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things are brought to such a state, that "the sacrifice of many persons is the only "means of re-establishing the general wel"fare." Some little degree of indifference to the ruin of the colonists is indeed tempered, in the original, by a string of reflexions on the subject of the slave trade, tending to mitigate any inordinate compassion that we might possibly feel for the few or many persons sacrificed; but the assertion that this sacrifice is necessary is distinctly expressed; and I do as distinctly contend that it is utterly false and absurd.I apprehend, Sir, that our sugar colonies differ from the counties which compose the United Kingdom only in this, that they are more distant from the seat of government; the moral connexions of laws, language, and interests, are the same; their white population being wholly kept up by emigrants from hence, all of whom are stimulated by the hope of returning to their natural home. I further conceive, that the utility of such settlements consists solely in their affording the means of employment to adventurers, whose industry cannot be use. fully employed at home, and who are thus enabled to raise either food, or the raw material of manufactures, for the supply of the mother country. This the several colonies have done, and their sugar has contributed, in a much greater degree than is usually supposed, to feed, and thus to increase the population and cultivation of Europe. It is only inasmuch as they have done and continue to do this, that we have any immediate interest in relieving their present distress,

or any motive, exclusive of compassion of curiosity, for inquiring what mode of relief will produce the greatest effect with the least That sugat

inconvenience to ourselves.

enters, to a large amount, into the food of all, excepting the very lowest classes of our labourers, might be inferred from the enormous quantities of tea, or of infusions bearing that name, and sweetened with sugar, which have been admitted to the breakfasts of the manufacturing poor; but we have better because more direct evidence. The quantity of sugar retained for home consumption, on an average of the 4 last years, viz. 1804, 5, 6, and7, was 2,636,658.cwt.Now, Sir,you know that, from the time of the commencement of the American war, or thereabouts, this country, which had formerly exported corn. to a large amount, began to import considerable quantities for its own consumption, and that the annual average of foreign corn now required for the supply of this demand is 800,000 quarters. Such is your own statement of our wants, and I believe it to be authentic; and it may be presumed that the weight of this corn, even if it were all wheat, would not exceed 3,200,000 cwt. ;' allowing 4 cwt. to each quarter, it follows, that our consumption of food in the shape of sugar is equal, in point of mere weight, to at least three quarters of our consumption of food in the shape of foreign corn, or to the annual sustenance (if a calculation of the Edinburgh reviewers can be trusted) of bout 659,000 persons. Not one particle of this sugar was consumed in distilleries, but was fairly and honestly eaten or swallow. ed with water by the inhabitants of these kingdoms, and purchased by them at double the price of bread, taking that at 3d. a pound (13d. the quartern loaf) and the sugar at бd., a price which is below the average cost of that article during the three years. Further, the increasing taste for this species of food is evinced by comparison of the consumption just noticed with that of the years 1781, 2, 3, 4, and 5, which amounted to no more than 1,422,024 cwt. so that the augmented demand is 1,214,634 cwt. equal: to the weight of 303,658 quarters of wheat. You will observe, Mr. Cobbett, that I attribute to sugar no superiority of nutritive. power, because its efficacy in the distilleries. or breweries is not conclusive on this head, and we can derive no knowledge from comparative experiments; but, in thus comparing corn and sugar, weight for weight, there can be no fallacy; and every pound of sugar must have acted as a substitute for at least a pound of grain, or for a correspond. ing quantity of meat, or fish, or potatoes,

