The Sun.
London, England, 1833-10-03 00:00:00

doubtedly have the strongest reason to expect equal con-
fidence and favour, and equal success."
1 We shall indeed be much surprised if the

London public do not soon become well ac-
quainted with advantages which have been for
some years as familiar to the mind of Lancashire
and Yorkshire men as spinning cotton or wool.
We see by a note in the pamphlet that, within
these few days, THOMAS BROCKLEBANK,
GEORGE HORSFALL, and SAMUEL SAND-
BACH, three of the first merchants of Liver-
pool, have joined the direction of the joint-
stock bank in that town. So much for the
alarm with which all commercial men ought
to regard these establishments.

The pressure of the news from Portugal yes-
terday, and of the Magazines the day before,
has prevented us making any observation on
the Report of the Agricultural Committee,
published in The Sun on Monday. The delay
will be productive of the advantage of reducing
our remarks to one point. Indeed the report
offers but little tangible matter of any kind, the
Committee having contented itself with pro-
ducing a mass of evidence, and recommending
caution in any alteration of the laws relating to
agriculture. Its members were, for the most
part, supporters of what is called the landed interest
in contradistinction to every other interest in the
country, who, finding that the public were not
inclined to tolerate anv further plunder on their
parts, have wisely come to the determination of
simply endeavouring to preserve their present
advantages. Accordingly, they make a great
outcry, and finish by recommending that nothing
of any consequence be done. The subjects of
county rates, and of a commutation of tithes,
are to be considered, but the corn laws are not
to be touched. " Fluctuations of price," says
the Committee, " whether they arise from alte-
rations in the value of money, or from changes
of the corn laws, cannot fail to produce evils
in every branch of rural economy." Doubtless,
great fluctuations in the price of wheat pro-
duce evils; but it has been proved to demon-
stration, that the more free the commerce
in any article is, the less will be the fluc-
tuation in its price. The rule holds good
in corn as well as in every thing else ; and
the prices of corn have only fluctuated in
England as they have done, because the trade
in that article has been more shackled than the
trade in any other. The Committee, however,
boldly say, that it " cannot fail to remark that
there has been, coincident with the present
system of corn laws, a steadiness in the price of
corn of which there has been rarely, if ever, an
experience in any former period of equal dura-
tion ; and as, during the same period, there
has been a very considerable difference in
seasons, and in the actual amount of corn
produced, it is but just to ascribe to the
present system a great degree of that stea-
diness of price which has unquestionably pre-
vailed." We shall have something to say
presently about the steadiness of price which has
prevailed under "the present system," but we
must stop a minute to examine what, according
to the confession of the Committee, is the
upshot of " the present system" with regard to
the consumer of wheat in this country. The
Committee of 1821 declared, "that they were
not insensible to the importance of securing this
country from a state of dependence on other,
and, possibly, hostile countries, for the subsist-
ence of its population." This niaiseriewas hacked
by the assertion that the annual growth of wheat
in this country was equal to the consumption.
Does " the present system," which the Com-
mittee of 1833 is so anxious to maintain, pro-
duce wheat, of home production, equal to
the consumption ? Not at all, for they are
obliged to acknowledge " that a diminished
supply of home-grown corn, with an increasing
demand, has rendered this nation now annual-
ly dependent, for a portion of its supply, on
importations from abroad." The amount of
the importation of foreign wheat is lower down
acknowledged to have been, for the last five
years, 1,145,000 quarters annually. This is,
in other words, about an eleventh of our con-
sumption. If our prosperity and population goes
on increasing, there is nothing to prevent this
eleventh from rising to a half; and then,according
to the Committee, we should have nothing better
to do than cutting the throats of half the people,
in order to prevent dependence upon a foreign
supply of corn. This is no exaggeration of their
argument ; and we see little difference, politically,
between measures which prevent the growth of
six or seven millions of people more to help us
to bear our taxation, and measures which would
then bring down the population to the precise
amount which our own corn monopolists could
feed at a high price. But let us see what
further blessing "the present system" may possibly
have in store for us. Mr. JACOB, whose evi-
dence is particularly referred to, quoted, and on
this point approved of, is asked as follows :

" You say that in 1816, preceding the had harvest of
that year, you think there were six months' consumption
in store, and recently not more than one month ; sup-
posing the harvest of 1816 was to come over again, from
whence do you contemplate the supply 2--It could not he
supplied from all the world. My opinion is, that if we
were to diminish the growth of English wheat by one-
tenth part of that now produced, we should not be in a
safe state in case of a deficient harvest, for all the world
could not make up the deficiency. We are now about
four weeks in the year deficient in our growth on the
average ; last year the harvest was one month earlier than
the year previous, so that we were enabled to get to the
end of the year. The harvest of 1832 ought to supply
thirteen months, and I dare say it will do so ; but if we
have a deficient harvest, and the next harvest gives us but
eleven months' supply, and owing to bid weather it be
deficient one-tenth more, there would then be such a
deficiency as all the world could not easily supply, at any
price, for wheat is not the food of man in any other country
to the same extent as in England."

.•
Yet the Committee has afterwards the impu-
dence to pass the following eulogy upon the
present system :
The political considerations which weighed with the
Committee of 1821 remain unchanged; and if it ha mgt
prudent to run the risk of rendering the dense pop&attion
of these islands in a great degree dependant on the supply
of bread-corn from abroad, the protection now given to
corn the growth of the United Kingdom may be justl3i
regarded as an insurance against famine, and against the
danger of that reliance on foreign countries for the staff-' of
life, which might be found inconsistent with the safety
and permanent interests of the people, and ultimately fatal
to our national independence." •
We have been led so far from our origin:ol
path by the manifold absurdities in whioth