The Press. — London, England, 1854-11-04 00:00:00

P 1034 ELLESLEY in 1808, or than the same hero's rrative of the Battle of Waterloo. A plain uestion was to be asked as to whether Miss IGHTINGALE would superintend a staff of nurses, and the writer expands tips query with diffusive ingenuity calculated Va excite ti‘e envy of recorders of enormous ons imd . chroniclers of fallen chimnie§, llow 'military matters, feeble as aitician, the Secretary at War can only aO W ct the pros found in all 'that relate* to ourself. Ha talks familiarly of " the rank and file of 1 ," nurses." He records a proposition of the Rev. Mr. HUME, and condescends to say, " I 'approve of the tone of his letter very much." What a characteristic sentence ! Just as if a sentimental official was admiring the tone of a new bell in some sweet little specimen of a Della Crusean copy of a mediaeval church tower. Then he wastes space in pointless speculations as to whether Lady MARIA FOR , Immo did or did not know what she meant to 'lava done, or as to whether the Secretary at War was or was not mistaken as to the possi meaning of Lady MARIA FORRESTER'S , words, and much more in the same masterly . ptrain. Then the letter-writer humorously surmises that a number of " sentimental enthusiastic "` ladies turned loose (!) into the hospital at " Scutari " raises ci la porte." The phraseology of this i 'whole passage, commencing with English ladies " turned loose," and ending with a French phrase for their being turned out, is a choice specimen of weakness affecting to be strong. With what a fine manly air thi s Titan of the War-office—this Cecur-de-Lion of the Mantua-maker's Association—affects to dis parage the pretensions of sentimental charac ters of the weaker sex. But as there are women with heroic natures that often put manhood to shame, so there are ladylike gen. tilemen who would be evidently more at ease if they were classified with " the rank and file" of petticoated humanity. Now that numbers have perished for lack of proper organised ssistance, the sentimentalists begin t o work. They are roused into practical activity at the public cry of " Shame !" Alas! they are Wise after the event. They send nurses to the dead, and offer sympathy to those who have survived pangs which could have been miti gated if men of sense, not " sentiment," had " unlimited power of drawing on the Govern ment." But the incoherency of Mr. SIDNEY HER BERT'S letter is not the least ridiculous part of his effusions. In the middle of it he :writes, " I do not say one word to press you," and then, with his ladylike manner of re serving the substance for the last words, he concludes, " I know you will come to a right " and wise decision. God grant it may be one "in accordance with my hopes." This letter Was so long that we almost excuse him for having forgotten at the end what he said in the middle, for it would be too severe to expect him to peruse his own prolixity. His invoking Heaven at the end, how ever, after disclaiming the intention of saying " a word to press " Miss NIGHTINGALE, is a strange freak in an official pen. The rhetoric of the letter is certainly the most ridiculous that has ever proceeded from even the favourite pupils of Doctor Slipslop, and we do not wonder at the desperate efforts to hide it from the public eye. And such is one of the Ministers of State, on whom we have read numerous eulogies, and pharisaical panegyrics ! Such is one of the official personages on w h os e shoulders rests the burthen of power! His mawkish and maundering letter is all that was wanted 'to throw into high relief the practical sense led enthusiasm of the nobly as -- to whom it is addressed. NIGHTINGALE has its root )roils volition, influenced !s, and the weakness of springs front the merely affected by the ladylike Facto non verbs is the ic gentlewoman ; but Mr. the motto He fancies great act when he has Iter, whose length can be his own face as he reads and sustained entlitu piring gentlewoman ti The virtue of Miss N liarear of vigor istiMinie 7 impulses SaailEY HERBERT I sentimental •being al Secretary. at k War. ftli+ heroii .• ERBERT reverses th . Aone a great lette . , a. )pals potakeied by THE PRESS. the comments of the public journals on the care he has taken to make himself painfully ridiculous. _ THE PRICE OF CORN. TAO sq44ien rise in the price of corn folio' immectistely upon a remarkably favour season sppeare to have ' puzzled more thaq one`pt Aur daily eenteraporaries. They kay4 ttixed their ingenuity in vain to account to the satisfaction of anybody for this untoward result, and for this. simple reason, that they have aseribed it to every imaginable cause except the true one. That wheat should rise up to 80s. a quarter so quickly after an excellent harvest is a cir cumstance unprecedented in our commercial history. Even in " the dark days of Protec tion " its enemies must admit that, when our crops were abundant at home the people im mediately reaped the benefit of that abun dance in the diminished price of food. In such seasons our parliamentary returns in form us that we drew but scanty supplies from foreign countries, for the abundance of our home-grown food rendered us all but inde pendent of extraneous aid. Why is it that, under our present commercial regime, we now see results so very different? Why are we threatened with famine prices immediately after a harvest of unusual excellence ? Simply because, under the pressure of universal com petition, the production of British corn has diminished.' But for this diminution we might regard both the war in the East and the scarcity in the West without uneasiness. As it is, we know that we shall require large sup plies of foreign food in the course of the pre sent winter, without yet being aware how or where we are to obtain them. The fact of the diminution of British pro duction of recent years has, we know, been strenuously denied by our