, in no degree, benefit the consumer. The
quantity of wheat at present in bond does not exceed half-a-million of
quarters--the greatest part of which did not cost the importer 30s.
per quarter. At least we can vouch for this, that early last summer,
when the crop looked luxuriant, 5000 quarters of wheat in bond were
actually offered in the Edinburgh market for 26s., and were sold for
that sum, and allowed to remain in bond. It still remains in bond, and
could now realise 62s. Here, then, is a realisable profit of 36s. per
quarter, and yet the holder will not take it, in the expectation of a
higher.

We cannot think that Sir Robert Peel would sanction a measure so
clearly and palpably unwise, for the sake of liberating only half a
million quarters of wheat, which is the calculated consumption of a
fortnight. But the late frequent meetings of the Privy Council have
afforded an admirable opportunity for the alarmists to declaim upon
coming famine. Matters, they say, must be looking serious indeed, when
both Cabinet and Council are repeatedly called together; and they jump
at the conclusion, that suspension of the corn-law is the active
subject of debate. We pretend to no special knowledge of what is
passing behind the political curtain; but a far more rational
conjecture as to the nature of those deliberations may be found in the
state of the potato crop, and the question, whether any succedaneum
can be found for it. Perhaps it would be advisable to allow Indian
corn, or maize, to come in duty-free; if not as food for people, it
would feed horses, pigs, or poultry, and would make a diversion in
favour of the consumption of corn to a certain extent; and such a
relaxation could be made without interfering with the _corn_-laws, for
maize is not regarded as corn, but stands in the same position as rice
and millet. We might try this experiment with the maize, as the Dutch
have already forestalled the rice market.

If the state of the harvest is such as we conscientiously believe it
to be, there can be no special reason--but rather, as we have shown,
the reverse--for suspending the action of the corn-laws at this
particular juncture. If the enactment of that measure was founded on
the principle of affording protection to the farmer, why interfere
with these laws at a time when any apprehension of a famine is
entirely visionary? And since there is a large quantity of food in the
country, the present prices are certainly not att