Agricultural Statistics. 
557 
told it ; nor can it be said that any of that more abundant mental 
element in all communities, the faculty of after-wisdom, essayed 
to turn it to much account. Yet if such an event had happened 
in the iron trade, or in the cotton market of Liverpool or Man- 
chester, we will hazard the assertion that it would not have been 
suffered to pass by as a mere phenomenon of the year, without 
being improved to future use. It was this : — During the six 
weeks immediately following the harvest of the year 1846, from 
the middle of August to the end of September, the average price 
of wheat was 48.9. 2(/., the lowest point touched being 45s. Id. 
After some improvement in the following month it fell again by 
the end of November to 50s. ; by which time, most of that large, 
but we hope not increasing class who thresh out this year's corn 
to pay last half-year's rent, that class, whom the Mark Lane 
phraseology cruelly distinguishes as ' needy sellers,' the same 
class (for so unhappily it ever is), who ' cannot see what good 
agricultural statistics are to do,' had turned their little stock into 
cash and the cash over to their landlords. The year had no 
sooner died out than the symptoms of a scarcity began to 
manifest themselves, which in the course of six months brought 
the price of wheat, the produce of that same harvest (and in spite 
of an importation of upwards of four and a half million quarters of 
wheat alone), to the extraordinary price of 102s. bd. per quarter. 
Here was a prominent and melancholy instance of that law so 
quaintly expressed in the adage that tells us "the weakest go to 
the wall." Taking the actual value of the whole wheat crop of 
that year as fairly, at any rate approximately, indicated in the 
sum of the weekly averages of the Gazette from harvest to harvest, 
the small farmer who came early into market with his crop lost 
about 27s. on every quarter of wheat sold — a sum which, at the 
rate of four quarters to the acre, exceeded the whole cost of the 
fallow. Supposing his oddmark of wheat about 20 acres, his rent 
about 200/. a-year, he sacrificed the full amount of the half year's 
rent he was selling to meet. This is paying at a dear rate for the 
enjoyment of that kind of gambling which subsists solely upon 
ignorance, but which would, like a bet, lose even the element of 
fairness, would be not even justifiable, if certain existing facts 
were known which might be known, and which it is to be hoped 
soon will be known, equally to rich and poor, equally to the 
large and small farmer. It is to the latter — the man who cannot 
afford to wait the turns of the market, — that the statistical 
estimate of the coming prices of the year, based not upon guess- 
work, but upon the ascertained facts of the harvest, would be 
most pre-eminently serviceable. The loss even of a few shillings 
a quarter, when examined and duly multiplied, is a far more 
serious loss than meets the ear. 
VOL. XVI. 2 o 