or other articles used as sustenance : and sequently the colonists must have always been in competition with the farmers who supply the national market with provisions ; they must have produced exactly the same me effect, and probably would have produced it in the same degree as the foreign importer of corn, had they been placed on an equally advantageous footing. The foreign cultivator, whether neutral or hostile, sends his grain to the British market loaded only with the expense of freight, insurance, and trader's commission, which united charges may perhaps only place him on a level with the British grower; whereas the planter's sugar is further loaded with a duty of 3d. per pound, and consequently, however it may be in request, is rendered too costly for the consumption of a very numerous but needy class of purchasers. I only mention this, here, for the purpose of shewing a fallacy in the argument of the Edinburgh reviewers. Instead of saying that the colonists have increased their produce beyond the demand of the whole world, they ought to say no more than that the sugar grown exceeds the quantity which the consumers are willing or perhaps able to buy, at a given price. But they maintain that it would be unsaleable at any price. What? If these self-elected professors of political economy are so pampered that the taste of sugar cannot gratify them, do they really suppose that the oats or barley, or oats or potatoes, which form the sole food of so many millions of our countrymen would not become more nourishing and palatable by the admixture of this article? Would the labouring classes in Scotland refuse to purchase, by any por tion of their labour, a participation of a species of food which ranks amongst the luxuries of the richest tables? Is it not, in point of fact, consumed by all who can afford to consume it? That the price and not the quantity produced the glut of our market (for there was no other,) and that the supply of all the colonies, whether British, French, Dutch, Spanish, &c. was inadequate to the supply of the world, was sufficiently proved during the peace of Amiens, during which, exportation entirely removed it. The actual redundancy, which has resulted, partly from the capture of many foreign colonies, partly from our refusal to admit the Americans on the usual footing to our colonial markets, but more especially from the policy of the French go vernment, which has gradually excluded us from all the markets of Europe, is now diminishing and will soon disappear. It will disappear, I trust, before it shall have ruined

quite so many planters as the Edinborgh critics had devoted to destruction, because a glut of food is sure to be removed by increas ed consumption. That consumption has been checked by taxation carried to excess, an excess proved by the total unproductive. ness of the duty imposed by Lord Henry Petty, but the temporary sacrifice of the planter's whole profits has again revived it. His distress has been severe, but our advan tage has been proportionate to it. I shall, with your permission, Mr. Cobbett, take an early opportunity of reverting to this part of the subject, but in the meantime I contend, that the diminution of culture, which the Scotch reviewers recommend as a radical remedy, would only complete the destruction of our colonists, because it is impossi ble, under the growing wants of our revenue, that they should be permitted to indemnify themselves for their losses by that increase of price which might result from a diminished produce; and that with respect to us, such a measure would be merely a diminunition of the national magazine of provisions. I am, &c. S. H

CORN AGAINST SUGAR.

(Mr. Arthur Young's 4th Letter) SIR,-I did not conceive that any circumstance could so soon have induced me to trespass by another letter on the patience of your readers; but your late paper, in defence of the sugar proposition, renders it somewhat incumbent on me to support, as well a I am able, the evidence I gave in three examinations before the committee of the house of commons; for my opinions there delivered were most erroneous, if yours be just.-Before I enter on the question, permit me to congratulate you on what seems to be the dawn of a change in your political ideas. In various papers, under the motto of " Pe"rish, Commerce, you appeared to hold the commerce of the kingdom in such contempt, that the Royal Exchange began to shake to its foundations; and you were disposed to represent, with Mr. Spence, internal consumption as the only origin, support, and proof of wealth: the tea of the east, the sugar of the west, the tobacco of the north, were given to the winds; and we were called upon to give up the use of such luxuries. But in this late exertion of your genius such sentiments do not appear; on the contrary, the commerce of the west assumes a far different importance; for you expressly declare,if the injury to the barley growers were proved, I should inquire, whether the injury to the barley growers would be "more or less than the relief to the sugar

