In our opinion, it would be less wise to licence individually the allowable beggar, which seems to be the tendency of Mr. Martin's reasoning, than to licence the requisite number of collectors in behalf of the disabled poor. The distribution of the quest would, in the first case, be accidental; but, in the second, proportionate to the degree of disability. Linguet announced, in his Annals for February 1778, a prize of fifty louis for the best essay on mendicity; but we have never seen the victorious disssertation. ART. LXIX. A Narrative, exposing a Variety of irregulør Transactions in one of the Departments of foreign Corps during the late War. By Mr. JAMES PUOLE. 8vo. pp. 88. ART. LXX. A Reply to Poole's Narrative, &c. By J. GARDINER. 8vo. THESE pamphlets will convince a numerous public, that peculation is not confined to the admiralty department, and that public money is often made away with unfairly. Of the specific cases here discussed, we cannot speak better than in the words of Mr. Windham's letter, quoted in p. 67. "What I recollect of the statement for merly made is, that, during the time of the troops being in Flanders, allowances were made to the officers in the emigrant corps, not authorised by government, and which, notwithstanding, did not appear to be applied in the way afterwards represented to me, viz. : to the relief of the officers in those corps, but to have been divided between * , or at least to have gone, in the first instance, to the advantage of the commissary, from whom it might be suspected that a part afterwards was made over to *; that the allowance in question consisted had not the horses for which they might be of rations of forage to persons who certainly claimed; and that the commissary and inspector of that time were Mr. Devaux and Mr. Gardiner. This, if my recollection is right, was the nature of the charge, of the reality of which, or of the means of proving it, I am still, as I was then, too little informed, to be able to give any opinion as to the propriety of pursuing it." Gratitude is due to Mr. Poole for the public spirit of probity and reform which pervades his denunciation. ART. LXXI. Cursory Observations on the Act for ascertaining the Bounties, and for rega lating the Exportation aud Importation of Corn. By a MEMBER OF PARLIAMENT. SVO. Pp. 16. THE Report from the parliamentary committee on the corn-trade, ordered to be printed on the 14th May, 1804, forms an epocha in English politics. No names are affixed; no responsibility accepted. Men, who would rail against secret advisers of the crown, have become the secret advisers of parliament, although the personality of monarchic character is a far stronger security against the execution of malignant counsel, than where shame and odium areto be divided among a multitude. Their professed motives for suggesting the corn-bill are: 1. To secure an equitable profit to the grower. 2. To secure an uniform price. 3. To secure an habitual surplus of home-grown corn, so as to render the importation of foreign corn the corn-grower, not merely of his pre sent profit, but of any profit. Corn being habitually one-fourth cheaper in North America than in England, our markets would sink nearly to the transatlantic level. The Americans have no rents to assess on the price of their corn; labour is already falling among them; the cost of freight is but a small duty on importa tion; so that, with the competition. ef their produce, it would no longer answer to the farmer here to cultivate any bot his most fertile fields; he could not af ford the expence of far-fetched manure, and artificial husbandry. What would be the consequence? Much arable land would be laid down in pasturage: milk, butter, cheese, and meat, would become unprofitably cheap some tracts would again be abandoned to nature or to the poor. Many farmers would throw up their leases; all would solicit abatements; and, after about seven years, which, on the average, might suffice for the renewal of contracts be tween landlord and tenant, reats would be found to have sunken considerably. If the farmer is to sell his corn nearly onefourth lower, he will probably expect an abatement of one-fourth of his rent. This abatement of rent once conceded, he will make the same proportionate profit as before. It is only during the falling market that the farmer would be suffering. His trade, like all others, will not be car ried on permanently at a loss, he would else divert his capitals into some more productive form of employment. The average or habitual profit, which is the equitable profit, will, in the long run, be regularly levied under all circumstances. The landlord would be also a sufferer, but later. His rent-roll would be reduced by as many pounds sterling as he must give up to the farmer, in order to induce him to keep his lease. This loss, however, would not be entire. For the cheapness of corn would depreciate labour, and with it the price of manufactured produce, and of all the petty articles of consumption. Hence, the lowered rents would be found to go as far, or nearly so, in purchasing the conveniences of life, as the higher rents. This is so certain, that all those classes of society, whose incomes depend on a corn-rent, such as the clergy, and the owners of entailed estates, retain from century to century their relative rank in expenditure. Men of property are more numerous than of yore, because the population has increased, the commercial classes grow their proportion of eminent wealth, and the colonial