nip them so young. Sportsmen spare partridges till they are strong enough to take wing; and scribes ought to show a like forbearance to peers. We ought to make some bye-laws for the prevention of the destruction of the white bait and callow birds. Peer squibbing should not commence before the 1st of April at the earliest; and here was my poor dear Lord Winchelsea stuck upon paper, as flat as one of his own speeches, on the 19th of March.

It seems to be the opinion of a number of highly respectable people in this country, that they must persecute somebody, and they have accordingly fixed upon Catholics. God forbid that I should object to their gratifying themselves in this innocent way; but I cannot help thinking that they have not chosen the best sport. If they must persecute, why not get up a nice persecution of the Jews? A Catholic may, like a fox, give a good run, I grant; but when you have run him down, there is no booty in him. Now the Jew would be the hare, and we should devour his dainty substance. Imagine a roasted Rothschild, with current-coin sauce. What a rich meal he would make! Really, the very thought of it gives me an appetite. Let us, by all means, revive the old laws, devised by the wisdom of our ancestors, for the coercion of that stiff-necked race, and repeated only by the mistaken liberality of their unthinking posterity. The Jews are obtaining a fearful ascendancy in the state. They have already their feet on, instead of in, the stocks, and control the money markets; and who can guarantee us against the danger apprehended in the case of the Catholics-that of their coming to the throne? Suppose a Jew should be king!—as Mathews says, "here would be a circumstance!" What would become of protestantism or pork? Imagine a monarch with the beard of an old clothesman, striking at our hierarchy and our hams, abolishing bishops and bacon. The church demolished, and triumphant sin agog. Remember their old tricks; think of the days of Pontius Pilate, and smite them hip and thigh, in good time, before they get the upper hand again, as they infallibly must do, like the Catholics, unless disabled by the laws, and hunted down by the friends of established order, and the preachers of peace and good will among men.

THE NEW CORN LAW.

ONE of the gravest and best conducted hoaxes of modern times, is that which has been recently played off by his majesty's ministers on the question of the Corn Laws. It is, we think, about two years since it was first announced, that a plan for the amendment of the Corn Laws was in agitation. Combined with the indications which Mr. Huskisson and Mr. Robinson had given in small matters, of a desire to establish something approaching to a system of free trade, this announcement gave rise to the most extravagant expectations among the friends of improvement. Since the pregnancy of Johanna Southcote, we doubt whether there was ever a birth looked forward to with so much delight by a band of faithful believers. It is, perhaps,

hardly fair to charge the ministers with having created these expectations but they certainly humoured the thing with amazing skill. How tender and touching their reproaches to all who would force them to a premature accouchement; how solicitous their care not to bring out the Shiloh in an inclement season.-Poor Mr. Whitmore was last year considered a perfect brute for having rudely jostled against a ministry in their condition; and endangered the fond hope of a nation. Mr. Huskisson held forth to the shipowners, the advantages which they would derive from the trade in corn that was to be. Who could doubt, that something very fine was about to be produced. For two years the ministry drew on the credit of this opinion. It was a liberal ministry, less for what it had done, than for what it was to do. Even at the moment, when the imposture was necessarily to be revealed; the magnificent style of pretence continued; Mr. Canning was brought from his sick bed to open the subject no one else could, with propriety, take the responsibility, if he could possibly encounter the labour; but, on the other hand, rather than the country should encounter the misery of a delay, Mr. Peel was willing to hazard himself in the undertaking. What caution, yet what devotedness-what modesty, yet what boldness!

With such a plan as the ministers have produced, the practical comment on which is, that its announcement raised the price of grain 3s. per quarter, what was the necessity for all this mystery? There are some people who put an air of significancy into all they do; and tell us it is a fine day, with an air, as if they had discovered the author of Junius; but when a minister shakes his head for two years together, surely there ought to be something in it.

The new Corn Law project is a cumbrous plan for leaving things as they are; for letting not good, but bad, alone.

The plan proposed by the ministry, after all the parade with which it has been preceded, is one for the free admission of wheat when the price is at or above 708. per quarter of 18. duty; and when the price is lower, of a duty augmenting as the price falls, according to the following table:

It will be seen, that in this scale there is a point called the assumed point of protection; a phrase used in the tables printed for the use of the House of Commons; and below this point, it is presumed, that by the scale of duties, the British grower of corn is protected from competition; while above that point, he is exposed to a constantly increasing importation of foreign corn.

