The Press. — London, England, 1854-11-11 00:00:00

1058 precedent for rso remarkable an occurrence, and we are, therefore, driven to the conclusion that, under our present commercial policy, we must always look to foreign countries for a large portion of our food, whethor our own crops happen to be sooty or ahimiant. former years a good harvest rendere4 in 49, pendent of foreign supplies, and gave us a cheap loaf into the bargain. It now does neither the one nor this other; fur, in spite of an excellent season, and a opntinued, though diminished, importation, wheat has attained a price the double of that which Mr. COBDEN assured us it would never exceed after the corn laws were finally swept away. As the question of our home production of corn is of the greatest practical interest at all times, but more especially at the present, we shall lay before our readers some additional facts which are well worthy of attention. Mr. lla‘Cuttocti has very recently made an esti mate of the average quantity of grain grown in the United Kingdom during the last four years, and, confining our attention for the present to wheat, he furnishes us with the following results. He sets down the quantity of wheat raised for home consumption as follows Qll9. In England 9,42,8.57 In Ireland In Scotland 11,590,774 We imported of the same article from abroad in 1853 no less than 6,235,860 quarters, so that, if Mr. M'Cuttocii approximates to the truth, the relative proportions of our home and our foreign supplies of food under free trade may be readily estimated. Let us now compare these calculations respecting our borne growth of grain with those made by another great statistical authority previous to the adoption of our present commercial policy. The late Mr. G. R. PORTER, of the Board of Trade, in the edition of his work on " The Progress of the Nation," published in 1847, estimated the average quantity of home grown wheat in Great Britain alone at upwards of 16,000,000 of quarters. The difference be tween this calculation and that of Mr. M.Cct- LOCH is very striking ; but, although for the reasons already stated we have no doubt that the production of wheat has declined in England in consequence of foreign competi tion, we are by no means prepared to believe that it has diminished to the extent that these figures would seem to indicate. Yet the cal. culations of both the gentlemen we have named are worthy of all attention. Mr. PORTER had a high and merited reputation for statistical knowledge, and the authority of Mr. M'Cuttocu upon such matters is recog nised by all parties ; and it must be admitted that the two estimates bear with great signifi cance upon the point in question. If we give credit to both estimates we must conclude that the production of British grain has of late years diminished to the full extent of our foreign imports. In any case we must admit that they furnish strong corroborative evidence of the alarming fact of a great and permanent decrease, to which it is high time that public attention should be awakened. If any doubt could exist upon this subject, we have only to consider for a moment what would have been the condition of this country had the late harvest been a bad, or even an indifferent, one. There can be but one reply to this question. We must have been visited with a famine, which would have told, per haps, with fatal effect upon the national energies in our present gigantic st ru gg le. We should have had to contend at once with the horrors of war abroad, and of scarcity at home. Thanks to the bounty of Providence, we have escaped for the present the latter infliction ; but who will answer for another season in the present troubled aspect of the world? To return to the calculations of Mr. M'Cut 4ocif, we are not aware whence he has derived his materials for his estimate of the produc tion of Scotland, as the Highland Society have not yet completed their agricultural researches in that country. But with respect to Ireland no difficulty exists, as the exact quantity of land under cultivation is ascertained in each year. We have now befbre us the Govern- THE PRESS. ment returns of the production of wheat in the sister island for 1847 and 1848, neither of which, we need hardly inform our readers, were years of abuiehtnce. In the first of these years the ermine.) is stated to have been 2,949,73% and, in 18 tB, 8,945,121 quarters ; ja 1850 ira 1114 that it Bali fallen to 1,550,196; and Mr. Wak14.4.0C11 now estimates it at 1,000,000 pf quarters, or, in round numbers, at one-4144 of its tbrgier amount. Two millions of quarters of wheat have thus been sub tracted from the aggivgate production of the United Kingdom by the decrease of tillage in Ireland alone. Of the importance of this decrease we may judge by the fact that the whole of the wheat which in the course of the past year we imported from the three great continental empires now engaged in war, barely supplied the deficiency thus created. The quantity of wheat which we received from Russia, from Turkey, including the Danubian provinces, and from France, amounted, in the year 1853, to 1,991,063 quarters. And yet, with these indisputable facts before them, there are not wanting public writers who gravely assure us that our home production of corn has positively increased under the healthy influence of unlimited competition. LORD ABERDEEN'S WAR. AN attempt is made in a Ministerial journal this week to absolve Lord ABERDEEN from the responsibility of having brought about the war, with all its deplorable consequences. But the public knows well not only to whom it is indebted for the war, but to whom it is in debted for such part of the conduct of the war as will, ere long, demand investigation too grave to be lightly indicated. The Russian war is Lord ABERDEEN'S just as the Sydenham Palace is PAXTON'S, as the Parliament Houses are BARRY'S, and as St. Paul's is WREN'S ; and it would be about as easy to associate the ideas of ABERDEEN and War in the mind of the country, as to sever the other memorials we have mentioned from the names of their respective founders. By what course of de ception, timidity, and blunder, the miserable negotiations " drifted" on to the unhappy result