The Sun.
London, England, 1842-12-14 00:00:00

*tronbiZZittion

SUN OFFICE Three o'Cloch.

- -
It was observed by the Morning Chronicle
yesterday, which was heretofore an advocate for
a fixed duty on corn, and is now, we believe,
like the Examiner, a convert to the total repeal
of all duties, that " there are really no supporters
of the existing Corn-law. The question is now
not between the sliding. scale and a fixed duty,
but between absolute freedom and a fixed duty."
The business of all Repealers, therefore, is nar-
rowed to the one point of contending against a
fixed duty, and as there is a disposition in many
persons to believe that it would at present be
just and proper, as a safe means of conducting the
nation to a perfectly free trade, we shall state some
of the arguments which influence us in thinking
it ought not now to be adopted. We shall re-
serve Sir R. PEEL'S stringent arguments against
a fixed duty in general, till we learn on adequate
authority that he means to forfeit every claim to

public respect by adopting a nostrum, the fallacy
and folly of which HE has admirably exposed.

We must begin by clearing the ground of Mr
HUBBARD'S fallacy. That gentleman stated in
a pamphlet on the present Corn-law, that a duty
on corn would be paid by the importer, not
by the consumer, and would diminish his profit.
This opinion, which was developed and defended
L:EfRa To Nr ,oftofrvveeh
with much mercantile subtlety, was eagerly em
braced by Lord PA .
psup-
phlireadsetshe mandetainiesoorfiersecenciling his grandiloquent
tormadeit
with
his practice, and the intention of the Whig Ca-
binet to burden the most precious and important
trade of all with a permanent duty ofBs., amount-
ing to 18 per cent: on the probable average price
of wheat with a perfectly free trade. This opi-
nion we must try in the
first instance to refute.
It is perfectly clear that the consumer must,
in the long run, pay all the cost of the bread he
eats, including the ordinary and average rate of
profit of all the traders and capitalists in any way
instrumental in supplying him. On that condi-
tion alone is he or can he be supplied. In a
fixed and regular trade, the importer will not be
contented with a less rate of profit than other
capitalists; he could Only get an equal rate of
profit and pay the duty, provided the difference
in the price of corn abroad and at home was
sufficient to yield him that profit, and also pay
the duty. Such has occasionally been the case
under the sliding scale, and if
......r. HUBBARD and
Lord PALMERSTON have drawn a general infer-
ence from that exception, and applied, as a rule,
the consequence of that law, to the corn-trade
at all times. It is certain that a free corn-
trade would have a perpetual tendency
to equalise the price of corn in this country and
other countries, plus the charge of conveyance
from one to the other. If there were no other
difference in price than this cost of the convey-
ance, a fixed duty would be, and must be, paid by ,
the consumer, to enable the importer to realise a
remuneration.

No principle has in modern times been more
insisted on, and more clearly developed, as the
foundation of the theory of rent, than that the
cost, however high, of the very dearest portion
of the necessary supply of food determines
the price of the. whole. There cannot be two
prices for corn df equal goodness in the same
market. This principle is applicable to corn im-

ported as well as corn grown at home, and the
price of all corn here must rise to that level which
pays the expense of importing corn and the
amount of the duty. That which is 'imported is
a park of the necessary supply. It neither could
nor would be imported unless the whole cost

were paid, and to assert that the importer pays
the duty is tantamount to asserting that the
farmer pays the profit he makes on home-grown

corn.

wofuaathatsrnotte l'
; imported, equal
If, indeedrvrheat be 735. here, and 455. at Ham-
burgh,the cost of bringing-it hither 10s., and the
importer lucky enough to introduce it under the
sliding scale at ls. duty, he would gain 17s. per
q
if, at the same time, from the operation
scale, no nations had prepared corn to be
and all the supply we could obtain
need, the price would con-
tinue far higher than paid the cost of im-
porting p
e corn,rati
n 0 and
during
u ri n
gin that case a duty might
several years of the
o
sliding scale. If, however, the average price of
wheat here was 50s. and 455. at Hamburgh, the
expense ofimportation 10s., and the fixed duty
Ss., then it is clear that before wheat could be
imported from
Hamburgh, the price must rise
here on all wheat to Gas, or 045., that being the
sum by which alone
needed and imported
supply. Soinething like
that might happen we mild obtain the last
under a fixed duty. It seems
to us a perfect fallacy, therefore, to infer,
because the importer might have been enabled,
from the great difference in price, to pay the
duty under a sliding
trade, that he would also pay it under a fixed
duty and a regular scale and an interrupted
an
d permanent trade. We
should hope that we have sufficiently exposed
the fallacy so unadvisedly adopted by Lord Yen- 1
MERSTON, that we shall hear no more of it.
We purposely pass
over the great injury which
a duty of 18 per cent, on corn, would inflict on
our manufacturers, exposed as they now are to
keen competition in all the markets of the world,
on our trade, and—through our trade and manu-
facturers—would inflict on the agriculturists—to
consider its immediate effects on the latter.
We uite agree with thelfollowing remarks of
Mr. GREG :
The existing Corn-laws profess to secure a certain

