The Press. — London, England, 1853-10-22 00:00:00

FOOD I'M All:CIS. TnE consummation foretold at many a country meeting in bygone wagons is at length coming ripen us. England has trusted to foreign countries for her food, and the foreigner has failed in furnish ing the needful supply. Deficient crops in one quarter, political troubles in another, impending war, and even the accidental ciremusUance that a sandbar at the mouth of a river has grown too large for the customary navigation, have drained and Hosed the magazines to which we were taught to look almost, we may say, for our daily bread. From all parts of the European continent the cousignments of wheat have run very short for ninny weeks past ; and the deficiency is evidently increasing. The arrivals grow scantier and dearer every day as the actual yield of the past harvest in different localities beeotnee more thoroughly areertained. Our Mark ham. quotations, published week after week, will have shown the etfects of this failing supply in the rapid rise of prices which the article has undergone. The imperial average of wheat ranged iu the week ending June I:th at -eis. per quarter, and stood last week at !tie.: while superior qualities, such as are etiefly required for the metropolitan in arket, were at least ten shilling' dearer, with the almost certain prospect of a further enhancement. Nor war this the worst foreboding. The question in many quarters threatened soon to lie no longer one of mere pnce, but the fund of supply itself was about to dry up. Many chatmela which hail once flowed freely with cargoes of grain for Enghuid had already done so. To begin, however, with the home product. There are no statistical returns sufficently exten sive and authentic to enable us to speak precisely on the point, but the opinions of those most likely to be well informed concur in the conclusion that the breadth of wheat-sown land this year was barely two-thirds of bygone averages. We cannot wonder at this falling out; however much the fanners them selves as well as the community at large may now see cam* to regret it. Througlealt for imiortaia months of octolwr and November last y• nr, when the ground had to be set apart and prepared for the autumn sowing, the price of corn afforded little en. counagement to the ay rieulturist. twine the roamer month the tht.:, tte averege ruled et a few ilellee over 3t45., a price which teem the continuous wet of No ' vember raised barely to the even V. This wet again interfered with agricultural operations. caused notch land to remain autumn. and spoiled a considerable Ina with whereon the sowing had been r ompl e ted. And rear !rase this contracted area ot' wheat land we reap a aeauty crop imperfectly harvested. The sur fs,* us IP alsek turn was raised has thus been ; third lesia tkaia au average ; the product per acre on that 111.4111• M • third less ; and the quality, as assaall 4 the yield of !four, probably below the usual lateklir4 In a stall larger proportion. It is stated in Merk•lase Erpress that the autunitesown wheat has gran a decidedly short yield ; that much of that WWI ID 161011111/ has bet n wholly lord, or is unlit for human hail; and that the late constant tides have rendered it very difficult to get in many ',Relies of eorti, ''.4.3ele 'malady still remaining on the field t . 41 completely 1114Ii1ell 55 to be barely walk OUT) ing From Ireland the accounts received are some what more favourable. Indeed, we are promised that the sister We is once more to become a field exporting country for our advantage. Butt, even it' this pro raise .41 Id be kept, the aggregate product of grain will still tall far short of its wonted oiatitity, and of the glowing demands of our population. Taking. in round numbers, thirty million quarters as the fair annual average of home grown wheat, it is no exaggerauon to say that there will be it deficiency of from to twelve million quarters left upon the present harvest. The transfer of land from white to green crops — the conversion of cornfields into pasture, and the diversion of fiumers' capital and attention from grow fug wheat to griming mutton and beef—were Mees e:wily progienaieated by the agricultmists in bygone 'ears, and accepted 115 inevitable, lied indeed !des pond, consequences of their policy II) the adherents of the League. The latter pointed to the numerous quarters whence our supplies could be drawn When they fai!e I at home ; 111141 lola us that the staff of life would be garnered into Enithuel out of the harvests of the fro rid. Of course they never dreamed of Such etnnint ',trey as that of war shutting up the grain ri..s of Easteni Ems ;of the crops iuWesteni Europe being too scanty for the local consumption and of both thee casualties falling in with a deficient liar vest and a most clitieal shin of political and c oin inertial stun in England it silt'. 