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of the alphabet of their science, is familiar to the economists; nor do we think it impossible to be made as familiar to the people at large. For this reason we have long desiderated that Political Economy should hold a pre-eminent place among the lectureships of a Mechanic School-where, instead of a tyrant or a disturber, it would be regarded, and at length become a tranquillizer of the commonwealth.

But not only are high prices in seasons of scarcity a present necessary evil. There is a great ulterior good to which they are subservient. There are few of any pretensions to scholarship or general reading, who are ignorant of Adam Smith's effective illustration upon this subject-when he compares a country under famine to a ship at sea that had run short of provisions, and so had to put the crew upon short allowance, who although thus for the time being made to suffer, were enabled thereby to live on to the end of the voyage. Such is the precise effect of a high price, when there is a scanty supply of food in the land. It puts the country upon short allowance, by operating as a check upon consumption-when families, that they might get the two ends to meet, are reduced to their shifts and expedients for the economizing of food. Were it not for this salutary restraint, were the inadequate stock of provisions sold off at the usual price, the consumption would go on at its usual rate; and the premature exhaustion of the food on hand, though it should take place only a single month, or even a single week before the coming harvest, would land the country in all the horrors of a general starvation. We are quite sensible how difficult it were to persuade a hungry population, nay how provoking it might be when such a lesson is read out to them in all the pride and confidence of reasoning. The economist would adventure himself on a very serious hazard indeed, were he in all the coolness of his argument to attempt such a demonstration in the hearing of an angry multitude. Nevertheless it is even so, helplessly and necessarily so, in the nature of things and by the constitution of human society. The truth of it is quite palpable within the narrow compass of a ship, however lost sight of on the wider field of a country. Should one or more of the sailors intimidate the store-keeper, and force a larger allowance for themselves, the indignation of the crew, when it became known, would be directed against the purloiner-on whom, perhaps, for the general good, they would carry the Lynch law into effect, and hang him up at the yardarm. Such were the likely proceeding at sea, but on land they would order the matter differently. They would hang the storekeeper-for such the corn-dealer or meal-seller virtually is-who by means of his high prices deals out their short allowances to the people. It is true, it is not their good, but his own gain, that

he is looking to all the while. He is but the unconscious instrument of a great and general benefit which he is not counting on and not caring for." He meaneth not so." It is the doing of a higher hand, of Him who ordaineth both the laws of Nature and the laws of human society; and who can not only make the wrath of man to praise Him, but who can make even the selfishness of individuals work out a country's salvation. "The foolishness of God is wiser than the wisdom of men."

At the same time there is one important modification of this doctrine, which neither Adam Smith nor almost any other economist has adverted to; and which we state all the more willingly, that it might serve to restrain the unqualified, and sometimes injurious confidence, which is now so generally expressed in the virtues of Free Trade-as if this were to be the grand panacea for all the ills that can befall a country or a country's population. What we refer to is a peculiarity that belongs to the necessaries of life, in regard to the degree of variation which their price undergoes, as affected by the variation in the quantity brought to market. The one variation greatly exceeds the other. For example, so small a diminution as one-tenth in the grain of a country would induce a much larger augmentation of its price, so as to make it perhaps one-third dearer than before. The deficiency of a third in the crop would probably more than double the price of grain, while if approaching to one-half it would infallibly land us in famine prices. It is thus that in articles of prime necessity the price describes a much larger arc of oscillation than does the quantity, or fluctuates far more widely and beyond the proportion of those fluctuations which take place in the supply. And the principle of this is obvious. Men can want luxuries and even comforts; but they cannot want necessaries. They can limit themselves to a much greater extent in the use of the former than in the use of the latter. Should the crop of sugar be deficient by one-third, they could, if they chose, easily put up with one-third less of -so that there might be no rise of price, and the whole loss incurred by the deficiency would fall upon the planters. Should the crops of grain be deficient by one-third, men could not so easily put up with one-third less of bread; and, rather than this, would make a larger outlay for food than usual, so that more money might come into market for less of the article, and, instead of loss, there would be gain to the farmers. It is thus that, generally speaking, the keener competition in years of scarcity for the necessaries of life, causes the deficiency to fall with redoubled pressure on the consumers, who have both less to eat, and more to pay for it.

sugar

It is not then exactly, and in all cases, true-that the interest of the dealers coincides to the full with the interest of the pub

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lic; or that the former will take care to sell at prices sufficiently low for there being enough of consumption to carry off their stocks, and so as not to be landed in such a surplus at the end of the agricultural year, as with the supplies of the coming harvest might cause that grain shall be a drug upon the market. The truth is, and on the strength of the principle just explained, that if, instead of reserving a surplus, they had agreed to destroy it, such high prices might have been maintained throughout the year on the reduced quantity brought to market, as that the dealer should be more than indemnified. The elevation of price would more than compensate for the reduction in the quantity-so that could they agree in doing what the Dutch merchants are said to have done with their spiceries, lay aside a certain general surplus to be burned or cast into the sea, it might be greatly more than made up for by the enhanced prices which they would obtain for the remainder. But then the difficulty, or in the corn trade the impossibility, lies in getting them to agree. What might be effected by a small party of monopolists, is utterly beyond the power of a general combination on the part of dealers spread over a whole empire, and acting without any adequate control or cognizance of each other's operations. Our great security then, in all our larger markets, and wherever there is enough of competition among parties acting separately, and out of sight from each other, is the difficulty of combination. It is in these circumstances that the doctrine of Free Trade might be practically carried forth in its utmost perfection-and this with the greatest possible advantage to the community at large. The commerce might be left, or to use a still stronger word, might be abandoned with all safety to its own operations. And all which Government has to do is this—refraining from those interferences by which it has so often done mischief- -to remove those obstructions which itself may have placed in the way either of arrivals from all parts of the country, or of arrivals from all parts of the world.

