40*2 Letter on Affairs in general. [APRIL, 



ministers ; and almost all have their partisans except that, I believe, 

 every body has agreed in negativing the sufficiency of the Duke of Wel- 

 lington. I think there is a certain quantity of mistake about this. The 

 full capacity of the Duke for such an office as that of prime minister in 

 this country, I should be inclined to doubt ; but the attempt to treat him as 

 a mere soldier a man merely capable of directing troops in the field must 

 occur either from ignorance or wilful misrepresentation. The mere mili- 

 tary career in which the Duke of Wellington has been engaged, must have 

 given him considerable knowledge of all the circumstances connected with 

 the foreign policy and relations of this country. He possesses too 

 which is a point of no slight moment in a very high degree, the confi- 

 dence and esteem of almost every power in alliance with it. But, inde- 

 pendently of these circumstances, it is absurd to attempt to treat as a mere 

 director of sieges, or arrayer of orders of battle, the man who organized 

 the whole defences, and disposed of the whole national resources, of Por- 

 tugal ; and afterwards exercised an influence scarcely Jess extensive, (with 

 the most admirable success) over the powers of Spain ; not to enter into 

 the testimony of various foreign writers as to affairs and negociations 

 connected with his Grace's administration during his command of the 

 Army of Occupation in France, which shew that he was just as much in 

 the habit of contemplating, and often of estimating, accurately, his poli- 

 tical as his military position. How far I repeat the Duke of Wel- 

 lington might be qualified to share the direction of public affairs in this 

 country or even what pretensions he may have set up to such an effect 

 I do not propose to determine : but he could never have performed a 

 great variety of the services which he has performed, if he had not 

 possessed some of the qualities belonging to a statesman, as well as the 

 mere faculties of a soldier. 



The corn proposition has been brought forward by ministers, according 

 to promise ; and, like most moderate courses of policy, has satisfied no- 

 body. The manufacturing classes say, that it gives them no relief, which 

 most people will agree is perfectly true ; and the ultra-agriculturists con- 

 sider even the remotest possibility of peril to their interests as an arrange- 

 ment of great aggression. The best circumstance in the new plan, seems 

 to be, that it prevents any likelihood of corn ever reaching a very high 

 price in this country : it scarcely ever can get above sixty shillings a quar- 

 ter hardly, perhaps, above fifty-eight shillings. The inconvenience is, 

 that the system of weekly " averages" will be likely to lead to specula- 

 tion and jobbing in the com market : this is the objection of my Lord 

 Lauderdale, in his speech to the House of Lords ; but his Lordship exag- 

 gerates the danger too much. 



The proposition of the noblo lord as I understand it runs thus : when 

 the average price of wheat in this country is sixty shillings a quarter, 

 foreign wheat (according to the new system) comes in at a duty of twenty 

 shillings ; and as the home price on the average increases one shilling a 

 quarter, the duty on the foreign importation diminishes two shillings ; so 

 that at sixty-one shillings (home average) the foreign duty is eighteen 

 shillings; at sixty-two shillings, 'sixteen shillings ; at sixty-three shillings, 

 fourteen shillings; and so on till the average reaches seventy shillings, 

 when the foreign corn comes in at a duty of one shilling a quarter. Then, 

 his Lordship's fear is- Suppose a party of merchants to have one million 

 quarters of foreign corn in bond at the end of the week, ending, say, on 



