foreign competition the British cultivator, who cannot withstand foreign competition instead of the British manufacturer who can. Perhaps, the most effectual way to stop the senseless clamour on this subject would be for the agricultural interest to besiege Parliament with petitions that, in the event of the Corn Laws being repealed, all duties on foreign manufactures should at the same time be swept

away.

We have been unwillingly driven into these details. We are solicitous

to avoid any question which may have the appearance even of espousing the cause of one class of society in opposition to another, when, in fact, it is in the united interests of all that the only durable foundation for national prosperity is to be found. The investigation of the comparative importance of the different classes, and the proportions in which they respectively contribute to the wealth of the State, is none of our seeking. It has been forced upon us by the clamours and reckless demands of a furious multitude calling for the instant repeal of the Corn Laws. We have, on repeated occasions, shown ourselves fully alive to the vast importance of our foreign commerce and shipping, as well as to the paramount necessity of reconsidering that one-sided reciprocity system under which our commercial interests have so long languished, and which, securing to foreign nations all the benefits of our liberality, and to ourselves all the evils of their restrictions, perpetuates a state of things which must, ere long, extinguish both the maritime power, and commercial greatness of Great Britain.* But, when a fierce demand is made by a particular class in the community for a total repeal of all the duties which at present protect the industry of our agriculturists, we are naturally driven to enquire what is the relative proportion of the class advocating this innovation to the other classes in the community whose interests they propose materially to injure; and the result is, that the class who thus insist that every thing should be sacrificed to their demands, are not a seventh-part of the whole population, and do not create a tenth-part of the

whole wealth annually produced by the nation.

Holding it, therefore, as clear that the manufactures raised for the export sale are not a half of those which are consumed in the home market, the question comes to be, even with reference to the interests of the manufacturing classes themselves-Is it wise or prudent to force on a change which may seriously affect the prosperity of those classes whose productive industry constitutes the main-spring from which the wealth is obtained by which these manufactures for the home market are purchased? Is it prudent to advocate measures which may extend the market for that class of our manufacturers who produce forty-eight millions' worth of goods, by levelling a deadly blow at the interests of those classes who take off a hundred millions a-year worth of goods? Considered merely as a matter of pounds, shillings, and pence, as a calculation of profit and loss, it is surely an unwise thing to attempt to push the lesser market at the expense of the greater—to seek to extend a distant market of half the dimensions by crippling a nearer one of double.

But the case becomes incomparably stronger, and, in fact, altogether invincible, when it is recollected what is the difference between the description of persons who constitute the foreign and compose the home market. The foreign market is, in great part, composed of individuals owing allegiance to independent potentates, and who either have been, or may become, our inveterate enemies. The home market is made up of our own countrymen, brothers, and friends, the bone of our bone, and flesh of our fleshthe sinews of the state, by whom its independence is to be maintained against foreign invasion, and its prosperity secured against domestic calamity. What will the operatives of Birmingham, Manchester, or Glasgow, gain by doubling the growth of corn in Poland, Prussia, or the Ukraine? Nothing but this that they will augment the resources and revenue of the Czar, who wields at his pleasure the whole power both of Russia, Poland, and Prussia, and enable him to pur

sue, with increased advantages, his long-meditated designs against the prosperity of this country and the independence of Europe? What will they gain by crippling the agricultural resources of England, and impoverishing, more or less, five-sixths of its inhabitants, who now depend, directly or indirectly, upon the two hundred and fifty millions' worth a year of wealth created by its agricultural labourers? What but that they will essentially weaken and depress every branch of the community; diminish the best and most profitable market for their own industry; augment the weight of the national and parochial burdens, which, in default of the landed interest, must be borne by themselves, as the producers of its manufacturing wealth; and disable the state from maintaining that contest for its own, and the general independence of Europe, with the Colossus of northern ambition, which every one sees is fast approaching?

