to retain it. This increase of price would be very irconsiderable, and would be much less than the value of the time, which would be thrown away by the purchaser waiting in the market, or his loss by his ignorance of the quality of the commodity. What I have said respecting millers, appears to me to be most necessary to do away the present opinion, that the high price of four is in some degree owing to the millers or mealmen: but as a respectable baronet has brought forward a bill on this subject, the resolutions contained in my letter respecting millers may be rendered unnecessary, except in drawing the attention of the country to the consideration of these subjects, which I hope will be the consequence of the attention which has been paid by the committee to inquire into the causes of the high price of corn. A table, like the following, might regulate the prices of a mar. ket, as far as related to the quantity and weight. per bushel. per bad. 1. S. d. 12 O 0 11 17 6 lb. lb. 11 10 11 15 6 O 6 Thus 17. 10s. per load difference would be made in the price, where 28lb. per sack was the difference in weight, which would be five half hundreds in a load of wheat, which is the exact weight of a sack of flour, and which the Best wheat would produce more than the lightest.-I have added this as a rule to settle any dispute, in case the wheat delivered under a particular sample, should prove lighter than the bushel or sack registered with the clerk of the market. I will only add, that from every conversation which I have had with farmers, mealmen and millers, since this subject was brought forward, I am convinced that the use of weight, as the regulator of measure, will prevent fraud in dealings in corn, and will enable the magis grates or others, to regulate the price of bread by the average price of wheat or flour, instead of being fixed by the highest price of wheat, as it is at present. C. D. Extra& of a Letter from Mr. Davies, to William Morton Pitt, Esq. Longleat, Nov. 22, 1795. YOUR question-Whether it be possible or proper that farmers, who sell their corn by sample, should be obliged to bring the whole or a certain quantity of it to market?"-involves so many ob jects of consideration, that I must beg g your leave not only to give my opinion, but to state my reasons at some length; the subject is a serious one, and I trust you will not think me more prolix than it requires. The difficulties in reducing this plan to practice seems to be these: .. 1st. The infrequency of market towns in many parts of the kingdom, and the distance from those towns to the places where.corn is consumed. 2d. The increased expence, of carrying corn to markets; and then, in many instances, bringing it back again to be consumed near the spot where it grew. 3d. The 3. The impolicy, if not injustice, of restraining, by compulsive means, the sale of an article, which, how. ever indispensable in itself, has as fair a claim as any other article of trade to a free and voluntary mode of sale; especially an article of which the growth is optional on the part of the seller. 4. The absolute impossibility of securing a constant uniform supply on every market day, sufficient for the consumption of the district dependant on that market, till the next market day. The above are my doubts as to the practicability, or even the possibility of carrying a plan of this kind into effect. My opinion is, that it can do but little good, and may do a great deal of harm; and I take the liberty of supporting that opinion by the following reasons. The present, and indeed every scarcity of corn, arises chiefly from a failure of crops. That failure must be compensated to the grower (who is obliged to pay the same rent in all seasons) by an increased price.-That price is always regulated by the demand. -The great decideratum is to keep the demand and the supply as nearly regular as possible. The proposal now made to the committee has that end for its object. I have, with all deference, to prove that it is inadequate. I live in a situation most likely to furnish me with the means of in formation; viz. at the junction of the country which produces corn, with the country which consumes it, within five miles of the great corn market of Warminster. From Warminster, for near forty miles eastward, through Wilts and Hants, is a country which does not consume one fourth part of the corn it grows.