11 r. 6 !mistime. we perceive. b o asted at Mainche , ter that. although the pt-ice of et ra was so high, no distress or discontent lad arisen amongst the industrial population. But tlau 'anal lam not CkolllV ;et. THE PRESS. Looking at foreign sources, or what used to be such, of supply, we tied that our next neighbour. FILANCE, has for some months past been a large iree porter on her own account. Many cargoes were actually bought in the Thames on French account, and the result, if not quite KO striking, is much the same in practice, when the dealers of that country come to compete with English purchasers; in a com mon market elsewhere. In Danis at this moment the cost of bread is quite as high as in London, the natural tariff being above a franc per Rh. loaf, while the Emperor, in dread of the political consequences of a f a mine, is forcibly keeping down the price to an official maximum of $4l. at an outlay for the city alone of 4::,dixtf. per diem. Respecting the amount of im portation into France, the Debuts of Tuesday last states that the quantity of wheat imported into Havre and Marseilles alone had already exceeded a million hectolitres, and the total import into the country by land and sea had fully reached three million hecto litres. This is equivalent to about a fortnight's con sumption of corn for the whole of France. ItEI.OIICM is nearly in the same condition of scarcity. Corn riots have already broken out in both countries to an alarming t xtent ; and in both the tiovernments have temporarily relaxed their fiscal regulations, and dew everything in their power to invite supplies front abroad. 'Both have, moreover, done much by means of restrictive enactments to check the exportation Of vegetables and other succedayets 14 bread to foreign —that is to say, English—markets. Front the Mime, during a few days very recently , the arrital of corn ships al to once more to be pretty numerous. This, however, arose from a change of wind, which brought in a whole fleet at once. Here after, we are told by the Mark-lane authority, we must " calculate on a period of short arrivals, the shipments front the lower Baltic ports having been very - small of late, and those from Dautzic having fallen off." In the countries whence those ports are fed we learn that the new wheat which is now coming forward for sale is decidedly inferior in quality to the produce of last year, having been harvested in the wet, and in quantity considerably less than that of a fair average season. Stocks of old wheat are also wellnigh exhausted. In Konigsberg, 'Or exam ple, not 111,0011 quarters remain of last year's corn, and the condition of the new wheat is too bad for shipment. At Pantzic the Nice of very inditliTent wheat was mos. per quarter; and at Stettin, Rostock, and Hamburg the go ed qualities commanded and even 715., free on board, even though the quota tions were too high to render any purchases possible, as yet, on English account. The MEDITERRANEAN ports offer us no better pros pect. The supply in many places hardly kept pace with the home d e mand. The Pope is a large pur chaser of corn ; and what his Holiness does from benevolence a multitude of imitators throughout Italy are doing for profit. Tuscany and other states are either fencing round their home grown stock of grain with prohibitions against its travelling elsewhere, or taking steps to increase the quantity from distant sources. At Leghorn,tienoa, and other seaports, the price of corn is sufficiently high to stop all cargoes in trunsita from the Levant. While wheat can be sold for his. a quarter on the shores of the Adriatic, it must nse somewhat above tiffs. to niake it worth while to send the article to the Thames. Egypt, moreover, so long the granary of Europe, is now closed or empty. A brief delay to complete existing contracts has been reluctantly obtained from the Paella ; but by the end of next month the last cargo of eon' that can be expected before next harvest will have left. Alexandria. The ports and affluents of the Ilt..tex SEA seem to be the only Einopean localities where the supply of corn is even coinn n abundant. At Ddemsa we hear of its being brought in such quantities that the granaries are glutted and the grain is piled in heaps ' in the streets. In the Danube also are several 111'114041 saul of corn-laden ships—but. unluckily, On the wrong side of the Sulina bar. Political troubles HMI a scarcity of shipping interpose inexorably between the suppl and the market. In °Matz good wheat was offered at :hls. a quarter; but freight was nearly as much and but little at that. From both causes, says the Express, "it is questionable whether any portion of the large stocks of wheat lying at Odessa or tialatt can be shipped off before winter steps in and puts a stop to the navigation." There remains AMERICA, whose resources are sup posed to be boundless. The Economist, in articles written evidently with the view of consoling the com mercialists under their despondency. refers to the mnelrbelanded "valley of the Mississippi" as the storehouse whence England may be sure of drawing supplies for all her need. In the famineyear of Itcr; the United states, we ale told, furnished us with eighteen hundreitand.odd thousand quarters. Since that dismal era the productive faculties of America have also, we are assured, undergone a wonderful "Pins". "In no country in the world have the means of supply increased in so remarkable a way as in UP; weltvru tat a the Union, and in Upper SATURDAY, Canada ; and if high price