The Sun.
London, England, 1845-11-12 00:00:00

REVIEW OF THE CORN TRADE.

BRITISH CORN.

A reaction ha taken place in public opinion since our last,
And it is now the general belief that there is no foundation
for the rumours which have been circulated by a portion of
the press during the past fortnight, respecting the probabi-
lity of an immediate Ministerial interference with the exist-
ing torn- laws. The effect of the reports alluded to on the
trade in grain has undoubtedly been of a mischievous ten-
dency; the regular course of business having been disturbed
thereby. All parties, whether sellers or buyers, have na-
turally, whilst any doubt was supposed to attach to the main-
tenance of the present regulations, refrained from entering
into fresh engagements. Under these circumstances the
transactions of the week have been on a comparatively re-
stricted scale, and it is probable that, until uncertainty on
this important subject be wholly removed, merchants, mil-
lers, and others, will continue to employ more than ordinary
caution in their operations. The fall of 2s. per quarter, which
leas taken place in the price of wheat must be mainly attri-
buted to the depreesing influence of the state of doubt and
uncertainty above described. The auspicious weather ex-
perienced for the conclusion of the northern harvest may have
had some effect ; but this alone would not, we think, have
been sufficient to occasion a decline in the value of wheat, the
quantity of that grain grown in the north being, in a national
point of view, unimportant. We are, therefore, inclined
to believe that the present languor will prove temporary,
and see no CAUSE! to alter the opinion we have previously
expressed, viz., that prices of bread stuffs will be higher
than they have yet been, either before the termination of
the present or early in the ensuing- year. In stating this to
be our conviction, we have not the slightest desire to aid
those who have for some time been labouring- to produce
that alarm they profess to dread. That the yield of wheat
is defective, as well in quantity as in quality, admits of no
doubt ; but to represent the deficiency to be so great as to
threaten a famine is a gross exaggeration. It is perfectly
true that prices are likely to rule much higher than in any
previous season since the present corn-laws have been in
force ; but, indifferent as has been the 'harvest on the Conti-
nent, we have no doubt we shall be enabled to draw sufficient
supplies from foreign countries to make good our deficiency.
To do this, however, the value of the articles must rise here
so as to cause the duty to fall to a low, if not the lowest,
point. Under the existing laws it requires an average of 725.
per qr. to admit wkeat at is. per qr. duty, whilst the last
weekly return for the kingdom is 60s. Id. per qr. It must be
recollected, however, that a large proportion of the wheat
usually thrashed soon after the completion of the harvest,
consists of the most inferior qualities, and that the condition
of even the worst will be improved after it shall have been
subjected to the action of frost. It is, therefore, very pos-
sible that a rise of Gs. to Bs. per qr. on the present prices
would be sufficient to lower the duty, without any interfer-
ence of the Legislature, to a point to encourage importations.
That such will take place we fully expect; but this does not
necessarily imply that misery and want are to be the portion
of the poorer classes of the community. We need not look
back many years for a period when wheat was much higher
than it would be were the anticipated rise on present rates
realised ; at the same time there was a great want of employ-
ment for our artizans and labourers; but even then, though
the pressure was severe, things were not nearly so bad as the
alarmists prognosticate will be the state of affairs during the
coming winter. The flourishing state of trade in the manu-
facturing districts, and the increased employment created by
the formation of the numerous railways, afford a guarantee
against the distress predicted ; and as 'far as regards England
and Scotland, we see no grounds for gloomy forebodings.
As respects Ireland, we must admit we entertain serious
doubts. The potato failure appears to be more General there than
on this side or the channel, and though the grain crops hare as
a whole probably turned out better in the sister isle than
with us, the people are, unfortunately, too poor to obtain
even oatmeal as a substitute for their staple article of food;
and without assistance in one way or the other from England,
much misery must result. Government have for some time
been alive to this state of things, and should the potato crop
really prove so bad as represented, the Legislature must in-
terfere.

