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ries, as in the rude and awkward nature of the articles he uses. and oppression have depopulated his country, and he can always find plenty of land lying waste. He cultivates it when he obtains sufficient security for an increasing family, and notwithstanding the depreciation of the produce of his industry, of which, perhaps, he is not aware, he is at present in a state of progressive improvement.

But the other half of the land belongs to the proprietors. This half, which is equal in extent to France and England together, and which is more fertile in corn than both, is wholly cultivated by the serfs at their own expense, while the produce is sold by their lords, who have no expenses to reimburse. Doubtless the landlord suffers when the corn sells at a low price, for his income diminishes; but then his income is altogether gratuitous. It has cost him no outlay either of capital or of labour. However low it may fall, it is still his interest that his serfs shall produce corn, for in that way he obtains something; and if he did not make them work he would get nothing. On the contrary, a low price induces him to cultivate a further extent of land, in order that he may obtain by the sale of a great number of measures the same income which he formerly derived from a less.

It is impossible for a country in which cultivation is carried on by large farms to support such a competition-a competition with dealers who can always let their merchandize go at a lower price than their rivals. If the ports of England are thrown open to corn from the Baltic and the Black Sea, the cultivation of grain must be completely abandoned in that country; for, whatever may be the perfection of English agriculture and the fertility of the soil, corn will always cost the English farmer a certain expense; on the contrary, however great may be the ignorance of the Polish labourer, and even the sterility of the soil he cultivates, the corn which he raises costs nothing to the lord who sells it. Corn costs just as little to the Pasha of Egypt, or the Beys of Tunis and Tripoli.

But what is to be done? Ought the ports of England to be opened, or shut? Must either the manufacturers or the agricultural labourers of England be consigned to famine and death? The question is truly alarming. The position of the English Ministry is one of the most difficult in which statesmen can be placed. We therefore think it right to call their attention to the consequences of cultivation by forced labour, which appears to have escaped them; but we look forward to the new lights which will be thrown on the subject by the approaching parliamentary discussions, and do not pretend to decide the question. Another and more general consideration, however, presents itself at first sight-namely, the danger of cultivation by large farms; the danger of rendering cultivation altogether a system of speculation.

Wealth, we cannot too often repeat it, is not the object of society; it is only one of the means of arriving at that object, which is the greatest good of the greatest number. The system of large farms, of great capitals employed in agriculture, and of the application of natural science in extended cultivation, have favoured, it cannot be denied, a certain progress of wealth. Labour is thus better performed, injurious weeds are more completely extirpated, the harvests are rendered more abundant in proportion to the seed sown, and the management of cattle is better understood. But the industry on which the subsistence of 2 A

Oct.-VOL. XVII. NO. LXX.

the whole nation depends, is constantly subject to the fluctuations of the market. In England, the cultivation of corn must be taken up or abandoned according as the barometer of Dantzic, Taganrok, or Kentucky, indicates profit or loss on English, or on Russian, or American corn. This, indeed, must be the case in a country where corn is only cultivated for sale. A former who rents a thousand acres, raises on his ground every year, at an average, about twelve hundred quarters of corn, and does not consume in his family more than twelve or eighteen quarters. The remainder is for sale, and its mercantile value is the only thing which he considers in his cultivation. But if farms, instead of being of one thousand acres, were only of fifty; if the twenty families who would replace the great farmer cultivated their farms themselves, each family, out of the sixty quarters which it would raise, would consume from twelve to eighteen, and each would persist in the cultivation of corn for their own use, though some loss might be experienced on the corn sold, in consequence of the low price of foreign corn raised by forced labour.

This is, in fact, the present state of things on the Continent of Europe. The corn of Poland and Russia is as near to France as it is to England; that of Bohemia and Hungary is nearer to Germany than to England; the corn of the Black Sea and Barbary is still nearer to Italy. In these countries, agriculture doubtless suffers from the low price of foreign corn. However, none of the governments has thought fit to prohibit the importation of corn, or to load it with heavy duties; and the peasants of France, Germany, and Italy, while they somewhat diminish their cultivation of grain on account of its becoming less profitable, never think of giving it up, because they must, before all things, labour to maintain themselves.

The more exchanges are multiplied in a nation, or the more each individual is accustomed to buy all he wants and to sell all he produces, the more is the circulating medium augmented, the appearances of wealth encreased, and the means of employing large capitals extended. But there is also a gratification in the ideas of security constantly connected with the custom of supplying one's own wants, and living on articles of one's own production, without resorting to markets. This state of happiness has often been invoked by poets, who love to picture the husbandman enjoying the fruits of his well-stocked barnyard, and clothed by his own fleece, hemp, and flax. The desire of thus providing for one's own wants is by political economists regarded as a vain illusion; they have long ago declared that each individual does that best which he does exclusively; that, by buying and selling, we procure things both better and cheaper than if we ourselves made every article of which we stand in need. The example of England, however, shows that this system is not wholly exempt from danger.

Suppose it true that the labourer who sows corn for his own consumption, raises it at a dearer rate than he who sells almost all he has reaped, to pay for the labour with which he is to produce more; still it would be better that the great mass of labourers belonged to the former instead of the latter class. The high price at which corn will be produced by that class is a national expense, it is true; but national wealth cannot be better applied than in purchasing security. Now, it is not consistent with the security of a country that its sub.

sistence should depend on the fluctuations of markets; that speculators should feed or starve the population according as the price of corn may happen to be high or low; that the abundance of one harvest should afford no protection against deficiency in the next; that the whole people should, with regard to food, be made to pass through all the crises and alternations of glut and scarcity, which are already so severely felt with respect to manufactures, but which, however, are inevitable consequences of all speculators perceiving at once, from the state of prices, that there is too much or too little of their goods in the market, and acting all at the same time on that information. On the contrary, in France and Italy, where, according to calculation, fourfifths of the population belong to the agricultural class, these fourfifths will always be fed with corn of native growth, whatever may be the price of foreign corn, and the fluctuations occasioned by speculation will affect only the remaining fifth. Thus, the value of four-fifths of the whole produce of the harvest is fixed, and the value of one-fifth only is variable. But in England, besides that the agricultural class does not form one half the population, not one-tenth part of the labourers consume their own corn. Thus, the fluctuations which are the offspring of speculation-of those two errors termed by the English over-trading and under-trading-operate on all the corn grown in the country, and are felt by the whole population.

