tation of corn, which was interrupted at the latter period. I have no difficulty in admitting the correctness of your statement, as to the rapid strides which this country made during the period nientioned by you, and particularly the latter part of it; but cannot consider this as having any thing to do either with the facility of importing corn, or the quantity imported. Joits an try broñoqar Jolt is rather the year 1767, than 1778, that should have been mentioned as that in which a greater than ordinary importation com menced for the average excess of annual importation, up to the latter year, was nearly as great as that of the first five years of the halcyon period mentioned by you, and was much greater than that of the third and fourth five years; while, in the second, it is to be observed, that the exportation exceeded the importation, nearly as much as the importation did the exportation at any, and more than at two, of the periods just mentioned. This will be seen more distinctly from the following tabular view :- Quarters. From 1767 to 1772, both iuclusive, the annual From 1778 to 1782, excess of exp. 95,930 From 1783 to 1787, excess of imports - From 1788 to 1792 Deduct excess of exports. 149,588 84,577 70,123 425,066 95,930 329,136 It appears, therefore, that for twenty-six years, viz. from 1766 to 1793, in which twenty-two of the forty-two years quoted by you are included, the average excess of importation was not quite 79,000 quarters per annum; a trifle not to be named as having any sort of palpable national operation. From the year 1793 up to 1814, inclusive, the importation of corn increased so as to make the annual average nearly 500,000 quarters, or, reckoning the value paid for it to the grower at 24s. per quarter, a seventy-fifth part of the exports of the country. The national population was, without doubt, at this period rapidly advancing; and this, with the exigencies of war, produced a greater than ordinary demand for agricultural produce. But the real cause of such an importation, small as it must be considered in a national point of view, is to be seen in the bad harvests and deficient crops which so frequently occurred between the years 1793 and 1812. On referring to Mr. Tooke's valuable work on high and low prices, you will find that during this period, amounting to twenty-two years, there were no fewer than eleven years of scanty harvests. Deficient production was therefore the ultimate cause of this increased importation; and, in reasoning from effects, it would be just as philosophical to refer the prosperity of that period to bad harvests, without which such an extent of importation would not have taken place, and to advancing prices, which were the conse quences of increased demaud for corn in this country, as to a system of laws which would have had no palpable operation, except under the uncontrollable circumstances of seasons. An increased importation would have occurred on any necessity for it arising, if the change of law effected in 1773 had not taken place. Such was the fact after the deficient harvest of 1765; such was likewise the case after that of 1757; and those were two of the only three bad seasons which had occurred from the year 1715 up to the first mentioned period. The third was in the year 1740; and then it was found that the extra supply wanted was produced from our exports of corn being diminished from an average of above 300,000 quarters per annum, (as occurred in the preceding five years,) to less than 50,000 quarters. It is a favorite idea with yourself and other modern political economists, that a valuable result of a freer importation of corn, will be that of removing a principle of fluctuation in the price of the article, which is regarded as materially depending on the present laws, and as equally unfavorable to the farmer, the landlord, and the consumer. But I would appeal to the experience of the whole period to which our documents extend, whether it is possible, by any human efforts, to prevent fluctuations in the price of corn. A glance at Mr. Tooke's Tables will demonstrate that the thing is impossible; and that the effects of seasons, whether bad or good, will set at nought the pigmy efforts of human skill to counteract them. It sounds very plausibly, too, that by a freer importation of corn, we allow the plenty of one country to counteract the scarcity of another; whereas it is found that Great Britain is very much an epitome of Europe; and that from the best evidence which can be obtained on the subject, as given by Mr. Tooke, and as sanctioned by the high authority of the House of Commons itself, there is a prevalence of a general similarity of seasons over the whole of Europe, within certain latitudes. Mr. Lowe's information is highly important on this subject.") "The public," says he, "particularly the untravelled part of the public, are hardly aware of the similarity of temperature prevailing throughout "what may be called the corn-country of Europe, we mean Great Britain, Ireland, the north of France, the Netherlands, Denmark, the north-west of Germany, and, in some measure, Poland and the north-east of Germany. All this tract is situated between the 45th and 55th degrees of latitude, and subject, in a considerable degree, to the prevalence of similar winds. Neither the superabundance of rain which we experience in one summer, or its deficiency in another, are by any means confined to Great Britain and Ireland; while in winter, both the intensity and duration of frost are always greater on the Continent. Exceptions certainly exist in particular tracts; but in support of our general argument, we have merely to recall to those of our readers who are of an age to recollect the