The arrivals of wheat coastwise into London have been
fair, the quantity reported up to this (Saturday) evening
amounting to 8,995 quarters. A considerable proportion of
the preceding week's supply having, however, remained un-
sold, as well as tha major part of Monday's show by land
carriage, from Essex, Kent, and Suffolk, the stands have been
well filled. The millers have throughout the week acted with
the utmost caution, being anxious to have all doubts re-
moved regarding the Ministerial intentions relative to the
talked-of Order in Council to admit grain free, before they
replenish their stocks. On Wednesday scarcely a transac-
tion took place; indeed, so unimportant were the sales, that
quotations were perfectly nominal. On Friday affairs under-
went a slight improvement, and at a trifle below Monday's
currency the greater part of what had previously remained
unsold was cleared off.

Holders of free foreign wheat have firmly refused to sub-
mit to lower terms, and where it has been necessary to buy
old for mixing, purchasers have had to pay previous prices.
The advance established on bonded wheat about the close of
the preceding week has been maintained, but the high rates
demanded have checked speculation, and comparatively few
contracts have been closed, either as regards parcels on the
spot, or cargoes to arrive.
The averages rise so tardily, in consequence of the very
inferior quality of much of the new wheat, that it has become
questionable whether the duty will, for the present, fall below
13s. per qr., unless circumstances should occur to give a fresh
impetus to prices. The last weekly return for the kingdom
is 60s. Id. per qr., though moderately good qualities have for
some time been worth at least 70s. per qr. at the principal
consuming markets. It is not at all probable that holders of
wheat in boad here will enter for consumption unleis the
duty falls cobsiderably lower than it appears at present likely
to do, th chances being greatly in favour of higher prices
in the ring.
The ale
I(
of town-made flour has not been lively since our
last, but the previous value of the article has been steadily
supported. Ship flour has been more pressingly offered, and
in some cases Norfolk household and similar marks have been,
sold at prices which would not have been accepted the pre-
ceding week. Canada flour has also moved off somewhat
tardily at late rates ; nor has there been much doing in
United States and other sorts under lock.

Though the arrivals of barley have not been by any
means large, this grain has been rather difficult of disposal;
it has, therefore. been impossible to recover the decline of
Monday; indeed, for all but choice qualities, the rates then
current have been paid with considerable reluctance, and
present appearances indicate a further abatement.
The inquiry for malt has been of a retail character; but
the quantity of superior quality on the market being small,
the best sorts have brought quite as much money.
With slightly increased supplies of oats (25,256 quarters
having come to hand, including foreign, within the past
eight days) the upward movement in price has been
checked. It being the general opinion that rather a large
supply must be on passage from Ireland, which the pre-
vailing westerly wind may be expected to bring to hand,
the principal dealers have refused to purchase, and though
prices at least Is. per quarter below those at which
sales were made on Monday would have been ac-
cepted on Friday, factors were unable to make sales of any
importance. Meanwhile the stocks in the hands of the large
dealers have been reduced into a very narrow compass, and
their actual wants will soon oblige them to purchase more
extensively ; it may therefore be questioned whether the
value of this grain will give way much more. The duty
fell 53. per qr. on Thursday, and will be down another step
next week; this being, however, anticipated, it has not had
much influence on prices of bonded oats. Archangels have
been freely offered at 265., and other sorts at corresponding
rates.

There was not much passing in beans either on Wednesday
or Friday, but former terms were well maintained.
Peas of all kinds were scarce, and brought high price.
The duty on beans has for some time past been at Is. per
qr., and that on peas also declined to the minimum point on
Thursday last

THE

SPIRIT of the PUBLIC J OURNAL&

FROM THE MORNING PAPERS OF YESTERDAY.

