The Express.
London, England, 1846-10-08 00:00:00

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MAILS.
The We.d India 111,111%, CllClUdilltr chose for Mesiort, Honduran. and
Havana, will be mule up on the morning of the Ilth October.
The mails for Walsh North Americi, mid the United State*, will
be made up on the evening of the I:th October.
Ths overt ind mails fnr Gibraltar, Malta, Greece, the lonian Island.,
Egypt, Aden, Ceylaw, India, Hong-Kong, and China, ria Soutnampton,
Intl be made up on the morning of the 20, October.
The overland cloned mails. rid Marseilles, to the Mediterranean,
Egypt, Aden, Ceylon. India, Hong-Kong, Sic., will be made up on the
evening of the 21th October.
The mails for New South Wales, Tan Die:nail's Land, will be made
up oil the 31,1 October.

TO CORRESPONDENTS.
We cannot notice, in any way, any communication that tt sent to tri
anonymously; but three who cliooac to ;Atkin-taw in confidence will
end their confidence respected. NEITHER C AN WE UNDERTAKE
TO RETURN ANY MANUSCRIPTS \YR ATEVER.
Advertiaementa intended for l'ke land be at the Office by
Two o'clock on the day at publication.

HIGH WATER AT LONDON-BRIDGE.
Twin Morning, 44 min. nag 3; Afternoon, 3 min. past 4.
TU•MONROM.—llotaing, 24 min. post 1; Afternoon 43 win. poet 4.

LONDON, THURSDAY, OCT. S.

WE have Free Trade in food as a policy adopted by
the legislature ; but we cannot yet enjoy the results of
that policy. The world, and especially the trans-
atlantic world, is not ready for us. The law relates
to corn vet ungrown, to be purchased by money yet
unearned, the price of commodities not yet manu-
factured. "He that will have a cake out of the
wheat must tarry the grinding, and the bolting, and
the leavening ; and here's yet in the word, hereafter,
the kneading, the making of the cake, the heating of
the oven, and the baking." Cargoes of grain are not
created extempore. We may open our ports, and
open our mouths ; but be it ever so widely, neither
one nor the other is immediately filled
thereby. A crop of corn requires long notice.
There must be the application of capital and
labour, induced by the previous assurance of a market.
Two or three years hence,the valley of the Mississippi
or the plains of Hungary may make some response to
the legislative overture of our new policy. They have
tarried for us, in the barrenness to which we doomed
them by our Monopolist restrictions ; and we must
tarry for the fertility of which Free-trade will prove
the signal. It would have been pleasanter to have
waited full-fed than hungry. But we must take the
consequence of our own contrivances. The world
could not tell that we were about, just then, to
change our minds. The seasons will not hurry them-
selves for our accommodation. Nature rewards not
our repentance with an extra harvest. The pangs of
scarcity must be endured, together with the unpa-
latable accompaniment of the diet that our supplies
are postponed by our own tardiness in rectifying the
errors of our legislation.
From the first we pronounced the compromising
portion of Sir ROBERT PEEL'S measure a great mis-
take. In providing for the gradual abrogation of the
corn-laws, he disregarded the fact that their abroga-
tion must needs be gradual, by the nature of the case,
and without any legislative interference. A parlia-
mentary abrogation, total and immediate, must, in
actual operation, have spread itself over a considerable
time, from the causes to which we have just adverted
as keeping down our present supplies. Corn is
only produced by culture; and cultivation requires
the previous adjustment of capital and labour,
besioles being a twelvemonth's process in itself. Nature,
and the hiss s of political economy, which are laws
of nature, had provided for a gradual character in the
change. What nature has provided for, senates may
safely let alone. But we must needs be meddling ; and
unfit r the influence of old habits and connexions,
Sir ROBERT PEEL BMA needs be compromising; tink-
ering the great Providential compromise, in the very
nature of the change, with histhree years' sliding scale.
And now, sec the consequence. We are paying, in
a season of pressure and rising prices, a duty of Bs.
per quarter on the paltry sweepings and gleanings,
which are all that the world, taken by surprise, has
to spare for our markets. Ireland is screaming
to us for food ; and we are barring out what
modicum there is to be had, by a tax
of one-seventh of its enhanced price. We have
praised Sir ROBERT PF.EL ungrudgingly; we shall
never forget or underrate the gratitude and glory to
which he is entitled; nor do we advert with any
bitterness of censure to a mistake, on which we com-
mented at the moment, and which is now displaying
its full and mischievous extent. But the mischiefs
are even greater than was anticipated. They arc
rendered so by the continued failure of the potato,
and the state of the crops throughout Europe. The
ratification of the error is a legacy to his successors ;
and in thus completing his work, they may justly
calculate on his hearty co-operation.
Were the world overflowing with food, there
might be some plausibility in continuing the
three-years restriction to the end of its term.
The superfluity, supposing its existence, might have
realised some faint portion of the ruinous results to
the cultivator which were predicted by the Protec-
tionists. But instead of superfluity, there is deficiency.
We are actually exporting food to France and Hol-
land. The change of a total and immediate repeal
would have now been unfelt by the farmer. Ile would
have been, almost unconsciously, floated over the
dreaded sandbanks on which his wreck was foretold.
And then, by the regular gradation which extending
cultivation abroad, open markets at home, and the
stimulus of free competition, would have secured, a
complete and satisfactory adaptation to the new state
of things would have accomplished itself. This whole-
some and natural process is precluded by the combina-
tion of limited supply with prolonged restriction. Corn
is likely to attain prices not only injurious to the
public, but deceptive to the farmer. Meanwhile
the foreign cultivator is not idle. The high prices of
the English market will be a stimulus to him also.
They will be deceptive to him also. Unfavourable
seasons do not follow in an indefinite series. More
propitious times will multiply the home produce,
probably at the very juncture when the foreigner is
ready to pour in his diligently increased abundance.
Then we may indeed look for agricultural distress ;
the result, not of free trade, but of this most unwise
prolongation of a restrictive system. It is only the
tail of the reptile, but the sting is there. No class,
except those to whom the difference is food or no
food, is more deeply interested than the agricul-
tural, in the abolition of the clumsy machinery of
this posthumous sliding scale.
We put the question on this ground, because it is
vain to talk, under present circumstances, of opening
the Ports as a temporary measure. They can never
be shut again. The re-imposition of the restrictions
stands high in the catalogue of thins impracticable.
A promise to that effect could be only a delusion.
Now, as in November last, such a measure could only
be the prelude of a final relinquishment of the duties;
and it is to be desired, not less in this view, than as
an immediate concession to the wants of Ireland and