A programme has been put forth as that upon which
Sir ROBERT PEEL'S Corn-law Reform is to be shaped. It is presented in the most apocryphal manner ; so much so, as to be thought on the one hand utterly groundless, while conjecture, wandering to the oppo- site extreme, regards it as a "feeler." It has not, however, been positively contradicted. As far as internal evidence goes, it looks likely enough. It retains the sliding-scale, but with a curtailment at either end; and it involves some plan, unexplained, for mending the mode of taking the averages. The maximum of duty is to be 18s.; and the scale is to slide down by degrees of one shilling each, at every rise of one shilling in the price of wheat, to the minimum duty of 4s : the minimum is to be applied when the price of wheat is 68s. the quarter, the maximum when it is 54s. The aim of such a scale would seem to be to fix the price at some vague medium between these extreme points—say about 61s. Of course it could no more fix it than the present scale. It would be equally in- operative in preventing the price from falling to 40s. or less, as it has been known to do within these few years : it would give the farmer none of the desired " protection ' ; for in seasons of scarcity, when the loss on the small amount of his marketable produce has to be repaid by an exorbitant price, a 4s. duty would be nearly as little "protection" as a Is. The interest of the community of consumers in such an arrangement is still less than that of the farmer. As to the gambling in the averages, we must wait to know the plan before we can guess at its efficacy ; but we believe there will be gamblers as long as there are averages. The narrower range of the new slide may offer rather less inducement to gambling, but in no very great proportion ; and if an inducement of ten per cent enables smugglers to defy an army of Preventive-officers, it would not take a very large profit to stimulate to the collusive tamperings with the averages. They might be taken in a more strict and com- prehensive manner, but the corn-dealers must always make them; and as long as they are to be made, the dealers have the game in their own hands. The only way thoroughly to quash that kind of
swindling is, to abolish the averages altogether: and they are essential to the principle of the present Corn-law and a sliding. scale.
