The Express.
London, England, 1860-04-26 00:00:00

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LONDON, 711URSDAY, APRIL 26.

Tar unusual lateness of the season, and the
dearness of recta and fodder, combine with the
low price of grain to form a conjuncture of cir-
cumstances exceedingly trying to the agricultural
mind and spirits. The crisis is, indeed, precisely
one which would formerly have been supposed
certain to drive them into revolt against the free
admission of foreign grain. Wheat is now selling
very low, while all other produce is excessively
high ; if we were still under the old system, '
wheat, which is selling at from 455. to 48a.,
would fetch from 60e. to 70s. ; yet we hoer no
outcries of distress from the farmers. On the
contrary, there is every reason to believe
they see the advantage of free trade.
This is a fact so encouraging in regard to
the restrictions on our commerce which still
reins'", and so important at a moment when
the French Treaty has brought up, on one or the
other side of the Channel, the old ideas and argu-
ments and feelings about free trade, that it de-
serves distinct notice and emphatic attention. If
at such a moment as the present English farmers
accept a natural system of commerce as beet,
though it brings them low prices for their wheat
instead of high, we may fairly hope that in less
than twenty years time, French and English ma-
nufacturers, French logicians, and even English
shipowners, may have grown no less wise than our
fanners, and may acknowledge their blessings no
lead rvidily.
The season is, indeed, a crucial one for the
free-trade theory ; and it is interesting to others
than agriculturists to hear what it is that satisfies
the cultivators of the soil with a change under
which their wheat sells so low. Gathering in all
directions the information which sufferers enjoy
giving, we find that wheat is looking badly every-
where ; that in many places it has perished en-
tirely through alternate thawing and freezing,
while much that is still alive is so poor that it is
a question whether it ought not to be ploughed
up. In the wet clay districts at least a third of
the land has not been sown at all. Where the
plant holds its ground best it has not fulfilled the
popular March test of "hiding a hare," being
barely able to " hide a mouse." The barley and
oat sowing has been later than in any spring
within the experience of our generation. We
read of Scotch farmers coming down to Liverpool,
and Cumberland fanners travelling south, and
Midland fanners running to the porta, to buy up
hay, or anything they could get, to feed their
stock. We read of 2,000 sheep on one farm
with only four days feed in hand or in prospect.
We read of hay at 10i. atom, and straw at 9d, a
stone in March, and of a crowd of farmers who would
be thankful to get either at any price in April.
We are warned of prices beyond all precedent
for lamb this season, and even for beef and
mutton. Pigs are sold from the sow at 255.
which were 10s. or 12s. in former years. These
prima will do the farmer and grazier no good, for
no pnce that the public will pay can compensate for
the cost of food during a winter of six months, pre-
ceded by &seism extremely unfavourable for fodder.
At the same time the wheat of last year disap-
points expectation, coming out in the thrashing
very deficient. Inferior barley is dear, while
good malting barley is very scarce. The inferior
barley and oats are dear because they have been
in demand to supply the deficiency of hay. It is
the unusual amount of the reserve of the wheat
cony of 1858 which keeps down the price for the
public, preventing the farmers from getting a
high price for their wheat while paying excessively
dear for all the produce they have to buy. Even
in such a position as this they see the wisdom of
free trade. How does this come to peas?
The reason is that they have learned, and
are still learning, an economy so much better
than the old methods that the ghosts of their
fathers would call farmiug a new art. They are
how satisfied that a sufficient supply of wheat may
always be reckoned on from one part or another
of the world ; and they, therefore, feel themselves
net free from any obligation to grow wheat against
the grain. If we see in many directions high
farming applied to poor soils which the Corn-laws
called int, cultivation—an expensive tillage by
which alone such soils can be made to answer—we
see in more instalices that change of gram which
the men of the League foretold before 1846.
Farmers in some of our wheat-growing districts are
ridding themselves of the idea that they must
depend on their wheat crops for their rent. Be-
lieving that there is no prospect of a steady high
price of wheat, they resolve to grow more barley,
more food for stock, more of anything that nature
and the wants of society indicate. At thee hearsame
time, with the extension of barley-growing,
we
of an organised resistance on the part of the Agri-
eu kunst' to the malt duty ; and, as such orgenisations
against an unpopular duty always suoceed, if the
ny.t..rs have paticnce citirigh, we shall in course