Present condition and future prospects of the country, in reference to free trade and its recent application

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Letter I

Deah Lord John, — I have just read your letter to your London constituents, on the subject of the Com Laws, t rora the interest I have so long taken in this question, I am sure you will forgive me if I venture to make some observations upon It by way of reply. Obloquy may attach to those who Siill adhere to their views on this matter, but from a member of the house of Russell, I can never learn the miserable lesson of yielding to clamour what cannot be conceded by conviction, or of deserting opinions long conscientiously Hiaiotained, because they support what forthe moment may appear to be a falling cause.

Believing the Corn Laws to have been founded on a comprehensive principle of public advantage, I should belie the faith that is in me, and b^.a*CQMrard to what [ deem the tnith^ could I shrink froi^ the dvowalyof it, at a time especially when 80 many are .fftt . for its '*^i^ck, and so few for its defence. I maybe ;wfongTri ray ''view of this great subject. If 1 am i hope .to -be cofirected, and that truth will prevail. I am not so presaniptuous even^ as to suppose that I can be entirely right in my estimation of all the bearings of so large a question. What human being ever was absolutely and per^ctly right in his judgment of any one subject ? I have tried to steer clear of error as far as my feeble ligfht will permit, and if [ have erred, I have erred with an honest intention. But doubting the infallibility of human powers in judging of the future^ and having already seen too many instances in which, as legislators {to the subsequent cost and injury of thousands)^ our anticipations have been lamentably disappointed, I would, in matters where small mistakes may breed great wrongs, argue for being guided by the practical cautious lessons of "history, rather than by the visions^ however ingenious, or by the conjectures, however specious, of speculation and the closet.

I repeat my belief that the corn laws are founded on public principle — that they are essentially for the public good, lor the welfare, the permanent welfare, not of the few, but

JL 2 of the m&ny. On no other ground, could they have stood 80 long ; on no other can they stand ; on no other ground ought they to stand for a moment longer; unless with a view of gradually breaking the violence of the shock to the property embarked in the land, which so sudden a change would confiscate. And I stait with this broad affirmation, because, if the landlords and farmers of England had believed the com laws to be injurious to the majority of their countrymen ; — if they had believed them to be, as some assert, laws for the starvation of the people, and not laws constituted for the lasting support of the people, and for the continuous cultivation of the land, they would never have supported them.

It is because the landlords and farmers of England — ^a body of men, you well know, as amenable to the charities of life ; as interested in the welfare of those around them ; as anxious to do their utmost to alleviate the pangs of suffering and distress they may witness ; as ready to submit to personal privation, when the claims of religion, humanity, or their country, call for the sacrifice ; as ready, to say the least, as any other body of men — it is only because the landlords ana farmers of England, as a body, are convinced that the corn laws are for the public benefit, that those laws have always received, and still continue to receive, their unabated support. If they had thought them injurious to the permanent welfare of the people, 1 cannot doubt that they would have been as ready to repeal them as yourself.

Y our letter naturally divides itself into two parts ; the first relating to your apprehensions of present scarcity, and to your views as to the proper legislation consequent upon sucn apprehension ; the second part referring to your objections to the Com Laws generally. I will take each part in its order.

You state that "parliament should have been called together three weeks ago, and that no party in parliament would have made itself responsible for the obstmction of a measure so urgent and so beneficial,*' as the suspension of the import duties on corn. To this it may be replied, that if no one could have opposed such a measure, an order in council would, w ithout delay or risk to the government, have much more speedily, and therefore much more efficiently, responded to the public wants. But what would have been the effect of the immediate suspension of the import duties ? Either we could have obtained an immediate supply, or we could not. If we could not, it would have been mischievous to have opened the ports, since the importation of a large additional supply would have so lowered the price of com, and have led to such an increased consumption, as might have trenched injuriously on the means of supply before the next harvest.

If we could have obtained an immediate supply, an equally mischievous result might have followed ; it would have equally led to an immediate increase of consumption, and might equally have trenched on the ultimate means of supply; since it is notorious that, with, perhaps the exception of Canada and the United States, and possibly Spain and Italy, there is as great a deficiency of wheat in the rest of the world as in England, if not a greater deficiency; and this does not appear to be a casual occurrence. Mr. Lowe in hb ^< State of Agriculture," (published, I think, in 1818) from a careful survey and comparison of the seasons, for a number of years back, states, that it appears that the corn-growing countries of Europe lie between 45 and 55 degrees of latitude, and are subject, in a great degree, to similar winds, mins, droughts, and frosts. There are, he says, some remark«ble instances of this. In 1794 the spring was prematurely warm on the Continent, as well as in England. The summer of 1798 was dry and that of 1790 wet, in both places. Again, in 1811, the harvest was deficient, throughout the noith-west of Europe generally, and from the same cause, blight; while that of 1816 was still more generally deficient, firom rain and want of warmth. From a coincidenoe of prices in the 1 7th and 18th centuries, it is also highly probable that similar seasons prevailed here and On the Contment, especially in 1708, 1709, and in several seasons between 17G4 and 1773. When, therefore, it is proposed to leave England dependent on forei^ supplies. It should be recollected that the same causes which occarion a bad harvest in England, would very probably produce it in other com countries.