land-owners are becoming residents in Great Britain; wherefore, a given sweep of acres is not so near the summit of society as it was. But, in the hundred, or the shire, it still weighs, as before, against all the forms of contiguous rank. There is no relative degrada tion locally; but, in the increased assem blage of metropolitan property, the same height is no longer eminence. As a fall, so a rise, in the price of corn, is not of very durable importance, either to the farmer or to the landlord. The average unelapsed term of a lease being three years and a half, it is only for three years and a half that the farmer will get more than the habitual or equitable profit by a rise. Rents will then be raised to a new level; and whatever the farmer got, beyond what other farmers are willing to do business for, will go to the landlord. The landlord, in his turn, finds his apparent profit by the advance of rent again gnawn away by the gra dual rise of all commodities, which is ever commensurate with the dearth of food, a process which may require another three years and a half; so that it is only for about that period that the cour try gentlemen will have bettered, either the condition of their tenants, or their own, by introducing, and carrying through, their corn-bill. Under a system of entails, the profits of a dearth are likely to center chiefly in the farmers, because the landlord must let, and cannot sell; but, under a system of absolute tenure, the profits of a dearth would center chiefly in the land-owners, who would transfer, during a dearth, the fee simple of their farms, and buy them in again dur ing a plenty. Let us suppose, however, that instead of a three or four years' interest in the price of corn, the landlords and tenants of Great Britain had a life-interest, or a perpetual interest, in its dearth. Ought corn, for them, to be made dear? Who are the collective mass of corn-growers? At most, even including the dependents on their expenditure, a tenth of the community, a petty fraction of the nation. The corn-eaters, or consumers, who are all injured by an increase of price, form far more than nine-tenths of the whole. Their interests constitute vastly the superior claim to political attention. The corn-bill diminishes the relative plenty at nine tables out of ten, in order to increase the relative ple ty at the tenth, one might say at the hundredth, table. It slays the hecatomb to the Apis. But this is not all: it assesses a tax on cornconsumers, in the worst possible proportions. In the expenditure of the rich, the cost of bread is a minute article. In the expenditure of the poor, the cost of bread is the principal charge. It levies, therefore, the value of a minute's labour per day on the affluent; while it defrauds the pauper of the whole produce of two hours' labour per day. The consequences are exactly such as might be expected from the malignity of the system. In every cottage of the empire, the labourer's bread is now leavened with a mo ther's tear, who feels that it will not suffice for her offspring. Of all the wants of man, food is the most essential. When his income decreases, he first shelters himself worse, he next clothes himself worse, he next feeds himself worse. The cheapness of food is therefore justly considered by Vattel, and the publicists, as a chief purpose of political association, and the main end of legislation. To rebellions of the belly, as of all others the most justifiable, they recommend especial lenience. In the impeachment of Hastings, to have enhanced, by favouring monopoly, the cost of so welcome a superfluity as opium, was denounced as a high misdemeanor against humanity. But this corn-bill undisguisedly, publicly, designedly, undertakes to increase the price of necessary food. It contemplates an average increase of one-fourth. The pendulum of price had formerly to vibrate between other limits. The markets, which lately opened to importation at forty-eight, now open to importation only at sixty. It is proper to compute the amount of this burden. London is said to consume yearly 800,000 quarters of wheat, and to contain 800,000 inhabitants, (compare Proposal for supplying London with Bread, and the Popu ation-Abstract); so that each individual requires annually about one quarter of wheat. The 15,000,000 of persons contained in Great Britain and Ireland would, therefore, at twelve shil. lings per quarter, pay on their wheat a tax of 9,000,0001. sterling. Let us suppose that all the other sorts of corn enumerated in the tables of the act, such as rye, peas, beans, barley, beer, bigg, and oats, amount collectively to two-thirds of the value of our wheat; and that an equal proportion of burden reposes on these articles of food; and it will appear probable, that the annual tax inflicted by this corn-bill on the people of Great Britain, and inflicted in the inverse ratio of their means, amounts to 15,000,000l. sterling-15,000,000l. sterling yearly! Of this tax, which, for magnitude, transcends the boldest efforts of ministerial rapacity, not one penny is to be applied to any public or national purpose. It is wholly a donative to individuals; to be parcelled out among farmers in the form of profit, and among landlords in the form of rent. And so much for the equitable character of the profits which are to accrue from the corn-bill. 2. Why is an uniform price of corn desirable? Fluctuations are favourable to speculation, to traffic, to the multiplication of corn-merchants, to the investiture of