreign corn would drive a greater number of our population into cotton-factories: it would subject a greater mass of them to the baneful influence which, in crowded manufacturing districts, affects their health and morals; but it would not secure to each individual more or better food than he can command at present. If, however, any political or natural contingency should cut off the foreign supply, upon which the population had become dependent, the unemployed and destitute workmen would be involved in all the wretchedness of starvation and want. It is, indeed, the darkest blot of a manufacturing system, which depends for its permanence upon a foreign supply of food, that its prosperity is almost as

In order to show that this is not a mere theory unsupported by facts, we shall extract from a very sensible and practical pamphlet before us, the following table of weekly wages paid in a particular district, to agricultural labourers, for the greater part of the last thirty-five years, together with the annual average of the price of wheat, and the quantity of it that their weekly wages enabled them to buy :

This table is given by Mr. Cayley, upon the authority of Mr. Robert Merry, a very

intelligent practical farmer and landowner of Lockton, near Pickering.

fatal

fatal to the workmen employed as its decay. While the usual supply continues to arrive, they are stewed in manufactories; when this supply is interrupted, or fails, they are starved in workhouses. The profit of an extension of this system would be entirely reaped by their employers, while the degradation and misery, inseparably connected with it, must fall exclusively to their lot.*

By way of reconciling the agricultural classes themselves to the projected alterations in the Corn-laws, it is contended, that a steady price is much more beneficial to the grower than a high price; and that a free trade in corn would be the means of preventing those fluctuations in the price of it which are found so detrimental to the interest of the farmer. It is asserted that these fluctuations recur less frequently in proportion to the extent of territory over which a free trade in corn is permitted;-that when the crop proves deficient in one district, by an invariable law of nature it is found abundant in others; that a short crop in England, for instance, is uniformly counterbalanced by a superabundant harvest in some other country; in a word, that whatever may be the character of the seasons, there is little or no variation in the amount of produce throughout the whole of Europe. This is a very pretty theory; but we are sorry to say it is one which has no foundation in fact. In his valuable work upon high and low prices, Mr. Tooke has set this part of the question completely at rest. This accurate and acute writer states it to be the result of his examination

'That seasons of a particular character for productiveness or unproductiveness are liable to occur in very different proportions in equal series of years at different intervals: as, for instance, in one interval,

* Speak not to me of swarms the scene sustains;
One heart free tasting Nature's breath and bloom
Is worth a thousand slaves to Mammon's gains.
But whither goes that wealth, and gladd'ning whom?
See, left but life enough and breathing room

The hunger and the hope of life to feel,

Yon pale Mechanic bending o'er his loom,
And Childhood's self as at Ixion's wheel,

From morn till midnight task'd to earn its little meal.
Is this Improvement?-where the human breed

Degenerates as they swarm and overflow,
Till Toil grows cheaper than the trodden weed,
And man competes with man, like foe with foe,
Till Death that thins them, scarce seems public woe?
Improvement!--smiles it in the poor man's eyes,
Or blooms it on the cheek of Labour?-No-

To gorge a few with Trade's precarious prize,

We banish rural life, and breathe unwholesome skies.'

These verses are from Mr. Campbell's beautiful poem on revisiting the Clyde, in the New Monthly Magazine for February, 1828.

viz.

viz., from 1693 to 1714, both years included, making twenty-two years, there were twelve seasons more or less unfavourable, or of deficient produce; and in another interval, from 1730 to 1751, making likewise twenty-two years, there was only one season, which, from historical record, or by inference from fluctuation of price, can be considered to have been decidedly unproductive.

That seasons of nearly a similar description frequently prevailed during the same periods in France, and in some other parts of Europe.

That the dearness of corn in the period of twenty-two years ending in 1714, and the comparative cheapness in the twenty-two years ending in 1751, in France, as well as in this country, while the value of money, in other respects, seems to have been falling, cannot be accounted for satisfactorily, except by the fact, of the occurrence of unfavourable seasons in such different proportions in the two periods.

'That in the twenty years from 1793 to 1812, both years included, there were no fewer than eleven years of greater or less deficiency of produce arising from the seasons, with a considerable proportion of long and severe winters.