These were occasions when dearths appear to have been the most generaL Instances also have doubtless occurred of more partial scareities; instances perhaps, like those when Prussia could sup|>ly our wants ; out when we took off the duty on importation, the King of Prussia put it on at his side of tho water ; thus filling his excheauer at the expense of ours, without the suspension of the duty being of the slightest benefit to the English consumer. When, under such repeated scarcttv to be fulfilled at that time than this— *were then folfilled* Rumoar with her busy tongue — panic with its prostrate imbecility — were as rife then as now. And what was the result ? In no four years in any period of English history, before or since, had we such lai^e importations ; a supply so commensurate with our wants that those only who took a political interest in the question appear now to remember them ^ except, indeed, those poor fanners who cultivated what were then emphatically designated the wheat soils of England ;»full a tnird of whom, m spite of the protective price afforded by the com law, were so inadequately compensated for their deficient crops^ that with this adaition to the pressure of accumulated distress, from the great fall in prices subsequent to the Money Act of 1819, they must have sunk to tl]ie earth to rise no more. And had it not been for jth^ protection thus afforded by those com laws, the stoutest of tnose cultivators of the wheat soils of England mqst have befen swept away from the face of the land. Tliank God I we had still resolution enough to abide by the experience of the past, instead of the infatuation to run headlong into ap unknown abyss of a new-fangled philosophy. If the higher duties of the com law of 1828 did not, during four successive deficient harvests^ prevent our obtaining a sufficient foreign supply, wh^ should we so much dread the effects ot a com law, with lower duties, in preventing a foreign supply sufficient to meet the deficiency of only one year r

Had the com laws been abolished in 1828 — throwing thousands upon thousands of labourers and acres out of employment and cultivation, as the consequence — under the fallacious apprehension of the effect of scarcity, I should have indeed trembled for the supply of food for tne people in the year 1846. Nothing but the firmest conviction of the tmth of Mr. Huskisson's axiom — that on Britbh com must our British people mainly rely, in war and in peace, for the food they eat — gives' me the confidence I feel, with gratitude to Heaven I utter it (provided our legislative vacillations, while they paralyse the future efforts of the British farmer^ do not at the same time clog the well-nigh omnipotent powers of the British merchant and of British gold)^ that in England at least we shall experience none of the miseries of famine. To the eaters of potatoes in Ireland, whose forlorn dependence on that lowest species of food I commiserate, especially under their present adverse circumstances, as mucb as you can do,— to the Irish, open ports would not give the money to purchase com.

But what is the real truth respecdng the crops in England ? As yet it may not be fully ascertained ; but for the comfort of those who are more apprehensive than myself, I may state that an extensive inquiry is now makiog, and in part made, into the state of the crops in Yorkshire, and, as fieur as I have seen, the following are the almost invariable answers (with certain limitations) to the queries sent : —

1. That the wheat crop, though very deficient in jield, when considered relatively to the quantity of straw, is yet kvlieved to be little below the average of the last few years ; in consequence of the large proportion of land cropped with wheat* the unprecedently Large bulk of straw, and the unusually productive crops in many of the backward and upland dustricts.

2. That the deficiency of yield chiefly arises from the number of light grains which are necessarily blown out in dressing the com for market, leaving the whole of the marketable gr^in, with but few exceptions, sound and wholesome; whereas in years of real scarcity, such as 1800, 1816, &C. a large proportion of the wheat crop was sprouted and unfit for use.

3. That where proper care has been taken in sorting potatoes attack^ with gangrene or murrain, and in storing them in dry, cool situations, little progress appears to have been made by the disease of late ; and it may, therefore, be reasonably hoped that the full extent of the evil is already known.

4. That the deficiency caused by the potato failure will be in some measure compensated by the unusually large crops of oats^ barley, and beans.'*

1 am very glad to be able to add to this account (contrary to your experience) that potatoes are not generally forced into the market, but that the labourers hereabouts are generally tuming their worst potatoes into bacon, in the expectation of the best keeping till spring ; and I am greatly in h(q[>es that the extra pig, which they are thus enabled to feed, will go as well as the others to the comfortable support of their families ; for the demand for labour is so good that

* It is now pretty accurately ascertained that the stock of old wheat in the countrj,at the time of harvest, was sufficient for its supply till the comniencemcnt of the new year. So that the last crop, in all probability, will not iMfS to meet more than eight or nine months cousurnyUon.