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growers; the latter being, in my opinion, "full as much entitled to the protection of government as the former? P. 643." Here is at least a liberality of sentiment which will please the merchants of the Exchange, much more than it will the freeholders of Hampshire.-In the support of weak positions, there is too often a lust in the exertion of great talents, which on many occasions has done no slight mischief to the cause of truth: hence the arguments of sophistry, in tissues so dexterously intwired, that though common sense, at the first blush, feels the fallacy, yet to unravel the web of error may demand ingenuity as great as the talent that produced it. Hence the glaring paradoxes that have disgraced the pages of genius: a Rousseau could contend that man should crawl on his hands and not walk erect on his feet; a Monboddo discovers the imperfection of the species in our want of tails; and a Berkley could assure a man, who knocked his head against a post, that he was under the greatest of errors, that matter has no existence, and the post to be found no where but in his own brain. A philosopher could deny the possibility of motion; walking across the room was a better reply than a logical discussion. And you, Sir, have had ingenuity enough, not quite to escape this foible. You are far enough removed from such gross attempts as I have quoted, which I presume to mention only to shew that very great men, from feeling a confidence in their powers, are too apt to overlook those difficulties which would preserve inferior minds from such rashness. For not to speak of your agreement with Mr. Spence in some of his extraordinary positions, the paper before me affords a notable instance; for though on the first reading of it I felt that error was at the bottom of the reasoning, yet so ingeniously have you wrapt it in a profusion of arguments, carrying the simi itude of truth, that the understanding of the reader, though not convinced, is perplexed with subtleties, upon the very points that ought to be the most luminons and convincing. Political economists and common sense tell us, that if a large portion of a demand be withdrawn from a market, price must fall; that a fall of price discourages production, and that eventual scarcity will be the consequence. These combinations are plain and self-evident; the degree in which they operate will vary with circumstances, and in a case of farming produce, the pressure felt will cer

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tainly be proportioned to the abundance of

the crop.

Now, Sir, a considerable portion of your paper is employed in stating a train of consequences that militare with these first principles of political economy: they are' erroneous, or you are wrong.-Fer, Sir, what is the grand object of your reasoning? But to prove that an immense demand for barley may be withdrawn from the market, and yet the farmer not suffer; this is the position, turn and twist it as you please. Your imagination is on the stretch to fix absurdities and contradictions on the agricul turists: we may be bad reasoners, but that will not convert paradox into truth --You seem to think that you have bereft us of our facnities, by the canning question :—I the produce of the distillery, foo!? or is it not food? If it is not food, the barley is thrown away; if it is food, the West Indies will give it. I care not what you make it, while I know it causes a demand in the farmer's market, and that if you stop it you deprive him of that demand Malt spirits are certainly not food; but 2,254,000 pounds weight of beef, added to the flesh of lean oxen, unquestionably is food, and such food as the West-Indies cannot give; for it is upon evidence, that sugar wash without grains will not fatten. But though mait spirits be not food they are a commodity necessary in the consumption of the people; and I leave to your subtlety to prove, that the manufacture of such a commodity is throwing the raw material away. Such an argument might make some figure in a panegyric on French brandy, but sinks to nothing in a question of British farming. Your argument is to the full as applicable to the brewery as to the distillery. Is beer (relative to the question of scarcity) food, or is it not food? If it is not food it is barley thrown away; if it is food, the WestIndies will give it; and this supposition touches our case more nearly than at first meets the eye; for your correspondent, X. X., Vol. II. p. 26, whose letter you commend, expressly joins both these modes of consuming sugar as highly desirable to the planter, and not at all detrimental to the nation at large. Bravo, X. X! that is a home thrust, indeed; and I must advise you, Mr. Colbe, when you address the Hampshire freeholders, to explain this matter fully illuminate their dark minds, and convince them that the loss of a demand for 300,000 quarters of barley is so trifling a

:

Supplement to No. 20, Vol. XIII.-Price 10d.

