The Sun.
London, England, 1854-04-13 00:00:00

would afford information of singular value to
persons engaged in the corn trade, and, by so
doing, would tend to diminish speculation,
and to adjust the balance between supply and
demand, thereby reducing the elements of fluctu-
ation in price which are so fatal to the interests
of the agriculturist. Furnished with these
vitally important statistics, we might not only
appreciate the condition of the farmers with
something like accuracy, but might even calculate
within reasonable limits the probable produce of
each approaching harvest. Eighteen years have
elapsed since the throwing out of these very
rational and comprehensible hints for the establish-
ment of a regular system of agricultural organisa-
tion. Eighteen years have elapsed since then,
and two decennial censuses have been taken within
the interval—that of 1841 and that of 1851
—and now, as then, we are as far as
ever from the realisation of any such plan
of internal improvement. What says the Edin-
burgh ? " While at this moment we could easily
tell in any year the number of herrings caught
and cured on the British coast, of the bales of
cotton grown in Georgia, or of chests of indigo
produced in India, no man can do more than
guess the quantity or proportion of agricultural
produce in his own country, or even his own
parish." The acknowledgment is made, remem-
ber, not in the year of that Agricultural Distress
Committee, from whose records we have just
quoted—not in 1836, but in 1854, as we have
said, nearly twenty years afterwards.
Wherefore it has come to pass, naturallyenough,
that those who still hanker after the revival of the
dead and buried system of Protection object to the
arguments, drawn from the fact of our increased
im-
portsunder the system of Free Trade, that for every
bushel that has come in from abroad a bushel
less has been grown at home. How utterly this
sophistical mis-statement has been demolished,
may be seen by any one on reference to this impor-
tant contribution to the pages of our Whig quar-
terly contemporary. It will there be seen, more-
over, how between 1846 and 1853, there have
actually been produced in this country, as among
the prominent results of the Free Trade system—
I. The addition of nearly a third to our BREAD !
11. The nearly doubling of our• SUGAR !
11. The addition of a third to our COFFEE !

IV. And the nearly doubling of our TEA !
Putting these facts before the world in another
form, the reviewer arrives at the subjoined results
in regard to the Consumption per head at the
periods here specified :—.

Bread, stated in bushels of wheat
Sugar in Ibs
Coffee, in ounce,:

1833. 1843. 18.53.
8 8 106
18 16 30
14 16 204
19 22 34
So that, literally, under Free Trade, the
British people eat nearly a third more bread
than they did before, under Protection ! They
eat double the quantity of Sugar ! They drink a
third more Coffee ! They consume nearly double
the quantity of Tea ! For the present we content
ourselves with this general reference to the ela-
borate analysis of the effects of Free Trade put
forward by our Edinburgh contemporary. it '
presents a niass of statistical information, how-
ever, so suggestive and extraordinary, all the cir-
cumstances of the case considered—namely, at
this remarkable conjuncture, when seven or eight
years have elapsed since the passing of the
measures of 1846, and when a general European
war is at the instant of its commencement—that
a recurrence to the arguments of the reviewer
cannot but be desirable at the earliest available
opportunity.

lea in ounee3

If
it be the prime merit of a Government mea-
sure to pass a second reading, like the response to
the
QuEEN's Speech, without a division, then the
couldOxfo be
Oxford University Bill must rank as highly as
desired. We are so used, however, to a
vote on the principles of every important mea-
sure, that the absence of it almost provokes sus-
picion. We are tempted to inquire whether such
a bill, like the address to the Throne, is much
more than the echo of the known views of those
before whom it is laid ; whether conciliation has
not been more attended to than principle, and
whether there was much worth the country's
having when no patrons of vested abuses ven-
tured to show determined fight. English pug-
nacity hardly thanks a Government for what has
not cost it even a political battle, and it is very
slow to believe that the good of any such measure
is so great and evident as to over-awe opposition.
We must candidly confess, however, that this last
reason has united its force with the less noble one
first suggested. The actual system of govern-
ment at Oxford is so utterly bad, so at variance
with the best antiquity, so opposed to the repre. !

ticular, decision on the part of France and Eng-
land towards the Councils of Berlin and Vienna,
must be allowed by the least resolute amongst us
to bo at any rate very desirable. In reality,
it is much more than desirable. It is ab-
solutely and imperatively requisite—requisite
for the safety of the cause in which we have
embarked, the cause not alone of Turkish
Independence, but of the future tranquillity
of the earth—the continued reform of its abuses,
and the conservation of whatever social, political,
or commercial changes may have already been
effected for the advantage of its more civilised
population.

A masterly analysis of some among the more
remarkable of the effects of Free Trade during the
six or seven years which have elapsed since the
period of its formal adoption in this country as
the guiding principle of our commercial policy,
appears in the number of the Edinburgh Review
just published. It is a paper eminently worthy
of perusal, and appears as the last of the eight
contributions, being presented to us under the
suggestive title of " Consumption of Food in the
United Kingdom." Extraordinary difficulties are,
of course, in the way of any one who adventures
upon any calculations of the nature here indi-
cated. Several of the more important of these
difficulties have in the present instance been
adroitly overcome by the reviewer. But under
no circumstances, perhaps, has there been
reason for a more painful sense of the want of
some reliable statistics in regard to the extent of
the toil and of the fruits, in reference to the pros-
perity or adversity, the success or failure, the ad-
vance or retrogression of our own Agriculture. As
matters are now, as they have been hitherto, there
is no possibility of learning the amount of the
cereal produce of the three kingdoms. We can-
not obtain even a proximate notion of the extent
of laud at any time employed in these islands in
grain cultivation. Whereas, after proper attention
to the subject, it were easy enough not only to learn
thus much in round numbers and in the aggregate,
but periodically in minute detail, so that au esti-
mate might be readily arrived at as to the
number of acres sown with wheat, barley,
and oats respectively. Information of this cha-
racter might be placed from time to time at
the' command of the public through the
Board of Trade, or of some other of the offices of
Government. It was so suggested, indeed, by
the Agricultural Distress Committee of 1836. It
was declared before that committee by Mr. STURGE,
the corn factor, that he thought it might be done
at very small expense, with sufficient accuracy to
be valuable as matter of reference. Nay, the
Protectionist ex-member for Wakefield (Mr. SAN-
DERS) then and there avowed in so many words—
" I cannot conceive a duty more imperative on
Government than to ascertain the quantity of food
that the people are likely to be supplied with."
While the Right Honourable the representative of
North Hants, the present Speaker of the House
of Commons, intimated shoe tly afterwards in an
elaborate address to his constituents his entire
coincidence with the opinion that this was indeed
a matter of " infinite importance"—suggesting at
the same time that the scheme for collecting this
accurate statistical information might be advan-
tageously grafted on the present division of Eng-
land into parochial unions, and might also be
adapted to the Scotch counties and baronies in
Ireland. The Speaker went further, and proposed
the publication of these returns periodically in the
London Gazette, returns which be maintained.