PRICES OF BARLEY AND OIL-CAKE. 



139 



price obtained for that sold. Hence we may reasonably account 

 for the low price of barley, the high price of oil-cake, and the 

 unprofitable returns for grazing. The reason assigned for the 

 low price of barley was an immense supply beyond the demand. 

 A precisely opposite reason was assigned for the high price of 

 oil-cake, for the demand exceeded the supply. At one time the 

 farmer had, I beheve, to accept from 10/. to 121. per last for 

 his barley, and to pay from lOZ. to 12^. per ton for cake. There- 

 fore the cost of a ton of cake was the price of twenty coombs of 

 barley ; and we are entitled to assume that, for every ton of 

 cake consumed, twenty coombs of barley were forced upon the 

 market, which would have afforded, upon the principle I have 

 laid down, six tons and a half of compound. To form some idea 

 of the gross amount of barley that might have been consumed 

 instead of cake, we have merely to suppose that fifty thousand 

 tons were imported ; now, as twenty coombs of barley were only 

 equal to one ton of cake, fifty thousand tons of cake were equal 

 to twenty times fifty thousand, or one million coombs of barley ; 

 therefore, as twenty coombs of barley will make six tons and a 

 half of compound, a million would have afforded three hundred 

 and twenty-five thousand tons, all of which I calculate would have 

 been a clear saving, and returned to the pocket in the sale of 

 meat : because if one-sixth of the barley sent to market last year 

 had been withheld and made into compound, the j)robabihty is 

 that, consequent on a short supply, the price would have ad- 

 vanced 3^. per coomb, and the remaining five parts realised 

 something more than the whole six — that is to say, as sixty 

 coombs of barley, at 125. per coomb, would amount to 36/., 

 fifty coombs at 15^. would obtain 371. lOs. ; consequently ten 

 coombs in every sixty have been worse than thrown away, for 

 the money was given to the encouragement of foreign agri- 

 culture, and to the employment of foreign labourers, while 

 English labourers, for the want of work, were compelled to 

 seek an asylum in Union-houses, where they were maintained 

 in idleness. 



Scarcely a guinea of those immense sums paid by the farmers 

 of this to the farmers of a foreign country for oil-cake meets an 

 adequate return. Thousands of bullocks are often sold in 

 Smith field which do not pay the wages for tending, and some 