That in the interval from 1813 to 1821, both years included, there was only one decidedly bad season-viz., 1816, and only one very severe winter-viz., 1813-1814, while there were three harvests of acknowledged great and general abundance-1813, 1815, and 1820.

That in the first ten years of the period under examination—viz., from 1793 to 1802, both included-the proportion of seasons of scarcity was as great on the continent of Europe as in this country; and that, therefore, although the expenses of conveyance were not more than 5s. per quarter on wheat higher than in peace, no adequate supply could be obtained by importation, except at a great advance in price.

"That in the nine years ending in 1821, the harvests on the continent of Europe were still more abundant than in this country; so that when, by the single bad season of 1816, our ports were opened, and partly by erroneous estimate of the produce of our own crops, and partly by miscalculation of the effects of the Corn Bill, they were kept open for the two following years, an importation of extraordinary magnitude took place; and that this great importation, added to three crops of full average, and one of superabundant produce, made a surplus or stock on hand at the commencement of the harvest of 1821, exceeding, as far as evidence can be procured, or conjecture made, the reserve at any harvest during the last thirty years.'-Tooke on High and Low Prices, pp. 322, 323.*

It

Mr. Lowe fully corroborates Mr. Tooke's views on this subject:-The public, (says he,) particularly the untravelled part of the public, are hardly aware of the similarity of temperature prevailing throughout what may be called the corn-country of Europe we mean Great Britain, Ireland, the north of France, the Netherlands, Denmark, the north-west of Germany, and, in some measure, Poland, and the north-east of Germany. All this tract is situated between the 45th and 55th degrees of latitude, and subject, in

a con

It thus appears, that, in nine instances out of ten, the character of the seasons is, throughout the greater part of Europe, very nearly uniform; and we take it to be the inevitable consequence that the habitual importation of foreign corn, instead of tending to render prices steady in the importing country, would inevitably increase the extremes of the scale on which prices now range and vary. And to prove this fact, we refer, with the fullest confidence that they will amply bear us out, to the records of the Lombard and Flemish towns, which at the time of their manufacturing prosperity were dependent principally upon foreign countries for subsistence. The fluctuations of prices in these towns were, at all times, infinitely greater than they ever were in corn-exporting countries; and in years of scarcity their prices never failed to reach an all but incredible maximum.

We are, therefore, fully persuaded, that the best system of cornlaws, as it may affect the general and permanent interests of the country, is that which amounts either to an actual or virtual exclusion of foreign produce, until that which is of home growth has reached an immoderate price. It will be urged, that if we habitually and permanently close our ports against foreign corn, except in times of scarcity, foreigners will contract their tillage, and will not grow more than will supply their own necessities; and that, therefore, when a year of scarcity actually should occur, this country could not look abroad for the means of supplying the home deficiency. We consider this argument as a mere fallacy. Let us suppose Poland, on the average, to produce twenty millions of quarters of wheat; fifteen millions for home consumption, and five millions for exportation to this country. It is manifest that the tillage of Poland would be limited-not, it is true to the growth of the fifteen millions required for its own population—but to the a considerable degree, to the prevalence of similar winds. Neither the superabundance of rain, which we experience in one summer, nor its deficiency in another, are by any means confined to Great Britain and Ireland; while, in winter, both the intensity and duration of frost are always greater on the continent. Exceptions certainly exist in particular tracts; but in support of our general argument, we have merely to recall to those of our readers who are of an age to recollect the early part of the war, or who have attended to registers of temperature, the more remarkable of the present age. Thus, in 1794, the spring was prematurely warm on the continent, as in England; there as with us, the summer of 1798 was dry, and that of 1799 wet: again, in 1811, the harvest was deficient throughout the north-west of Europe, generally from one and the same cause blight: while that of 1816 was still more generally deficient, from rain and want of warmth. In regard to a more remote period, we mean the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, generally, if the temperature has not been so accurately noted, we find, from the coincidence in prices, that it is highly probable that there prevailed a great similarity in the weather of the continent. Thus, in France, the latter years of the seventeenth century, the season of 1708 and 1709, as well as several of the seasons between 1764 and 1773, were as unpropitious, and attended with as great an advance of price as in England.'—Present State of England, 2nd èdit. p. 152.

2 F2

growth