In truth, more momentous considerations than even those of national wealth or prosperity depend upon the vital question which is now at issue between the manufacturing and agricultural classes. The national independence the national existence-is at stake. It requires little penetration, indeed, to perceive that the general peace which we have so long enjoyed is not destined to be of very long en durance, and that a contest, possibly as serious and protracted as that with Napoleon, awaits us with the power which has already arrayed more than half of Europe under its influence. The revolutionary party at least will not contest the reality of this danger, since the aggressions and ceaseless strides of Russia are the subject of their endless and frequently just invectives. What, therefore, can be so hazardous, it may almost be added so insane, as to forfeit the national independence at so critical a moment, by throwing ourselves upon the mercy of foreign states for the purchase of bread? It was a maxim with the Romans, "Salus populi Suprema lex." Every consideration must yield to the paramount necessity of providing for the subsistence of the people. At present that subsistence is amply provided for, as the unparalleled low prices of the last six years demonstrate, by the efforts of our own agriculturists, secured and protected by the operation of

the Corn Laws. Having secured, then, this inestimable blessing from a source within ourselves, and independent of the caprice or jealousies of extraneous powers, what can be so imprudent as to risk it again to the mercy of foreign states, the chances of the winds and the waves, or the stillmore uncertain results of political combinations?

But the folly of such a proceeding becomes still more apparent, when it is recollected that the power at whose mercy we are so desirous to place ourselves, in this vital article of national subsistence, is the very power whose hostility, at the same time, we have so much cause to apprehend-against whom the national pas sion is at this time so strongly arousing, and between whom and this country a more permanent cause of variance is to be found in the opposite tendency of their national interests. Poland, Prussia, the Ukraine, are all, in fact, provinces of Russia-they all equally take the law from the Cabinet of Saint Petersburg. Odessa, Dantzic, Memel, and Riga, are alike Russian harbours.

Yet these are pre

cisely the ports from which our supply of grain must inevitably be obtained if we throw open our ports to foreign competition. The provinces from which we will almost exclusively obtain our food will be those that wait at the beck of the Emperor Nicholas. To the insatiable and undying ambition of the Russian Cabinet the British possessions in India afford a perpetual object of desire; to the jealousy and apprehensions of their despotic Government our Liberal institutions and unrestrained press are a constant subject of disquietude. Every thing, therefore, both in political combination and national interest, conspires to indicate that the seeds of permanent rival hostility between the British and Muscovite empires have not only been sown, but are already fast springing to maturity. And yet it is at the very moment that this fact has become clearly apparent to the inhabitants of both countries, that the infatuated manufacturers of England propose to place their necks under the feet of their formidable rival, by placing in his hand the keys of the granary from which they are to be fed. With what joy would the measure be hailed in the salons of St Petersburg! How rapidly would alla oprehersiens of the

British power vanish before the effects of this one suicidal act! Vain, then, would be the prowess of the British arms-vain the recollections of their former glory! Without fitting out one ship of the line-without raising one hostile banner, the Emperor of Russia would easily beat down the once dreaded power and independence of England. By simply closing his harbours, by shutting up the granaries of Dantzic and Hamburg, he would speedily starve us into submission. The populace of Great Britain, deprived of their wonted supply of bread, would become ungovernable, and submission soon be felt to be a matter of necessity. Can we, who, with our eyes open, propose to do such things, blame the Carthaginians who first surrendered their galleys and arms to the Roman generals, and then, when the legions were encamped around their walls, found themselves without weapons to withstand their inveterate enemy, and perished through the impotence they themselves had created? Nor is there the slightest foundation for the opinion which is sometimes entertained, even by well-informed persons, that, such is the magnitude of our manufacturing population, that the supply of the country with foreign grain has been, or soon will become a matter of necessity, and that the evils which have now been described, however great, are unavoidable. It appears, from the table quoted below, that there were, in 1827, 46,500,000 arable acres cultivated in Great Britain and Ireland, and 15,000,000 uncultivated, but capable of improvement, being, as nearly as possible, two acres under cultivation to each inhabitant. The average produce of each cultivated acre may be taken in grain, or other subsistence equally or more nutritious than grain, at two quarters.

