The sanguine expectations of a "sun-burnt autumn" and re- dundant
harvest have this week experienced a cheek. The wea- ther suddenly changed from bright and hot, to cold, gusty, and wet. A gale of extreme violence and extensive range has been accompanied by heavy and continuous rain. Owing to the sudden ripening of the cereal crops and the paucity of labourers, much of the standing grain was over-ripe. The fears, therefore, that con- siderable damage may have been wrought by this break in the weather—though it seems to have already passed away—are better founded than those panics which a few stormy days in harvest can at any time excite, not only in the susceptible agricultural mind, but on 'change, where, at this season, stocks rise and fall with the mercury in the barometer.
Such, however, is the rich promise of the crops, and such the appearance of the weather having " taken up again," that there is probably no serious ground for apprehending a deficiency in the harvest. Speculative and inquiring minds may complacently, now that the danger seems less imminent, indulge in conjectures as to what might have been the consequence of a short crop. The abolition of the Corn-law has placed the general public above the fear of an insufficient supply of food or exorbitant prices of grain. But this same free trade in corn, with a defi- cient harvest; would have subjected our farmers to low prices at the very time when they needed a rise to compensate for defi- cient quantity. Hence a bad harvest would have occasioned much pinching among agriculturists and among those manufacturers who work principally for the home market. In that ease, the marvellous harmony and resignation to the abandonment of Protection, which have hitherto characterized the agricultu- ral meetings now in progress, might have experienced an in- terruption. The Free-trade harangues of Whig magnates might have been listened to with less of complacent patience, even though the Boanergeses of Protection had not begun to roar again; and Lord Derby and Mr. Disraeli might have been asked by their colleagues whether they had not been too hasty in throwing Pro- tection overboard—whether that was not a card which might yet
be profitably played ? "Drowning men catch at straws," says the proverb ; and had the storm, that appears to be clearing up, sha- ken the grain out of the over-ripe ears of the standing corn, the drowning rats of the Derbyite Ministry might have caught at the residuary straw to some purpose.
