14 SEPTEMBER 1839, Page 1

NEWS O1' THE WEEK.

Is lazy September, party politics are a bore. Men are thinking and talking of the crops, partridges, and the Doncaster St. Leger. We must dismiss the " sporting characters," whether of the field or the turf, with a single sentence. We understand that " birds" are plentiful in some districts, scanty in others ; and that although the candidates for the St. Leger are unusually few, a good attend- ance of horses, lords, and blacklegs, is expected at the great race- meeting of the autumn. But now finr the harvest! We cannot make a favourable report. Rain has fallen abundantly in the North of England, Ireland, and Scotland, when warns drying weather was required to save the wheat-crops. There have been intervals of sunshine—sufficient to cause sprouting of the grain ; and of the outstanding crops it is certain that a large proportion will be got in seriously outstanding In the home counties, most of the wheat has

been secured, but the new samples are of indifferent quality. They tend to depress the average prices, and raise the duty on the superior foreign article ; thus making good wholesome corn dearer than it would otherwise be,—one mode in which the present laws benefit consumers ! The calculations of the amount of stock on hand and of the gross produce of the pending harvest must of course be vague ; but it is known that the consumption of old English wheat has within these few weeks been rapid, and that the stocks are low. Abundance, then, is not to be expected—or its consequence, a material reduc- tion in the price of bread. And —which is the main point that attention should be directed to—wages will not rise; the tendency being rather to decline. With the exception of few and fir between periods of unusual demand for the products of manu- facturing industry, it appears that the remuneration of labour in England has been regularly diminishing since the peace. The sums actually paid have been less, while, latterly, the cost of living has been increasing. There is not the slightest prospect of a speedy improvement in the condition of the working classes : on the contrary, deterioration seems inevitable. We find in a re- spectable Sheffield paper an account of the gradual reduction of prices and of wages to which employers and their dependents have been compelled to submit. Although new markets have been opened up, the demand for manufactures falls off, while the classes relying for profitable employment of capital, and for subsistence on that demand, are always augmenting. " The steady diminution of the rate of wages proves that bad trade has not been the result of a mere casual occurrence, such as the failure of the cotton-crop in America, or the unfixed state of our monetary system ; but that it has had its origin in some deeper-seated and more widely-extending cause. It is not so much bad trade, as a falling-off of trade, that ought to alarm us." So writes the Sheffield Iris, front a part of the country where, he admits, "depression has not been felt to such an extent as in some districts in Lancashire."

It is said that the Anti-Corn-tax movement is to be renewed with augmented vigour. Unless the middle classes are prepared to submit to pressm'e that must one day become intolerable, they will unite to make that movement effectual. It may be ex- pected that the working men, recovering from the "tin-canister" and other delusions of the bygone year, will aid, instead of retard- ing, efforts the success of which must be to them of incalculable benefit. The continuance of scarcity, low wages, and dull trade, would give irresistible force to arguments backed by the masses as well as their employers—by the great body of the people. One might suppose that even the peasantry must now be aware that high prices of corn will not necessarily produce high wages; and that tenants, forced this year to pay advanced rents, must have dis- covered that Corn-law legislators—" the Farmer's Friends "—will forego but a very minute if any portion of the profits which their acts of Parliament create. The tiine is propitious for a heave at the Corn-tax : let it be vigorously made.