The total amount of the subsistence that might be raised in the forty-six millions of acres would be ninety-two millions of quarters. A considerable proportion of this produce doubtless is consumed by the horses, which, by the latest return, amount to nearly fifteen hundred thousand in the United Empire; and Arthur Young calculates that each horse consumes as much food as eight men, or about eight quarters, a quarter to each human being forming the average consumption for the whole year. At this rate the horses would consume subsistence to about the amount of twelve millions of quarters a-year; and supposing that double this amount, or twenty-four millions of quarters, is required for the cows, butcher-meat, &c., there would still remain land ca. pable of producing nearly sixty millions of quarters a-year, at the very moderate rate of two quarters, or sixteen bushels, an acre. This would maintain nearly three times the present population of five-and-twenty millions in the United Empire, without taking into view the probable cultivation of the fifteen millions of acres of waste lands not yet reclaimed, or the probable improvements in agriculture, which, especially by the introduction of draining, may be reason ably expected to add at least a half to the assumed estimate of two quarters, or four bolls to an acre. Nothing, therefore, seems more reasonable than to hold that the British Islands contain within themselves the means of maintaining in comfort at least triple their present population; and, consequently, all arguments drawn from the supposed impossibility of adequately maintaining our population from our own agricultural produce, or of the inhabitants soon approaching the limits assigned to the increasing subsistence,

are perfectly chimerical and absurd. While, on the other hand, these facts demonstrate that at least triple the amount of subsistence may be extracted from the soil of the British Islands which is at present obtained, and, consequently, triple the vent for our manufactures obtained in the home market from that which is at present afforded, and which even now, in its comparatively infantine state, takes off a hundred millions sterling worth of our manufactures, being double the amount of our whole foreign exports. What, therefore, can be so unwise as to run the risk of injuring an interest capable of such prodigious extension, and on which such enormous classes are dependent, which is, withal, entirely within ourselves, and beyond the reach of foreign jealousy or attack, for one of far inferior amount, held by an infinitely more precarious tenure, and susceptible of a much less considerable extension?

But, almost boundless as is the capability of increase in British agriculture, it cannot be denied that it is necessarily liable to considerable variations of price, and that the vicissitudes of the seasons, incident to a wet and unpropitious climate, must frequently occasion years of scarcity, and possibly, at times, bring about longcontinued want, which may border upon famine if the resources of domestic agriculture alone were to be relied on by the people. It is of essential importance, therefore, that some means should exist to provide against the severe vicissitudes of price peculiarly severe to a dense population, to which all latitudes, and more especially all northern latitudes, are subject. It is here that the admirable wisdom of the present Corn Law becomes apparent; and it is by its operation that a permanent granary is provided for the subsistence of the people in periods when the home supply has, from unfavourable seasons, proved deficient, and, when but for its operation, no such resource could have existed. Under the existing law, by which the duty on foreign grain, so heavy as to amount to a prohibition when wheat is between fifty and sixty shillings a quarter, declines rapidly, till at seventy-two shillings a quarter it becomes merely nominal, a certain reserve of foreign grain is provided in the bonded warehouses of

the kingdom, which at once becomes available in the event of prices rising to that level, and renders it almost impossible, at least when the foreign harbours are open, for them to rise much above it. Speculators purchase up grain largely on the Continent during years of plenty, and store them in the British bonded warehouses, in anticipation of the rise of prices on the first unfavourable season. There the ample store lies innocuous to the British farmer during seasons of prosperity, when its aid is not required by the British consumer; but no sooner does the expected period of adversity arrive than it issues forth in vast quantities to avert the calamity, and diffuse the stream of plenty through every village and hamlet in the realm. Decisive proof was afforded of this highly important effect of the Corn Law during the last three months, in the commencement of which the prices rose to seventy shillings a quarter, from the continued rains and bad harvest of last autumn, but were immediately checked by the overflow of foreign grain from the bonded stores, and rapidly reduced, first to sixty-six and subsequently to sixty-two shillings a quarter.

