papers, that the Lords of Trade had granted, or, were about to grant, licences to import corn, and stones to grind it with, from France, in exchange for colonial productions; for trash where bread is wanted; and feeling myself, as it were, involved in the disgrace of a measure which, in my estimation, at once betrays our want of resources to carry on the war till an ho nourable peace is obtained, and places us in the ridiculous situation of claiming the dominion of the sea, and begging bread to enable us to hold it from the very enemy, who is determined to give up his share of that dominion only with the existence of the nations which he rules; I addressed the underneath to their lordships, and sent it to a Sunday newspaper for insertion; but it was returned without assign The Revenue which arises to the Collector alone of this Port, from the above exorbitant Docket of Fees, is, at a very low estimate, worth at least twelve thousand guineas per annum. It is, Sir, a melancholy reflection, that this severe tax on commerce and industry, does not, in the most remote degree, go towards increasing our resources or lightening our heavy burthens, but is appropriated to the sole benefit and use of one individual, who fattens on the exertions of the industrious, and by the insupportable extent of his Fees, does incalculable injury to the nation, by paralizing those efforts, which, if unshackled by the enormous weight of Custom-House Fees and Charges, would be the means of benefiting thousands of individuals, and of giving circulation to English manufactures to a surprising ex-ing any reason whatever. I allow every tent. Should a merchant make any representation as to the extravagance of the charges made by the Custom-House, he is immediately referred to a Docket sanctioned by the signature and approval of Sir Geo. Beckwith, K. B.; and here, Sir, I cannot but observe, that I believe this to be a solitary instance, where a British commander in chief has, of his own authority, thought fit to supersede an act of the legislation! For, although the Fees received at other Custom-Houses be higher than those specified in the act, yet, until the present instance, no governor has been bold enough to put his hand to an illegal and oppressive Docket. There is, Sir, however, another, and a great evil, attendant on the rapacious system of the English Custom-Houses, established in foreign colonies or islands; it impresses the natives and others, with the belief, that extortion is sanctioned by our government. A foreign island is justly esteemed more lucrative to the governor, than an English one; and if it were not so, how could St. Croix, St. Thomas, and Martinique, be as valuable governments (or perhaps more so) than Jamaica ? But I hope, Sir, through the medium of your Register, that this representation will meet the eyes of ministers, and that, by their measures, foreigners may be convinced, that nothing but a want of proper information, has hitherto permitted the existence of abuses, so degrading to the nation, and so oppressive to individuals. I remain, &c. MERCATOR, HIGH PRICE OF PROVISIONS. man, Sir, to be the best judge of his own reasons for whatever he does; and I can conceive many reasons why the conductors of periodical publications, should return or suppress many of the articles that may be sent them; but as I do not see the reason why public spirited men should not assign their reasons for doing so, I think I see very clearly that such of them as do no do so, take the most effectual means in their power to crush public spirit and deprive themselves of its aid, by shewing such unqualified marks of contempt, as their refusal does shew for the feelings of those, who may, from a sense of public duty, wish to add their mite to the aggre gate stock of general knowledge through the medium of the press. It cannot be flattery to say, Sir, that I hold a very different opinion of your liberality as a public spirited man; (a public character La vyers will not allow you to be) and to confess that such opinion has received a considerable degree of strength, from your recent publication of an article in defence of Col. Wardle, which the Editor of the Morning Chronicle refused to insert, perhaps with no greater degree of regard to the feelings of the author and the duties of candour, than the Sunday paper has shewn in my case. Holding this opi nion of your liberality, I beg leave to trouble you with the letter in question, leaving you, as I did the said paper, to apply such corrections, as in your better judgment may stand in need of, to merit its room in the Political Register, if it deserves your attention. it My Lords; It is unnecessary to remind your lordships of the fatal consequence to millions, I may say, of your fellow subjects | ble advantage of the consumer, but by my which resulted, immediately as well as re-positive recollection, that the price of motely, from the duke of Portland's Pro- | bread in the winter of 1799 and 1800, rose clamation of Scarcity in 1799. Your nearly in the proportion of 125 per cent. lordships' recollection of the calamities to the price of the preceding year, while of that and the succeeding year, can only the deficiency of crop, as stated by the terminate with your lives; and the public late dake of Bedford in the house of peers, can only forget them, when history ceases amounted only to 25 per cent. of the preto record the soup shops, accumulation of ceding year's crop. This, my lords, is the poors-rates, and multiplication of paupers strongest proof which the case will admit which disgraced those years, and will dis-of, that the 100 per cent. difference begrace others for ages to come. Your lordships are also aware of the rapid strides which these calamities are again making this year, under the similar plea of a deficient crop; and to arrest their progress, your lordships, if report be true, have either granted or intend to grant, licences to import grain from France, provided Napoleon will take colonial productions in exchange. It is impossible to conceal from him that we have sugar, coffee, and cotton to dispose of; but in the present state of his temper, power, and determination, is it not the last thing that he ought to know, nay, is there any thing which ought not to be done, to conceal from him that we