TO THE EDITOR OF THE SPECTATOR.

Westminster. 2d September 1841.

SIR—I willingly acknowledge beim', gratified that you have thought my communication on the subject of the Corn-laws worthy of the notice which you have bestowed on it ; but I cannot help feeling at the same time that, in so doing, you have made an attack on my understanding and my candour. You have thereby compelled one to write in defence of them ; and you have put yourself to the alternative of either publishing my letter, or forfeiting your well- deserved character for fairness and consistence. I cannot help this. I bad no intention of entering into controversy with you. I advanced no " theory," and I expressed no " opinion." I communicated a dry fact, which I respect- fully requested you to endeavour to reconcile with vour assertions and assump- tions; and your answer was that 1 had misunderstood you. Now, Sir, on the 14th August you write the following words- " The only p!ossibk direct and immediate ,ffect of a law restricting the importation of corn. is to diminish the quantity and raise the price rifiwd. All the other effects attri- buted to it, whether by its friends or its enemie, whether for good or for evil, are Se- condary, and mere consequences of its inevitable tendency to mike food dearer by making it scarcer. It may on the one baud benefit, protect. and encourage national agriculture ; but if it tines this, it tars it by raising tin price of the staple product of agriculture, food. It may. on the other. camber am! impede the development of us- Donal commerce: this it dons in the first instance by rendering food scarcer and dearer than it would he under a system of free trade. All the advantages which the advocates of the Corn law anticipate from it—all the evils which opponents say it must produce, are expected to be brought about by its keeping up the pri,e ()flood; THAT rs. rendering it dearer because scarcer than it otherwise would be."

You continue—(I now detach intermediate passages that have no bearing on any object)—" To diminish the supply of food is to render it more difficult for all classes to procure a sufficient allowance. To raise the price of food, is to declare that the poor man shall purchase less in order that the rich man may

have as much as he wants. A limited supply, with high prices," &c. " It is however, food alone that is limited in quantity and increased in price by

the restrictive Corn-late." ." The depressing influence of high prices and a short supply of the necessaries and conveniences of life is thus multiplied"; it increases the pressure felt by all class's from the rise in the price of provisions." "As the price of food rises, the means of purchasing it are withdrawn." " The farmer, it may be, gets a higher price for his corn," but he "pays dearer" for his bread. " This is the state of things, which to a greater or less extent, must be produced by all restrictions on the corn-trade for the pureose of raising the price of food." The advantages "being procured by limiting the quantity of the nation's food and raising its price, they must he purchased at the expense of all that suffering we have iudicated," &c.

I wish to ask if the English language can furnish words, or any writer of it compose sentences capable of conveying more strongly and clearly than in the above extracts, the proposition that the direct and immediate effect of the Corn-laws is to raise the price of food. I deliberately say it is impossible the expressions are redundant, laboured, intense; and there is nothing in the rest of the paper to qualify or confirm them. Is it wonderful, then, that I should ask to be told how I had misunderstood language which appeared and still appears to me so clear and unequivocal; and is it becoming in any public writer, particularly one whose " object is to ascertain the truth, to make it evident to all his readers, and to show them where their mistake lies," to answer such a request with a sneer—to call it -returning to a charge," "perti- nacious questioning," and mere "harping upon a word: " It now appears, however, that you do hot hold that the effect of the Corn- laws is to raise the price of fieul. If you will print this admission as a correc- tion or erratum to your first article, or at the head of your subsequent articles, you need take no more notice of me or my letters ; but at present you express it thus—" Ignoramus, then, is under a mistake in supposing our position to be that the direct and immediate effect of a corn-law is to raise the price of pro- visions : our position is, that the direct and immediate effect of a restrictive corn-law is to diminish the quantity of food." This is just say that the corn is no dearer, but less of it is given for the money. Is it possible that you think that these are two propositions ? Why, besides being an evident contradiction in terms, your own definitions "keepin,g up the price of food, THAT IS, rendering it dearer because scarcer "—" the law which renders food scarce raises its price "—sufficiently confute the idea. And yet, without supposing you to have come to some such preposterous conclusion, I cannot explain your saying, " We may he wrong in our assumption that the scarcity of corn occasioned by a restrictive corn-law has a tendency to raise its price— Ignoramus may be right, a commodity may be made cheaper by being made scarcer ": that is, you may he wrong in an assumption of what is impossible to be otherwise, and I may be right in maintaining an impossibility. I must, with all due acknowledgment, repudiate the concession. You also say, " We certainly hare more than once expressed the opinion that a restrictive corn- law raises the price of food ; but this is its secondary effect, derivative from its tendency to lessen the quantity." Pray read again the first paragraph of the first sentence of your paper of the 14th August, which 1 have quoted. In order to make it now appear that you look upon deficient supply and high price of corn as separate propositions, you garble your own sentences by stopping at words and leaving out parts of passages which tell against your present reading; but in your first paper, deficient supply is not once mentioned without its concomitant "high price," although in your citations you make it appear that they are mentioned separately. You now say, in conclusion, that all that you attribute to the Corn-law is its "creating an artificial scarcity of all the necessaries and conveniences of life, and that all the other evils it occasions" (of course the deficient supply and high price among them) "are secondary consequences of this direct and immediate effect.' It is comparatively a trifling objection to this having been your meaning, that there is no allusion in your first paper to artificial scarcity at all, but an over- charged picture of real scarcity derived from the high price of food ; here is a conclusion that makes the great, the master evil of all a consequence, a se- condary consequence, of an effect which is initiated and caused by itself. Sir, it is generally as prudent as it is well-bred to abstain from characterizing writing or the works of writers with whom we differ : that part of controversy is much more impartially done by readers ; and as, if you deal fairly with me, these have now an opportunity of judging for Lemselves how far it is ray under- standing that is deficient in this discussion, bow far it is any " quibbling," my " devices," my " disingenuousness," that are apparent in it, I conclude this painfully but necessarily long letter by repeating once more, not as an opinion or a theory, but as a certain fact, that the direct and immediate effect of the Corn-laws was to LOWER the price of food ; and as this fact, until explained away, upsets your whole arguments, I again call upon you as an honest man either to reconcile it with their, or at once to abandon all deductions founded upon these arguments. I annex a verification of my assertion, and an addi- tional authority for it to that which I first sent you ; and I "write myself down," in perfect good humour, Your very obedient humble servant, IGNORAMUS. Note.—The Cormlaw was passed on the 20th March 1815. The average price of wheat in 1814 had been 74r. 74d. a quarter. In April 1815, it was 71s. 9d. After that month it was as follows; mark the gradation downwards- 1815. a. d. 1815.

a.

d.

1816.

s. d.

May 70 6 . .. September.. 64 0 January..

52 6

June 68 11 .... October .... 57 5 February. 56 6 July 67 8 . November.. 56

7

March ... 54 8 August 68 6 . December.. 55 9 April ....

60 7

Average of 1815- 611.41d.

Extract from Mr. M'Culloch's Article on the Corn-laths, in the Encyclo- pedia Britannica. " The agriculturists coifidently expected that this act (1815) would immediately raise prices, and render them steady at about 80s. But for reasons which will be after- wards stated, these expectations were entirely disappointed."