And it is particularly worthy of observation, that this admirable effect could not possibly have taken place if an unrestricted trade in corn had existed; and that it is the creation of the Corn Law, and the Corn Law alone. If a free importation of grain were to exist between Great Britain and the Continent, these great bonded reservoirs of grain in the British harbours would not exist. Food would be provided for a large part of our popula tion by the foreign, instead of the British cultivators; the temptation of sale, at a present profit, would prove irresistible to the foreign importer; and the British warehouses of Dantzic wheat would be emptied as rapidly upon the first rise of prices as the barn-yards of the British cultivators. The home supply being greatly diminished, and the foreign proportionally augmented, the average supply would just be about equal to the average demand, and no reserve store would exist in any quarter to supply the wants of the people in seasons of scarcity. But, while a free importation of grain could not provide such a reserve store, for the same reason

that it cannot be provided by the domestic growers in the British Islands, it is effectually secured by the present Corn Law; which, prohibiting importation in ordinary seasons, yet permits any quantity of foreign grain to be stored up in our bonded warehouses, and thus permits the surplus produce of the Continent, in years of plenty, to be set apart as a reserve store for the British population in periods of scarcity. We are enjoying the full benefit of this wise provision at the present moment; scarcity, perhaps famine, were staring us in the face, when they were averted by the fund which legislative wisdom had provided; and, while the blind and misled manufacturers are clamouring for a repeal of the Corn Laws, they are indebted to those very laws, and to them alone, for the rescuing of themselves and their families from want during the next twelvemonths.

The Roman

Emperors, aware of the danger arising from the destruction of Italian agriculture, under the effects of unrestrained foreign importation, were careful to provide, at the public expense, vast granaries for the support of the people in periods of scarcity; but great as were the resources at the command of the Imperial government, they often proved inadequate to the Herculean task of purveying to the wants of a numerous population. That which the power of the Emperors strove in vain to effect, the wisdom of the British Legislature has effectually obtained; the resources of the state are no longer required for the mighty undertaking, but the certain purveyor, even for five-and-twenty millions of human beings, is found in the enterprising body of merchants whom the desire of private gain bas led into the paths of public good.

It was on the afternoon of a summer day that Arthur Edmonstone, a young barrister, left his chambers in the Temple, and walked to the northeastern part of London, where exists a whole region of human life, never heard of in fashionable society. He reached, at last, an obscure and squalid street, where the doors of most of the houses stood half open for the convenience of the several lodgers. Through one of these entrances he passed, and mounted three flights of stairs till he reached a small closed door, at which he tapped. A low voice said, " Come in," and he entered the room. It was small and dim, and was nearly filled by a pallet-bed, on which lay a wo

man.

She was covered with a loose and tattered wrapper, through which her wasted figure was plainly to be traced. Her small and pleasing features were flushed with a deep red. She raised her blue eyes as Arthur entered, and said she was sorry to have given him the trouble of coming to see her; but she added that she was too unwell to go to him.

"I am very glad to come to you. But tell me who you are, and what you want of me?"

"I am a farmer's daughter. Your old schoolfellow, Henry Richards, became acquainted with me in the country, and at last he persuaded me to go away with him and be privately married, for his friends would give him no encouragement in such a matter, any more than mine would help me. Ah! sir, that disobedience of mine was the root of all our misery! We came to

London, and he tried to support himself by writing things to be printed; and so we managed pretty well for some time. But, at last, too much confinement and overwork made him ill, and I beg pardon, sir, for crying-he died just before my baby was born. He told me, at the last, that he did not know any one who would help me, unless it were my own friends, or an old schoolfellow of his; and then he wrote your name and direction. It was three months ago, and I have gone on as well as I could, ever since. But it is a hard thing to live, sir, in