Now it will be immediately perceived, that in its principle, a plan which aims at this end, is precisely similar to, and as far as it attains the end, is the same as the Corn Law now in existence. (The details we shall presently speak of.) The assumed point of protection is fixed lower in this plan than in the Corn Laws of 1815 and 1822.

The assumption in this plan, as well as in the former laws, is, that a certain price, here taken at 60s. is necessary for the remuneration of the farmer; the plan taken to secure it to him is to shut out corn when the price here is at less than that rate-to admit it when the price is greater.

Such a plan would be undoubtedly effectual, if the production of corn were exactly like the manufacture of stockings or hats; if the farmers could exactly ascertain the quantity usually wanted, and the quantity which a given number of acres in tillage would produce every year. They might then grow exactly enough for the supply of the markets to which they resorted; and receiving the remunerating price, foreign corn would be neither needed, nor, on the supposition, admitted to competition with their own.

But the supply of corn is not like the manufacture of stockings, and varies from year to year, not in proportion to the quantity of land tilled, or labour bestowed on it; but in consequence of rain or drought, of cold or heat, over which the farmer has no controul. Mr. Hodgson, who gave evidence before the Committee of 1822, as to the inquiries made by the house of Cropper and Co. in which he is a partner, concerning the produce of the crops of several years, a subject on which they have taken great trouble, and obtained most accurate information, gave the following as the results:

In 1815-37 bushels per acre; in 1816-25 bushels per acre; in 1817-38; in 1818-32; in 1819-27; in 1820-37-Minutes of Evidence, p. 264.

The variation between the best year and the worst, amounted to a third, and yet in this time there was not one year equal for scarcity or abundance to many known at other periods; and even in this period, if the quality were taken into amount, the difference would be greater per acre than the mere quantity in bushels indicates.

If we suppose, that our farmer, satisfied with "the assumed point of protection," cultivates boldly enough land to supply, on the average of years, enough corn for the consumption of the kingdom, let us see how the protection will be felt. In the first year, or series of years, we may imagine, that as in 1816, the crop is to the average produce as 25 is to 32, or one-fourth below it, and had in quality to boot. It would be, therefore, necessary for the farmer to sell his bad grain at 768. 9d. in order to remunerate himself: but this is far above the assumed point of protection; foreign corn would, therefore, be poured in, (if the supposition on which the plan is founded be true,) long before prices mounted so high. If, in spite of the supply, the price

ascended above 708. there would be free and unlimited importation; so that the farmer could not realize throughout the year, or series of years, a price which would compensate for the deficiency of his produce.

The deficiency of a crop, however, it may be said, is a curse which cannot be guarded against; we will suppose in the year, or a series of years after that, the farmers are blessed with a crop as much above the average as the other was below it. Now" the protection" begins to operate-but there being on the supposition, one fourth more corn in the kingdom than the people want to buy, the exclusion of foreign grain avails nothing, and the prices are forced down as much as they would be, if a quantity of grain, equal to one fourth of the consumption of the kingdom, had been imported duty free, or even cost free. The corn cannot be sent abroad; for one object of the plan is to keep corn permanently so much above the price of other countries, that a fall to their level must be ruinous, and scarcely conceivable. It cannot be a favourite object of speculation, to hold it over to future years; since there would be no chance of a price much higher than 60s. There would be a moral certainty, that in such a state of things, the markets would show the usual effects of a glut, that the price would fall in a much greater proportion than the quantity had increased; and that as the farmers did not get quite their remuneration in the year of scarcity, they would get nothing like it in the year of abundance;-that they would be in such a state as we actually witnessed in 1822.

It is manifest that under this system, an average of corn equal to the consumption of the kingdom, cannot be grown with safety to the growers; because as corn, on the supposition, is to be imported in many cases, there will be this imported corn in addition to the corn grown at home: so that if the corn grown at home be on the average equal to the consumption, there must, on the average of years, be an excess equal to the importations; an excess which must at some or other period produce a glut, since the system precludes all relief by exportation.

The very essence of the system, therefore, is discouragement to agriculture, by the evident hazardousness of the occupation whenever the average growth equals the average demand of the kingdom.

