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the demand and supply to continue also similar. This last consideration plainly requires, that the duration of the term should not be indefinitely extended; but, if it were asked what precise limits ought to be assigned to it, the most obvious answer would be a reference to usual custom, In leases of land, the term which has been generally supposed to reconcile, as nearly as possible, the interests of the landlord and tenant, has been seven years; and, as the rent of land depends on the estimated value and quantity of the corn which it produces, on an average of prices and seasons, the plain rule of analogy would lead to the adoption of the same term, for the purpose of deducing from it an average price intended to satisfy the conditions of the problem. This would be very nearly effected, by the average of the last seven years, as stated in the Report of the Committee.

To this mode of settling the price which shall determine at all times the minimum of duty, there is but one intelligible objection. It is notorious that during the last seven years, various causes have conspired to advance the price of grain; that the medium price of wheat on an average of 1810, 11, and 12, was 108s. 4d. whereas that of the four preceding years was only 81s. 6d.; and consequently that all the future averages, being affected by the properties of the first, must necessarily rise far beyond the limit originally intended by the legislature. The practical inconvenience of these successive augments would, indeed, become utterly intolerable in the course of the long period recommended in the Resolutions; and, though much diminished by the abridgment of the term, would still be too great to be overlooked. A very abundant harvest may, certainly, reduce the market price of wheat a good deal below the price of least duty; but in general, these two prices may expected to coincide very nearly, because good and bad seasons will counterbalance each other; and the fluctuations hitherto occasioned by the unequal competition between the foreign and the home grower will be limited, in future, by the counteraction of the duty. Now, supposing this to take place, and the minimum duty to be first deduced from the average price of the seven years ending with 1812, viz. 9Ss. 3d.; the successive similar averages would be 95s. 3d.-98s. 5d.-101s. 2d.-102s.-101s. 4d.102s. 4d. &c. after which the variations would be trifling. The simplest mode of remedying this inconvenience would be to enact that the price of least duty, being once settled from the medium market price of some preceding period, should continue unaltered till the expiration of a similar period; after which the mode of deriving it annually from successive terms of years might be finally established.

We have hitherto assumed that the point, at which it is proposed

that

that the graduated scale of duties on imported foreign corn shall commence, has been chosen after an impartial consideration of the interests of the growers and consumers of corn at the present moment; or, at least, that this point cannot fail to be fairly settled during a parliamentary discussion of the Resolutions: and we therefore confine our objection to that single enactment, which must entail on us an indefinite augmentation of the low duty price, notwithstanding the probable return of peace at no distant period, and the consequent renewal of our commercial relations with every part of Europe. By the removal of this defect in a system which is in all other respects equally wise and liberal, every ground of opposition will, we think, be done away.

We are perfectly aware that the select committee on the corn trade have declared their opinion that if the regulating price for allowing importation be made a very high one, it is the best possible protection the grower can have; but to this opinion we cannot assent, because we conceive that the protection of the grower is derived solely from the duty, in consequence of which the foreigner cannot, in any state of the market, come into competition with him upon perfectly equal terms; and that the degree of protection will, consequently, be proportionate to the amount of the minimum duty. But the price at which this takes place will become the standard, the measure, of what may be called the natural price of corn; a standard annually corrected by a reference to the mean prices of some average of years. To make this very high would be, not to protect the grower, but to give him a very undue and short-lived profit, by depreciating all the articles in which he receives an equivalent for his produce. This advantage over the consumer having ceased, as it must shortly do, the farmer would find that the difficulty of exporting with profit, and the necessity of opposing further obstacles to importation, were not a little enhanced by the increased excess of our standard compared with that of other countries.

Leaving the further discussion of this topic to wiser heads than our own, we will now conclude our article with a few remarks on the general subject of subsistence and population.

It has been generally supposed that about one quarter of wheat," convertible into about 480lbs. of bread, is sufficient for the annual sustenance of an individual, on an average of all ages. If this were true, it would evidently be easy to ascertain, in any country of which the extent and population were accurately known, the average annual consumption and reproduction of food, to estimate the degree of comfort enjoyed by the inhabitants of such country, &c. But the number and variety of articles really employed for the purpose of food are so great as to throw considerable doubts on the truth of this approximation, and it is perhaps impossible to furnish

any

any which shall be free from considerable error; yet it may be of some advantage to know the attempts which have been made elsewhere to solve this intricate problem, and we shall therefore here state the supposed proportion of animal and vegetable food consumed in the French metropolis about the time of the revolution, as tolerably applicable to Great Britain.

The data for such a calculation were very numerous in France, where every province has been accurately surveyed, the population of every district regularly registered, and the consumption of the towns minutely ascertained, by means of the entrance duty collected at the gates. The calculators, amongst whom were Lavoisier and La Grange, were men of undoubted science, and the result of their labours is, that the annual food of each inhabitant, as deduced from the population of Paris, amounts to 642 French pounds, (693 English,) of which the vegetable food, including corn, potatoes, fruit, and garden esculents of all sorts, forms 435lbs. (469 English,) and the animal food, comprehending meat, fish, butter, eggs, cheese, &c. 207lbs. (224 English.) Now, if it be considered that the extent of pasture land in Great Britain is, at least, ten times as great as that of wheat land; that this pasture is, from the moisture of our climate, remarkably fertile, and that our insular situation must supply us with a much larger portion of fish than our French neighbours can easily attain, it may reasonably be presumed that the estimate which allots a quarter of wheat to the subsistence of each person, probably exaggerates, by about onethird, the real consumption of grain in this country, and reduces, in the same degree, the amount of our whole annual sustenance.

