only ten months' consumption
instead of twelve: and should the next harvest be an early one, which
we have reason to expect after this late one, the time bearing on the
present crop will be still more shortened. Nor should the fact be
overlooked, that two months' consumption is equal to 2,000,000
quarters of wheat--an amount which would form a very considerable item
in a crop which had proved to be actually deficient.

But as there has been a movement already in some parts of Scotland,
though solely from professed repealers, towards memorialising
government for open ports on the ground of special necessity, we shall
consider that question for a little; and, in doing so, shall blend the
observations of our able correspondent with our own.

Such a step, we think, at the present moment, would be attended with
mischief in more ways than one. There can be no pretext of a famine at
present, immediately after harvest; and the natural course of events
in operation is this, that the dear prices are inducing a stream of
corn from every producing quarter towards Britain. In such
circumstances, if you raise a cry of famine, and suspend the
corn-laws, that stream of supply will at once be stopped. The
importers will naturally suspend their trade, because they will then
speculate, not on the rate of the import duty, which will be
absolutely abolished by the suspension, but on the rise of price in
the market of this country. They will therefore, as a matter of
course--gain being their only object--withhold their supplies, until
the prices shall have, through panic, attained a famine price here;
and then they will realize their profit when they conceive they can
gain no more. In the course of things at present, the price of fine
wheat is so high, that a handsome surplus would remain to foreigners,
though they paid the import duty. Remove that duty, and the foreigner
will immediately add its amount to the price of his own wheat. The
price of wheat would then be as high to the consumer as when the duty
remained to be paid; while the amount of duty would go into the
pockets of the foreigner, instead of into our own exchequer. At
present, the finest foreign wheat is 62s. in bond--remove the present
duty of 14s., and that wheat will freely give _in the market_ 80s. the
quarter.

It is, therefore, clear that such an expedient as that of suspending
the corn-laws merely to include the bonded wheat to be entered for
home consumption, would