The Sun.
London, England, 1845-11-04 00:00:00

HUMAN FOOD.

The world has seldom exhibited a more strange and
startling contrast than that which now presents itself be-
tween the intemperate pursuit of artificial wealth and the
stern incurable deficiency of the most essential products of
nature. If any one should come amongst us unprepared by
the renown of this great country for the astonishing spec-
tacle of human activity which it presents, he would ask with
a sort of wondering fear for the meaning and the purpose of
this infinite perturbation, this ceaseless running to and fro,
this'intricate and restless mechanism of fortune. He would
see fictitious holders of fictitious property wade and unmade
in an hour by the fluctuation of fictitious prices; and by the
side of this imaginary opulence, inflated by the premature
excesses of unreal luxury, he might watch the steady ap-
proach of want in its worst form, imposing on every man who
breathes the breath of life duties of self-denial and public
sympathy. At the very instant when the imagination of
the community is rapt in a sort of frenzy by the disco-
verers of some new mode of creating inexhaustible wealth,
we are reminded that these great magicians of the age are
powerless against the cankerworm or the palmerworm, which
are emphatically called Ged's army for the chastisement of
mankind; and whilst they are proclaiming their recent vic-
tory over space and time, a blast of wind or a grub may de-
ny subsistence to the world. Though we can pierce rocks
and pile embankments with a power and an art which will
leave imperishable traces on the globe, we cannot anticipate
by an hour the harvest of next year, we cannot augment the
actual supply of the primary articles of food. Be it more or
be it less, the population of the globe has its annual ration.
The present prosperous condition of the country, the de-
mand for labour, the high rate of wages, and the general
fever of activity which pervades every class of the commu-
nity, are circumstances which tend to augment rather than
to diminish the danger of scarcity ; for they manifestly in-
crease the amount of present consumption, they encourage
habits of indulgence, they drive off the day of privation and
self-denial. The time when a nation may have most need
to husband its resources may also happen, from causes quite
independent of the scarcity of food, to be that at which it is
most lavish of them. It has yet to learn the mockery of
wealth which cannot purchase sustenance far the population
of the world.

At the present time of year, in the months immediately
succeeding harvest -time, these forebodings may seem unne-
cessarily dark; for, except by a slight augmentation of price,
no real pressure is felt in the provision market. But we hope
the country will learn in time that these cautions and this
augmentation of price are the checks which can alone mode-
rate the evil hereafter. 'We are under no anxiety for the
supply of food in the second er third month of the year, but
our anxiety and our foresight ought already to embrace the
probable condition of Europe in the eleventh and twelfth
months. If it be necessary to support the population of any
given country or of all the countries of Europe upon eight or
ten-twelfths of their ordinary quantity of nourishment, it is
evident that the more equally the privation is distributed
over the whole year, the less severely will it be felt at the
end of it. The obvious course is, therefore, to endeavour at
once to devise the best modes of economising the supply of
food we possess, more especially by the introduction of bread
stuffs which may be usefully and safely combined with the
best kinds of grain and flour. For example, the farina of the
potato may be prepared with complete success even from the
diseased tubercles of the potato plant; and Indian corn,
which even now may be imported at a very low duty, is cer-
tainly the best substitute for wheaten flour, especially when
mixed with it in proper proportions.
In ordinary years it may be assumed as a general truth
that there is no excess of food produced on the globe. With
the exception of wine, there is no article of very extensive
consumption for the purposes of sustenance of which the
annual store exceeds the demand ; and, with reference to the
principal object of vegetable diet, a very slight deficiency is
inlmediately felt, because it must be supplied, as far as pos-
sible, out of the current year. The failure of the potato crop
in most of the northern provinces of the continent, and more
recently in so many parts of the United Kingdom, is, how-
ever, no slight deficiency. The potato is the lowest and
cheapest article of human food; and the difficulty of provid-
ing food by some means or another for the populations thus
deprived of their habitual subsistence, is increased by the cir-
cumstance that the substituted food must be, for the most part,
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 areseeking
to preserve the supply of the 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; Sand,
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.