which is placing the hottoeholds of England in mourning, it is surely needless to say. That map has been traced too distinctly to be effaced, and it hangs side by side, to most eyes, with the map of the seat of war. Let us rather ask what advantage the Premier and his friends purpose to them selves by their incessant iteration of a political untruth. Is it—we almost feel inclined to apologise to men of the world for asking them the question—but is such iteration made with the faintest hope that the untruth will obtain acceptance and credit anywhere ? No ; we feel that to make the demand amounts to such a disparagement of their individual in tellects as, even with a recollection of their mishaps of last session, no assailant of their united policy has a right to offer. We are well aware that it is not with any such ridi culous hope or expectation. That the Earl of ABERDEEN should feel most keenly and deeply the responsibility which lie has brought upon himself by his greed for ' an office for which he was notoriously un• qualified, is far more improbable. Few men are more dangerous to a State than small men with large ambition. The Coalition holds several of such men, but the most mischievous is its head. He has plunged the nation into a war, unwillingly, as we firmly believe, but because, ungifted with the fine intellect and lofty heart necessary to our counsels at such a crisis, he nevertheless persisted, with cha racteristic pertinacity, in trying to " manage" a situation he had firot produced and subse quently complicated. He cannot still be un convinced of this, if indeed he ever really believed himself capable of dealing with a na tion's destinies. The fires and thunders of the Alma and of Sebastopol must have cured any blindness and deafness on his part. " Antiquated imbecility," to quote his col league's words, would have office, and a flame is raging which no statesmanship can now • extinguish or limit. To suppose that the Earl SATURDAY, of ABERDEEN does not feel all this now, were to accuse him of a dulness and a heartlessness which political antagonism has no right to charge against him. But hutv can his perpetual peace-cry console him ? To dwell upon the war is to yomember its origin—himself. Time is a certain subtleness of a ludicrous character which i 9 often found in combination with shallowness, and even with simplicity. We do find a ptizzliug and irritating under ourrent cunning in man whose intellect and practical knowledge are of the least elevated description. They frequently have recourse to the most tortuous and under-handed courses for effecting objects which could be far better attained by straightforward frankness and manliness. Can this fact in natural history throw any light upon the conduct of the Premier and his party ? Do they imagine that they see, at some almost incalculable dis tance that lends greater enchantment to the view, a prospect of the ultimate triumph of those " Russian counsels" which they have striven so long, so lamentably, and so fruit lessly to acclimatise here ? And are all these wretched protests that the Aberdeen party had always been for peace, that they undertook the war reluctantly, and would terminate it joy fully, intended for capital in that great day of rejoicing when our friend of forty years shall revisit Windsor? Because, if the reiteration of political untruths—which the speakers are at any rate too clever to imagine that anybody in England will believe—has not some such object, in the name of all that is common sense, if not common honesty - , what is it for? Is the Premier gifted with his national second sight, and, having "turned his coat" (according to the Highland formula), has he peeped through the blanket of the dark, and beheld NICHOLAS with the Mild Eyes taking an early morning walk on the slopes ? If this be too far-fetched a supposition, we have but one more to offer. The iteration regarding a " peace policy " is not intended to deceive England, or to please Russia ; and yet so ridiculous a picture is flung, so lately as Thursday night, into the faces of Englishmen fresh from perusal of painful news from the scat of the Aberdeen war—flung at a period when every instinct of good taste and good feeling would have dictated the avoidance of a protest which could not . but be received with " cheers," of whose derision, or even bitterer meaning, reporters could not be expected to speak, but which were very well understood at the Guildhall. There is only one way of ac counting for Lord ABERDEEN'S course, and this would place him in an entirely new light, and as nobody's enemy but his own. Is it possi ble that Lord ABERDEEN, having duly gauged his intellect by a calm consideration of the frightful position into which, with the best intentions, he has brought us, has come to the conclusion that he can, by perseverance, de ceive—himself The exhaustion process brin4s us to the conviction that this is the solution of the Aberdeen mystification. THE CARNATIC STIPENDIARIES. " THE Carnatic Stipendiaries " is the designs• tion by which are known the junior branches of the family of the Nuwabs of Arcot. It is exactly eighty-three years ago—that is, within the existence, if not within the memory, of some persons still living—that the then Sovereign of England, CrEoanE 111., wrote to the then Nuwab of ARCOT as follows : We received from the hands of the East India Company in July last your letter, accompanied with your different presents. We shall look upon the picture of yourself and your children with pleasure, as it will put us constantly in mind of that affection which you have always shown towards us, and which, we have no doubt, will be here ditary in prow offspring, as we are satisfied that our friend ship and ction to you and your posterity will descend through our successors from generation to generation. At that time the Nuwab of ARCOT was a powerful Sovereign, and England was en gaged in a struggle that many of her most eminent statesmen thought would be fatal to her existence. Since then the tables have turned. The Nuwab of the Arcot has sunk into a mere stipendiary of the East India Company, while England has long since tar more than recovered the prestige which in her