UNITED STATES EXAGGERATED, 335 



an average price, at the place of export on the Atlantic 

 border, of only one dollar a-bushel, which is from 10 to 

 20 per cent below the price it usually brings, and suppose 

 the whole export to have consisted of wheat in the raw 

 state, without any expense of manufacture added to it, each 

 dollar in value of the exports will represent a bushel of 

 wheat. The average export of the States thus estimated 

 did not, up to 1846, exceed 17,000,000 of bushels, and 

 in 1848 did not exceed 37,500,000 of bushels of wheat 

 a little over 4,000,000 of imperial quarters. 



If, of the crop of 1847, there were really 52,000,000 

 bushels of wheat alone to export, and in 1848, 10,000,000 

 more, what became of it all? If even 37,500,000 of 

 bushels were sold, the rest must have been a drug in the 

 market, and must have reduced the value at New York to 

 a mere nominal price. But if nearly one-half of the bread- 

 stuffs exported during the three famine years consisted of 

 Indian corn, as was most probably the case, there could 

 not have been a larger quantity, in all, than about 

 20,000,000 of bushels of wheat sent from the United 

 States to all parts of the world. 



It is fair and reasonable therefore, I think, to con 

 clude, until we have better data, that the wheat-exporting 

 capabilities of the United States are not so great as they 

 have by many in Great Britain hitherto been supposed ; 

 that they have been overstated on the spot, and that our 

 wheat-growers at home have been unduly alarmed by 

 these distant thunders, the supposed prelude of an ima 

 ginary torrent of American wheat which was to over 

 whelm everything in Great Britain farming, farmers, 

 and landlords in one common ruin. 



I have said that the wheat-exporting capabilities of 

 North America, as a whole, excluding Upper Canada 

 in regard to which I would reserve any decided opinion 

 are lessening rather than increasing, though it may be 

 ten years or more yet before they become very distinctly 



