The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1850-03-12 00:00:00

TO CORRESPONDENTS.

The letter on our " parochial medical st

in our next.

CO r '

tibr.pool

nbarti.

TUESDAY MORNING, MARCH 12, 1850

OUR columns, this day, contain a brief report of
the proceedings at a meeting of the agriculturists
of Lancashire, held at Newton, on Thursday last,
for the purpose, as stated in the advertisement
calling it, of memorializing the High Sheriff to
of the county to represent to the
legislaturethe existence of severe agricultural distress,

convene a meetin

s a meeting for such
ost respectable one. The
speakers were intelligent and practical men; and
their observations upon the present position and
prospects of the class to which they belong derive
increased value from the calm, though earnest ton
in which they were uttered. We regret, however
the conclusion to which the
the resolution, move

and to pray for a remedy

an objec

it was

meeting came, in
I by Mr. Townley

er, to the effect that it was inadvisable to call
eeting upon the subject; and beg most
y to deny the grounds upon which that

a county in
emphaticall

gentleman attempted to justify the conclusion at

Which 1

e had arrived

Mr. Parker was afraid that, in

he event of thei

convening a county mee

le agriculturist

would he overwhelmed by an attendance from the
neighbouring districts favourable to free trad
measures; and probably ou

!d. Where, we
any class of men
Ted such mighty

'ask, would he find in this coun
upon whom free trade has
benefits ? Where

_ sperity which
it was to have created ? It is not to be discerned.
We have cheap bread, it is true ; but we have our
manufacturing operatives in weekly expectation of
a reduction of wages, proportionate with the re-
duction in the price of the loaf. We have had, in
the first year after the repeal of the corn laws,
almost a national bankruptcy, attended by a
destruction of capital to the large amount, as esti-

as the

mated by compete"
ling. We have, at the present moment, a large
number of our cotton mills working short time ;

£2 50,000,000 ster-

and the existence of severe suffering amongst
tradesmen and shopkeepers, caused by the dimi-
nution of the home consumption of manufactures,
and foreign produce, is almost universally admitted.
This is, we say emphatically, a time in which the
agriculturist might have safely entrusted his case to
the justice of his fellow-countrymen. He could,
with his present experience, defy the mendacious
spouters of the League to prove that he is the
extortioner that he was represented to be; and
that he could grow wheat at the price for which it
is produced by the foreigner. He might have held
up to the gaze of the world the lying prophecies of
those men, and shown unmistakeably that, whilst
their measures are bringing ruin upon the farmer,
the manufacturers are about to feel the recoil, and
to be submerged, in company with those whom
they sought to render the victims of their selfish-
ness.

The adoption of the bold step of throwing down
the gauntlet to their opponents would, we—are
satisfied, have won for the agriculturists of Lan-
cashire a large amount of sympathy and support
from the masses in our large towns, who are
already beginning to suspect that they have been
of late proceeding in a wrong direction. It is a
mistake on their part to imagine that they are a
weak and isolated class, and have interests distinct

from the great majority of the Brit,.
was such a wrong impression, as to their influence
and position, which led them to neglect invoking
the aid of the Conservatives of Liverpool, Man-
chester, and other towns, in the movement
they meditated. For our own community, we can

peoplt

wnich

answer that they would have joined heart and hand
in a demonstration, which would, perhaps, have
startled the world quite as much as the result of
the movement of the Protectionist party in parlia-
ment

Our agricultural friends might have
remembered that the colonial proprietor, the ship-
owner, the shipbuilder, the carpenter, and every
class connected with our mercantile marine, have
been plunged by free trade in suffering, if not
equal to that of the farmer, only less severe because
as yet they have not had time to experience its full
effect; and these c!asses only burn for an oppor-
tunity of speaking out upon the subject.