-From Warminster for near forty miles westward, through a great part of Somersetshire, and including Bath and Bristol, is a country which does not produce one fourth part of the corn it consumes. The other three fourths of corn consumed in the latter district is brought chiefly from the former (for the increased population of the north has deprived Bristol of the resource it once had down the Severn). Warminster and Devizes are the principal markets by which this quantity is supplied. From these towns to Bristol and Bridgewater, there is not a market where corn is exposed for sale in bulk. But would it be politic to compel the growers of this one-fourth part of the consumption of Somersetshire to bring it to Warminster or Devizes, or to Bridgewater of Bristol, to sell it, to be carried back again to be consumed by the manufacturing towns of Frome or Shepton Mallett, possibly within a few miles of the place of its growth, at an advanced price, occasioned by this useless carriage? I may be The proposal made in the committee, of obliging farmers to bring at least a sack of corn to market as a sample, or even a bushel, is objectionable; the latter quantity, small as it is, cannot be brought ten miles under an expence of two shillings, and nobody could buy it at that additional expence, unless they also contracted to take a greater quantity with it to cover that expeace: the poor, for whom it is intended, could never buy it. Besides, in all manufacturing : countries the poor seldom buy wheat at market, or would if they could; the labour. ers in agriculture in the villages buy it of the farmers for whom they work: the manufacturers live from hand to mouth, and buy bread ready baked. Besides, it is seldom reckoned how much a poor man loses in time and expences in going to market to buy corn, even if he could buy it. Ff VOL. XXXVIII. asked, asked, why cannot markets be held at these towns 1 answer, the establishments of markets are not the work of a day ;--and suppose they were established, still that would not increase the quantity of com grown in that country. The dealers must still go eastward for three-fourths of their supply, to the neglect of their own trifling markets, which of course would soon come to nothing again. The avowed object of the plan before the committee is, doubtless, to defeat a supposed combination between buyers and sellers of corn to keep up its price, and to lay the markets open to a fair competition; and a very laudable object it is. I have already stated my doubts as to the possibility of carrying this plan into execution, or indeed any plan that would defeat this kind of com. bination; but I have very great doubts in my own mind as to the existence of combination to the ex. tent we frequently hear of, and still greater as to the magnitude of the injury supposed to be done thereby to the public.-I am sensible I am taking the unpopular side of the argument. I think you will agree with me in some parts of it at least; and if you do not, I am sure you will not be offended at my giving my opinion. That a combination should exist among farmers is impossible; they are too numerous, and many of them roo necessitous, ever to act in con cert. Rich farmers may undoubtedly (and this year they have done it) keep their wheat from market. In times of scarcity, like the last months of June and July, it is well they did, we should other wise have been quite starved in August. The shortness of the supply then produced a saving in the consumption, and thereby the stock in hand lasted out. Suppose we had a wet harvest; in that case the new corn could not have been ground without an addition of old. The rich farmers who had wheat left would then have been useful men. The fact speaks for itself. If these men As to jobbers of corn, these men may combine together; their num ber is but few, comparatively speaking; but how do they combine? not to raise the price of corn, but to sink it! Warminster market, though a sack market, and not a sample market, is in a great measure governed by these men ;-and were it not for them, Bath and Bristol must be fed much dearer than they are now. cannot get corn at one market they go to another, and if there is not enough at market they go to farmhouses. But when they get to the places of consumption, there the combination ends, and competition begins;-less profit will suffice these men, than the expence that would be incurred by ten times the numbers of bakers and maltsters, coming twenty or twenty-five miles to market. In fact, had it not been for men of this description, Bristol would have been starved last sum. mer.-There were instances, more than once, of that city being with. out a fortnight's supply of corn. These men knew it, and ransacked the country for more.-They did it for their own sakes, and thereby served the community. But even admitting a combina. tion between farmers and jobbers to exist in any particular country; the moment corn gets above the price at which it would bear the additional expence of carriage ten miles farther, there is an end of the combination; and if it was possible the whole kingdom could combine, an importation from any country where it could be got cheaper would instantly knock it up. In fact, these very men, though dealing at all times under suspicions, and this year frequently in danger of their lives, are the very hands that transfer the plenty of one country to relieve the distresses of another; and though at former periods, as well as now, they have, in times of dearth, been pointed at as the cause of it, they have to my knowledge this year mote than once saved whole