1 and Trade," without being in the least advantageous to the consumers of raw produce, are eminently hurtful to agriculturists. While they exist, no market can be found for that excess of produce, which an agricultural country generally has to dispose of in favourable seasons. Farmers are not, therefore, stimulated to exertion, because, in a country thus situated, a luxuriant crop, by its causing a great fall of price, is nearly as prejudicial to them as a scarcity; which indeed, by lessening the quantity sown next year, it seldom fails to produce." Yet this was at times, and for long periods, the course pursued in this country. About the middle of the last century, to this unwise proceeding was added another, which has continued ever since, namely, that of prohibiting impor tation, until the price of corn in our own markets had attained a certain price fixed by act of parliament; and the price, at which corn has been prohibited, has been rapidly rising ever since. By preventing exportation, the sale of any surplus produce to the foreigner was prevented, until the price had fallen so low as to do considerable mischief to the consumer, by causing the price of corn to fluctuate between two very injurious extremes, without the power of adjustment. By the present system, which has been maintained, on the ground that it had a tendency to equalize the price, the extremes of the fluctuation have been considerably enlarged; and, within a very few years, the price of wheat has been, at one time, upwards of 100s. per quarter, and at another time nearly as low as 50s. per quarter. Such are the inevitable consequences of tampering with the corn trade. Another consequence of the laws, prohibiting import, may be mentioned here, the impossibility of exportation. At the present time, for instance, it is admitted on all sides, that the price will not remunerate the farmer, profit being entirely out of the question, and yet the price is so high that no foreign nation will purchase. By what steps this state of things has been produced, will be made apparent." Two attempts have lately been made to raise the import price of corn, by what has been emphatically called a CORN LAW, to 978. the quarter; that is, to prohibit all importation (wheat) until the price in our markets has risen to 97s. instead of 80s., which is the present import price fixed by act of parliament. The first of these attempts was made early in the session of 1819, but it was immediately crushed by a declaration on the part of ministers, of their determination to oppose it. The second attempt was made during the last session. Petitions from the land-owners and farmers were presented to Parliament from various parts of the kingdom, praying for what the petitioners called relief; and a committee on the subject of these petitions was, after a debate in the House of Commons, voted. Ministers, however, found means to induce the house to postpone the appointment of the committee to the next day, when, instead of a committee to consider the subject of the petitions, a committee to examine the mode of taking the averages in the twelve maritime districts was appointed. Thus the proposal for a new restrictive law was set aside. But the business, as might have been expected, will not be allowed to rest; meetings have again been held in many counties, and Parliament is again to be applied to for relief. The applications are, it seems, to consist of no less than four propositions, one or more of which those interested hope to carry. The first proposition is, to raise the import price to 97s. the quarter.* The second proposition is, to allow, as they say, the free import at all times of foreign corn; only a tax is to be levied on foreign corn, so as to raise its price to the consumer, as high as is contemplated by the first proposition. Thus if, for instance, foreign wheat could be imported at 50s. the quarter, a tax of 47s. would raise its price here to the consumer to 978. The third proposition is, to give a bounty, to enable the growers of corn to export it; and, by thus diminishing the quantity, to raise the price at home to about 90s. the quarter. The present price of wheat may be taken at 578. the quarter, the price on the Continent is about 45s. the quarter. To enable the English corngrowers to sell in foreign countries, he must receive a bounty, equal, at the least, to the difference between the prices, and to the expenses of freight, insurance, and all other charges; and this can scarcely be less than 17s. the quarter, and it may be much higher. The fourth proposition is from the county of Mayo, in Ireland. Here the land-owners, having assembled, declared, at once, that it would be necessary for the Legislature totally to exclude the importation of all foreign corn. It is not intended to examine these propositions minutely, but rather, having pointed them out, to leave them for the reader's consideration, and to go on with an exposition of the principles of RENT, PROFIT, and WAGES, which will be found to contain nearly all the general reasonings, respecting the demand for, and the supply of, subsistence. It will be seen that, in every attempt to regulate the growth, the sale, or the export of corn, the Legislature has been governed by no fixed principle, and that vague opinions have alone formed the ground of its enactments. At the time, when the last law, prohibiting the importation of wheat, until the price in our own markets averaged 80s. the quarter, the price of standard gold, in bank-notes, was 105s. the ounce. It is now 78s. in bank-notes. Bank-notes were at that time depreciated 34 per cent. It was in this depreciated currency that the calculation was made, by the supporters of the bill, that 80s. was a remunerating price to the farmer for a quarter of wheat. Bank-notes being now at par with gold, 60s. is about an equivalent for 80s. of the same currency in 1815. Were wheat now to be sold at 80s, the quarter, the actual price estimated in the currency of 1815 would be equal to 107s, the quarter, To expose the mischiefs, which those errors in legislation produce, is the first step towards preventing their increase. The second step is the repeal of the injurious laws; and if it should be made plain to the understanding of all men, that nothing but evil has arisen, or can arise, from them, it is not too much to hope, that the time will come, when they may be safely repealed by com mon consent. ON THE PREVAILING TASTE FOR ISOLATED COLUMNS AS PUBLIC MONUMENTS. THE prevailing taste for isolated columns, as public monuments, is partly the effect of unmerited encomiums bestowed upon the columns of Trajan and Antonine, raised by the Romans in degenerate times, when the arts were declining, from a vain emulation to vie in height with the Egyptian obelisks, that had been previously transported to Rome, and is partly an erroneous result of our admiration of the column as a member of architecture. Hence, the isolated column unfairly forestalls approbation, and at first view evades fair criticism, which would not fail to reform the public prejudice, if we reflected, that the proper office of the column being to support an incumbent weight of a proportionable magnitude and form, it does not admit of being