NEWS OF THE WEEK.
THE measure for the repeal of the Corn-laws, propounded by Sir Robert Peel, is before Parliament and the country. It both falls short of the most extravagant expectation and exceeds it : it abolishes the Corn-laws less abruptly than to many would have been desirable ; it does more than abolish the Corn-laws. The whole scheme may be said to consist of three great parts, each containing many subdivisions.
One part deals with the corn and other agricultural produce. The plan with wheat is this : the sliding-scale of duties is con- tracted at each end, and made to range from 4s. to 10s. ; the range of prices is from 47s., at which the maximum duty is im- posed, to 53s.; indicating, so far as an artificial enactment can, a price of 57s. at the highest. The inferior grains are admitted at a correspondingly reduced scale of duties. All Colonial grain is admitted at a nominal duty—a great boon to the Australias. Maize and buck-wheat, as grain used. in the fattening of cattle, are admitted at the nominal duty of Is., their meal at an equiva- lent rate. Seeds for agriculture and food for cattle are admitted free. Other kinds of agricultural produce used as food—cattle, meat, and vegetables—are admitted free ; others at reduced du- ,ties. The -new, scale of corn-duties is to last for three yearas then, by the proposed enactment, to cease and determine. As a prelirninary chatlition, the manufacturers are called upon toimake good their offer to give up protection on their part. From the great staple manufactures of cotton and woollen all duty is to be absolutely withdrawn ; on other finer manufactures, employing more domestic labour, protection is to be reduced from 20 per cent to 10. There is to be a concurrent revision of the general tariff; and the duties on a multitude of articles are to be reduced, notably- on spirits. The Sugar-duties are scarcely touched. High duties not protective, as those on tea and tobacco, are left alone.
Next come a number of auxiliary measures, intended to benefit the landed interest, though the name of compensation is repudi- ated. Loans of public money are to be made, on application by persons contemplating agricultural improvements. Enormous waste and mismanagement are to be saved by a consolidation of the highway departments—establishing some six hundred separate boards in place of sixteen thousand. The law of settlement is altered : a live-years "industrial residence" is to give a settlement ; preventing the regurgitation of paupers from the factory to the rural districts. The county-rates are to be relieved of the cost of prisoners ; parochial education is to be paid by the State ; half the cost of medical relief is to be so paid; with many minor measures of a cognate kind. Such are the main features of the scheme. It is received by Sir Robert Peel's more stanch adherents with acclamation ; by the Richmond party, and a few waverers who have now deserted the Premier, with violent protests ; by some of the Liberal party, with hints Of dislike to details, by others with gladness r out of doors, by the Protectionist press, with execration ; by some of the Conservative press, with dread ; by the Leading Journal, with patronizing pleasantry ; by the factious Liberal papers, with a tendency to disparagement,—the impolicy of which was quickly seen and in part repaired. What really, is the scheme worth It has its defects, no doubt, and in our estimation serious defects. It wants the simplicity appropriate to a measure the best for its chief purpose. It is too large, or not large enough—too like a reorganization of our whole commercial system, without being so ; it disturbs too many things, without always effecting a change worth the turmoil. The alteration of the Sugar-duties, for instance, abating 3s. 6d. in the difference on free-labour sugar, deserves the term of paltry. It is somewhat late in the day to insist on a delay of three years before the final abolition of the sliding scale. It is alleged that the delay is injurious to that very interest for whose benefit it is in- tended—the agricultural : if on mature consideration the Protec- tionists discover that truth, we dare say the Premier will be happy to oblige them by waiving the three years. Considered with reference solely to its main object, the measure appears to be unduly cumbered with auxiliaries : the whole scheme is in too many small parcels to be conveniently carried,—like an old maid's coach-luggage, which keeps her in a perpetual fever on the jour- ney, and leaves her to deplore the loss of part at the end.
But, on a broader view, what does the measure do? It pro- vides for abolishing the Corn-laws. It declares the principle of protection to be abandoned, and wipes away half the elaborate works of protection at once. It does meet the emergency of the dearth, so far as that is admitted : for the dearth is not one to the wheat-eating, but to the potato-eating part of the community ; and to them the reduction of duty on inferior grains, with the free admission of maize, is a virtual repeal of the Corn-laws total and immediate. If the delay in sweeping away the fragments of the protection machinery do not materially serve the farmers, but only sooth their panic it will not be without its good. The auxiliary measures, although regarded as incumbrances to the main project, are on the whole not bad in themselves. The tem- porary assistance may give a timely stimulus to that agricultural improvement which competition and the free interchange of the raw materials for agriculture. will keep up. The new law of settlement is just both to landowner and to pauper; • protecting the landowner, who is made to pension the worn-out servant of the manufacturer ; the worn-out workman, who is now hunted. with his family, like vermin, from parish to parish. The coneo- lidation of highways may effect a great saving of expenditure and an equal improvement in managing the parochial roads. In some degree the framer of the scheme has taken care for all classes, from the rich man, who is to pay less duty mans foreign carriage, to the "sans potato," who is to learn to relish Indian corn. The solicitude for the producer, hitherto eiclusively ruling our tariff, is extended to the consumer.
Taxes are remitted, money is to be paid on account of the auxiliary measures, increased expenditure for defence was an- nounced in the Queen's Speech ; but there is to be no increase of the Income-tax : Sir Robert Peel proposes no new taxation • having confidence in the reproductive power of a liberal policy to; maintain the revenue. Perhaps that declaration will help as much as anything to fulfil the hope on which it rests. Such is the measure. Shrewd calculators say that the chances are in favour of its passing the Commons by a large majority ; and the Lords are not likely to court the odium which collision with the Lower House on such a subject would create. The Liberals have begun to learn that it is the part of earnest Free- traders to push the measure, although its details may not be identical with those that they, themselves would have framed. It is not clear that the Whigs would have advanced one so broad in its scope, still less that they could have carried it. Defeat for this attempt might postpone free trade until the meeting of the Parliament after the next. Let the measure pass, and free trade, with only such imperfections as time will easily remove, is the law of the land ; protection a tradition of the past, traced only in ruins doomed to rapid decay.
