The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1840-01-14 00:00:00

CONTEMPORARY PRESS.

THE REPEAL OF THE 43ORN LAWS.--COM-
• PENSATION TO THE LANDLORDS.
(From the Morning Herald)
The exceeding self-complacency with which the op-
ponents 'of the corn laws are in the habit of deciding
the question of compensation, to which, even they ad-
mit, a repeal of the corn laws would, inevitably, give
rise, is not, at times, unamusing. An ingenious even-
ing contemporary discusses the matter in the following
strain ;

" It is not the business of those who are opposed to the
felon law to demand its partial repeal. Founding on prin-
ciple, they should demand the total repeal, as an act of jus-
tice. If any persons, being advocates of the law, conic for-
ward and say, The abolition would inflict an injury on me ;
I gave £20,000 for an estate, relying on the corn law being
continued, which will not be worth above £12,000 if the law
be abolished ;' we are far from saying that such a case ought
not to be taken into consideration. If a farmer says he took
a lease for ten years in 1837, and gave 30s. an acre for the
land on the virtual pledge of the legislature that the corn law
should be continued, his case also may be deserving com-
pensation. We must, however, have the individual injustice
substantiated before giving redress.

This promise of " redress" must be, doubtless, ex-
ceedingly consolatory to the agricultural community.
The question may, however, suggest itself to sundry
farmers and landowners—" Whence are to be derived
the means of supplying the compensation so magnani-
mously guaranteed to us, in the event of abandon-
ing the corn laws ?" And, truly, the query is a co-
gent one ! The landowners of England have invested
in. the soil upwards of two thousand millions of mo-
ney ; while the amount of farming capital is computed
to exceed seven hundred and fifty millions. The amount
of capital embarked in trade is, on the other hand, less
than two hundred and fifty millions. These propor-
tions indicate but an indifferent prospect of compensa-
tion for landowners and farmers, _ should landowners
and farmers ever consent to a repeal of the corn laws.

THE CORN LAWS.
(From the Evening Mail)
We left off with the proposition that Ireland may be
made to yield from ten to thirty million's worth of ad-.
ditional agricultural produce yearly. There
.are in
Great Britain 34,254,000 statute acres of cultivated
land, Which so, far back as ism yielded an agricUltn-:
ral produce of the annual value of £150,000,000.
There are in Ireland 14,603,000 statute acres of culti-,
vated land, yielding; in 1835, an agricultural produce
of the annual value of £36,000,000.
So then, as to the extent cultivated in Great Britain
is to the produce yielded there, so ought the extent
cultivated in Ireland be to the produce yielded here,
and see what is the result.
As 34,254.000 acres : .E 156,000,000 :-14,603,000 acres : at 64,000,000
The result is simply this that Ireland which now
yields £36,000,000 worth of agricultural produce only
ought to yield at least £64,000,000 worth to be on a
par with what Great Britain was even so long back as
1810.

