Agricultural Statistics. 
593 
the present day, having the question put to him for the first time 
which was put to Sir John Walsham, would not have shrunk 
instinctively at the suggestion of the medium proposed for this 
experiment, as a sort of difficile per difficiliiis, however he might 
afterwards be led to acquiesce in the economy and seeming con- 
venience of the channel. 
We lean to the belief that that first instinct would, in such 
case, have been the right one ; that the seeming convenience of an 
old channel was mistaken ; and that the newest and directest 
path of the statistical Enumerator to the very door of the Farm- 
house, from a central statistical board even of the most pro- 
visional construction, and invested with ordinary constitutional 
authority, would have carried the point with a success owing 
much more to its relation with new than with old associations ; 
and that the employment of persons so well qualified to assist, 
by local knowledge and ability, as the clerks of unions and parish 
overseers, would, if requisite, have been most effectually had 
recourse to in their separate capacity, apart altogether from the 
business of the Poor-Law. 
One word on the question of the economy of the plan. This 
is one of the most indefinite elements that ever finds a place in 
such calculations. In matters of the nature under discussion, it 
scarcely can be said to possess independent existence. It is 
purely relative to the results. What seems economy to-day may 
prove to have been a wasteful error to-morrow. The simple cal- 
culation by which, in Mr. L. Levi's evidence, a loss to the nation 
of three millions sterling in freight and price is shown to accrue 
from the case taken of a delay in our purchase of foreign corn, 
through a few months' withheld information as to the wants left 
by the deficient harvest of a single year, affords, without attaching 
to it undue exactness, a sufficient general index of the breadth of 
the interest at stake regarded in its pecuniary aspect : — 
" Suppose at the very last moment we shmild find ourselves to be in want 
of about five or six millions of quarters to be imported into this country in two 
or three months, of coiu'se the price of grain wonld rise enormously. Let ns 
calculate that, owing to the suddenness of the demand, the rise might be about 
6s. a quarter ; the natnral rise beyond it would have taken place if it had been 
known before. Then to these Gs. must be added also a very considerable rise 
in the rate of freights : for instance, I find that, during 1846 and 1847, the 
freight from Odessa to this countrj' for tallow ruled from 50s. to 110s. a ton ; 
and from the Danube, from 9s. to 21s. per quarter ; and from Alexaudi'ia, from 
6s. to 12s. din'ing 1846. Now let it be admitted that, owing to the suddenness 
of the rise, as we must have the grain speedily brought in, the rate of freight 
also shoidd rule 6s. a quarter higher than need be ; that wonld make nearlj'' 
10s. a quarter, wliich, upon six millions, would prove a loss to the public of 
about 3,000,000?. sterling. And this may actually bo ascribed to our finding 
ourselves all at once to be in want of large supplies, and that for that reason 