continue it is certain that the supplies from these quarters will greatly exceed anything we have yet seen or anticipated. Since 1517 upwards of twelve million acres of land have been sold by the federal Government and public bodies to new cultivators. Emigrants from Europe, to the number of about one and a half million, have arrived, and a great proportion are engaged in tilling the soil." Further we are informed that during the same interval the great difficulty experienced in 1547 against bringing forward the supplies—namely, the insufficiency of internal transport—has altogether disappeared. lialf a dozen railway lines now de bout+ upon the coast from the western provinces, and form so many additional routes for the passage of agricultural produce Irian the corn-producing States to the seaboard, which six years since was squeezed through the single channel of the Erie Canal. This may be so. But there still remains the ocean voyage to be provided for. It may sound very well to quote the shipping returns of the United States, which show an increase of tonnage between ISIS and MI, fostered by British relaxations of the navigation laws, from 2,400,1*0 to 4,1000 NMI, li e ducting for the vast expansion of their home trade in all directions, and especially reckoning into the ac count the huge demands for shipping occasioned by the new state of California, how much of this tonnage will be left free for the conveyance of corn to England, in anything like the quantities required ; or, it free, at what price must we purchase from our 'cute Yan kee cousina a service which our own improvidence has rendered so indispensably necessary ? Among our home marine we have lately experienced the enormous enhancement of costs and charges fir freight produced by a comparatively trifling turn in the equilibrium of demand and supply. If in voyages of :Um miles, performed in coasters and lasting but a few days, the occurrence of a slight scarcity of ship ping from temporary causes has caused the freight of coals from Sunderland to reach the exorbitant amount of r2s. or 14s. per ton, what effect must be anticipated from a sudden and unexpected demand for some four or five millions of tonnage to be con veyed across the Atlantic in vessels that cannot com plete the circuit, all delays included, wider three months? Comparing Imso will► IM-17, the Economist con fesses that the British grain crops this year lime been worse, and in France, Belgium, Holland, and the Rhenish provinces, not much better, than in the memorable year of famine. Yet it is contended that the prices of the coining winter and spring cannot range by any means so high as they were found to do at that period. For this conclusion our contem porary relies upon two facts and one assertion. Ihe facts are that America, ►►. s we have already men tioned, can supply us abundantly ; and that the 10• tato crop has not tailed this year. The assertion is this—that even in 1547 the prices were extravagantly raised through wild and disastrous speculation. Re specting the American stores, we have shown that the question will turn altogether on price. There is probably enough corn in the States, but it cannot be brought here in sufficient abundance except at a cost which will fearfully expand as our necessities grow more urgent. The potato rot again affected this country in 1m47 chiefly through Ireland ; and its bearing upon the corn market was almost entirely limited to the extra demand occasioned by the purchases made with English money to feed the famine-stricken Irish. The Economist carefully reminds us that nearly 10 millions were thus expended—a fact which we admit, though we must question the inference - that " the greater part of this sum acted directly upon the foreign corn maukcts.• . The truth is that an almost proportion of the total supply of food sent to Ireland during the famine consisted of wheat. Indian corn, oatmeal, rice, and other grain was sent ever in vast quantities ; but far too little corn to affeet to any noticeable extent either the home or the" foreign market." Concerning the alleged speculation we have no means of !liming a judgment. The capitalist power is doubtless great at all times; and, as the Economist knows. is often recklessly and fatally exercised. In 1547 we can well believe that it did irremediable harm to multitudes. lint against the recu►rence of the sante recklessness, leading to similar disasters, we are convinced that a timely warning will be the best safeguard. An alarm now is tar Letter than a panic in February. It is the popliesiers of "smooth things," with their constant assertions of safety and plenty, until peril and want are absolutely at our gates, who so fearfully aggravate the inevitable ca lamity—concealing the scarcity which should have been provided for, and distributed over months, until it amounts to actual famine, and giving to the public a brief interval of delusive quit t at the cost of a Anal access of despair and confusion, from which the ct tn !nullity awakes to find itself heavily impoverished; although a few sl•eeulators, to whom such general delirium is a congenial element. may have improved the oppoitunity for their own enrichment.