Yet there is one important exception, peculiarly applicable to the state of matters at present, and but for this indeed we should not have lengthened out our article by any explanation of it. The argument in favour of Free Trade, and against the interference of Government, requires, not only that there shall be an unshackled competition, but that there shall be enough of it. Now there are many places in our land, and more especially in that part of it on which the present calamitous visitation has lighted, where this postulate is altogether wanting-as in sequestered villages, or small and remote islands, where a single mealshop might suffice for all the customers within its range. Now it is in these circumstances, that one or even a small number of

dealers, if but few enough to lay their heads together, could easily so manage as to realize the most unconscionable profits. They have but to impose their own prices, and they have the people at their mercy. It is true they might in this way greatly limit the consumption, to the severe hardship and suffering of all the families, and it may be with some deaths by starvation to the bargain; but although they should thus abridge the sales, they would, if there be truth in our principle, greatly more than make up for this to themselves by an overpassing enhancement of the prices. They might sell one-third less than at a fair price they would have done, but this by a doubling of the price, and so a tripling or quadrupling of their own profits. Yet notwithstanding this cruel monopoly of theirs, we would not just hang them up at their own doors; but, with all deference to the Free Trade principle, should not object if a Relief Committee made free to take the business for a time out of their hands, by importing grain and selling it at the cost prices. This were in the face of all principle in those places where there is enough of competition, both in the retail and wholesale business. But what is at all times sound doctrine for London or Liverpool might in particular emergencies be the very reverse for Owenmore or Tobermory-in the former of which places, we learn from a private source that rice has been selling at 36s. per cwt., when in Dublin it was selling for 24s. ; while in the latter, it appears from one of the volumes under review, and on the information of Sir Edward Coffin, that the people were "much gratified with the prospect of obtaining the needful supplies through the intervention of the Government, and at cost price, instead of being obliged to make their purchases at Glasgow or Liverpool, or to pay the exorbitant prices exacted by the few local dealers."-(P. 53 of Scotch Correspondence.) There is no disparagement in this to the wisdom of the very enlightened Resolutions on the part of the North Leith Parochial Board, when the recommendation was laid before them of laying in stores of provisions; and they very properly decided against it, on the ground" that the saving of the retailer's profits would be nothing to the advantage of their funds." But while very true that the competition in such a place as Leith is a sufficient guarantee against extortion, we believe that what Captain Pole tells us of Skye is just as true,-even that "the dealers there had raised the price of food exorbitantly" or, as he expresses it in one of those admirable summaries wherewith he closes his letters, that "the market is destroyed locally by the famine prices of the dealers." We therefore fully sympathize with Mr. Rainey, the patriotic owner of the island of Raasay, when he complains that "his people, who are obliged to go to market at Portree, are charged exorbitantly for every article." And hence, too, the

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Marquis of Lorne who, fully aware of what the sound Political Economy is on the general question, writes thus to Sir George Grey the Home Secretary, "That interference with the 'ordinary channels of trade' is in itself objectionable there can be no doubt; but when there is just ground to fear that those channels will not convey to any district a sufficiently accessible supply of food, it becomes one of those cases of necessity which demand extraordinary measures. The fact is that, as regards the most distressed districts of the islands and western coasts, these channels of trade' have never been cut."-(Scotch Correspondence, p. 26.) The wisdom, therefore, which we have just ascribed to the North Leith Resolutions, does not conflict with the equal wisdom of the Argyleshire Resolutions, in which we find it stated, that "there are localities, where, from the great redundancy of population, and great scarcity of food, distance from market, and the nature of the occupation of land, it is practically impossible to command a supply sufficient; that, under these circumstances, Government should be requested to establish stores of food in the localities alluded to, such as Oban or Tobermory, so as to be accessible to proprietors to be purchased by them." Yet what was thus requested and rightly for the Hebrides, was deprecated, and just as rightly, for the Shetland isles--where the framers of a truly enlightened memorial tell us that they wanted no interference with the retail dealer, on whom their ordinary supplies depend, because they felt assured "that it may safely be left to mercantile enterprise and competition, to import a sufficient quantity of food at the cheapest rate, provided the means for paying such can be afforded to the people."*(Scotch Correspondence, 1. 154.) It is all a matter of selection, and dependent on the circumstances of each locality, whether there should be a Government depôt or not; and in these islands, as we are afterwards informed, there was no occasion for one-because there was there enough of competition from the frequent interchanges that took place between Lerwick, the capital of the group, and various ports in the south. To point out the exceptions to a doctrine is often a higher effort of discrimination than to understand the doctrine itself. And so we can imagine a number of new-fledged economists in the metropolis parroting over their last gotten lesson of Free Trade, and contending that in every instance the supply of what is needed should be left to "private speculation and individual enterprise." And we do admit that

Let the reader mark the importance of this last proviso. It is but doing the thing by halves to establish depots in such places as Skibereen or Schull, where, if the food was only to be distributed by purchase, yet the people were not provided with the means of paying for it, they behoved to die in hundreds, although within sight of plenty..