We have kept out of view the evils of the farmer, (still greater than those which we have enumerated,) which might arise if he were tempted, by a series of insufficient crops and high prices, to extend his tillage. Because the evils of an excessive production, arising from this cause, are not peculiar to the "protecting" system; though they are felt the more when the natural evil of this system, which we have described above, should be superadded to it.

It is demonstrable, from the nature of the case, that the inherent evils of this system cannot be removed by any scale of duties, or any regulation of the averages. So long as foreign corn is brought into this country in seasons of scarcity, while British corn cannot be exported in seasons of abundance, the agriculture of the country must suffer from the evils we have noted; unless our supply be, which it is not on the average, very much below the wauts of the kingdom

and to permit importation in the first case, is the express object of the scale of duties-to prevent exportation, its unavoidable effect.

But if this reasoning be supposed to be inconclusive, let us look to the experience of those years during which the law of 1815 has been in force, and consider what would have been the effect, if, instead of that law, the new scale of duties had been, during that time, in operation. We will in the first instance take Mr. Canning's own account of the law of 1815.

In the year 1815, the principle of absolute prohibition, up to a certain point, was adopted by the legislature, and this principle, sir, was qualified by the opposite principle of unrestricted importation. It does appear to me, on a calm review of the character of that Act of Parliament-(not at all pretending, that if I had happened to be among those, from whose deliberations that measure proceeded, I should have been at all wiser than my neighbours)-it does appear to me, sir, as if this was an experiment to combine the most opposite principles in one and the same act of legislation. In the act of 1815, sir, here is absolute prohibition, up to eighty shillings; but the moment you turn the point of eighty shillings, you arrive at unlimited importation.

Now, what was the consequence of this measure? Not that the extreme forces produced, by their operation, a mean power, and went on amicably together; but that, each in its turn prevailed with its own peculiar mischief-and that you had, within the extent of seven years, from 1815 downwards, every result that could deter men of observation and experience, from ever resorting again to the principle cither of absolute prohibition, or of unlimited importation; and, most undoubtedly, from any attempt to unite again the two together.

Let us now inquire what was the operation of this law? It passed, as I have said, in 1815. I say nothing at present of price; I shall come to the consideration of that point presently. The law of 1815 imposed absolute prohibition up to the price of 80s. The harvest of 1816, it is well known, was one of the most unfavourable that this country ever experienced. It was known to be so, as early as the beginning of August in that year. It was on the 15th of August, 1816, that that average of prices was to be prepared, which was to govern the question of exclusion on the one side, or importation on the other, for the next three months. On the 15th of August, the price of wheat was above the importing price of the law of 1815; but it had not been so for a sufficiently long period, to give an average price above the importing price. The result was, therefore, that the ports remained closed during three starving months from August to November, 1816; and did not open until the 15th November of that year, after the price had been, for about fifteen weeks, above the importing price, and when all the northern ports of Europe were shut against supply. The ports opened in November 1816, and remained open till the November of the following year; when they closed, the average price being less than eighty shillings by the fraction of five-pence. The harvest of the year 1817 having been nearly or quite as bad as that of 1816, we had again a scarcity of supply, but the ports thus closed in November, 1817, of course did not open until February, 1818. Although the harvest of that year (1818) was most abundant, not only in this country, but in all the corn-growing countries of Europe; yet, by some accident, or by some contrivance, the ports were continued open on the 15th of November 1818, by a fraction of two-pence: and by consequence, for the next three months, from Nvember 1818, to the quarterly average of February 1819, an extraordinary influx ofoforeign corn continued to inundate the country, already inundated by a plenty of its own growth; prices were in consequence depressed to an extraordinary degree. Indeed, the effect of these three months importations, produced, and as I have said, by a fractional difference of two-pence, was felt in the depreciation of the market for the three succeeding years.

Thus by the system of 1815, the ports were shut when the supply at home was deficient, and when the introduction of foreign grain was loudly called for-and opened when the home market was glutted, and when it was most expedient to shut out foreign supply and the one operation and the other were produced by fractions of five-pence and of two-pence respectively.

The consequence, then, sir, of setting these two extreme principles in action, of setting them in conflict with each other, was this-that each class of the community in