The Sun.
London, England, 1858-12-18 00:00:00

AG.RICULTURAL PRICES.

(From the Derbyshire Courier.)
The farmer is now again realising the effects of
free trade and a fettered currency. The price of
wheat is, as the Mark-Lane Eexpress states, "ex-
tremely low." " The average for the week ending
Nov. 27th of the 290 towns making returns was
41s. 2d. on 103,981 qrs., the lowest since Nov. 1852
—on the 19th October in that year it was 375. 10d.
on 114,833 qrs." The report of Monday's prices
on the Corn Exchange, Mark-Lane, is very dis-
couraging. There is, in fact, a downward ten-
dency in agricultural produce generally. The com-
paratively small quantity of wool which is still in
agricultural hands commands a remunerative price,
but this is nearly the sole exception. Great quan-
tities of wheat, the staple' commodity of the farmer,
have been sold this year at less • than the cost of
production. The crop of beans and peas was so
deficient that present prices scarcely repay the
producer. Many a farmer is selling his mutton
for less than it cost him same months since. Pork
is very low. Altogether the agriculturist cannot
but regard the present state of things with gloomy
apprehension, and to the smaller farmer the ap-
proach of rent day is a subject of serious alarm.
Such always has been, and such always will be
the effects of a monetary crisis. After the panic of
1847 the average price of wheat for the five suc•
ceeding years—front 1848 to 1852—was barely 435.
a quarter. And though the improved state of trade
gave, some time ago, a hope of a more remunera-
tive scale of prices for the food producer, yet such
hope has since then materially declined.
The agricultural labourer feels the ill effects of
this unremunerative cheapness. Ask any sensible
working man what is best for him and his family,
and he will reply, " Neither very cheap nor very
dear bread." When bread is very dear the wages
of the labourer never rise in
proportion. Wheat at
80s. a quarter and wages
at even 15s. a week leave
the working man only s
bare subsistence. The
high price of food, and consequently of the other
necessaries of life, deprives him of the power of
making the least provision for the future. When
bread is very cheap, the 'wages of the labourer ne-
cessarily decline. Farmers in
disin-
clined, and many unable, t general are then
C. employ more labour than
is absolutely necessary. Wheat at 40s. a quarter
and wages at 10s. a week are bad for the poor man.
The rent of his cottage, the contribution to his
sick club, the school Pence for his children, are
fixed money payments, and these, and similar de-
ductions, consume a large proportion of his small
wages.
What is good for the master is good for the man,
and that is a fair, remunerative, steady price.
The system which our Money Laws have called
into existence is exactly the opposite to this. At one
time we have high prices, commerce inflated, trade
stimulated to the utmost, speculation of every kind
and sort aroused. All is unhealthy excitement
and reckless enterprise. In the manufacturing
districts enormous mills and factories rise up as if
by magic, in which thousands of men, women, and
children, stimulated- by high wages, work day and
night in an unwholesome atmosphere, and subject
to every kind of contaminating and immoral influ-
ence. This is the time for bubble banks, bill-
accommodation merchants, and swindling direc-
tors. " Their palaces rise like exhalations, and
their equipages glare like meteors." In the mean-
while the agriculturist cares little about a rise in
his rent. He improves his laud, buries his capital
in the soil of its owner, adopts a system of high
farming, and a better breed of cattle. This par-
ticular phase of the monetary system induces
every agriculturist to a liberal outlay of capital.
Observe, it is the state of the money laws which
leads to this temporary prosperity. Very shallow,
unreflecting persons, who learn nothing by the ex-
perience of the past, talk of such prosperity being
the effect of " the war." War with Russia was
proclaimed on 28th March, 1854, and up to the
last hopes were strongly entertained that it might
be avoided. But the " prosperity" of the country
had commenced the year before. In March, 1853,
Lord Aberdeen declared, at the Lord Mayor's
Banquet, in the City, that "all the great interests
of the country were prosperous and flourishing
to a degree almost unparalleled." Free trade was
said by many to be the sole cause of this. Free
trade had, indeed, at this time come into full opera-
tion ; and let the agriculturist remember that
during a time of peace and with free trade in full
operation, the prices of every description of agri-
cultural produce were amply remunerative, and
that as to wheat, the first quality sold in Oct., 1853,
at Uxbridge, at 100 s. a quarto..
It was not the war, or anything connected with