830 



Agriculture and the Corn-Law. 



Vol. VIII. 



uge of foreign competition is let in upon 

 him. Yet tiiis is the law which farmers, in 

 their darkness, have been strenuously strug- 

 gling to save. 



The sliding-scale has yet a further opera- 

 tion which presses with peculiar severity 

 upon the English agriculturist. It depresses 

 prices just when his stock of corn is largest, 

 and when he is most anxious to realize ; — 

 and raises them when he has none to sell* 

 This is not an accidental operation : it is in- 

 herent in the nature of a sliding-scale. In 

 five years out of six, prices are highest just 

 before the harvest, because then the stock of 

 wheat in the country is the lowest; and they 

 fall immediately after the harvest, from the 

 opposite reason. We give in a note a table 

 illustrative of this fact from 1829 to 1841,t 

 showing that the average price has invaria- 

 bly fallen about harvest time nearly eight 

 per cent., or from 60s. Ad. to .55s. 9d. 

 quarter. In the present year, this result 

 has been still more remarkably brought out 

 The harvest was unusually early, and the 

 stocks of farmers more than usually ex- 

 hausted. On July 9th, the weekly average 

 was 65s. 8d..; on September 10th, when the 

 harvest was generally got in, and when 

 farmers in the south were ready to bring 

 their wheal to market, it had dropped to 51s 

 6d. — a fall of nearly 22 per cent. ! 



Now that this fall is to be attributed 



* "The sudden admission of so large a quantity of 

 foreign wheat in September 1838, [1.513,113 quarters 

 in one week] had the effect, notwithstanding the as- 

 certained deficiency of our own growth, of depressing 

 markets; so that the average price, which on the 24th 

 of August had been 77s., declined within the four fol- 

 lowing weeks to 61s. lOd.; so that whereas the previ- 

 ous rise to 77s. was for the benefit only of the wealthier 

 farmers, who had been able to hold their stocks of the 

 crop of 1837 to the last, the subsequent fall was to the 

 detriment of the numerous class of small farmers, 

 who, having by that time got their crops in every 

 where soith of the Humber, were threshing out, and, 

 as usual, bringing the earliest supplies to market." — 

 TOOKE, III. p. 30. 



chiefly, though not altogether, to the opera- 

 tion of the sliding-scale, is evident from the 

 fact that it is equally observable in defective 

 as in abundant years. But for the sliding- 

 scale, a rise in price would naturally be the 

 immediate consequence of a deficient har- 

 vest. But the duty being always lowest 

 when the price is highest, and prices having, 

 as we have just seen, generally reached 

 their maximum in August or September, 

 the whole of the foreign corn in bond is cer- 

 tain to be liberated at that time, and is 

 thrown upon the market so as to depress the 

 price, just as the farmer — who, being rarely 

 a man of capital, cannot wait till the reac- 

 tion of the following summer, but must re- 

 alize at once — is preparing to thresh out his 

 wheat. The annexed table* will show, that, 

 in every year of considerable foreign impor- 

 tation since the enactment 'of the sliding- 

 scale — except 1831 and 1839 — the chief 

 portion has been poured into the market im- 

 mediately before the harvest, and the low- 

 est point of duty has almost always been 

 reached in August or September. 



The experience of the last fourteen years, 

 then, and more especially of the present 

 year, must, we think, have convinced the 

 farmer, that the inevitable operation of the 

 sliding-scale is to expose him to the over- 

 whelming competition of a sudden influx 

 of foreign corn, just at the period when he 

 has most to sell, when he is most anxious to 

 sell, and when consequently such competi- 

 tion will be most severely felt. Is this the 

 effect which he looked for from it? Is it an 

 effect which he is desirous to perpetuate"? 

 Does it not convince him, that the sliding- 

 scale, to which he trusted for protection, 

 has been, in truth, his greatest enemy 1 



But it has a still further, and still more 

 hostile operation on the poor farmer. It ex- 

 poses him to the depressing competition of 



t Up to September 5th. 



