The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1849-09-18 00:00:00

settlers will be ruined for want of labour ; the labourers
will be starving for want of work."

Th;s is undoubtedly a singular phenomenon.
Yet it is capable of explanation. This glaring evil
is inflicted upon our colonists, in order to provide
a field for the pet experiment of our Whig empirics
in the treatment of criminals, or—we beg pardon—
in " criminal reformation." The honest yeomanry
of Great Britain are thrown for support upon the
streets of Sydney, Port Philip, and other towns,
that the young thieves of Parkhurst and Milbank
may be planted as Arcadian shepherds amongst
the graziers of the interior districts. 'We quote
the explanation of the phenomenon from the con-
cluding remarks of our Sydney contemporary :

" But the colonists will naturally enquire, have the
Government done all they could to avert these conse-
quences ? Nay, are they free from the responsibility of
having been accessary to the breach of contract ? Let
Sir Charles Fitzroy give the answer. Speaking of a widely
different class of immigrants—of immigrants whose crimes
have banished them from their native shores, and who
come to ours bound with felon's fetters, and branded with
the felon's infamy, His Excellency proclaims the decree—
' They will not be landed in Sydney, but receive their
tickets for the remote districts of the colony.'
" Whatever causes may have operated heretofore to
deter the free immigrants from accepting employments in
the remote districts, here is a cause quite sufficient to
account for and justify their repugnance hereafter. Sir
Charles has hermetically sealed our sheepwalks against
untainted shepherds. He has put the finishing stroke to
that series of disasters of which we have long been appre-
hensive, and of which we now behold the commencement.
By proclaiming the dispersion of the cc•nvicts, he has
ratified and perpetuated the non-dispersion of the immi-
grants."

THE Morning Herald last week had the fol-
lowing
"The condition of England is daily made more appa-
rent. A good harvest is not now the boon that it was at
one period of her history. Dearth and dearness, a plen-
tiful harvest, and a plethora of penury, now act similarly
here. Legislation on the free-trade system has performed
its work. Goo° or bad, well or ill, as to our productive
agricultural resources, the results are still the same."

The first remark of our contemporary is partly
correct. A good harvest is not a boon to Britain
to the same extent that it formerly was; yet it is a
boon notwithstanding. The farmer no longer gets
for his good harvest the same remunerating prices
which he got in the days of protection. But he has
more to sell at the low price which foreign compe-
tition has established. His increased quantity
of grain fills the place of a portion of the
foreign supply which would otherwise come in ;
and the money receipts of the farmer arc un-
doubtedly greater than with a short crop, the
enhancement of the price of which is prevented by
the foreign supply which is always available.
The second portion of our contemporary's para-
graph,—" Dearth and dearness, a plentiful harvest,
and a plethora of penury, now act similarly here,"
—is simply incorrect. It is inconsistent, moreover,
with the preceding portion of the paragraph, which
presupposes that dearth does not imply dearness—
remunerative price for the farmer. What " a plen-
tiful harvest and a plethora of penury" have to do
with each other, either as antagonistic or coinciding
states, we are at a loss to know. This, however, is
true, that a deficient and plentiful harvest do not
act similarly. A deficient harvest is followed by a
drain of money, to pay foq increased importations of
food, a disordered and decreased supply of cur-
rency. commercial depression, deficient home con-
sumption of agricultural products, bankruptcies,
and industrial prostration. A plentiful harvest
brings with it none of these evils. It brings both
to the agriculturists and the community less of
good; but it wards off a vast amount of calamity.