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the amount of the protection; and here the The following tables, compiled from sevstruggle lay between a formidable associa-eral parliamentary returns and public docution, acting on and by the strength of pop-ments, will not only elucidate the present ular prejudices and passions, and clamour- discussion, but afford some statistical data ing for the abolition of all duty-and that which are worth preserving, as well for the great and respectable body, including most facts they establish as for the doubts* they of the property and intelligence of the here and there excite. country, who-adhering to protecting duties as the best, and, indeed, only mode of insuring a constant and regular supply-are well aware that the rates ought to go no higher than will suffice for that object. We therefore believe that there are very few of even the most exclusive agriculturists who would contend that the rate of duties established in 1828 was not now fairly susceptible of some diminution, and that it would have been politic, or even possible, to have maintained them at so high a scale.

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We shall begin by exhibiting at one view the Old and New Scales of duty on wheat, to which all other grain is generally proportionate. Our readers will observe that 8d. appears in each rate of the old scale; this was not so at first;-but 8d. was added to the scale in consequence of the change from the Winchester to the imperial measure, made subsequent to the original act.

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We have begun the foregoing view of A vast proportion of the duties received the old scale at 36s. price and 2. 10s. 8d. under it was at the rates which are not alduty, because they were the extreme points tered-viz. 1s. and 2s. duty on 738. price; practically attained during the operation of and the proportion received beyond the that scale, but by law there was an increase of 18. duty for every fall of 1s. in the price, so that, if we could suppose the price to have fallen to 10s. a quarter, the duty would have risen to 31. 16s. 8d.

Sir Robert Peel intended by his new scale to make a considerable diminution of the duty, and has done so; but the difference between the two scales is much greater in appearance than in reality-the higher protections of the old scale being in fact nominal, and, we may almost say, delusive.

point where the new scale terminates-viz.
20s. duty on 50s. price-was, compared
with the total amounts, inconsiderable. On
the other hand, the protection afforded by
the new scale, though lower and more li-
mited, will be found more steady, and, we
believe, more effective-as it will greatly
diminish, if it does not wholly prevent, those
frauds which were equally injurious to the
producer and the consumer.
We next give a return of the

Average Prices and Total Quantities of Foreign Wheat and Wheat Flour entered for Home Consumption, with the Average Rate and Total Amount of Duties paid thereon, with the Average Prices of Flour for each year during the operation of the Act 9 Geo. IV., c. 60, from the 15th July, 1828, to the 29th April, 1842.

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This table shows that averages, spread only 700 quarters; and the last four, as over wide periods of time, may be very fal- much as 2,300,000 quarters. It is quite lacious in several ways. The total import clear that, for a country that sometimes rein fourteen years being about 15,000,000, quires to import a tenth part of its annual writers have stated that we import annually consumption, and at other times needs little somewhat more than a million of quarters or no importation at all, a fixed duty would of corn, and as our total annual consump-be an untenable absurdity, which would tion (for seed and food) is calculated at alternately ruin the producer and starve about 24,000,000, the import has been stat-the consumer. The reader will also obed at a fortnight's consumption. Now this, if true, would imply both a regular import and a regular supply at home, and in that case something might be said for a fixed duty; but, in fact, we see that, in the first four years, the average importation was about 1,200,000 quarters; the next four,

serve that the general average given by the sliding scale is 2s. 5d. less than the Ss. fixed duty proposed by the Whigs; so that this scheme for cheap bread would have raised the price of the loaf in the proportion of about one-third for the last fourteen years. We confess, however, that we do not much

rely on these yearly averages of duty; they great markets does not influence, as directare liable to individual disturbances, which ly as might be expected, the price of flour reuder them unsafe guides when there have in detail. In 1828, when wheat and flour been great fluctuations. Let us take, for were at 60s. 5d., Greenwich Hospital paid example, a case which happened in 1839, for the sack of flour 46s. 6d. ; when in and which happens in a greater or less de- 1832, wheat had fallen 1s. 9d the quarter, gree every year-14,000 (in round num- the sack of flour rose 8s. 1d.; and in 1839, bers) quarters of wheat were imported early when wheat had risen to 70s. Sd., flour fell in the year at Is. duty; 700 quarters were to 52s. 2d. In the deluge of papers which also imported late in the same year at 20s. have been called for in this corn-contro—the duty on the whole would be 14007., versy, we are surprised not to find any and the average of the whole would be return of the successive prices of bread-stated at 1s. 103d. Yet who can doubt that which, being really what the lawyers call the 1s. paid on 14,000 quarters would be, the gist of the whole case, we should have for all practical purposes, a fairer measure expected to find a prominent object of inof the effect of the duty on the general quiry; but it has not been so, and the market than 1s. 10d.? Again; we have imperfect information we have privately now before us an official document which gathered, coupled with the strange disstates the average duty for Michaelmas quarter, 1841, at 16s. 8d., to which is appended a note to say that the real average was only at 1s. 1d. This enigma we suppose means that there was during all the earlier part of the quarter a very high duty, at which little was entered, which in the The following account, which ranges the very last days fell to 18.-when a large im- whole of the quantities of wheat imported portation was effected: and we shall see under the respective rates of duty actually more fully by and bye that the stated aver-paid, is more valuable-it rests neither on age of 58. 7d. on the whole period is very averages nor on any other conjectural data, much higher than the real and effective rates but is the exact statement of the real opeof duty. We must also notice in this table ration. that the price of wheat and flour in the