2 B

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business, that your friends meditate the fur-
ther deprivation of three millions of quarters
more. And this without doing them the
snallest injury-Much error has crept into
this discussion from speaking generally of
corn, and not particularly of barley, and
you have made no small use of this mistake.
You say "As connected with a question
like this, which embraces the general
produce of the soil and the general inter-
"ests of the nation, all the distinction be-
"tween barley-growers and wheat-growers
"is too trifling to be attended to." P. 648.
This utterly deny; and we have only
to compare the two products under a very
few circumstances, in order to shew that
they must be considered as separate and
distinct. Ninety years ago five millions of
people consumed more malt that paid excise
than nine millions do at present. Has the
consumption of wheat been arrested in this
manner? Does wheat pay a duty of 34s. Sd.
per quarter? The import of wheat is im-
mense, of barley scarcely any. Of all,
white corn barley is the most peculiar in de-
manding a suitable soil. On new improve-
ments, by breaking up waste lands, it is the
last grain sown and in many such cases not
sown at all. To consider, therefore, wheat
and barley without a due distinction between
them, would lead to nothing but nonsense
and confusion: and has led to such stuff as
talking of the substitution of spring-wheat,
of oats, and of hemp: all, or either of
which crops, may, and would do, to a cer-
tain degree, in some instances, but on the
true barley soil must be rejected in all.
A single contrast will shew the truth of this
opinion: superabundance of barley, propor-
tioned to demand, sinks the price with a
similar abundance of wheat, import lessens,
Is not this a
but price remains the `same.
distinction sufficient to decide the question?
The low prices of wheat which we have
seen were caused by a great import; the low
prices of barley, by legislative burthens.
Hence therefore, Mr. Cobbett, we have a
right to claim your support; for you say:
"Make it out that it will be injurious to
"the culture of corn in general, and I am
"with you," p. 643. We have made out
by a great variety of information before the
committee, that the barley growers would
be deeply injured, that the clover would
suffer, and the wheat also, besides the
more general injury resulting in a thousand
different ways, from any circumstance tend-
ing to impoverish the cultivator of the soil.
The reference which has been made to sub-
stituted crops to feeding pigs, to jumbling
al sorts of somatogether in the inquiry, and

the question whether or not istillationes
food-all these objects are well enough to
play with, after admitting the leading prin-
ciples which govern the inquiry but you
should first settle the point, whether with-
drawing demand does not sink the price.
This question should be met, and not shifted
to a dependent chain of eventual supposi-
tions: thus, should pork be very dear, ghe
barley to pigs; if the soil suits, sow oats;
if rich, sow bemp; if scarcity comes,
make bread: but multiply such as long

as you please, they may all turn out no better
than moon-shine. Barley may be abundant,
pork cheap, peace with Russia, and hemp
a drug. The distillery, Sir, is worth a
hundred thousand such ifs. The measure is
not to extend to Ireland, and yet you tell us
we may send our barley in the shape of
pork to the West Indies!!! Ireland dis-
tilling malt, and England sugar, and which,
think you, will send out pork or beef?
Such exceptions and exemptions are hostile
to every
idea of a real union. You leave
the Irish barley growers safe, and lay
your manacles on those of England.-
You triumph greatly upon the imaginary
contradiction in those, who having declared
the danger of scarcity, now are apprehen-
sive of a superabundance of corn, and as
if they feared a glut in the corn market,
Our only apprehension of superabundance
was eventual scarcity. You cannot reduce
the price of any one product so low, that
the farmer will not be paid for producing
it, without scarcity being the consequence;
and yet such a reduction of price will mark
what you may call a glut in the market. In
this, therefore, we are guilty not of the
smallest contradiction, but have been influ
enced by principles admitted on a thousand
other occasions to be sound and just.-You
do not approve Mr. Wakefield's most accu
rate idea, of the distillery being a public
magazine of barley, applicable to other
uses if wanted. The same idea has often
been applied to the export of wheat with
the bounty; if having a surplus of any
article of produce you do not get rid of it,
it re-gorges in the market, sinks the price,
and discourages the cultivation; but, as
with wheat for exportation and barley for
distillation, if either be wanted for bread at
home, you stop, what, in such case would
be a misapplication, and the command of
the grain at once proves the fact, that you
have indeed a granary to resort to
it was Hume, who represented manua
tures as a store-house of labour for the pub-
lic, war formerly threw bands out of em
ployment, and then they were ready for the

