1827.] Letter on Affairs in general. 403 



the 7th of July, when the average in the home market is sixty shillings 

 a quarter these persons would then have a duty of twenty shillings a 

 quarter to pay, on bringing in their foreign supply, or 1,000,000 on the 

 whole venture. But, instead of paying that amount of duty, if, in the 

 course of the next week, or fortnight, they suddenly make purchases to 

 the amount of 300,000 in the home market, it will be easy for them, (says 

 Lord Lauderdale) by this sudden speculation, to throw the average say of 

 the 1 1th, or 2 1 st of July, up to seventy shillings ; by which means they then 

 bring their whole 1 ,000,000 quarters of foreign corn into the market at one 

 shilling duty, instead of twenty shillings; inundate the country with 

 foreign wheat, to the ruin of the agriculturist; and clear 950,000. 



Now, I perfectly agree with Lord Lauderdale, that, if the merchants 

 of the country could do this, to-morrow, they would do it. And here I 

 don't think that his lordship casts any aspersion upon any particular class 

 of men, because all the people of England, of late years, have become 

 " merchants." There has been hardly a monopoly, or a speculation, in 

 the last five years, by which money could hope to be made, in which 

 " peers" and men of " honour" have not been found struggling which 

 should take " usance" foremost. Colonel Congreve, who invented the 

 bomb-shells, was pars magnet! the great gun in the pawnbroking 

 company ; and Mr. W. Wilberforce, I see whose father once redeemed 

 all Africa from slavery according to a police paragraph in the Times of 

 the 15th instant appears to have turned milkman! But, without doubt- 

 ing their disposition to do this, or any other piece of advantageous mis- 

 chief, I do not believe that a combination of merchants could perform the 

 transaction which Lord Lauderdale describes. 



In the first place, the capital required for such a project could hardly 

 be furnished by a very few individuals. Taking the one million quarters 

 of foreign corn to be bought at thirty shillings a quarter, the whole sum 

 employed in that purchase would be 1,500,000. In the next place, a 

 certain quantity of loss must be at once incurred upon the 300,000 laid 

 out in British corn, purchased to raise the home average from sixty shillings 

 to seventy shillings ; the corn bought, pending the course of such a rise, 

 could not cost less than five shillings a quarter more than the natural market 

 price ; and here, therefore, there would be a loss, in the commencement, 

 of 25,000. But the insurmountable difficulties have yet to come. It is 

 contrary to all possibility, that one hundred thousand quarters of corn, pur- 

 chased in the home market no matter with what celerity (and 300,000 

 would buy no more, at sixty shillings, than one hundred thousand quarters 

 subject to the supposed rise of prices to be produced, not so much) it is 

 hardly to be expected that five times that quantity of purchase, in the 

 common order of events, could raise the price in the home market in any 

 thing like the extent of ten shillings a quarter from sixty shillings to 

 seventy shillings ! 



An outlay of 300,000 would have scarcely any effect upon the average at 

 all ; and even if it might this seems to me to be the most difficult point his 

 lordship never inquires what the agriculturists are to be about all that time ? 

 It is absurd to say that the agriculturists of the country cannot combine. 

 They combine every day and almost without knowing it. What was it 

 that raised corn in our home market, from fifty-three shillings to sixty 

 shillings a quarter, the very moment that the new propositions came out ? 

 There was no change in the seasons no demand from abroad to warrant 



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