early part of the war, or who have attended to registers of temperature, the more remarkable seasons of the present age: thus, in 1794, the spring was prematurely warm on the Continent, as in England; there, as with us, the summer of 1798 was dry, and that of 1799 wet: again, in 1811, the harvest was deficient throughout the north-west of Europe, generally from one and the same cause, blight; while that of 1816 was still more generally deficient, from rain and want of warmth. In regard to a more remote period, we mean the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries generally, if the temperature has not been so accurately noted, we find, from the coincidence in prices, that it is highly probable that there prevailed a great similarity in the weather of the Continent; thus, in France, the latter years of the seventeenth century, the seasons of 1708 and 1709, as well as several of the seasons between 1764 and 1773, were as unpropitious, and attended with as great an advance of price, as in England." Similar statements are given by Dr. Adam Smith, as noticed by Mr. Tooke. The forty-two years which you mention, as being remarkable for the prosperity of the country, presented a greater extent of fluctuation in prices, than any which has been experienced sinice; the lowest prices having been 36s. in the year 1779, and the highest 123s. 6d. in the year 1801. Here was a fluctuation to more than three and a half times the extent; whereas a fluctua The present State of England in regard to Agriculture, Trade, and Finance, &c., by Joseph Lowe, Esq. tion to only about double the extent occurred since the year 1815: the highest price, 94s. being in 1817 and the lowest, 48s. in 1822. Not less remarkable are the fluctuations which have occurred in the price of corn from the year 1646, at which the registry begins, to the commencement of the period from which you date your calculation. A slight inspection of the table of prices will prove this to be the case; and the following are some of the most striking differences S. From 1648 to 1654, 6 years, the price varied from 75 From 1672 to 1674, 2 From 1755 to 1757,2 . . . 29 65 . 36 5 to 61 0. It seems to be demonstrable, therefore, that no alteration which can be made in the system of corn-laws, no assimilation to what has been regarded as the practice of former periods, will, in any material degree, prevent that fluctuation of prices which, though depending mainly on the season, you are disposed to regard as very much the fruits of the present system. In considering the subject of fluctuations, you are, indeed, a little hard on state doctors, without considering how natural it is for doctors to disagree, and how difficult is a decision as to the judgment exercised, either by the medical or political physician, when it is by the result, not by the means employed in effecting it, that ability is for the most part estimated; ab eventu, præcipue, honorem aut dedecus reportant." But when you charge the Parliamentary faculty with throwing their patient, the agriculturist, into an ague, you appear to forget that there is such a thing as mistaking an ague, which is generally considered as an inno cuous and manageable sort of complaint, for a more formidable disease, and thus endangering, by severe or mistaken remedies, the production of a more severe malady. You seem not to bear in mind, likewise, that the mere difference of feeling, which is experienced in a variable climate; or, perhaps, the little chilliness, or slight cold, to which the most healthy, in our insular situation especially, must be subject, may be conjured up to the most formidable symptoms, calculated to excite alarm through the whole kingdom, and to accumulate prescriptions and exorcisms from every part of the empire. Et Metus, et malesuada Fames, et turpis Egestas, The ague-fit is, however, nothing more, in fact, than the maladie du pays of this and of every other country; and, unless a process can be invented for changing climate, and producing a sort of artificial temperature in the atmosphere, it will be in vain to expect to submit it to Parliamentary authority. In representing the natural progress of nations to be from the agricultural to the manufacturing state, you employ a very common and a very specious view of the subject. America should, therefore, according to this hypothesis, be solely or principally a grower of corn, which she should dispose of to Great Britain for manufactures, which ought to be the chief objects of our attention. But, because we have extensive manufactures in this country, is this a reason why farming is to be a secondary consideration with us, when, according to your own estimate, we are to depend for twenty-two parts out of twenty-three of our consumption of wheat, and of course for an equal, or even greater degree, of many other articles of growth, on the production of our own country, or of Ireland? Would it be politic, likewise, in America, because she is a new country, to lend herself to this hypothesis, and to give up to old Europe all claims to commerce and manufactures, and trust to the sale of her corn for procuring manufactures, colonial produce, and the luxuries of the East? America has good ports, and an active enterprising people; and it would be bad policy in her not to direct part of her energies to the production or procurement of various articles of importance in life with which to exchange, as we do in this country, for the product of her own soil. You state the various circumstances which prevent America from exporting much corn, and England from receiving much; and to what use therefore, unless the hypothesis can be applied on a large scale, is the hypothesis at all? England ought to be, |