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ranks of the army. The granary and the store-house rest on the same principle. Yet, Sir, you pronounce Mr. Wakefield's granary idea, as nothing more than buying corn in order to throw it away. Did our ancestors, when, by the first of William and Mary, they prohibited the import of French brandy and established the English distillery (as the preamble of the act declares, for the encouragement of consumption and tillage), did they think any thing thrown away that encouraged tillage? Did they not rather prove themselves to be guided by principles extremely different from those which instigated the exertions of your pen in defence of the West Indian project ?—The questions asked in the committee, and several of your observations, unite in supporting a notion that there would be no difference between the measure now proposed of withdrawing a demand from the market, and the proposal of the agriculturists to enclose and cultivate waste lands: such new cultivation, it is asserted, would pour fresh corn into the market, and that would have the effect of sinking the price, as much as stopping the distillery. But, Sir, such a position is one of the convenient results of confounding the terms corn and barley. If such cultivation should, after supplying itself, pour 300,000 quarters of barley, at a short period, into the market, your conclusion would be perfectly just; but it would not of necessity follow, that any such results would be the case.- -Wastes situated on a soil peculiarly fitted for barley (like many on the sands of Norfolk and Suffolk) would after some years certainly produce that grain; but the great mass of our wastes are not adapted to it. Oats, rye, wheat, potatoes, turnips, and grass seeds, are the main articles in such cultivation. Potatoes and wheat to lessen, and, if possible, do away the enormous import of foreign wheat; and oats to diminish, or annihilate, a similar foreign supply. Let any candid man determine, whether our demand for such cultivation, is any contradiction to a wish to preserve to our farmers the markets of the distillers for their barley.You mention a committee being appointed on the distillery in December, 1806, adding, that you never heard of any report made by that committee, Such a report was made and printed, and you will thank me for presenting you with an extract from it "The use of sugar or molasses in the distilleries appears to be impossible, unless that of grain is excluded. To Ireland and Scotland it could not be extended, without a com#plete revision of all the laws enacted for

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"the security of the revenue on the distil"lation of spirits. By no regulation could "the use of sugar be permitted in the distil"leries, even to the total probibition of the use of grain, except to the loss of the revenue of about £115,000 annually, pro"vided the distiller using sugar was enabled to carry on his trade with the same ad"vantages he now possesses from using grain. Upon spirits made from molasses "the loss would be still greater, because "the duty on molasses wash at present is higher than that upon the wash from sugar; and it would be necessary, as appears from Mr. Jackson's evidence, that "both should be reduced to an equal and "lower rate. If the wash duty were re"duced below its present rate, a bounty "would thereby be given on the use of

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sugar. It is not, however, in the con"templation of the committee to recom"mend, at the present moment, the exclu"sion of grain from the distilleries, and the use of sugar mixed with grain exposes the

"revenue

to considerable and inadmis

"sible risk.-For the purpose of inducing "the distiller to use sugar at all, it shooid

appear that part, if not the whole of the "customs duty on sugar, must be drawn "back."-" The different rates of duty on "the articles used in the distilleries, and "the different modes of collecting those "duties in the three parts of the United

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Kingdom, constitute, in the present state "of things, a difficulty almost insuperable."

-(Report, ordered to be printed February 17th, 1807.)-“I presume it is not "intended to extend the use of sugar to "Ireland and to Scotland. I see almost "insuperable difficulties to the use of sugar

in the distilleries in Scotland, and from "the little I know of Ireland, I should "conceive it very objectionable there' (Ibid. Examination of Wm. Jackson, Esq.) -May I be permitted to ask, if you, Mr. Cobbett, are prepared to admit the people to be taxed above £100,000 per annum, in order that sugar may be substituted for barley? I add, to the unquestionable injury of our farmers? And I beg you, Sir, to note the difficulties that stared the committee in the face, and produced this report only a year ago. If in so short a period they are made to disappear, I leave to the freeholders of England to judge, whether they have not as much reason to expect that another. year will extend the proposition to the brewery, as they could have had last year to see it so soon revived for the distillery, after the report of a committee, who found nothing but difficulties in the execution of the mea

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