Star.
London, England, 1825-04-29 00:00:00

ie their accumnlations upon us. T. is was a circum-
stance which, for the sake of the country,. ought to be
guarded against. He 'would therefore take an early'
opportunity of submitting a proposition to the House, of
opening the stores here, and allowing the bonded cote t
come into the market; and after the admission of thellem.
Member, that 60s. would be a fair remuneration to thf
farmer, he thought that to this proposition there could
be no objection. The quantity of foreign corn at pre
sent in bond in this country was not so great as wise
imagined. It war estimated at 394,000 quarters of
wheat, and a very.senall quantity of other kinds of grain.
The proposal which he should hereafter make to the
House would be this—that the corn now in bond should
tome out at 70s. per quarter, Now the averaes it the end
of March, before this question began to be agitated, were
695. per quartet, and before this time would have reached'
:fats. per quarter, had it not been for its agitation.-4
He thought, that when the price of corn reached thee
sum, the House would not object to the admission of
bonded corn into the market, on payment of a duty of
Ss. or 10s. a quarter, especially as it would still leave
the owners of it liable to a very considerable loss. They
would not be at liberty to take it out'of bond all at
once; but as four months must elapse before the com-
mencement of next harvest, they would be at liberty to
take it cut in four quarterly portions, pi ovidei that if
the whole of it were not withdrawn by the 15th of next
August, the owners of it should be liable to all the con-
ditions upon which it was In iginally imported. He
thought that by such a system tl:e country would be
saved from that revulsion which might otherwise take
place, should a large importation of foreign corn take
place before the month cf August next ensuing. Ano-
ther advantage which would arise from it would: be
this—that much of the accumulated corn in this coup•
Xry would be disposed of before the arrival of the pe-
riod when the co n laws must come under the revision
'of Porli meat. He therefore thought that there could
be no rational obj 'ction to the details of the measure
which he had just mentioned; he should bring it for-'
ward on an early day, and he trusted that he should
then be able to convince the House thaia duty of Bs. or
10s. per quarter would be suffic'ent for the protection of
the interests of all pat ties concerned in this great question.
He could not refrain from dissenting from the language
which had fallen from his Hon. Friend the Member for
Suffolk, who had modestly asked, 14 Why not let well
alone ?"—(Hear. hear). The prevent law," his Hon.
Friend said, Ig worked well." He (Mr. Hinkisson) had
always understood that the great desideratum in this
important question was to provide, for a steadiness of
price, and to guard against excessive fluctuations in it
from the vicissitude, of trade. To say of a system
which affected the price of labour and the comforts of
the labourer, and which cramped the resources not
oaly of the manufacturer, but also of the farmer him-
self—to say of such a system that it [corked well, was
so completely refuted by the Report of 1821, that he
was surprised that any man should be bold enough oo
make it. What did they think of its working well in
1822, when corn was as low as 38s. per quarter?—
(Hear, hear)—when- Gentlemen came down to the
House nightly to talk of a national bankruptcy, and to
propose the most extraordinary changes in the currency
--(Hear)? At the present moment it might work well;
but had the Country Gentlemen forgotten their own
misfortunes, their former predictons of ruin to the
•country,—nap, their repeated ri quests that :his sys•
tent, which now worked so well, should be instantly
altered ?—(1-leto , hear). la two years, the price of
corn had varied horn 112 s. to 38s. per qr. Such a fluc-
tuation in price deprived the business of the farmer of all'
security, and converted it into a business of gambling.
The bubbles in the shares of mines could not produce
more gambling than that to which such fluctuations
must necessarily lead. The man who engaged in a
long lease, could not at present be aware of the Coo.
ditions upon which he was taking it, or of the results
which it might produce upon his family arrangements.
After illustrating this point at considerable length,
and shoving that it was a monstrous fallacy to suppose
that this system worked well, he proceeded to notice
an assertion which had been made in the-course of the
debate, that if the prices did fluctuate excessively,
they still produced a fair average price. A fair ave-
rage price ! He wondered what this phrase meant,
when applied to the provisions of the people. He
should like to know how any Gentleman, who was ac•
customed to eat a good dinner every day, would like
to be kept one week without food, and to be supplied
the next with twice as much as he wanted ? Would
he feel satisfied at being told that he had got a fair
average quantity of provisions for each day in the
two Weeks ?—(Hear, hear, and a laugh). He thought
that the Gentleman would not be satisfied—that he
would find such an averaging system to be neither
wholesome to his constitution, nor pleasant to his sto-
mach—(Heardrear). But it was said that to with-
draw our protection from the manufactures of the
country, and to continue it to the cern, was act-
ing. upon an erroneous system. He denied this
position entirely, and contended, that reasoning
from analogy in a case like the present,_ must
necessarily lead to an erroneous conclusion. —ln
the first place, we could manufacture cheaper than
every other country ; but every other country could
grow corn cheaper than we could. In the next, we ex-
ported thirty millions of cottons annually,and not thirty
bushels of corn. Then there was no accumulation of
cotton of the Continent, but there was an accumulation
of corn. When there was an accumulation of cotton,i
the manufacturer could contract his supply; but could'
a similar measure he adopted by the agriculturist, when
there was an accumulation of corn? Besides these
considerations, there were several others applying to
agriculture, and not to manufactures, which were suf-
ficient to convince any impartial man that the argument
founded upon this analogy was anything but logical-.
Hear, hear).—He was not one of those who wished to
lessen the rank which the agriculturists held in the
country.. To be admitted into that class, ought to be
the ambition of every man who by his industry and his
talents had acquired a fortune for his family; but it was
the duty of tl e House to watch the effect of the price
of labour on the advantages we at present possessed ;
and if Gentlemen reflected that it was to the capital
'and skill which our manufacturers posseised that the
agricultural interest owed its present prosperity, they
would see that if their capital add skill was removed
from us, the agriculturists, in the long run must be the
greatest sufferers. At this moment 'America, which
procured the raw material more easily than we did, •was
manufacturing cottons so cheaply os to be driving ours
out of the market. At this momentot merican cotton
goods were on their pos.srge to different ports in the
oleditetracivan, and were selling there at a price at
which we could not afErrol to furnish the rot to Orr, con-
• sumer. If capital lord n t a fair•tcmentr.rith foe, it