I rejoice to say that I can scarcely find an extra hand when I want one at half-a-crown a day— the wages, more or less, ever since I can remember, of this district May a free trade in corn never reduce them !

1 find my observations on the first part of your letter drawn out to so much greater length than I had expected, that my intended comments on the second oart I most unwillingly reserve for a second letter. 1 will not close this, however, although it may be said more properly to belong to the second part, without expressing my satisfaction at your not joining (which, indeed, it would have been tlie worst injustice to have suspected you of) in the exaggerate statements so common to the opponents of the corn laws, that they entirely restrict the people to the consumption of British-grown corn ; and that with an increasing population, they limit us to the comparatively stationary amount of food which the British islands can produce. But can any one with truth deny, that if our population were tenfold what it is now, the present com law would admit as much corn as could possibly be imported, whenever the duty fell to that point at which it served the merchant's interest to enter it for consumption? When the period arrives that the com laws do practically prevent our importing foreign com in sufficient quantities to meet the deficiencies of home growth, then will be the just time, and not till then, to complain of their effects under an apprehension of scarcity.

The corn laws, then, do not prohibit the importation of foreign corn. They do but prevent its being entered for consumption at a price that would ruin the English grower, and disemploy the English labourer. After that risk is passed, importation is free; and surely you should not object to this principle, who hold that so much evil may accrue from having at one and the same time, ^* scarcity of the article, and cheapness of price."

This, indeed, as it appears to me, may be truly stated of the corn law — viz. that as between the English grower and the English consumer (leaving foreign corn out of the question), it does not in the least affect the price of com ; but that the price, under the circumstances of this mere domestic interchange, is determined, and determined alone by the supply and the demand — t. e,, by the plenty or deficiency of the article, as compared with the increase or decrease of the demand ; or it is determined by the plenty or scarcity of that Tnedium called money, in wiiich the price is measured. It is an error, therefore, to imagine that, under these circumstances of mere domestic interchange (separate from a foreign importation), the corn law does or can raise or fix the price of corn. Its real effect is to prevent foreign competition from throwing down the natural price struck out between the domestic producer and consumer.

The question, however, is totally changed when you introduce into the question the element oi* foreign competition. Just as with any other commodity, so with com, if you bring a larger quantity into the market, you as certainly diminish its price for the time being. But if by competition you drive the parties employed in producing a commodity to give up producing it, with the view of relying upon a foreign supply ; if that article be one of fint necessity, like com, and there comes a period of war, or of scarcity in the foreign country or countries on which you usually rely for your supply of such article, then it may turn out that this species of competition may prove a ** penny wide and pound foolish economy ;'* — one which has given you cheap com when you do not want it — and very dear corn —or worse than that, none at all, when you do want it.

What the English farmer wants, is not scarcity or dearness. Scarcity is a curse to man and beast ; plenty a blessing to both. But he wants that degree of price which, under our most artificial state, with debts^ taxes, embarrassments, and entanglements innumerable, and almost out of count — will enable him to compete with those who have no such burdens to bear, or incomparably fewer. Strip him, as his foreign competitors are stripped, of these heavy weights, and, if I know the British farmer, and I think I do, he would not be afraid to run an equal race. But fettered as he now is, he requires for his existence as cultivator — and the great body of consumers, as 1 think, require for the continuous cultivation of the land —protection against prices which are unequal to repay the costs of cultivation ; and the farmer also requires, as other producers do, some compensation, in an increased price, for a scarcity in his commcxiity from a dispensation of Providence. And he considers this compensation as indispensable to the permanence of his occupation as it is to that of all others. That scarcity and increased

[>rice should go together, he both learns from you and beieves to be one of the wise regulations of nature. If, however, you at once admit forei^ corn, the moment some deficiency is apprehended in his crops, you at the same time deprive him of that increase in price which he thinks the natural compensation for deficiency ; and you rob him of what, under an artificial system, he believes, and not unrea^ sonably believes, to be his due.

Nor does the farmer believe that the public (unexcitedby specious declamation) would ever grudge him the benefit of a law which, under low prices (when the consumer's interest is not palpably involved) protects the grower ; which^ under scarcity, partially compensates him for* a deficient cnyp; and which admits foreign com to the consumer at a price

f considering scarcity) not unreasonably high. The British armer does not think this so unreasonable a demand that the British public — always in the end pretty just in their conclusions — should, if left to the exercise of their own inpendent sense of fairness, in the long run refuse it to him. My reply to your more general observations on the Com Laws I reserve, as I said before (providing the physical strength be left me), for a second letter.

More ! Do the farmers want, do you ask ? May I answer you ? Yes ! They now, not improbably want, as I do, to see Lord John Russell in his old place as leader of the House of Commons; for then they would feel that they might safely repose under the protection and consistency of her Majesty's — Opposition.

Dear Lord John^

Yours very traly,

E. S. CAYLEY.

Wt/dale,Nov.2»,lfmi.