5 NOVEMBER 1842, Page 11

THE PRICE OF BREAD.

GOVERNMENT have taken steps to collect information in all the corn-return-towns respecting the relative prices of bread and wheat. A correspondent of the Times hopes that it will lead to a kind of assize—a maximum price of bread, to slide up and down rateably with the price of wheat. It is to be hoped that Government will not do any thing so very obsolete and silly, so very obnoxious to be evaded by mischievous adulterations and quibbling pretences, and so very sure, if it were effectual, to check competition. The simple collection and diffusion of the statistical information, on official authority, would answer every purpose, by enabling the people to tell what they were paying in comparison with their neighbours. A fact will show how useful it might be. A person living near High Holborn, who was paying 7d. a loaf for his bread, like all his near neighbours, heard that an Clerkenwell bread was selling at 6d. He went to his baker and intimated his intention to send to Clerkenwell for the cheap bread : his baker saved him the trouble, by cutting a penny off his own charge. If all the inhabit- ants of one place knew that in another the bakers all sold bread a penny or a halfpenny cheaper, they would not submit to the over- charge. Besides, a pushing baker in the cheap district, hearing of the high price, would send his cart of cheap loaves to pick up a new round of customers, and must soon either take the custom or beat down the price of the dear bakers. Thus, the mere knowledge of the statistics would be a safeguard against extortion and a stimulus rather than a check to competition.