NEWS OF THE WEEK.
ANOTHER scheme claims public attention as the veritable Corn- law Reform contemplated by Sir ROBERT PEEL. Mr. CHRISTO- PHER, a Lincolnshire Member, is the promulgator; and although he disclaims being the " pilot balloon" to the Premier, the Times is borne out by an expression which escapes him here and there in axing upon his plan, thrown out " to elicit information," as the counterpart of the long-expected February plan which Sir ROBERT asked six months to prepare. It is conveniently hinted among the agriculturists of South Lincolnshire by way of trying their temper : and they seem to have received it in such a way as to disarm all fear about the hostility of the agricultural interests. The scheme, however, which passes current among the Tory electors of Lindsey, is not likely to be at a premium in Manchester or Liverpool : and truly, if Mr. CHRISTOPHER'S really is a portrait of Sir ROBERT'S invention for settling the Corn-law question, it will grievously dis- appoint those who may have expected such a miracle at his hands. It retains the sliding-scale : for that everybody was prepared. But it modifies the scale very considerably ; making it slide, not jump, as Mr. CHRISTOPHER said, in regular degrees of one shilling each, from the highest to the lowest duty—from 20s. or 30s. to Os: r the maximum being imposed when British wheat is at 50s., the mini- mum when it is at Os. This, as in the City version of the scheme last week, would considerably lessen the inducements to push the apparent prices to the height in order to attain the sudden decrease ;of duty marked at the lower extremity of the existing scale. Much emphasis is laid upon the fact, that the abrogation of the present enormous duty applicable to a very low range of prices will remove an impost which Js, totally inoperative—for it can only come in force, as Mr. CIUSTOPHER Says, during abundant seasons, when the Eng- lish grower is competing not with the foreigner but with his coun- tryman—while it has the odious aspect of an excessive burden on food. This consideration, by the admission, only concerns appear- ances, not realities. But the grand characteristic of the scheme is a device for correcting the method of taking the average of market- prices upon which the duty is to be calculated: some o:if the large -towns, where the operations of the corn jobber are carried-on with most ease, are to be excluded from returning averages; and the producer is to make a return of prices as well as the dealer, each under his own hand, in a form prepared for the purpose. This will be some check upon the collusive bargains among mere dealers, which are now used as the means of raising or lowering the quota- tions of price upon which the averages are based ; but it does not seem equal to preventing such bargains. Supposing the producer cannot be drawn into the collusion, and that his returns are bond fide, represeritina the actual price, the dealers who Seek to raise it needt' only multiply their fictitious bargains and force their fictitious price a degree or two higher to counteract the dead-weight now cast into the scale against them. And as to the less inducement to tamper with a scale which slides down by regular degrees, it May be observed that at present the object is not to bring in corn at any particular low duty, but at a lower instead of a higher duty or at-the lowest : as long as the scale goes up and down, there will be quite sufficient motive for the corn-jobber to 'force it down or to permit it to rise according as he has corn to bring in or not. The proposed plan, indeed, would diminish the inducements to such operations, and would- introduce a new obstacle to them; but it does not appear that it would do so in any material degree. It scarcely seems, on the face of it, worth all the breath to be spent on defending and attacking it in Parliament, or the stationery to be consumed in its machinery. Its visible purpose is, as much as that of the existing law, to diminish the natural supply of corn in the home market : it makes no pretension to extend the foreign markets for our exported manufactures in exchange for corn im- ported.
But how can Sir ROBERT PEEL suppose that this or any simi- lar plan should settle the question, any more than the Whig eight-shilling duty ? The impractical extravagancy of a section of the Anti-Corn-law array may have placed them for the time hors de combat : the distracted purpose of all parties may enable any plan, which is brought forward for actual consummation, to work its way through the Legislature next session. Nay, as the less bigoted agriculturists step forward and undertake to mend all the faults in the Corn-law to prevent its being torn from their hands, many may be willing enough, as a last trial of patience, to see what the Corn-law doctors can do for their own case, though there should be little hope of success. And indeed there is none, ac- cording to present appearances. When this new experiment in clipping the scale and complicating the averages has been tried, in all probability precisely the same evils will beget renewed agitation, with the conviction that nothing really can be expected from the agriculturists so long as they are suffered to act instead of being coerced. With that troublesome, fruitless and obstructite experi- ment, Sir ROBERT PEEL will have identified himself: an unwise policy.
In the mean time, although the Anti-Corn-law leaders defeat their immediate purpose by indiscreet pretences of a violence which really means nothing in their mouths, the agitation which they are permitted to keep up so long as the question remains open, is doing obvious mischief to conservative interests. When Mr. COBDEN and Colonel THOMPSON propose what amounts to a wholesale confiscation of agricultural property, to pay an exorbi- tant land-tax or a bounty on foreign corn, they probably mean nothing more than a melodramatic ruse to magnify the formidable' aspect of their attitude ; and the unreality of the vaunt prevents its effect with the party at whom it is levelled: but it is not alto- gether nugatory in other quarters. Questions of rent, its theory and liabilities, which have hitherto slumbered in the tomes of poli- tical economists and philosophers, are now dressed up and sea- soned for agitation-dinners : they suit the palate of popular politi- cians, who have already some notions, picked up at random, of the right of the state to all lands, and of a redistribution of property. True, no one fears the positive recurrence to a primitive state of existence, or the subversion of society in a year to be fixed by some PRAEGER trCoNson t but that is not in any sense a safe State of the country in which Such questions are popularly mooted: no judicious and determined statesman would suffer it to continue. It is not the Corn-law question alone that wants settling, but its concomitants ; and they are worth a better device than that which is indicated by Sir ROBERT'S " pilot balloon."