The price of bread has recently-while this article was printing-attracted considerable notice, and a kind of controversy has arisen as to the fairness of our bakers' prices. We extract from the Times of the 8th of September, the following interesting statement of the relative prices in London and Paris:

The fairest mode of investigating this matter appears to be, to take a large city, such as Paris, where an assize or legal price of bread exists, and which has continued for many years to work well in detail; and to compare the prices now prevailing there and here, both of the manufactured article and the raw material, and then see where the difference

arises.

'The highest price of white wheat of the first quality in Paris is 38 francs per 1 hectolitre, which is equal to a price of 58s. per quarter English; and the highest price of white wheat in London being 60s. per quarter, it follows that wheat is 3 per cent. higher in London than in Paris.

The highest price of the finest wheaten flour in Paris is 70 francs per 159 kilogrammes, which is equal to a price of 44s. per sack of 280 lbs. English; and the highest price of flour in London being 47s. per sack, it follows that flour is nearly 7 per cent. dearer in London than in Paris.

The price of wheaten bread of the first quality in Paris is 38 cents. per kilogramme, which is equal to a price of 6d. per 4 lb. loaf English weight: and the price of bread at most of the full-priced bakers'

crepancy between the prices of wheat in the official averages and of flour in the Greenwich books, induces us to suspect that the actual prices of bread might offer very different results from the official prices of corn.

in London being 84d. per 4 lb. loaf, it follows that the price of bread is 30 per cent. higher in London than in Paris. If the price here is taken at 8d., as stated by some bakers, the price in London will still be rather more than 23 per cent. higher than in Paris.

'The price of bread of the second quality in Paris is 30 cents. per kilogramme, which is equal to about 5d. per 4 lb. English weight; and the price at which bread is sold in London by some of the low-priced bakers being 6d. per 4 lb., it follows that bread of this description is 20 per cent. higher in London than in Paris.'

These are very remarkable facts-and particularly the statement that in France, a country generally so cheap as compared to England, and where there are no corn-laws, wheat is at a price equivalent to 58s. per quarter English. We very much doubt whether the current-price here was higher on the same day, we know that in some markets it has been lower.

As to the variations in the price of bread, it is clear that they cannot, fortunately, be so rapid as those in the price of corn, and that, for many reasons, bread must be somewhat dearer than even the average price of wheat might seem strictly to warrant every step in the process from the wheatfield to the baker's counter--operates as a rest which tends to level and to steady, though at the same time to raise the retail prices.

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The total quantity of foreign wheat and flour imported between 1828 and 1841 was 15,034,794 qrs., of which there came in

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deranging the trade, discouraging the fair trader, frequently ruining the speculator himself, and defeating the main object-a constant and steady supply. It became, therefore, absolutely necessary that these

We think this account shows that, for all practical purposes, the New scale, varying from 18. to 1., has a sufficient range, and there is reason to believe that it will afford a sufficient protection. We see that 9,569,274 qrs., considerably above three-jumps should be removed, and that the fifths of the whole importation, came in at the prices of 72s. and 73s., and at the two lower rates of duty, which are not altered; and that considerably above four-fifths (12,648,855 qrs.) came in at the four lowest rates of duty, which are the least altered, and which are altered merely by following out the general principle of advancing one shilling each step, and thus removing the chasms and jumps which did so much mischief and afforded the most plausible objections to the system. As to the entries at the highest rates, they were obviously accidental and of no importance either as affecting prices or protection. In short, it is clear that the chief business-that which alone can, in ordinary times, operate in a large way-must lie among the lower rates, and there was certainly the defect of the former scale, which jumped 4s. on each of its second and third steps-from 28. 8d. to 6s. 8d., and from 6s. 8d. to 10s. Sd., and then at 2s. each step up to 20s, after which it went on at the regular increase of 1s. We need not now examine why Mr. Huskisson permitted these jumps in the earlier and more important stages; suffice it to say that experience has shown, and all parties are agreed, that they have had an injurious effect. The possibility of making a profit of 4s. and 8s. in the duty, on the rise of 1s. and 2s. in the price, was a strong incentive to fraud of various kinds--frauds which we admit appeared to be generally in favour of the consumer by tending to the introduction of corn at a lower duty, but which were in truth injurious to everybody, by artificially