price to the farmer for his wheat. On this price the
landlords—the authors of these enactments—calculate
and fix their rents ; and on this price the farmers
make their calculations, and contract to pay those
rents. But it turns out that the Corn- laws do not
ensure this price. The rents have been adjusted on a
fallacious supposition : the two contracting parties,
therefore, cannot both be satisfied, and the weakest
goes to the wall. The landlord exacts his rent, and
the farmer is ruined.

Mr. GREG confirms his statement by a succinct
history of the objects and effects of the Corn-
laws of 1815, 1822, 1828, and 1842, and concludes
" that the Corn-laws induced the farmer to con-
tract to pay rents which, except in years of
scarcity, the price of wheat will not enable him
to pay." Now the effect of a duty for revenue
being the same as a duty for protection, the far-
mer will be as much deluded by such a duty as
by the existing duty, and will in consequence
promise to pay a higher rent than he will be
enabled to pay. Mr. GREG proceeds to show
that home consumption will prevent the farmer
from realising the price he anticipates from the
law :

By dint of looking always at the intention, and
never at the operation, of legislative measures, a
great number of our farmers have come to believe,
that low prices are the effect of foreign competition,
and that high prices are the consequence of that com-
petition being shut out. Now, how stands the fact ?
Why, that it is impossible to point to a single year of
low prices, in which there was any perceptible import
of foreign produce; or to a single year of great
foreign importation, which was not also a year of
high prices. The years 1834, 1835, and 1836, were
years of low prices, and of great distress and discon-
tent among farmers, the average of wheat being
under 455. a quarter ; yet the import of foreign wheat
was only 122,175 quarters. The years 1838, 1839,
and 1840, were years of high prices, and compara-
tively of farming prosperity, the average of wheat
being 675. 2d.; yet in those years we imported the
enormous quantity of 7,858,500 quarters. Of this
we say nothing more at present than that it undoubt-
edly establishes the fact, that low prices of wheat in
England are not, and have never been, the effect of fo-
reign competition. For five months at the close of
1835, and the commencement of 1836, the price of
wheat ranged under 365. a quarter; at which price
no foreign wheat could have been imported from any
country in the world, even had the corn trade been
perfectly free, instead of being burdened as it was
with a duty of 50s. a quarter. And in 1839, in spite
of an importation of 2,681,400 quarters, prices never
ranged so tow as 665., and averaged above 70s. The
fact beyond all question is this—and it should be im-
moveably rooted in the understanding of every farmer
.--that low prices are owing to abundant harvests, and
not to the admission of foreign corn; and that high
prices are owing to defective harvests, and not to the
exclusion of foreign corn ;—since in the former case it
is never admitted, and in the latter case it is never
excluded.

Now let us ;apply these principles to the pro-
posed fixed duty. At present the farmers ge-
nert,lly are pledged to the high rents they have
been induced to promise by the law. Those
rents are paid not only on the corn and meat
they consume in their own family, but on all
that is consumed by their labourers and by the
poor in the workhouse, and on all that is con-
sumed by the animals necessary to carry on culti-
vation. The proposed duty is expressly to keep
up those rents to a certain degree. At the same
time the farmers are called on to lay out a great
deal of additional capital in extending cultivation.
Every shilling they may so lay out will pay the
higher rent. The more they lay out the more
corn they will grow, and the more certainly will
the price fall to its natural level. They
never can recover with a fixed duty the sums they
are asked to lay out. Just now, of all times then,
when so much is to be done to the soil, a fixed
duty, enhancing all present expenses, which
could not secure a future remuneration, would be
most injurious to the farmers. Before they can
lay out their capital with advantage, certain of a
future remuneration, all their burdens and ex-
penses, such as the price of seed, poor-rates,
wages, and rent, must be reduced to the lowest
possible figure. The design of the fixed duty is
to prevent that, and therefore to prevent the
future'. prosperity of the cultivators of the soil.
Such a consequence is influential enough to
make us say that now, in particular, a fixed
duty, however small, ought not to be imposed.
We shall probably consider,some other bearings
of the proposed duty hereafter.

