The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1850-05-14 00:00:00

TO CORRESPONDENTS.

•
A correspondent states that a paragraph has been going the
rounds of the press, stating that the Albert Gallatin made her
outward passage in nineteen days, and expresses his surprise
that her arrival out is not corroborated by the news per
• steamer ye,terday, although that would allow her thirty-four
days for the passage.
We are unable to attend satisfactorily to several communica_
Lions received yesterday, but they shall have our attention
next week.
A landlord cannot be considered at all responsible for the acts
of his tenant.
It appears that there was no truth in the report of a contem-
porary. that a petition relative to Convocation was placed at
the Constitutional Office for signature.

TUESDAY MORNING. MAY 14, 1850.

'The free trade organs have been, of late, at great

pains to convince us that the grain markets abroad
bad reached the minimum at which shipments
would he made to Great Britain ; and they are just
flattering themselves upon their correctness, a
slight reaction having taken place during the past
fortnight. Men of experience in the trade, how-
ever—such men, for example, as Mr. G. Sandars
and his Stettin correspondents—have maintained,
on the contrary, and still contend, that as yet the
Teal price at which the surplus of foreign countries
would cease to come here had to be discovered;
and that the experience of past years afforded no
data upon which to form a judgment. With a
scale of duties in this country which only occasion-
ally permitted holders an opportunity of supplying
us at a profit, and that at a short notice, stocks at
the various foreign ports were geoerally only suffi-
cient to serve for distribution coastwise, or for
chance shipments to supply deficiencies in neutral
markets ; and cultivation in the interior was limited
to borne wants. But a totally altered state of
things has now arisen. The opening of the British
market at a nominal duty has already stimulated,
and will, more and more, stimulate the exertions of
the foreign farmer, and the prices at which imports
will come forward will no longer be regulated by

those which temporarily rule at the ports, but those
at which grain can be raised in the interior, and
forwarded for shipment. On this point we have as
yet very trifling evidence to give.
It is certain, however, that the calculations made
hitherto have been very unsatisfactory and incor-
rect. Thus, Mr. Jacob, in his report of 1826,
'stated the average price of Wheat at Vi arsaw at
28s. per quarter. and the internal transport and
charges upon it 125., making it cost 40s. free on
board at .Dantzic. Mr. Mae&loch adds to this
price 12s. as the Cherges to a British port, making
total cost of 525. as the lowest at which Dantzic
wheat eonid be sald in L ,radon. The 12s. charges
from'Dentzic form an ahsurdly exaggerated esti.
mate, when it is considered that the present freight
from that port, to Liverpool is only about 3s. 6d.
per quarter; and that it is less to a port on the
•. east coast.. The 12s. for interior charges we con-
sider also exaggerated. Another authority, Mr.
Grade of Daetzee furnished the agricultural com-
mittee of Ib3l with a table, which gave the average
price of wheat at Dantzic in the twenty years
ending 1819 at 575. Bd. per quarter ! But it is to
. be remarked, that included in these twenty years
were the famine years of ISCO and 1801 ; and that
during sixteen of them continental agriculture was
well nigh ruined by the wars, in which every nation
was successively plunged. The average of the next
eleven years (of peace) up to 1841 was greatly re-
duced (being 375. 11d.), and would have been still
further reduced had those from 1838 to 1841 been
omitted. Mr.Muculloch remarks that in these eleven
years the average price adding 10d.lor shipping
charges would have been 38s. 9d., free on board at
Dantzic, and that it could nut have been delivered,
allowing 12s. or 13s. for its importation and delivery
to the millers in London for less than 51s. to 525.
per yarter, independent of duty. This price, how-
ever, he reminds us, would only rule during periods
when no considerable exportation was taking place.
The prices "represent only average years; and when-
ever there is any unusual demand for corn, or when
from 200,000 to 300,000 are wanted for this country,
• the price immediately rises to from 455. to 50s. a
quarter and upwards"—tnind free on board at
Dantzic. Twelve or thirteen shillings more is, ac-
cording to his showing, to he added for transport
and delivery to the consumer here, making the
cost, say 625. per quarter.
• Now this is one of the boasted authorities of the
writers and speakers on Free Trade. Mr. Macul-
loch's statistics have been crammed down the
farmer's throat again and again, as infallible
truths. Let us therefore test his accuracy. A
demand for -two hundred to three hundred thousand
quarters for this country was to raise the price at
which Dantzic wheat could be delivered in the
• London markets to about 625. shillings per quar-
ter. The actual price, however, of this wheat on

