ON THE RECENT EEVIVAL IN TRADE. 443 



lience the doubts so freely expressed at the present moment wlietber a 

 drain of gold may not soon set in. 



Secondly, it is evident that on the whole the prices obtained for our 

 exports are only to a trifling extent better than they were, whilst the 

 prices paid for our imports are considerably enhanced. Thus the revival 

 has been much more to the advantage of the sellers of the goods we have 

 consumed than to that of those who sold our own produce or manufacture. 

 In the complicated state of trade transactions it is impossible to say whether 

 any or how much of this advantage belongs to our merchants, since this 

 depends upon the ownership at the time when the sales are effected. As 

 between the actual producers and consumers it is clear that a higher rate 

 of payments for imports, with nearly stationary receipts for exports, 

 cannot increase the prosperity of either one or the other. It would seem 

 to be the case that sales are effected because prices are low, and that 

 purchases are made because we need them although prices are high. 

 Take, for instance, the fact that the cotton used up in the manufacture 

 of our piece-goods has failed to bring in the higher price which the 

 advanced cost of the raw material would justify or require. 



Thirdly, the whole excess in the value of the exports is scarcely equi- 

 valent to the extra cost of the food we have imported. Unless we can 

 suppose that large stocks of produce and manufacture, or the means of 

 producing them, are prepared for future sale, in readiness to obtain a 

 profit when parted with, it follows that, as a whole, all the gain of extended 

 foreign outward trade has but gone in the sustenance of those by whom 

 the goods have been produced, leaving nothing Avherewith to recompense 

 capital or for the accumulation of wealth. 



This brings us to the really important consideration whether the food 

 question is not truly at the bottom of the recent fluctuations in trade. 

 For a series of years our own supplies have been scanty, and the bad 

 harvest of last year rendered us more than ever dependent upon the pro- 

 duce of foreign countries, particularly of America. Purchasing largely 

 from the Western growers, and giving them remunerative prices, they 

 have large profits to expend iipon our manufactures. Encouraged by 

 the successiv^e annually increasing quantities they were able to sell, they 

 have been laying themselves out to meet our wants, and, anticipating an 

 ever-growing call for their produce, they have determined by means of 

 new railways to bring larger quantities, and at lesser cost, from the distant 

 fields in the West to the seaboard in the East. Hence the sudden demand 

 for rails and for the iron to make them which the pits and the mills of 

 their own country could not supply, but which the diminution of prices 

 here enabled them to obtain sufficiently low to counteract the otherwise 

 prohibitory duties of their own tariff. Trade thus started in one direction 

 speedily spread in others, and thus extended far beyond the boundaries 

 in which it emanated. The repeated adversities of former years have 

 caused the depression of 1878-9 to be greater than the causes warranted, 

 and with the changes of last autumn confidence became restored, and this 

 of itself creates trade. 



The supposition that this revival is greatly owing to the failure of our 

 home crops derives much confirmation from the fact, that whilst the best 

 authorities estimate the diminished growth of wheat last year at from five 

 to six million quarters, worth some eleven or twelve millions of money, 

 our purchases of corn from the United States alone were fully that amount 

 in excess; to compensate for which they took from us iron and other 



