Wheat. Flour. qrs. cwt. February 5, 442,389 478,815 March 5, 405,685 355,462 April 5, 559,602 356,308 May 5, 383,395 243,154 --------- --------- Making a total } 1,791,071 1,433,739 in four months, }
--equal, if we take 3-1/2 cwt. of flour to the qr. of wheat, to 2,200,700 qrs. of the latter. The importations of the first four months of the year are, therefore, nearly as great as they were during the whole of the preceding twelve months, the quantities duty paid in 1848 being, of wheat, 2,477,366 qrs., and of flour, 1,731,974 cwt.
The reason why young states, especially if they possess land eminently fitted for agricultural production, such as Poland and America, can thus permanently undersell older and longer established empires in the production of food, is simple, permanent, and of universal application, but nevertheless it is not generally understood or appreciated. It is commonly said that the cause is to be found in the superior weight of debts, public and private, in the old state. There can be no doubt that this cause has a considerable influence in producing the effect, but it is by no means the only or the principal one. The main cause is to be found in the superior _riches_ of the old state, when compared with the young one, which makes money of less value, because it is more plentiful. The wants and necessities of an extended commerce, the accumulated savings of centuries of industry, at once require an extended circulation, and produce the wealth necessary to purchase it. The precious metals, and wealth of every sort, flow into the rich old state from the poor young one, for the same reason that corn, and wine, and oil, follow the same direction in obedience to the same impulse. That it is the superior riches, and not the debts or taxes, of England which render prices so high, comparatively speaking, in these islands, is decisively proved by the immense difference between the value of money, and the cost of living at the same time, in different parts of the same empire, subject to the same public and private burdens,--in London, for example, compared with Edinburgh, Aberdeen, and Lerwick. Every one knows that £1500 a-year will not go farther in the English metropolis than £1000 in the Scotch, or £750 in the ancient city of Aberdeen, or £500 in the capital of the Orkney islands. Whence this great difference in the same country, and at the same time? Simply, because money is over plentiful in London, less so in Edinburgh, and much less so in Aberdeen or Lerwick. The same cause explains the different cost of agricultural production in England, Poland, the Ukraine, and America. It is the comparative poverty, the _scarcity of money_, in the latter countries which is the cause of the difference. Machinery, and the division of labour, almost omnipotent in reducing the cost of the production of manufactured articles, are comparatively impotent in affecting the cost of articles of rude or agricultural produce. England, under a real system of free trade, would undersell all the world in its manufactures, but be undersold by all the world in its agricultural productions. If the national debt was swept away, and the whole taxes of Great Britain removed, the cost of agricultural production would not be materially different from what it now is. We shall be able to raise grain as cheap as the serfs of Poland, or the peasants of the Ukraine, when we become as poor as they are, but _not till then_. Under the free-trade system, however, the period may arrive sooner than is generally suspected, and the importation of foreign grain be checked by the universal pauperism and grinding misery of the country.