THE farmers of Scotland have always been
pointed to as examples for their English brethren to
follow. With their scientific culture, we were told
that they feared not foreign competition; and they
confirmed the assertion themselves by their almost
uniform return of free traders as the representa-
tives of county constituencies. From that country,
however, the cry for protectionist measures is just
now coming with an earnestness proportionate to
the greater means possessed by the Scotch farmers
of correctly guaging their position and prospects
under present prices. Unlike some of the farmers
of England, their Scottish neighbours have always
adopted an accurate system of keeping their ac-
counts. They have been enabled, besides, 'to em-
ploy sufficient capital upon their lands. They have
adopted the most approved modes of cultivation
and cropping; and to their case no further resource
is open. If at free trade prices they cannot live
now, and pay rents, there is nothing for them to
fall back upon except protection, or the abandon-
ment of the cultivation of whole districts, the soil
of which is confessedly of a quality which can
only be forced into productiveness by an outlay in
-manure, &c., which nothing save a high range of
prices will warrant.
These prices, however, are no longer within their
reach. In the Scotch counties, distant as some of
them are from the great markets of consumption,
the rates realized by the farmer are considerably
below those in our own country. On the 28th
ultimo, we find that a jury summoned by the
sheriffs for the purpose of fixing the Fiars prices
for the county of Fife, returned the following as
the averages of the various descriptions of agricul-
tural products :

White Wheat
Red Wheat..
Barley

£1 13 0} per quarter.
1 9 34 "
O 19 64 "
O 17 64 "
O 15 Ok "

Bere
Oats ...
Oatmeal
Ditto

1 311 per 280 lbs.
0 9 6 4.sths per 1121bs
1 1
01 24 per quarter.
1 0
2 4 24 "

Peas and Beans
Rye
Malt

Comparing these prices with those of previous
years, it is perfectly clear that the Scottish farmer
has had swept away by our free-trade policy, a sum
double or treble the rent at which he holds his land.
In 1843, the average prices in the county of Fife
were for white wheat £2 Bs. 7d., and for red
£2 Gs. 7:.1-d.; in 1844, the rates for white and red,
respectively, £2 Os. 101 d, and £1 18s. 10?-01. ;in
1845, £2 9s. 5:1-d., and £2 7s. 5.711.; in 1846.
£3 Is.ll d., and £2 175.1-. id.; inlS-17,1:2 125.111 d.,
and £2 9s. ; and in 1848, £2 3s. Bd., and £2 ls. Bd.
The average of the six years was £2 9s. 6d for white
wheat, and £2 6s. 9d. for red ; and the reduction
from the farmer's produce is, therefore, 16s. 6d. on
white wheat, and 17s. 6d. on red. Taking the pro-
duce of the soil, under the most perfect system of
cultivation, at the high scale of three quarters of
wheat to the statute acre, the loss, on the two
descriptions, is £2 lls. per acre !

What reduction of rent can place the farmer in
a position to live with these prices ? It was well
said by one of the speakers at the Newton meeting,
on Thursday last, that rent must be annihilated
altogether. This reduction in price is more than
double the average rental per acre of the United
Kingdom, and obviously places wheat cultivation
entirely beyond the reach of the British agricul-
turist. It cannot be urged either, that the case of
Fifeshire is an isolated one; for we find a similar
range of prices existing in Berwickshire, Dumbar-
tonshire, Paisley, Morayshire, Ayrshire, Dumfries-
shire, Wigtonshire, Edinburgh (best wheat £1 13s.
6d.), Perthshire, Selkirkshire, Caithnesshire, and
Roxburgh sh ire.

That ruin to every man connected with the soil
must result from a combination of the present de-
pressed state of things is perfectly obvious; and
the only question which remains is, how long will
the agricultural community endure in silence ? Not
long, we suspect. Another year will see an amount
of agricultural suffering which \l'll' drive half the
nation into a state of frenzy; and, however the
Cobdens of the present day may sneer at the pro-
phecy, we dare venture to tell them that a general
election, with the agricultural portion of the com-
munity in such a temper, will a little alter their
tone. Our Scottish fellow-countrymen, in parti-
cular, are proverbially difficult to rouse ; but, when
once roused, they pursue a tolerably direct course
to their object, and nothing more effectually moves
them than an inroad upon their pockets,