This is not all. The English regard their large farms as the only means of perfecting agriculture; that is to say, of obtaining the greatest supply of rural produce at the cheapest rate. But the reverse is the

fact. The wealthy and intelligent English farmer, aided by all the improvements of science, with his fine teams, his well-weeded fields and close fences, cannot maintain a competition with the ignorant and wretched Polish peasant, degraded by slavery and brutified by drunkenness, and whose agriculture is yet in an infant state. Corn raised in the heart of Poland, after paying the expense of several hundred leagues of land-carriage, river navigation, and the charges of a sea voyage, besides an import duty of thirty or forty per cent. ad valorem, can still be sold cheaper than that which is produced in the richest counties of England.

The English economists, who never examine the condition of other countries, attempt to explain this perplexing fact, sometimes by the burthensome weight of the taxes, and sometimes by the alteration made in the currency. I have never been able to comprehend the arguments of the modern school respecting the alteration of currency; nor am I convinced that these arguments are understood, even by those who employ them. As to taxation, it is certainly heavy, and must augment the price of every thing; yet it would be setting but little value on British freedom, to deny that the privation of all security and all justice is still a heavier tax on the Polish peasant, and on the fellahs of Egypt or Barbary, than any to which the English labourer is subject.

It is well to appeal to Ministers for reductions and economy; but as, in spite of every reduction, the interest of the debt will remain to be paid, taxation cannot be very much diminished. It is the system of cultivation that is bad; it rests on a dangerous basis, and should be changed, not violently and precipitately, but at least actively. This

system has been recently explained to our Ministry by writers on political economy; and it is necessary that we should understand it rightly, in order to guard against imitating it.

How will it be practicable to adopt in England those effectual but slow remedies which would tend to restore small farms, at a time when the manufacturing classes, forming one-half the population, are perishing of hunger, and calling for measures which would bring starvation on the other half engaged in agriculture? I am not prepared to answer this. It appears to me that the Corn Laws must of necessity undergo great modifications; but I would recommend those who call for their complete abolition, to examine carefully the following questions:

1. If free importation be allowed of corn raised by forced labour, and without any expense to the original owner, will it then be possible for the English farmer to keep a single acre in cultivation ?

2. If England should renounce the cultivation of corn, in consequence of importation being found more economical, to what extent would agricultural employment be diminished? What expense would be incurred by the manufacturing class in maintaining in workhouses the families of unemployed agricultural labourers? What would the manufacturers lose by the consumption of this class of labourers, who form nearly one-half of the population, being discontinued? What would the manufacturers also lose by being deprived of the consumption of the landlords, whose rentals would be reduced to nothing?

3. What will be the security of the country, if it depend for subsistence entirely upon foreigners, and in particular on such as may very readily become enemies; upon governments which are the most barbarous and despotic of Europe, and which would be the least of all deterred from injuring England by the consideration of any injury which might at the same time be done to their own subjects? What would become of the honour of England, if the Emperor of Russia had it in his power, by closing the ports of the Baltic, to starve her into any concession?

These are difficulties which, combined with many others, present themselves for serious consideration, when a change of system is proposed, which would supersede agricultural labour in England. Besides, the same difficulties are destined to reappear, some ten or twenty years hence, when the rapid increase of sheep in Austral Asia shall introduce into the English ports wool at a price so low as to render the breeding of sheep as unprofitable in England as the cultivation of arable land. This, in fine, is the result of the universal competition for producing every thing as cheap as possible; the consequences of which ought to be looked forward to at the present moment, when the progress of ideas prompts us to regard the whole universe as only one great market.

ROMAN GIRL'S SONG.

Roma, Roma, Roma!
Non è più come era prima.

ROME, Rome! thou art no more
As thou hast been !
On thy Seven Hills of yore
Thou sat'st a Queen.

Thou hadst thy triumphs then
Purpling the street:
Leaders and sceptred men
Bow'd at thy feet.

They that thy mantle wore,

As gods were seen:

Rome, Rome! thou art no more
As thou hast been!

Rome! thine imperial brow

Never shall rise:

What hast thou left thee now?-
Thou hast thy skies!
Blue, deeply blue, they are,
Gloriously bright!

Veiling thy wastes afar

With colour'd light.

Thou hast the sunset's glow,
Rome! for thy dower,
Flushing dark cypress-bough,

Temple and tower:

And all sweet sounds are thine,

Lovely to hear;

While Night, o'er tomb and shrine,

Rests darkly clear.

Many a solemn hymn,

By starlight sung,

Sweeps through the arches dim

Thy wrecks among.

Many a flute's low swell

On thy soft air,

Lingers and loves to dwell

With Summer there.

Thou hast the South's rich gift

Of sudden song;

A charmed fountain swift,

Joyous and strong:

Thou hast fair forms that move

With queenly tread ;

Thou hast rich fanes above

Thy mighty dead.

Yet wears thy Tiber's shore

A mournful mien:

Rome, Rome! thou art no more

As thou hast been!

F. H.

"

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