This proportion will, of course, vary in different districts, in different classes, and in different seasons; but, in general, there is reason to hope and believe that the ratio of the more nutritious to the less valuable species of food, is still increasing in the general consumption; that wheat continues to supplant the inferior sorts of grain, and that the comforts of the poor are more widely dif fused. Of wheat, indeed, it is impossible to state with accuracy the annual produce, but the inference may be indirectly proved by the augmented consumption of the food afforded to us by our colonial agriculture. On an average of ten years, ending in 1801, the mean annual consumption of sugar was between 177 and 178 millions of pounds, which, divided by the amount of the popula tion, (10,942,646) gives 16lbs. as the consumption of each individual in Great Britain. By a similar calculation on the next ten years, we find the consumption augmented to between 19 and 20lbs. for each person, the annual average being 240,800,000lbs., and the population 12,352,144. This is exclusive of the distilleries, and of the export to Ireland; and as it appears from ex

periment,

periment, that a hundred weight of sugar is equal, in point of nutriment, to a quarter of barley, or of a quarter of wheat, it seemsto follow that the coarser kinds of grain, formerly in general use. for the manufacture of bread, are daily giving way to more palatable articles of nutriment.

With regard to animal food, the abundance of which has been at all times the peculiar boast of the British islands, we know, by the direct evidence of the markets in the metropolis, that the quantity consumed is regularly increasing. This, indeed, as we have seen, has been considered by many writers as a proof that our tillage has not improved in a degree at all proportionate to our pasture lands; but in truth it is the peculiar advantage of the modern husbandry, that the quantity of winter and summer provender for cattle, yielded by the plough, greatly exceeds the annual produce of grass and hay from the same quantity of land. If, however, this were not notoriously true, there can be no doubt that our fisheries might, for centuries to come, effectually supply the deficiencies of our agriculture. There are, indeed, no bounds to the possible accumulation of animal food; and its efficiency as a resource, in the failure of other nutriment, is only limited by its very perishable nature; an inconvenience, however, very easily remedied, so that we may perhaps be justified in expressing our belief, that if the proposed imposition of a duty on foreign grain were accompanied by a repeal of the tax on salt, the growing population of these islands might be supported, for centuries to come, in the enjoyment of increasing abundance.

ART. VIII. A Journey through Albania, and other Provinces of Turkey, in Europe and Asia, to Constantinople, during the years 1809 and 1810. By J. C. Hobhouse. Cawthorn. 1813. pp. 1152.

A

FTER the complaints, which we have been accustomed to hear, of the indolence of our travelled countrymen in communicating their observations to the world, and their unwillingness to expose themselves to the censure of our literary tribunals, we begin to think it not a little probable, that the current of opinion will shortly set in a contrary direction, and the dread of repletion succeed to the sufferings of a spare diet. The last and present year have been abundant, at least, in accounts of the countries bordering upon the Mediterranean; and some additions have been made to the stock of original information. On many points, indeed, much novelty is not to be expected. It would not, for instance, be

very easy to make discoveries respecting the Turks, a people whose general character and external appearance might be as correctly taken from the earliest, as from the latest writers. We do not, indeed, mean to say, that the Turks will be found existing, in the present day, in the exact state described by Busbequius; but we believe that the changes which have taken place, will be found to have been chiefly political, and that in the gradual decay of their empire, their individual character has remained unaltered. Their manner of living has varied but little, and that little has been in general for the worse. Their baths are less magnificent, their houses more mean, their intercourse with strangers less free, their story-tellers less entertaining; they no longer allow the infidels to reside in the city of Faith, and carefully exclude them from the female slave-market. Yet the vivacity of a recent description may give charms to the recital of what was before known; and the scepticism of the modern may induce him to search more closely into the evidence of some stories, which have enjoyed a prescriptive character for truth, though originally, perhaps, the invention of some talkative dragoman. Besides all this, we like to be assured of the fact, though nothing more be gained by it, that the distant world is still going on as it did twenty years ago; that the Bosphorus of Thrace, in spite of the reveries of politicians, and the prophecies of divines, is still inhabited by men in green and white turbans, and that the Dardanelles, though not impervious during war to a British fleet, are since the peace hermetically sealed against every stranger, without the special permission of the Grand Signor himself. We like also to be informed, for we all love to speculate, as to the probability of a change in the situation of the Greeks; we anxiously catch at the idea, we were about to say of the renovation of such a people, but at all events, at the prospect of a restoration of their country, if not to independence, at least to quiet and prosperity. In the same course of feeling we cannot be indifferent to the possible fate of that lesser Asia, which contained, in the period of its glory, so many trophies of art and learning, and which still presents to the enraptured view, a country rivalled only by that garden formed by the sovereign Planter,

when he fram'd

All things for man's delightful use."

Lastly, the hopes of finding fresh specimens of ancient art rescued from the destruction that awaits them in the land of barbarism and ignorance, or new positions ascertained or established in ancient geography, afford additional motives to the reader, and give a liberal interest to the descriptions of the latest traveller.

Upon all these points, both the general reader and the scholar may look for no small portion of information and amusement, from

the

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