The Sun.
London, England, 1838-10-15 00:00:00

LONDON :
MONDAY EVENING, OCTOBER 15, 183$.

A friend of ours having been recently constrained
to proceed to Germany, has furnished us with a few
facts illustrative of the working of the Corn or Devil's
laws, which we shall lay before our readers in his
words :

" On board the steam-vessel which carried me to Ger-
many, was a merchant and shipowner, of Rostock, whose
purse was heavy with English gold, and whose pocket-
book was crammed with bills of exchange drawn by English
houses on their corresponden's in Germiny. His coun-
tenance was redolent with satisfaction as he quaffed his wine
and spoke of the pleasure he anticipated from a warm bath
and fragrant coffee sipped on the Jungfern Steig. He hid
good reason to be pleased. He bad strips at Rostock, and
skilful commercial friends in England. Acting on their
advice, he had sent a dozen vessels to England laden with
corn ; they had all arrived and entered their cargoes when
the duty on wheat was at one shilling, and he was return-
ing home enriched by the produce of his speculation. Yet
be was a reasonable man, averse from the gambling and
risks to which our Corn-laws expose all corn-merchants, and
he was anxious that those laws should be abolished, that he
might gather in peace and quiet the ordinary and steady
profits of commercial industry. He was, however, an
example of a foreigner who had acquired a very consider-
able sum by the late rise in the price of Corn, which threw
1,500,000 qrs. of wheat on our markets, much to the de-
preciation of the price of our own farmers' crops, the cost
of growing which is materially enhanced by the Corn-laws."

Such examples as this of the Rostock merchant
are to be found, we have no doubt, in Hamburgh,
Stettin, Amsterdam, Bremen, and all the ports of
Europe, from Ostend to Dantzic, and they illustrate
the wisdom of those who assert that the Corn-laws
exclusively promote British interests and prevent
foreigners from carrying off our wealth. For our parts
we rejoice to see that these brutal laws cannot accom-
plish the detestable object of injuring other nations,
without at the same time injuring England herself;
and one proof of that is to be found in the fact that
they enrich speculating foreign merchants at the ex-
pense of our people. The next fact mentioned by our
friend elucidates a similar operation of those laws
which are recommended to the nation by the lying
statement that they enrich England and prevent other
nations being enriched at her expense :

" One of the first objects," says our friend, " which
arrested my attention in Hamburgh, was animmense steam
corn mill which had just been built on the new wall, and
was yet scarcely come into work. It was such a spacious
mill, and had such a towering steam chimney as one sees
about Manchester, that great city of mills. Though I
was only a few hours in Hamburgh, I soon saw another
such steam corn mill, and on inquiry was informed that at
present no trade was more flourishing in Hamburgh than
biscuit baking. It is carried on to a great extent, and large
quantities of biscuit are annually sent, I was told, to New-
foundland, and other English colonies, where shipping are
to be met with. I understood from the Captain and
crew of the steam-vessel, all of whom find themselves,
that they purchase all their supplies at Hamburgh, which
is thus made, at the expense of our millers, biscuit-bakers,
and agriculturists, a great biscuit manufacturing city to
supply our colonies nod a considerable portion of our
shipping."

The fact which our friend mentions as to Ham-
burgh, is no doubt common to all the great sea-ports
of the neighbouring Continent ; and all the ship-
ping of England which visit or frequent them procur:
there, like the steam-vessel which carried him to Hain-
burgh, all their provisions. Thus the Corn-laws
by enhancing prices at home, in order to swell the ren'
of the idle, worthies.; landowners, deprive our indu,;-
trious farmers and agricultural labourers of the market
which this large portion of our shipping would supply
for their produce. They do more mischief than this.
Millers and biscuit-bakers, by their own consumption,
as well as by their industry, are excellent customers to
the farmers, who are deprived of those customers
by the abominable laws, which transfer biscuit-baking,
and a great variety of connected trades, from London
and Liverpool to Hamburgh and Rotterdam.
The lying, plundering landowners, however, and
the lying scribes who defend their abominable
legal robbery, will, no doubt, continue to as-
assert that " the Devil's laws" protect and preserve
our home trade, extend the market for the produce of
our industrious agriculturists, and prevent foreigners
from thriving at our expense. All their assertions on
this point are mere fanciful speculations, baseless
hypotheses ; but here is a fact, or rather a series of
facts, for what is true of Hamburgh is true of the other
ports of the North of Europe ; and, so far as these
facts go, the effect of the Devil's laws is to diminish
and curtail the market for our agricultural produce. If it
be said that without these laws, foreign merchants, like
him of Rostock, would get still more of our wealth
by the settled profits of trade, and that the mar-
kets for our agricultural produce would be more
narrowed by allowing foreign corn to come freely
into our ports, than it now is by causing
us to lose the manufacture and supply of biscuit for
much of our own shipping,—the answer is, in the
case of the foreign merchant, that we should always
have a full equivalent in the profit of the manufactures
we should export to pay for the corn, for his settled
present we have no equivalent for the
profit, while at
vast increase of price which he has received on his
corn in consequence of our laws keeping it out of our
price is 735. The answer to
market till the average
the supposition that the market would be still more
narrowed were there no Corn-laws is, that but for
those laws the selling or money price of corn would
be on a level, except the charge et transport, in the
several ports of Europe, and that our agriculturists,
being able to produce corn at as low or at a less real
cost, or less quantity of lab ur, than most other agri-
culturists, would, by Cie aiiniition of the Corn-iaws, ac-
quire a great extension of the market. They would be
unable, indeed, to pay high rents to the plundering
landowners, and the landowners would not and could
not pay the rent-charge into which tithes are in the
course of commutation ; but the real cost of cultivation,
bating these two taxes—for the Corn-laws make rent
a tax, as much as the tax on malt—would certainly
not be higher in England than in most parts of
the
Continent ; and if she did not again become, as has
been said, an exporting country, she would have no
need to fear the competition, in feeding her people,