additional capitals in the purchase of corn, and consequently to a larger do mestic command of food. The stock reserved for immediate consumption would, on a system of unrestricted trade, This corn-bill, however, has no more tendency to prevent fluctuation than the old corn-bill had. It contemplates an oscillation of price between new extremes; but it does not narrow the dis tance, or diminish the probability of these two extremes. It is a low imposture to bring forward and urge as a argument for the change of a law, what is equally true of the law in its ancient form. Now the law in its ancient form never prevented fluctuations; and, for this reason, that it confines our corntrade to our own resident merchants. A few corn-dealers in London can easily combine greatly to affect the market, and being secured against the interference of foreign capitals to a certain point, they can speculate much more daringly than if the ports were open always to and fro. The republic of Holland persevered in a sys tem of open trade during the whole cen tury in which our old corn-bill was operating. Holland, which grows no corn, was, during that whole period, the gra nary of Europe, was our own recourse in times of scarcity, and was supplied at home at a more stationary price that ourselves. Like the Dutch, we should house corn for all Europe, if we had the certainty of being allowed to carry it abroad, even when famishing at home. These that will pay most, want it most, and ought to have it. The selling-price of corn in any one country, varies with the seasons, and the consequent popular apprehensions; but it seldom happens that the selling-price varies in different countries in the same direction. Corn cheapens in the Baltic when it becomes dear in the Mediterra nean 2 nd reversely. On a system of unre.. stricted trade, we should, at the same time, te buying in the Baltic, and selling in the Mediterranean; and our own do mestic prices would rise, if the tendency to export was strongest, and would fall, if the tendency to import was strongest; but neither, in the same degree as in the distant markets. But, under the limitation system of the corn-bill, our merchants must make their election, whether they will export to the Mediterranean, or import from the Baltic. They cannot do both. They must then, by combination, bring down the prices in the one case, and run them up in the other: and thus the greatest attainable fluctuation is always secured by the corn-bill. 3. The only argument for the cornbill, which is said to make much impression, is the assertion, that it has a tendency to secure an habitual surplus of home grown corn. If the English have this great predilection for autochthonous bread and butter, it is strange they should not apply the principle to the rest of their breakfast. This country could grow its own tea, its own sugar, if it would build and cover in the requisite hot-houses, and incur the requisite expenditure for coals and tendance. But it would be absurd to make the attempt, because these commodities can be grown in other climates more cheaply. So that, by employing domestic labour in other purposes, the produce of that labour will purchase more tea and sugar, than if it had been squandered in this specific cultivation. The abundance of these commodities is greater in England, by leaving them to be reared in their native places, than if they had been here forced into existence. It is not less absurd to grow dear corn. It is no object, or menit, to produce; but only to produc cheaply. Agriculture, at best, is the worst employment for the capitals of the country, because it is the least productive. Its reputation here, just now, results from an accidental blunder of Adam Smith. He says, (book ii. c. 5), that no equal capital puts in motion so great a quantity of productive labour as that of the farmer; but, in doing his sum, or making his estimate, he cleanly omits the capital value of the estate to be cultivated, and thus arrives, by a process, in other respects correct, at his stupendous and erroneous inference. If ever so little money is saved by buying our corn abroad, it ought there to be bought. This would set at liberty, for the more productive forms of employment, a tapital now bribed into misapplication. It is good for countries, as well as indivi duals, to deal at the cheapest market. And the sort of population employed in the importation and the removal of corn, is far more disposeable than the population employed in growing corn. The work of the husbandman must, at all seasons, be going on: for the demands of colonization, or war, he can neither be spared nor interrupted: he is a part of the fixed property of the nation. But the maritime population, which imports or exports commodities, can accommodate its industry to the convenient season, can make, years before hand, the requisite provision, and devote itself at any time to the defence or service of the country. While this country continues an island, there can be no fear but some of its shores will be accessible to importation at all times. While there are unsettled dis tricts in North America, or in the world, there can be no fear that the prospect of a British market would bring into cultivation acres amply adequate to our demand. Agriculture is only useful, in as much as it is the art of producing food cheaply; but our agriculturists forget its aim, and hold up means, not conducive to its purpose, as meritorious: to make corn dear, for the encouragement of agriculture, is