It is not often that we feel culled upon to
sound the praises of Sir ROBERT PEEL, his pre-
cious Income-tax having by no means strongly
prepossessed us in his favour; we must, how-
ever, in common fairness observe, that he has
shown much good sense and liberality in the
conduct he has pursued relative to the national
statues voted last session by Parliament to
the memory of three illustrious Naval Heroes,
recently deceased. We are told that he
has confided the execution of these sta-
tues to three sculptors from the capitals of the
three kingdoms; that Mr. MACDOWALL, of
Margaret-street, Cavendish-square, has been
selected by him to model that of Lord Ex-
MOUTH; Mr. STEELE, of Edinburgh, that of
Lord DE SAUMAREZ ; and Mr. KIRKE, of Dub-
lin, that of Sir SIDNEY SMITH. We understand,
moreover, that the Right Hon. Baronet " has
announced his desire to discontinue the old
practice- of giving a monopoly of all great orders
to artists of great name, and to make the patron-
age of this kind at the disposal of Government
available for bringing forward men whose fame
has not yet risen to a point commensurate with
their genius." In coming to this determination
Sir ROBERT PEEL has acted with not less judg-
ment than liberality. It is high time that mo-
nopoly should be put an end to in the Fine Arts,
as well as in other.matters ; and that struggling
genius should have a reasonable opportunity
allowed it for the development of its powers.
Why should the lucky Few only bask
in the snug, warm sunshine of Government pa-
tronage; and the ill-starred Many be left to
wither in the " cold shade " of neglect and ob-
scurity ? The temper of the times demands a
totally different course of action. It demands
the throwing down of all those barriers which
have hitherto obstructed the road of the un-
befriended artist to fame ; that a clear stage and
no favour should be allowed to every one who
enters into the arena of competition ; and that
genuine, undoubted merit should be promptly
and spontaneously recognized, whether it be
displayed by an R. A., or by one who can boast
of no such distinction. Monopoly and Favour-
itism are the two great malign influences under
which this country has laboured for years, but
we are now fully awake to their injurious cha-
racter; the mischiefs they have wrought have
come home More or less to us ail ; and not a
week passes but John Bull evinces more strongly
than ever his growing determination to shake off
the oppressive burdens. Give fair play to genius;
and there will be no want of artists capable of
realising our most sanguine expectations; but
hitherto, the energies of hundreds of gifted spirits
have been cramped, subdued, and frozen, from
the humiliating conviction--founded on rational
grounds—that toil, struggle, aspire as they may,
there is but a slender chance of their win-
ning renown in the world's eye, unless
Luck, in the shape of an influential pa-
tron, steps in to befriend them. Had
it not been for Monopoly and Favouritism, we
should now have possessed a National Gallery
worthy of an opulent and enlightened kingdom,
instead of that mean, discreditable heap of lit-
tleness which affronts the eye of taste in
Trafalgar-square, and which resembles nothing
so much as one of those fine, fillagree castles
which we sometimes see stuck upon the snowy
surface of a Twelfth-Cake.

The insurrection at Barcelona, though speedily
put down by the energy of ESPARTERO, begins
to excite feelings of rather an unpleasant cha-
racter among our neighbours across the Channel.
France, though she has inflicted so many
evils on Spain, still considers that un-
fortunate country under her especial protec-
tion, and is jealous of any other Power, but
above all of England, interfering with the Go-
vernment of the QUEEN. During the Carlist
war, though pledged with England to support her
against the intruder, the French Government )
showed great reluctance in the cause, even at first;
and latterly rather aided than opposed Don
CARLOS, with a view, as some assert, of making
terms with the party most hostile to England.