The Sun.
London, England, 1822-05-15 00:00:00

FOR THE SUN.

IRISH IMPORTATIONS.

Mn. EDITOR,
As the great importation from Ireland is sup-
posed, and justly too, one of the principal causes
of that fall of prices of which the agricultural
interests so loudly complain, it may not be
amiss to inquire into the state of that question,
and thereby enable ourselves to decide with
what justice that cause is fairly assignable, and
what the weight it ought to carry with every re-
flecting and impartial mind. It has been shown in
one of the letters I addressed to the public
through your valuable paper, and which appeared
in that of the 27th of April, that the Irish, con-
tented with coarser and scantier food than the
English labourer, is enabled to work cheaper,
and sell his produce at a lower rate ; tempted by
the prices of our markets Ireland has turned her
attention more to the cultivation of grain than
either the soil or the peculiar climate of that
island justifies, or consistently with the interests
of their own country or ours. Of the grain thus
raised they have' deprived themselves, through
the hope of immediate profit, wholly depending
on their crop of potatoes, which in the last season
almost entirely failed, their population now
starving through that unfortunate circumstance,
and the want of what they exported to us. The
exclusive supply of six millions of their increas-
ing numbers should have been their primary ob-
ject, and their further exclusive supply of live
and dead stock to the markets of both countries,
would not only have saved them from those im-
mediate distresses of which they so feelingly
complain, but have yielded better rents to the
landlord and profits to the farmer than the filling
our markets with grain we did not want, and
which occasioned a portion at least of that de-
pression of prices by which all the landed in-
terest of England is so dreadfully suffering ; but
the mischief did not stop there, for through the
medium of Ireland very large importations were
made from other countries ; France and the
Netherlands, and probably other nations, smug—
gled a great portion of their surperfluous grain
into our markets as Irish produce, and that, as I
am well informed, to an almost incredible amount.
If report speaks truly, supported by the best esti-
mates that have been handed to us, more than two-
thirds of the supposed Irish grain was in fact
foreign, the door being opened to every species
of fraud, winked at and perhaps encouraged by
the censurable neglect or connivance of our
custom-house officers. A gentleman of my ac-
quaintance having heard of this fact, took the
trouble of sifting a certain quantity of wheat just
imported a 5 supposed from Ireland, and found,
to his great. surprise, in full confirmation of the
fact, a large quantity of French seeds mixed with
the general mass. This speaks volumes on the
subject, and sets it beyond all reasonable doubt.
The remedies for this have been-pointed out in
my letter of -the 27th of April, not only without
injury to either country, but with manifest ad-
vantage to both. But even should those mea-
sures, or others equivalent, not admit of imme-
diate application, in the judgment of our Minis-
ters, yet constant and unceasing attention should
and must be paid to the smuggling system, and
especial care taken that no importations shall be
made from the Sister Kingdom, but what are
really of her own growth. So far as regards the
reciprocal interests of both Islonds, sufficient has
been said to set them in the clearest lights, of
which, at least in the limited view of the writer,
they appear susceptible, so that nothing further
remains to be said on the subject. Now then, so
another point of apparently infinite consequence
to all connected with the agriculture of this
country. It has been observed with equal sur-
prise and concern, by the writer of this letter,
that by all the, debators of either House of Par-
liament, the general pressure of that part of the
community has been universally acknowledged,
and early and _effectual remedies allowed as ne-
cessary to its relief, but uniformly accompanied
with an expressed dislike, nay aversion, to the
raising of prices; as if any relief whatever could
possibly be afforded without it : for of what do
landlords and tenants complain but of totally insuf-
ficient prices for their produce, and those denied,
what possible relief remains to them ? It is vain
to say that all your manufactures, and indeed all
your productive and unproductive population,
cannot bear this rise of prices, when the pro-
prietor and cultivator of the soil tell you they
cannot carry on their cultivation without it. How
long can it be reasonably supposed that agricul-
turists will continue to supply grain at less
than half the prices it costs them to raise it ;
and if they do not, what resource l'emains to a
starving population but importation from abroad,
which at once converts this rich and productive
country into a'desolate waste ? Supposing this
then the case, the soil of the country no longer
productive, and all those attached to or connected
with its cultivation ruined, the manufacturers
supported by imports from abroad, and their
home markets wholly done away by the ruin of
their best customers, what remains to this de-
voted country but total and inevitable destruction
It is quite a mistaken notion, when such flourish-
ing accounts are given of our Revenue, our manu-
factures and external commerce, to suppose that
the agricultural classes alone are suffering, for
exclusively of those petitions from every part of
the country with which the tables of Parliament
are nearly broken down, inquire of every shop-
keeper or trader from Hyde Park Corner west
to Whitechapel east, and from Islington north
to the extremity of Southwark south, and you
will not find one in ten, or even in twenty, who
does not complain of the almost total stoppage
of all trade. If then their customers do not
purchase of them, which they cannot with-
out the means, they cannot of the manufac-
turers, so that nearly all your home demands
are immediately done away, and you are almost
wholly left to the exportation of such articles as
other countries will take of you. What that
proportion bears to your former home consump-
tion in your fine staple articles of woollens, cot-
tons, linens, silks, and hardware, of every de-
scription, may be estimates?, and indeed has been
so from official documents, by an ingenious
author who has written on the subject. He states