The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1853-08-09 00:00:00

TILE CYCLE OF THE WEATHER,

price of wheat the undeni-
official do

WITH respect to the
,ble criterion is the

,ost ordinary capacity," without any gloss, can
mderstand the weekly averages, by the imperial
-r, from the Government Gazette—viz., on
Friday, July 22, 1853, wheat was 41s. per quarter
on Friday, July 23, 1552, wheat was 495. Bd. ;
last week, 51s. 10d. per quarter, being a difference,
under the Free-trade system, against the Free-
trade "loafer," of more than 10s. a quarter in one
year ! If any man ever placed any reliance upon
a fallacious political expedient, let him now reflect
that, in his passion for change and quackery, he

quart

of scarcity and
forgot the plimary causeof years
abundance. Such periods have existed from all
time, and will continue while the worldlasts.
Were it not that there is ONE regulation in these
affairs, infinitely superior to any Act of any Parlia-
ment, no factor or miller could govern the markets

so material for one -hour.
sited and blamed in any Go-

of the world in a matt
What is to be lal

nt, whether Free-
hat the

trade or Conservativee, is
3 never prepared for such emer-

- In this rather peculiar state of things, we find
that Count Abel Hucro—the most celebrated statis-
tician in France—a ceonservative, too, though the
near relative of Victor—has just published a work,
entitled " Memoire sur la Periode de Disette qui
Menace in France," which, in that country, has
created amongst politicians an immense sensation,
and deservedly so: for the count proves by hard,
dry, incontrovertible figures, that "periods of scar-
city and abundance of corn are of regular recur-
rence." To those periods of scarcity which he
.VOClfiern in past times, he traces local distress and
discontent, confusion and riot, and at times revolu-
tion ; and in these inferences it would be difficult—
nay, impossible—to overthrow Count Hugo's argu-
-
ment. Several of our own " strikes" are ascribable
to the same cause. But with regard to the Count's
discovery of tho" cycle or periods of scarcity and
abundance" he is entitled to no merit or credit
whatever. To the readers of this paper for several
years past the subject of this cycle must be fami-
liar ; and on the present occasion we need only ob-
serve that the editor of the Globe, who lately
brought the work of Count Hugo prominently un-
der notice in this country, on being reminded of the
fact, admitted the claim of one of our own country-
men to this important discovery. In fact, a " Pri
mary Cycle of the Weather" was communicated to
several authorities in this country in 1818 and 1819,
-and in 1821 was transmitted to, and acknowledged
by, the Academy of Sciences in Paris ; and, so far
as the periods of scarcity and abundance are con-
cerned, the work of Hugo is merely a re-production,
or rather an adumbration, of the discovery of
Maekenzie. It appears that Sir David Brewster
has been familiar with this system and wrote upon
it so long ago as 1818 ; and so lately as 1851 was
'furnished by the author with a diagram of the
cycle, retrospectively and prospectively, for a period
of two hundred and sixteen years ; by which the
corresponding periods of atmospheric extremes and
meteorological disturbance can be clearly and easily
traced by all those .who have the industry or the
inclination to study them.
With respect to the weather of the existing period
of the cycle, we are led to the conclusion that there
is little or no prospect of any improvement, so far
as regards the productions of the earth in this coun-
try, before the years 1855-56 ; and that, trying to
the agriculturist and grievous to the consumer as
the present year may prove, there is no appearance
whatever of next year being more propitious. The
wet weather of last winter and spring, and the com-:
pressed weather of the year, as deduced from the
cycle, are doing their allotted work, which was un-
equivocally announced more than two years ago"
throughout England and Scotland. The year 1855
will, m all probability, begin to restore the balance
of the existing extreme in the weather ' • and it only
remains for us to hope that, under Providence,
some means may be found in the interval to
gate those distresses of our people which such
periodsAinvariably superinduce.
ac-
The present subject seems to be far from an
ceptable one to those in " high quarters :" for it
would appear that Count Hugo s work has been
treated by the authorities in France with as marked
prejudice as Mackenzie's dis-
nooefelryeCt
has gnaiit
met r NNit h in this country. It would
seem to be purposely reserved for higher names and
more influential parties to develop the system. Be
that as it may, it can be safely predicated that the
order of the weather is .as regular and irreversible
as that of any other system in nature—that there
cannot be in existence such a thing as two cycles of
the seasons no more than there can be two suns in
the firmament—and. that all future observers must
on this subject have recourse to the only exposition
wohrii plWhaasrd produced, and which has been
f
ears before the public—
founded, moreover, as it is, upon more than sixty
ucsyeotf '4 etellty
years' daily and continuous registration of the wea-
ther in all its phases by one solitary hand.—Church
and State Gazette.

AUSTRIAN IzAzy.,--A letter from Milan of the 29th ult.,
in the Opinione of Turin, states that the. grape-blight
causes great uneasiness in Lombardy, arid that the scarcity
of corn is begining to be felt. All the labourers and work
men„being Austrian subjects, now in Switzerland, have
been ordered back to Lombardy. The same letter states that
one Beseti, a priest, and Nice-curate of the cathedra at
Milan, has absconded with a large sum of money he had
scraped together by playing upon the credulity of poor
people who resorted to his confessional, and from whom he
extorted their savings under various pretences.
SAD CABE AT CLINTON.—The Decatur (Marion county,
Ill.) Gazette of the 15th ult. has the following :—.Herr
Alexander . met with a most terrible check at Clinton,
Dewitt county, last week. In playing off the- hocus palls
, of the magic pistol, it proved to be loaded with balls,- and
the young man, George Smith, who was to stand up and
catch a fictitious ball in his mouth, received the contents
of the loaded pistalin his left side ; and from the character
"of the wound the probability is that it will 'terminate his
life, leaving a widowed mother, who was solely dependent
on him, inconsolable.
" SANDING" THE SUGAR : CONSCIENCE AT WPRIC
AMONGST Tin GROCERS.—The Washington County pot
says,-that a denizen of a certain village, with whom he is
acquainted, having had sanded sugar sold to him, inserted
in the weekly paper the following :—" Notice.-LI pur-
chased. of a grocer in this village, a quantity of sugar, from
which I obtained one pound of sand. If the rascal who
cheated me will send to my address seven pounds of good.
sugar, (scripture measure of restitution,) I will be satisfied ;
if not I shall expose him." On the following day nine
seven pound packages of sugar were left at his residence
from as many 'clitraent 40,1r3, emu §lippc.o.pa 11,14.4dttin