The difference between this sum and the total of the foregoing table is one of those discrepancies to which we have alluded: it arises from this account including some amounts damaged or ex-i

slight and equable advance of each step of the scale should be introduced to diminish, if not wholly prevent, all fraudulent disturbance of the market; and when that was to be done, it would have been, as we have already said, impolitic-even if it had been possible—to evade a general revision of the scale so as to fit it to the prices at which experience had shown us that it was likely to be called into operation. We believe that considerable improvements--although no great extension of arability-have been made and are in progress in practical agriculture; and we venture to anticipate much benefit from the influence of the recently formed Agricultural Association, which, we trust, will direct the application of science to the first and most important of the Arts; but, looking at what has been practically done, we do not think that any one is sanguine enough to suppose that the increased supply from the British soil has as yet been at all proportionable to the increasing demand. Whence are the four or five millions of additional mouths that have grown upon us since 1821 to be fed? Art,' says the sage, 'is long-life is short!' Can we wait for the slow experiments of the Davys and Liebigs? Here are the people swarming upon us! And will any rational man--be he farmer or be he landlord-say that we should not endeavour to create increased facilities for meeting an increasing deficiency? The strongest advocates of the agricultural interest admit, we believe, that in the most favourable season Great Britain can do little more

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ported which were excluded from the former account of the net duties received-but the variance is of no importance.

practised in public affairs, some of them parties to the former arrangement, and essentially and almost exclusively belonging to the landed interest, have recommended a scale which the representatives of the landed and all other interests throughout the country have passed with little objection, and we therefore indulge a very confident hope that it will be found sufficient to fulfil its object.

than feed herself; and we most readily admit, nay, insist, that for all that she can raise she ought to be secured, as far as human means can do so, a remunerating, and, we will even add, an encouraging market; for, as the home supply is the only safe and certain supply, it should be, we say-more for the interests even of the consumer than of the producer-not merely remunerated but encouraged. The question then is as to the degree of encouragement Our experience is as yet too short to ennecessary to maintain-and to stimulate-able us to speak decidedly of its effect, but the exertions of the home producer. as far as it has gone it has produced some singularly satisfactory results, as the following table of the weekly operation of the new Act will show :

The solution of that question must be always in a great degree conjectural and experimental. A Cabinet of able men, long

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Account of Wheat and Wheat Flour entered for Home Consumption at ten of the principal ports of Great Britain in each week since the passing of the new Corn Law, with the Average Price and Rates of Duty.

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Thus we see that from the 28th of April for the first week, ending 5th of May, havto the 3d of September, the latest possible ing been 59s. 1d., and the average of the date, the importation of foreign wheat and seventeen succeeding weeks has been 62s. flour at ten principal ports has been no less 1d.-the average of fourteen preceding than 2,457,931 qrs., being considerably years having been only 59s. The farmer, more than was imported in all Great Bri- therefore, has, as yet, lost no protection to tain in any whole year (except 1839) of the the price from the new scale *-nor, on the existence of the late law; and, be it ob- other hand, has the Revenue suffered, for served that this importation has been made the average duty paid during the existence in the face of a most promising harvest, of the late scale was only 5s. 7d. per qr., and with less irregularity than any corres- while the average of the late importation ponding period. Well, then, here is at has been 8s. 4d.; but, without reckoning by least a very unusual supply of food for the people-but does it ruin the farmer? We fulfils its promise, prices must fall; and the dealers There can be little doubt that, if the harvest see by this return that, during the progress evidently expect this, as they have made such large of this extraordinary importation, the price entries at 8s. and 9s. duty; but we still hope and has been in the home market comparatively believe that the farmers will find a remunerating steady-affording, however, a considerable market, and we are quite sure that their position is, on the whole, safer than it would have been under advance from the starting point-the price the former scale.

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