as ridiculous as it is oppressive. It is, however, highly probable that we now grow a vast surplus of corn at home, and that the alarm of the corncommittee is unfounded. They state that, during the last thirteen years, 30,000,0001. have been paid for imported corn, which is a mere trifle. They do not state how much has been received for exported corn during the same period: probably more. And there is, besides, a vast exportation of corn, in the form of beer, porter, spirits, starch; so that, after all, there may be danger of glutting the market by an overgrowth of corn, and of the return of cheap times, in spite of the corn-bill. We have heard much of the impolicy of returning bankers to parliament. We now feel the impolicy of returning landowners to parliament. We trust that this flagrant abuse of the influence possessed by territorial property in the house of commons, will be the means of exciting an habitual counteraction in the dis. interested and instructed orders of society. We hope that some efforts will be made to abolish that qualification of landed property, which necessarily throws the representation into the hands of the feudal aristocracy. We wish that the number of county-members were to suffer a sensible abridgment, and that their seats were transferred to persons elected by the cities. We have been the more diffuse in ar guing against the author of this respect. able and well-written pamphlet, as we hear that he has not only his arguments but his vote to reconsider. ART. LXXII._ Letter to the Right Hon. Charles Abbott, concerning the Extension of the Fisheries. By ROBERT FRAZER, Esq. 8vo. pp. 104. THIS writer takes for granted, that emigration is an evil which governments should endeavour to prevent: whereas emigration is a good, which governments should endeavour to facilitate. Where there is a regular drain on the population of a district exactly equal to its annual increment; the competition for labour remains the same, there is no tendency in wages to sink, and the general welfare of poor families is stationary. Where there is a regular drain on the population more than equal to its annual increment, the competition for labour diminishes, there is a tendency in wages to rise, and the general welfare of poor families is progressive. In these favour able circumstances, marriage begins to take place more generally, and at an earlier age; until the annual increment becomes equal to the annual demand: and then the prosperity is again stationary. But if any thing happens to interrupt the yearly removal of the superfluous hands, the competition for labour inconveniently increases, wages rapidly lessen, marriage can no longer be afforded, the promiscuous intercourse of necessitous communities is introduced, and vice and misery thin the population to its sufficient state. Those provinces of Europe, whence there is a large annual drain of people, are remarkably the happiest and most virtuous. To belong among the breeding districts of the earth, is a noble and enviable privilege. The banks of the Upper Rhine, which are distinguished for a moral, industrious, handsome, and hardy peasantry, supply yearly to Holland, a vast colonization. These men begin by getting in the hay-harvest, and gradually insert themselves in the towns, as porters and carmen: thus replacing a population, which navigation, and the East Indian settlements, are constantly consuming. Instead of checking the disposition of the Highlanders to emigrate, let them be carried gratuitously to Canada, to Trinidad, to Botany-bay. Let us under take the conquest of New Orleans, and the colonization of West-Florida; let us undertake the conquest of the Cape, and the colonization of the banks of the Orange-river, in order to create an addi tional demand for the home-born. Marriage will take place earlier, and morals become more pure; labour will be rewarded higher, and comforts abound more; the greater the annual emigration of our poor. Men, like nursery-shurbs, transplant the better for being reared in a bad soil. The lean and lacking corners of the em pire produce the most hardy and robust people. If great towns were to grow up in the Highlands, to scatter the fac titious wants of citizens, and, by accus toming the people to a division of labour, to destroy that versatile activity, that plasticity of industry, that accommodat ing serviceableness, that art of turning their hands to any thing, for which the Scots are eminent, these provinces would cease to be fit nurseries of men. The other districts, where a greater degree of privation and temperance continued to prevail, would become the breeding counties, and the Irish and Welsh would replace the Highlanders, as soldiers and colonists, with an obvious disadvantage both to our armies and to our colonies; for the Welsh and Irish are irascible and idle in a degree dangerous both to military discipline and to civil thrift. The wise statesman, therefore, will avoid, by any local privileges or artificial expen diture, to accelerate unnaturally the pr gress of the Highlands toward opulence: he will consider their present condition as far more advantageous to the whole than any other into which they can be thrown. It would be easy to make every one the Western Isles a seat of commercial cities, and far-fetched luxury of bustling business, and crouded vice. Let us sup pose, that, to the isle of Jura, were given the privilege of importing tea without any duty, and of distributing it untared throughout the British territory: it |