detached from its proper entablature, or of being raised to a height exceeding the uses and purposes of architecture. For " as it is the entablature that gives to the several orders their respective characters, to which their several ornaments are suited with consummate taste," an isolated column, not having any entablature to support, is divested of the expression of its proper character, and is therefore an imperfect structure, and an improper design. The grandeur of buildings consists in the expression of character, and not in the quantity of material or labour employed in constructing them. Unity of design is essential to that expression, but cannot belong to an isolated column, because it is an incomplete structure. if the isolated column possessed unity, and were also highly decorated, it could not excite emotion, or engage a lasting interest. Its beauties are too monotonous and circumscribed. They soon satisfy the mind, and are forgotten. To-day they may be admired, and tomorrow, and for ever, passed with indifference. Even An isolated column, of stupendous height, rivaling a lofty pinnacle, is an exaggerated misuse of the columnar office; for the end and purpose of a public monument is to express and record to late posterity, the glory and gratitude of a nation, or commu * Isolated Columns have been lately erected at Shrewsbury, Norwich, Anglesea, Dublin, Paris, and several other places. nity, for the genius, achievements, or worth of some pre-eminent individual. It is that, in order to identify the monument with the person or persons to whom it is consecrated, the statuary should be so appropriate, and form so integral a part of the design, as to make every other part of it appear to be auxiliary. But an isolated column does not afford any position suitable for statuary, and, strictly speaking, not even meagre compartments for sculpture. A column, bearing upon its capital a statue of a warrior or man of genius, is so far an unnatural design, as it places the object of our admiration in a place where we should not naturally expect to see him, and in which it was impossible for him to have performed any achievement. Moreover, as a statue with its accessaries, when raised so high above the natural point or focus of vision, would lose all distinctness of expression, and all similitude to their prototypes, unless they are colossal, and overcharged with expression beyond nature, even to caricature-these circumstances point out to us, that the height of such a column, if it was an admissible design, should be limited to the elevation that would shew distinctly a surmounting statue not much exceeding the natural size of man, for which purpose a column of a height within the limits of architecture would be sufficient. It is, therefore, evident, that columnar monuments of excessive height must have a bad effect upon the noble art of statuary, similar to that, which theatres of excessive size have had upon the drama. In respect of compartments for sculpture, upon an isolated column, it will scarcely be contended that a barbarous sub-base can obviate the deficiency of them; and as little need I argue against the impropriety of the spiral sculpture upon the Trajan column, though it has been imitated upon the copy of that column, lately raised by Bonaparte in Paris. The device of concealing within an isolated column a spiral staircase, to make it a round tower in masquerade, and to which mechanism it is said that modern tower columns owe even their short existence, does not in the least avert the foregoing objections from the column, though the staircase gives access to the surmounting statue, which, like a Pagod, would attract the multitude below by its deformity. For near approach would only render the elevated monster more hideous, and expose the grossness of its exaggeration, by contrast with the real man at the same elevation. And as a column, so constructed of courses of small stones, appears to the eye weak and unfit to support an incumbent weight, which is the original columnar office, a built column is, therefore, a gross and offensive incongruity. For these reasons, it is evidently im practicable to unite, in such a design, its integral object in true beauty and elegance, with that spurious species of grandeur attributed to mere height. We must, also, be conscious that a column, or any other design, that would expose to constant and familiar view, the statue and attributes of a patriot, hero, or genius, whose fame it commemorates, is directly opposed to the principle, which requires that the mind of a spectator should be in a free and fit state to receive the impressions, that objects of veneration, sublimity, and beauty, would excite. may If, as I imagine, the purest species of the sublime arises from whatever enlarges and awes our conceptions, whether it be an intellectual or a visible cause, as the sublime of matter excites the sublime of mind, and as the true sublime, like the beau ideal, transcends the exciting cause or object, it is erroneous to suppose, that a sublime effect can be produced by the mere height of an enormous, or be it a stupendous column, the monster of ungoverned fancy, and of misapplied art and labour. That emotion. be directly traced to the far nobler source, to which it is here, perhaps for the first time, properly attributed. For Longinus, though "he was himself the great sublime he drew," did not dare to define the sublime, and has been excused for that omission, because his treatise is a comment upon, or a deduction from, a work which has not descended to us; and the profound and luminous Edmund Burke has degraded the sublime, by supposing it to consist in the terrible, as if the emotions, which elevate and expand the mind, and those, which depress and confine it, could be identified.. Vast height, depth, or extent, darkness, or the display of great power, with which Burke associated the sublime, are but secondary causes of sublimity. The moral world, with all its pure emotions, is, for the most part, beyond the influence of those secondary causes. Those emotions, which arise from the sublime and beautiful in buildings and statuary, are moral sensations, produced by the pure and permanent expression of physical analogies, which "lead up to sublime and noble axioms," by embodying intellectual conception in visible expression. It is evident, however, that stupendous height, or magnitude, in buildings, is not essential to the production of those emotions. But, as the isolated column has pre-engaged the applause of large portions of the British and French nations, it may be shewn, by reference to the remarkable column commonly, but erroneously, called Pompey's Pillar, that the effect of that species of design is entirely derived from the associations with which it may happen to be connected. A spectator must feel and confess that even this ever-during column, it being monolithos, and not extravagantly high, exclusive of a superfluous cube or sub-base, is indebted, for all its supposed grandeur and effect, to the solemnity of the scene that surrounds the rising ground on which it stands, in the silent desert, between the remains of the celebrated City of Alexandria, which commerce, policy, and science, valour, genius, |