CHRONICLE—It is of no use any longer trying to hope where
there is no hope. It would now be sheer trifling to affect to con.
ceal from ourselves the truth, that " nothing will be done." the
law of artificial famine is to take its course. The sliding-scale has
three months given to do its worst. Three months—three winter
months—of British scarcity and Irish famine, before the Govern-
ment will lift a little finger for prevention or relief AU the Ca
binet Councils of the past ten days, with their adjournments and
re-adjournments, have come to nothing ; and Cabinet Ministers are
quietly slipping out of town to enjoy the rustic o!ium cum dignitate
which has been so disagreeably disturbed. The exigencies of a
crisis the most alarming that has occurred- for a quarter of a cen-
tury, are gravely ignored, after protracted deliberation, by the
man who makes-believe to govern the empire. The country
is turned adrift, and left to the tender mercies of potato-plague
and averages. The 'amazement with which one contem-
plates the reckless and daring hardihood of this deci-
sion of Sir Robert Peel's, rejects, as totally inadequate,
all the ordinary language of mere political censure. Indignation
is, for the moment, lost in astonishment. We did not believe that
the wan lived, out of Bedlam, who would dare to assume the re..
sponsibility of three winter months of famine prices and prohibi-
tory duties. Least of all could we have imagined that Sir Robert
Peel— a statesman so nervously irritable at the bare mention of
" responsibility," and so thoroughly well cognisant of the nature
and power of those terrible realities with which his legislation has
brought us face to face—could be the man to charge himself with
this burden, That " Sir Robert Peel has a heart, after. all," we
did not take it on ourselves to affirm very positively ; but we cer.
tainly never supposed him to have those nerves of iron which he
will need between now and next February. We knew, of
course, that he would have some trouble with certain of
his colleagues; but the well understood relative posi-
tion of Premier and colleagues in the Peel Cabinet
left little to be apprehended on this score. We had
always considered that the egotism se conspicuous in the Pre-
mier's Parliamentary oratory was something more than a mere
piece of rhetorical bad taste —that it accurately indicated a real
domination of his mind and will over the second and third.rate
men with whom he has surrounded himself; and we made no
doubt of its being asserted to good purpose In a crisis so momentous.
Little as we were justified by experience in looking for a simple,
straightforward, and timely act of statesmanship from Sir Robert
Peel, we did not think it necessary, in this instance, to make ex-
perience the rule and measure of expectation. Exigencies so
novel and alarming would, we believed, suggest and enforce
new counsels. Necessity has no law ; and this seemed a
necessity strong enough to overpower even the law of
habit and character, and to extort wise and decided measures
from a Minister who never, in all his life before, did the
right thing at the right time. That Sir Robert Peel would venture
to disappoint a national presentiment so strong and general as that
which has pervaded this country during the past fortnight, and
which reiterated and protracted Cabinet meetings had raised into
a sort of certainty, we freely took for granted to be morally and
politically impossible. This strenuous inaction of the Govern-
ment is the more amazing, when it is remembered that not only
has nothing happened, since the first summons of a Cabinet
Council, tending to abate public and Ministerial anxieties, but
everything has contributed to their confirmation and increase.
The accounts from Ireland, with some few partial discrepancies,
have, in the main, been more and more gloomy and ominous. The
last intelligence is ever the worst. • The " enemy whose history
and habits are yet but imperfectly known"—and to whose ma'ig.
nant sway Sir Robert Peel has now made over that miserable coun.
try—has continued and extended its devastations. Every day cuts off
many Jays' food from four millions of the Irish people—accelerates,
by many days, the arrival of the last horrible reality.
And yet, knowing this—knowing this officially—the Prime Minister
of the empire, instead of instantly sweeping away his sliding-scale
and his shillings, and raising the siege of the averages, insults the
world with the promise (if we are to believe the announcement,
" by authority," of the Dublin Evening Mail) of "a commission
of intelligent and experienced officers to consider the measures
which it may be proper to take with a view to provide," &c.
" Experienced in what, we should like to know, are these officers
to be ? In checking potato rot, or in making the rotten potatoes
sound again ? "The selection of persons," we are coolly told,
"has occasioned some delay ;" the writer does not sate that the
potato rot is delayed in the meanwhile. But " the arrangements
are now nearly completed, and it is hoped that in a few days the com.
missioners will be able to commence the arduous and responsible
duties'' of improving the fastenings of the stable. door after the
steed is stolen. Meanwhile the same calamity is making fearfully
rapid strides in certain districts of this country. We shall pre-
sently have a little Ireland of our own in our southern counties,
Our readers will have already appreciated the signifi-
cance of the dismal fact, that the " enemy whose history
and habits are yet but imperfectly known," is committing
the moat deplorable ravages in the agricultural districts of
the south of England. Already the mischief done is enormous.