Monday, May 6th, in the London market, was
445. to 465.; being an average of 17s. per quarter,
or twenty seven per cent. under the calculation of
the great free trade authority. And this too was
the case, although in the twelve months previously
we had taken from Dantzic, and from other ports
firi the North of Europe, a demand in which would
affect prices in Dantzic, nearer a million and a half
than two or three hundred thousand quarters !
•
But let us pursue the data given us by our
ataticians a little further. In 1835 Mr. Maculloch,
gives us the lowest price at Danzic, 218. Old.; the
highest '26s. 3d ; and the average 235. Bd. This
Was a year in which scarcely any wheat was imported
into this country ; and the quotation tends to shew
how far the foreigner will go in the process of reduc-
tion, in order to meet prices in the British market.
itacording to the evidence given by Mr. Jacob, in
his report, 12s. is the cost of conveyance from
Warsaw; of waste on the journey, of drying, and
of putting free on board at Dantzic, deducting these
charges, the cost of the wheat at Warsaw would be,
in 1835, 11s. Bd. Allow for carriage from interior,
commission, profit, &c.. and ten shillings per quar-
ter would, in that year, be the extreme amount netted
by the Russian grower !. We cannot find either
that he was ruined by this low price, and that it
• was to him an exceptional one, for he had sold at
an average 0f.275. 6d. in Danzic, equal to 15s. Gd.
in Warsaw, in 1834; at 30s. 7d. in Dantzic, equal
in Warsaw to 18s. 7d. in 1833 ; and in 1836, after
his sorry success in the preceding year, he realized,
in Dantzic, 28s. 11d., or in Warsaw 16s. 11d. Nor
do we imagine that a permanent range of prices at
this level would throw the land of Russia out of
' tillage, or that the real cultivator has ever been
permitted to receive much higher prices. The grain
• merchants on the continent, and the superior owners
. of the soil, are not so liberal to the poor serfs, who
toil for their joint profit. The instances are rare
in which one of these owns a bushel, and realizes
anything approaching the prices at the ports, where
the stocks have hitherto been exclusively held by
capitalists seeking to catch opportunities of large
profits upon their investments.
By a return of the prices of wheat during the
:years 1844 to 1849. which has just been furnished
to the House of -Commons, on the motion of Mr.
•Slaney, one of the members for Shrewsbury, we
find that in other markets similarly low prices have
been occasionally submitted to by the foreign ex-
porter. Thus, the minimum price in 1844 was, at
Odessa, 17s. 6d. ; at Dantzic itself, 16s. Gd. !
' (what was left for the poor serf then ?)—Konigs-
berg, 215.; Hamburg, 18s. 7d, ; Trieste, 9s. 31-d. !!
and New Orleans, 17s. We have not heard, never-
theless, that these countries have ceased to grow
wheat.

We attach, therefore, no importance whatever to
past quotations at any European port, as affording
a criterion of the prices at which we may, under
our present policy, expect to receive supplies from
the interior; and the same will ultimately he the
case with respect to the rates at which we shall be
supplied from the United States and Canada. At
present the prices of these countries rule higher
than in our own, in part owing to the increased
consumption there, caused by the
in measure,
emigra-
tion of the past few years, and, some
from capital and labour being withdrawn from the
cultivation of the soil to be embarked in the new
dorada which has sprung up on the shores of the
Pacific. But when the British and European capi-
tal and agricultural experience, at present proceed-
ing in such abundance from Europe, shall have
been placed in active operation upon the shores of
the great lakes and rivers of the fertile West,
nothing can arrest the influx of their produce to
our markets, at prices ruinous to the British grower.
With a virgin soil of inexhaustible fertility, requir-
ing no manure, and the fee simple of which can be
purchased for a less amount per acre than the rent
of a poor farm in this country,—with no internal
taxation, no tithes, no poor rates, and no highway
rates to pay, and with rivers, canals, and railways
to bring down produce to the coast,--can we doubt
that the American farmer would be enabled, in
' • csirdigary. years, to afford a surplus for the popula-