But, as has been seen, the increase in the amount o
agricultural productiveness in Great Britain since 1810
has been enormous. We have shown that less foreign
grain is now imported into the kingdom at large, than
in the period of ten years 'immediately preceding that
date; while the mouths to be supplied have increased
since then at the rate of one-and-a-halt per cent. per
annum. Between 1831 and 1835 the mean number
of consumers has been upwards of 25,000,000 ; in
1810 the number of consumers was less than 18,000,000;
whence, then, came the supplies for these seven mil-
lions of additional mouths ? Not from abroad ; for
from 1831 to 1835, we have actually been importing
less foreign grain than we did in 1810. No : these
supplies came from the better tilled farms of Great
Britain and Ireland; but how much more from those
of the former than from those of the latter, we have
no accurate means of determining., Let us, however,
say that each island supported its own additional popu-
lation by corresponding efforts in production, and the
£150,000.000, at which the annual value of agricultu-
ral produce in Great Britain was, estimated in 1810,
when the population of Great Britain was 12,000,000,
will Swell to £208,000,000 in 1835, when the popula-
tion had risen to, 17,000,000.
Arguing, then, that Ireland ought to have yielded as
'great an agricultural prOduce as great Britain did in
the same year in proportion to the extent of cultivated
land in each island, we have the result:—
As 34,254,000 acres: X 208,000,000 :--14,603,000 acres: '88,673,000.
That is to say, Ireland, to yield now as well as Great
Britain did in 1835, ought to yield annually about,
eighty-nine millions' worth pf agricultural produce, in.-
stead of the thirty-six millions' worth at which her
produce has been estimated. -Inother words, the agri-
cultural energies of the country are not yet developed.
All these calculations, in which for greater simplicity
we have adopted the round numbers, are grounded on
facts disclosed in the Appendix to the Third Repot t of
the Commissioners for Inquiry into the condition of
the poorer classes in Ireland, and in " Porter's Pro-
gress of the NatiOn :" facts which have never been
disputed, and which cannot be too prominently kept
before the observation of the Irish public. In the ap-
plication of them we claim no credit to ourselves. In-
deed, we but repeat the argument advanced on a part
of the same data lty the writer on the " Capabilities of
Ireland" in the*" Dublin University Magazine" for
Jan. 1837 ; and we cannot better follow up the pro-
gress we may have so been enabled to make in awak-
ening the Irish agriculturists and English manufactu-
rers to a sense of the benefits which both may derive
from a support of the corn laws, than by quoting the
views of that i writer as to the mode and means by
which these increased agricultural energies are to be
developed :
" If any reader be sceptical, we can only repeat, we have
as good land as the British ; we can afford to till it better ;
we ought therefore to have at least as good a crop. But we
have not half as good a crop in proportion to our capabilities ;
we therefore look to double our annual produce at least be-
fore we rest satisfied. How the improvement is to take place
is another subject of important speculation. In the first
place, any one looking at the. face of the country must see
.that immense quantities of arable land lie unproductive in
the nooks and corners of our misshapen enclosures ; that the
soil lost in ragged head-ridges, gripes, and bohereens is very
considerable; that thousands of acres of wet and rushy bet-
toms might easily be made. productive meadtiw land ; and
that almost universally* a vast improvement has still to take
place in all our implements of husbandry. Next, the intelli-
gent observer must be struck with the want of proper roads
for, the transport of manure and produce, but particularly
with the inaccessible condition of thousands of noble lime-
stone quarries, which only wait a practicable avenue through
which to pour fertility over whole parishes' and baronies.
Then, when our fences are-reduced to convenient forms—
when all the available surface of the land is cleared and
drained, and made accessible—when our mines of manure
are opened up, and all our mechanical aids of labour ready
to be put in operation—the question of the most profitable
rotation of crops, and the best description of seeds, will still
remain to exercise the ingenuity of the farmer."
Unquestionably we have on the average a better soil
than the English or Scotch—a sweeter, kindlier, and
more easily tilled soil. We have also a vastly greater
amount of available labour to bestow on it. We want,
then, nothing but a better system of farming to double
our produce at least—thereby enriching ourselves, and
keeping the manufacturers of the country in a state of
continuous prosperity. Even England might still
greatly increase her produce. On this subject hear
Mr. Porter :
" It would lead to a digression which might be considered
out of place in these pages, if any attempt were made to exa-
mine the question of agricultural distress, as to which so
much has been said year after year, during a very large por-
tion of the time in which the extension of tillage and the in-
crease of production, here described, have been going for-
ward ; but we may be allowed to remark, that the parties
who, during all that time, have embarked their capitals in
this branch of industry, must have been actuated by motives
altogether different from those which influence the rest of
mankind, if they have, year after year, been content to ac-
celerate their own ruin by increasing the extent of their ope-
rations. While the total number of families in Great Britain
has increased, between 1811 and 1831, from 2,544,215 to
3,414,175 or at the rate of 34 per cent., the number of fami-
lies employed in agriculture has increased only from 895,998
to 961,134, or at the rate of 7+ per cent. The increased pro-
duction which is thus seen to have been brought about by a
comparatively small addition of labour, has in a great degree
resulted from the employment of capital in improving the
soil, in draining and manuring, in throwing down a great
part of the fences with which our forefathers were accustomed
to divide their farms in small patches, by the use of improved
implements of husbandry, and above all, through the employ-
ment of a better system of cropping by rotation. Nor should
we omit to notice among the most effective causes of this im-
proved condition of agriculture, the help that has been bor-
rowed from men of science. In particular, the researches of
Davy, undertaken at the instance of the Board of Agticul-
tare, about the beginning of. the present century, may he
mentioned as having produced the happiest results, by show-
ing the various resources we can command, through the ap-
plication of chemical knowledge, for remedying the defects
' and, improving the natural capabilities of different soils." *
,
There is every reason to hope and to expect that the
improvements which of late years have been, begun in the
processes of husbandry, are very far from. having reached
their utmost limit. Even in England, where the advances
hitherto made have been so great as to place our farmers be-
fore those of many countries, much may yet be done by in-
troducing the profitable practices of some districts into the
remaining parts of the kingdom, and by the consolidation of
small holdings into farms of greater size, in the hands of men
possessed both of capital and intelligence, as well as by the
probable discovery of still superior methods -of culture,
through the labours of experiments and the researches of
men of science. It has been recently affirmed, that in Wales
the country does not produce half of what it is capable of
'producing ; and that if all England were as welt cultivated as
Northumberland'and Lincoln, it would produce more than
double the quantity that is now. obtained."
We say, then, food enough can be had, if the nation
will only insist on proper steps being taken to give se-
curity to the farmer. What are.these steps ? Simply,
these, to maintain the laws in general, and the corn
laws in particular. Make Ireland safe for good far-
mers as a home,
Do this, and we will have no more starving weavers
and England safe for them as a market.
---'
neglect it. and the empire goes to ruin.
* A most valuable work lately published by Chas. Knight.

the head of a victim of
UNTtnneAnszn &ram,: EFFECT
represented on the theatre at Berlin the
a drama recently
the tyrant of the piece was to be presentellito lnin in a dish,
on a table, and covered with a napkin,
were most ingeniously made for this awful the preparations
spectacle.. The
head was to be a real one, and the actor, who ~a
the part of the decapitated person, had to thruststo perform
i
through an aperture in the back.scene, and lay it in the s headdish,
painted so as to make a ghastly appearance. This was done,
the tyrant had raised the napkin, and the audience were all
becomingly horrified, when the .dead man's head replied to
the tirade which•his murderer was in the act of delivering by
a violent fit of sneezing, which at once turned the scene into
a ludicrous farce; and the house rang with laughter. Some
wag who had admission behind the scenes had sprinkled the
blood-stained dish with a quantity of snuff.
-- •