It is now for the people of Great Britain, from one end of the
country to the other, to pretest, in a tone which no Minister can
dare pretend not to hear, against the insane and criminal obduracy
of maintaining the prohibitory duties in the very face of famine.
The protest must be prompt, loud, unceasing, and unsparing. We
warn the country—though the warning is now superfluous—that
it will take a most determined effort to bring to his duty the
Minister who shamelessly abdicates the functions of Government,
after having distinctly acknowledged the urgency of the crisis call-
ing for their exercise, and who manifests a hardened indifference
to the reality of that " responsibility," the merest allusion to which
he affects to resent as an outrage.
TIMES.—We have recently had oecasion to remark, that the
annual supply of food in the world is so determined by the laws of
Providence, of nature, and of trade, that we are always dependent
on the products of the current year, and that a slight defalcation in
the harvests, or the failure of any one species of food, immediately
inflicts considerable and inevitable privations on a large portion of
mankind. The scarcity which at the present time threatens Europe
is not, perhaps, of so frightful a character as the famine sometimes
occasioned by the total failure of crops in particular districts, but
the evil is general and almost universal in extent, and no country
can expect to derive much assistance from any of its European
neighbours. To establish this fact, we have endeavoured to ascer-
tain from our own correspondents, and from other sources on which
implicit reliance may be placed, what are the real prospects of the
supply of corn in different countries; and we shall leave our
readers to draw the obvious inferences which are suggested by the
following statements. The principal countries of the west
and south of Europe are at no time exporters of
wheat. In France the export and import of corn is about
equally balanced in ordinary years; but wheat is not the cus.

tomary food ofthe French people, and the demand for it and for the

lower kinds of grain must be increased beyond the average, if not
beyond the supply, by the failure of the potato crop this year. The
harvest in France is, probably, not much below the average, but it
is insufficient to compensate for the destruction of other food. In
Spain and in Italy the harvest has been indifferent, and very little,
if any, corn can be exported from either country. The progress
of population i►► the Spanish peninsula for the last century has been
far more rapid than the extension of tillage or the improvement of
agriculture. The consequence is that Spain has comparatively
little agricultural produce to export; and her own colonies of
Cuba and Porto Rico now draw their supplies of food from the
United States. Throughout the Austrian dominions, with the
exception of Hungary, great privations will inevitably be felt.
The large stock of corn usually warehoused at Trieste for the pur.
poses of foreign trade has never been known to be so much reduced
as at the present moment. From Fiume we have received no
recent accounts, but that place is the sole por► of Hungary to the
west; much of the corn grown upon the plains of the Danube is
brought thither up the Save; and It is not unlikely that a supp:y
might be obtained from thence by foreign vessels, if measures have
not a'ready been taken by the Austrian Government to appropriate
it to the uses of the empire. But although the harvest of Hungary
is abundant, the surplus of that country will certainly not suffice
to satisfy the wants of el its neighbours. In the lower provinces
of the Danube and in Moldavia the scarcity is already great, espe-
cially in those districts which are within reach of water commu-
nication ; higher up the country the crops are reported to have
been better, but the means of transport are wanting. The pro-
vinces of Russia and Poland, which are usually the most fertile