political opponents. It has even been asserted that cultivation has been materially extended under the wholesome stimulus, as the phrase goes, of foreign com petition. But there are no data in existence which can lead us to any such conclusion. All the facts we possess point uniformly in the opposite direction. In England we have no means at present of forming any accurate estimate of the whole extent of land under cultivation, or of the gross amount of the crops. But we possess an index which through a long series of years has enabled us to judge with unerring accu racy of the comparative scarcity or abundance of each succeeding harvest. We allude to the weekly returns of the corn sold throughout the market towns of England and Wales. These returns represent a certain proportion of the quantity of corn grown in the United Kingdom, and up to a certain period we find that they exhibit a steadily progressive in crease. We find that they reached their highest point immediately before the intro duction of our present commercial system, and that subsequent to that event they have shown a material and a permanent falling off The returns for the three years preceeding 1847, as compared with the three past years, are as fellows:— Corn sold in the market towns of England and Wales. WHEAT, 1844. 1845. 1846. 5,456,307 qrs. .. 6,666,240 qrs. .. 5,968,96 3 qrs. 1851. 1852. 833. 4,487,041 qrs. .. 4,854,513 qrs. .. 4,560,912 qrs. BARLEY. 1844. 1845. 1846. 2,834,407 qrs. .. 2,468,489 qrs. .. 2,938,394 qrs. 1451. 1852. 1853. 2,333,710 qrs. .. 2,389,489 qrs. .. 2,474,206 qrs. OATS. 1844. 1845. 1846. 1,989,730 qrs. .. 2,000,952 qrs. .. 1,970,448 qrs. 1851. 1852. 1853. 940,006 qrs. .. 947,550 qrs. .. 880,408 qrs. It will be seen at a glance that much less home grown grain is sold in our market towns under our system of indiscriminate importa tion than was previously the case. The large falling off in the returns both of wheat and of oats is especially worthy of attention; and SATURDAY, when we consider that the great bulk of our imports of late years have consisted of wheat, and oats,. and Indian corn, the inference is fair and reaso nable that 'lrereign competition has hp.d the effect of diminishing our home supplies. An Edinburgh reviewer, indeed, lately nagle the notable discovery that these market-tqwn rfturna prove the very reverse, or, in other words, thap the more corn our farmers grow the less they sell. But we fear that the returns for the month just ended are sadly at variance with the theory of the inge nious reviewer. He will find that they very far exceed in amount those for October 1853; and why? Because they truly represent the comparative abundance of the one season and the scarcity of the .other.• If he extends his researches to the corresponding month in 1852, he will find that the sales, although larger than in 1853, still fall short of those in 1854; and why? Because the last has been by far the best harvest of the three, and, as a necessary result, a greater amount of home grown corn has been brought into the market. With respect to the production of Ireland . we are possessed of evidence which admits of no manner of doubt. The latest Government returns, collected and compiled by the aid of the constabulary and police, indicate the exact number of acres under cultivation in each county, and the returns for the whole island are as follows : TINDER WHEAT. 1847. 1849. 1850. 743,871 acres. .. 687,646 acres. .. 604,887 acres. 1851. 18.52. 1853. 504,248 acres. .. 353,566 acres. .. 327,254 acres. The production of wheat in Ireland, there fore, has fallen off more than one-half within the space of seven years. The cultivation both of oats and barley has also slightly de clined ; but it is fair to state that, while the cereal products of the sister island have thus steadily diminished, her flocks and herds have materially increased. In 1847 Ireland pos sessed 2,591,415 cattle ; in 1852 the number had risen to 3,095,067. In the same interval the number of sheep had risen from 2,186,177 to 2,613,943. In this increase of stock, coupled with a decrease of cultivation, we perceive an obvious consequence of free trade. The Irish farmer has only done what the most distinguished advocates of that creed advised him to do, viz , to grow less wheat and to rear more sheep. So long as we could count upon abundant foreign supplies the consumers aw no reason to be dissatisfied with the chage ; r NieHel-as but the ambition of the Emp ero has scattered to the winds the calculations of our economists, and our new commercial sys tem must speedily be subjected to an ordeal which was never dreamed of in the philosophy of its founders. For the reasons we have stated we cannot look without apprehension to the result. Since the above was written we have re ceived the agricultural returns from Ireland for 1854. Contrary to our expectation they exhibit a decreased corn production as com pared with the previous year. The late high prices have caused more wheat to be t e than in 1853 ; but there is an aggregs de crease of cereal production in thd Present year of 91,233 acres. As we before remarked, therefore, all the facts in o ur possession point uniformly in one direction ; and he must be, indeed, blinded by his prejudices Son ilse t ric o perce i v e their bearing upon the pr e p of corn. PROFESSIONS AND PRACTICE OF THE EAST INDIA COMPANY. THE opposition between the professions and the practice of the Indian Government has been frequently commented on. Mr. MA CAUL AY relates, in his sketch of " Warren Hastings," that the Company, scandalised on one occasion by his proceeding, sent out to him a sermon on humanity and justice, accom panied by a demand for money ; and that HASTINGS, perfectly understanding what that m eant, totally disregar ded the sermon, but re mitted the required account. True t o its original character, the Company still preaches philanthropy, and clutches at gain.