Last week the Spectator was somewhat singular in taking a
very cheerful view of the food-markets. Most influential journals were still continuing dismal vaticinations ; prices had continued to mount up ; the English corn-market had not yet sustained a re- action on its recent convulsive risings. We recognized in all this no- thing but what had been foreseen—the last throes of the market"' on the approaching exhaustion of the old stocks before the new were ascertained ; and we did not partake the panic which had extended to such high quarters. This week there is a general consent, in all quarters that send us journals, to write in the spirit of last week's Spectator: promises of abundance pour in from every district of the United Kingdom and every state of Europe —abundance in all things, grain, meat, vegetables, fruit, eatables and drinkables of every variety ; in some cases a tangible earnese is given ; in others the mere certainty of the supply imparts a
totally different view as to the available extent of stocks in hand ; and they are seen to be sufficient for the interval.
Meanwhile, some indignation is expended on the " rascally " corn-dealers, who have made such fortunes during recent panics. This is a very obsolete mistake, and people ought to know better now-a-days. The corn-dealers have derived great profits, no doubt, from the staff of life ; but their profits are a guarantee-fund that grain shall not be wasted. They have not abstracted a single grain of wheat, nor taken a single mouthful from the poor. Quite the reverse. The dearness of corn is, in a free country, the only way of enforcing a sparing use of it ; and it is the profit of the corn-dealers that has retained so much grain for the use of the people, which might otherwise have been squandered.