wheat lands of Europe, are this year dependent on foreign
importation; and as a necessary consequence, the Prussian ports
of the Baltic, wbieh commonly export the produce of the
interior of Poland, of Western Russia, and in part of Sile-
sia, will be unable to furniish any considerable amount of corn to
the foreign market. Sweden and Norway do net once m five years
grow their whole consumption ; but it is a curious circumstance,
that in the midst of this sweeping calamity, which has impoverished
empires, and threatens to spread famine over so many parts of Eu-
rope, the little kindgom of Denmark has been blessed with a bar..
vest of singular abundance, and may export a quantity of corn,
large in proportion to its territory,though very small as a measure
of relief to the necessities of other countries. We turn then
with the deepest Interest from this dreary picture of European
agriculture to the boundless lands of America, and especially to the
corn• growers of the United States. There at least it is admitted
that the harvest has been excellent, and the crop of Indian corn
especially abundant. The potato disease has, we fear, shown itself
in New England and some of the northern States, as well as in
some of the British North American colonies; but the consequences
of this disaster are less formidable in America than in
Europe.• Let us, then, inquire what are, in a good year, the re.
sources of the United State for the supply of food ? The answer to
such an inquiry is a matter of great interest, not only as it affects
our present necessities, but with reference to the whole questiou of
the corn duties; and we have no hesitation in replying, upon the
authority of tables and statements of great minuteness and accu.
racy which are now before us, that the agricultural produce of the
United States available for the purposes of food in foreign markets
has been greatly exaggerated by the hopes and fears of contending
parties in this country. It is demonstrable that in the United
States, as well as in most other countries, the consumers of agricul.

tural produce increase more rapidly in numbers than the producers;
and that the progress of the production of wheat has not been more
rapid than that of the population. In 1 790 the population
of the Union was 3,929,323, the estimated produce
of an average crop of the wheat lands was 17 millions of bushels of
601 b., and the quantity of wheat exported was 4,750,000 bushels,
or 28 per cent, of the whole wheat crop. In 1840 (a year in
which the export was unusually large) the population of the Union
had risen to 17,068,666 ; the estimated produce of the wheat crop
was 80,000,000 bushels; the export was 11,300,000 bushels, or
14 per cent, of the whole wheat crop. The states of New England,
Maryland, and Virginia no longer produce wheat enough for their
own consumption ; and we are told by an able writer in the Phila-
delphia Commercial List for 1342, that—
" If we make a natural line of the Mississippi to the confluence
of the Ohio, and up this river to Pittsburg, and thence draw an
imaginary line north to Lake Erie, and continue it round the
northern and eastern frontiers of the United States, it will be
found that at this time the wheat raised in all this section of the
United States is about equal to what is consumed in it, and that the
whole surplus shipped from the United States to foreign countries,
including Canada, is, in act, produced in the states and territories
north and west of the Ohio river."

By calcifiations based upon the official returns made by the Mar.
shals in the United States in 1840, and taking into consideration
the constant progress of the population, it appears that the utmost
amount of wheat and wheaten flour which may by possibility be
exported from the United States from the present time to 1850,
with average harvests, will not exceed twelve millions of bushels
per annum.* The whole wheat produce of the country is con-
siderably below 100 millions of bushels. The greatest quantity
ever exported was in 1840, when it reached 1,720,860 bushels of
wheat, and 1,897,501 barrels of flour; but in 1837, when the
preceding harvest had been below the average, no less than
3.921,259,bu5he1s were imported into the Union from foreign
countries. If this be the whole available produce of the United
States, it is evident that the proportion of it which will reach the
English market is still more limited. The largest quantity ever
exported to England direct was 615,972 bushels of wheat and
620,919 barrels of flour in the year 1840 ; but the effect of the
Corn.laws has of course been to render this trade excessively
variable ; though for the last five years another branch of
the same trade, by the extort to the British North American
colonies, has been regular and considerable. But it must be
borne in mind, that under any circumstances almost all
the West Indian islands draw a large portion of their
supply of wheat, as well as of Indian corn, from the United States.
Our own islands take about 250,000 barrels of wheaten flour per
annum ; the Danish, 50,000 ; Hayti, 40,000 ; and Brazil more
than 200,000 barrels; and this is independent of a consumption of
about 364,000 barrels of Indian coin meal in the West Indies
I alone. It is true that we have here confined one observations to
the American wheat crops, and that in computing the supply of
food in the United States, the enormous production of Indian
corn is the most important element, and constitutes the bulk of
the food of the people. But to the people of England in ordinary
years the supply of wheat is the principal question. Indian corn
is little known in this country; and it never will be known,
except under a very extraordinary degree of pressure, as long as it
is subjected to the same duties which are levied on foreign barley,
and is therefore, for all practical purposes, a prohibited article,