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how completely this, as well as all previous enactments, has failed in effecting even an approximation to its object. And Mr. Tooke, Sir Robert Peel's favourite authority, declares (and, we doubt not, with perfect correctness), that, under the sliding-scale, prices must fluctuate at least from 36s. to 73s. a quarter, or more than 100 per cent.[1]
Here, then, we have three remarkable facts. First, we have a parliamentary declaration, that steadiness of price is the primary object; which must never be lost sight of, and which is perfectly essential to the welfare of the landlord, the farmer, and the labourer. Secondly, we have a law passed for the purpose of procuring this steadiness, which nevertheless has not prevented the most excessive fluctuations. And, thirdly, we have it shown on the first authority, that this very law does, and must, aggravate these very fluctuations.[2] Surely a law passed with a definite object, and producing the exact opposite of that object, needs no further condemnation.
Moreover, it is perfectly evident that steadiness of price is at least as important to the consumer as to the grower of corn. The grower, if he be a man of capital, may to a certain extent set a high-priced year against a low-priced year, and so make a decent average. But the poor bread-eater cannot do this. He cannot lay in a stock of flour at 36s. and keep it by him to consume when the price is 73s. He eats what he wants in the low-priced year; and when the high-priced year comes, he lives upon something else, or eats only half the quantity. Had the price been stationary at 50s. he would have been to the farmer a regular customer for a regular quantity. But, as it is, he is a customer at 36s. and he ceases to be a customer at 73s. This, therefore, brings us to the important principle,—that the country could afford to pay the farmer a better average price, if prices were steady, than if they are fluctuating. What we complain of is, not so much that wheat should average 50s. a quarter as that it should ever reach 80s.
The third great mischief, then, which the corn-law inflicts upon the farmer is this:—by aggravating fluctuations, it upsets all his calculations; and prevents the country from paying him as high an average, as with steady prices it would be able to afford.[3]
- ↑ Tooke on Prices, III. pp. 35, 38.
- ↑ Under a fixed duty or a free trade, corn would come in just as it was wanted; the supply would meet the demand, and be proportionate to it, both in time and in amount. Under the sliding scale the price is rapidly and inordinately raised by the artificial withholding of the supply, till the lowest duty is attained, when it is as rapidly depressed by the sudden liberation of the whole quantity in bond.
- ↑ We apprehend that the farmers are very much deceived as to the actual average prices of wheat. The apparent average from 1829–1841, as taken from the weekly returns, was 58s. 9d. a quarter; but, as by far the greater quantities are always sold in the low-priced years, and generally in the lowest-priced weeks of those years, the real average paid to the farmers will be far lower; probably about 53s. On examining the quantity of wheat sold in the 150 towns from which returns were made to the corn inspectors, we find that in the three dear years 1829, 30, 31, when the average price was 65s. 7d. the quantity sold reached only 8,515,000 qrs. which in the three cheap years 1834, 5, 6, when the price had fallen to 46s. 2d. the quantity sold reached 11,286,000 qrs. And in 1839,
