The Sun.
London, England, 1845-11-03 00:00:00

of a higher and more costly description than that which it re•
places. But in the great corn-growing countries the scarcity
seems already to be felt with equal, if not greater,
intensity. In Lithuania, in the Ukraine, and in the Baltic
provinces, bands of famishing peasants are said to scour the
country and force the barns in which their landlords are seeking
to preserve the supply ofthe coming year; and the Russian Go-
vernment is accused, upon authority which we cannot discredit,
of the most inconceivable hardness and indifference to the
fate of this wretched population. But under any circum-
stances it is inevitable that the poorest countries must suffer
most from such a trial. Their primitive agriculture is less
able to resist the inclemency of a bad season, The want of
means of transport prevents the distribution of food. All
supplies from foreign markets are shut out; and even their
own growth is drawn to better markets abroad. Their habi-
tual and entire reliance on their own produce for their total
subsistence is now their total ruin. The habitual abste-
miousness which their poverty imposes on them is their only
advantage. In all these respects our position is incom-
parably superior to that of any other country; [and,
though the evil may exist here as well as abroad, we are
far better provided with the means of palliating it. In
spite, or rather in consequence, of the inferiority of climate,
the agriculture of England and Scotland leaves less to the
accidents of weather than that of regions 'more favoured by
the sun, and in point of fact, we believe it will be found that
we have suffered less by this season than any other people of
Europe. Then we have the greatest imaginable facilities of
transport, and of exchange. Already orders for food have
been sent within the last few weeks to every part of the
globe; and we have no doubt, assuming that the laws regu-
lating the importation of grain have been meanwhile adapted
to the wants of the people, that the supply at the present
prices will be abundant.
The Irish peasant starves because his whole subsistence
depends on the produce of his own patch of ground, and that
failing he has nothing to offer in exchange for the necessaries
of life elsewhere. The price of these articles is, so to speak,
indifferent to him who has nothing. He lives upon what
he possesses or he remains destitute. The condition of
many of the corn-growing States of Europe, as,
for instance, the western provinces of Russia and Poland,
is precisely the same as that of the Irish peasant. In
losing their crops, or even that portion of their crops
which is destined to support their own labouring population,
they lose at once their food and their wealth, and the result to
them is not only scarcity but famine. In England, on the
contrary, the laws of commerce operating fairly on our rela-
tions with the various producing countries of ;the globe, will
preserve us from this horrible affliction. " Never since I have
known England," said Mr. Burke after the bad harvest of
1795, " have I known more than a comparative scarcity ;"
but, added that great writer with a solemnity not inappro-
priate either to that or to the present occasion—
" We, the people, ought to be made sensible that it is not
in breaking the laws of commerce, which are the laws of
nature, and consequently the laws of God, that we are to place
our hope of softening the Divine displeasure to remove any
calamity under which we suffer or which hangs over us."
Such a calamity calls for public wisdom and public virtue;
but before the country can be prepared for the efforts it may
be called upon to make—and which it will make nobly when-
ever they are required of it—we must be rid of the tricks of
gamblers and the dreams of dupes, and the fabric of insane
speculation must collapse and shrivel into the nothing from
which it rose.—Times.

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