towns from famine. In fact, times of scarcity are favourable to this set of men. They are then (against their will, I allow) particularly useful to all countries who do not grow corn chough for their con sumption. In times of plenty they cannot exist to answer their own purpose in those times they are not wanted. But the great evil which we in this country feel, and which our great corn markets rather encou. rage than prevent, is the inequa. lity of measures by which corn, and particularly wheat, is sold; I do not speak of the various pro. vincial measures. It is immaterial to a country whether eight, nine, or twelve gallons are sold for a bushel, provided all parties under. stand what the measure is. But in this country, in all villages and small towns, where there is no assize of bread, the baker sells his bread and his flour at his own price, for which he always quo:es the highest market price of wheat; a few farmers, who happen to have extraordinary good wheat, make a point of adding two or three quarts to the meusure. This sack of corn, a much better and bigger than the average of the market, will frequently sell for one fifth more thin inferior samples of fair measure in the same market. This high price, and which it is the interest of the buyer to give, forms a standard of price of bread and flour for the ensu.ng week.-No existing laws are adequate to the remedy of this evil, for as neither buyer or seller complain, who is to re-measure this corn, though sold in a public market? Besides, there is so much art in measuring corn, that twe people may make several quarts difference in a sack, and yet both appear to measure fair.-If any remedy can be applied to this evil, it must be a compulsion to sell corn by weight;-this is done by choice at Manchester and Liverpool, and in this country the buyer always asks the weight, though he does not buy by it-in fact, weight determines the quality as well as the quantity. If weight was adopted, the price would be nearly equal, and it would then be possible to frame a fair assize table, which in my opi nion is impossible to do from mea sure, especially in such a year as this, when the difference in the price of good and bad wheat is full one third. I cannot help thinking, that if this measure was tried a year, it would be found efficacious. It would do one thing in an instant, which the legislature has not been able to do- in a century—“ equal lize all the various measures in the kingdom."" Fiz Copy Copy of a Letter from Sir Francis Basset, Bart. to the Chairman of the Corn Committee. Upper Grosvenor-street, SIR, Dec. 22, 1795. Many complaints having been made in different parts of England, of the hardships suffered by the poor from the present mode of pay. ment for grinding corn, and also of the difficulty of obtaining redress, whenever there is a suspicion that frauds are practised by the millers; I beg leave, through you, to submit to the corn committee a plan for remedying those supposed grievances. I would propose, in the first place, to alter the present custom of taking toll, into a uniform payment in money, to be settled by the jus. tices, with respect to all mills where such alterations would not interfere with peculiar rights established by the courts of law. I further propose to enable those persons who may in future think themselves aggrieved by millers, to obtain redress by a summary proceeding before two justices of the peace, instead of being obliged to have recourse to so expensive and so tedious a process as an indict. ment. As the law stands at present, the proprietor of an old mill may take his accustomed toil; but as that tell is known only to himself (for it is rarely avowed to his customer), this gives him a considerable latitude, and is a constant and never-failing scurce of jealousy to those who employ him. 1 have just said that the customer seldom knows what he pays; but in the -few cases which have come to my knowledge, where the miller pro. fesses to take a fixed toll, it varies from three to six pounds per W The millers, of course, profess to to take a fair price for their labour, and could not, therefore, I presume, reasonably object to a regulation, obliging them to receive a fixed payment in money, instead of an arbitrary and uncertain toll in grain; indeed, if they are con vinced that the complaints alleged against them are unfounded (as in many cases they probably are), they would rather rejoice to see a mode of payment adopted, by which all jealousies will be avoided in future, and by which they would receive an adequate compensation for the labour performed, and the capital employed. The toll, as now taken, is certainly extremely oppressive to the poor, who pay the most when they can the least afford it; and if frauds are ever practised by mil. lers, they are most likely to take place when there is the greatest temptation, that is, when corn bears a high price. It will not be necessary to say much respecting the preference which a summary proceeding must |