are in want of bread? Conceiving that there is not, I beg leave to submit to your lordships whether the means of defeating the internal enemies of their country, who, by advancing the price of provisions under the plea stated, have placed your lordships in the humiliating, if not traitorous, situation, of cringing for bread to the very enemy whom we attempted to conquer by the means of famine, be not more immediately within the reach of your lordships' power. The recent and rapid advanced price of corn must either be or be not the measure of the scantiness of crop, to which it is ascribable. If it be the measure of it, then the scarcity amounts to one third of last year's crop, for the price has advanced, or will soon advance, in that proportion to last year's price. And if it be not the measure of it, then it is not the corn that has advanced a third in price, but the money that has retreated back to two thirds of its last year's exchangeable value. It is my positive belief that the latter is the case, and in hold-produce, and create an artificial scarcity ing that belief I am not a free agent, for in the market. But to create this scarcity it is forced upon me, not only by my total is impracticable, without ready money to disbelief in a deficiency of one third, or pay their rents, taxes, and servants' wages, even of one thirtieth in this year's crop; &c. &c. and, therefore, to make it pracnot only by my experimental knowledge ticable, they lodge their own securities of the conscientiousness with which the with the bankers, who greedily issue their freedom of trade allows the monied far-paper for the sake of the interest it carries. mer and corn-dealer to take every possi- Thus at their ease, they come to market Y SUPPLEMENT to No. 18. VOL. XVI.-Price 1s. tween the whole of the advance, and the 25 per cent. corresponding advance to the deficiency of crop, cannot be traced to any other cause but a corresponding increase of Bank notes, country bank notes, Bank post bills, navy bills, exchequer bills, bills of exchanges, promissory notes, bonds, or any other instrument in writing, or otherwise, by whatever name it may be called, which absolutely or conditionally purchases or circulates the produce of our industry. The bank notes, both town and country, bills of exchange and promissory notes, part of which were issued for the express purpose of withholding from market and forestalling in the market, corn, as well as every other article of necessity or conveniency. And if this proof be positive as to the real cause of the calamities of 1799 and 1800, can it be less so as to that of the famine which again threatens us with soup shops, and their concomitant increase of paupers, in 1800? Conceiving that it is not, I must assume your lordships to be unacquainted with the manner in which the dealers in corn, and in every thing else, drag Fank notes and country benk notes into circulation, to satiate their own insatiable avarice at the expence of the consumer, with the view of shewing, more distinctly, my notions of the practicability of obtaining that supply at home, which must be looked for in vain from France, while the people of that country have a recollection of our assignats, and other visionary efforts to starve them out of their independence as a nation. When the farmers, (I do not mean the board of Agriculture), wish to raise the price, their policy is to keep back their a with long faces and scanty samples; and from an Emperor, who must" laugh when the dealer, alive to the prospects of ad- "our fear cometh," or be the most magvanced price and profit, which the scarcity nanimous of men? or, shall we, by the simholds forth, eagerly buys up what is of ple means of discharging first, and then fered to sale, and pays for it, either in his finding useful employment for, the able own bills of exchange, or, in the bank bodied men, who work and manage our notes which he obtained by discounting town and country rag-money manufacsuch bills. And having got possession of tories, manifest to the world, that for the commodity, to raise its price to any Britain to be happy, free, and great, it is extent he pleases, beyond the interest he only necessary that she should will it? paid for the notes, he has only to follow But the statesman and the landholder will the farmer's example, and obtain the perhaps exclaim with horror, what shall notes required to pay his rent, &c. we do without the thousands and millions of Briefly, my Lords, these are the means, pounds which we now collect in taxes and and the only means, by which the rent? Should our rags be converted into farmers, dealers, and bankers unite, their dung instead of money? Just what you power to filch the consumer of his last shil- did before you had them; and that was ling; and to subject their country to all better than you do with them; for then, the calamities of a real scarcity. The in addition to the rags, as manure, you remedy, however, is simple, and, as had the labour that converts them into choice of evils, if such it could be, it seems money, and that which money in various to be far preferable to the slow, if sure, ways employs unproductively, to cultivate degrading attempt to import corn from an the land, and bid defiance to such scarcity enemy, whom we hold at so much defi- as that, which at present threatens you ance. It is only to restrain our numerous with the most serious consequence. But banks from issuing their notes, until their independent of this advantage, and the value raises, or, the price falls to that level most solid advantage too, it does not at which it may be thought the mutual necessarily follow, that the exit of paper interest of the farmers, dealers, bankers, money can injure the interest of any class (if they are to exist) and consumer, it of the community, (that of its proprietors should stand. It is true the farmers and and those whose baseless bills they disdealers claim the right of raising the price count excepted), and to that evil the acquiof their commodities, as their taxes and sition of their labour to productive indos rates advance: who then is to pay them, try is more than an equivalent. But unthe consumer only? That cannot be, necessarily its fall may be attended with surely; it is impossible to allow them to fatal consequences. Suppose, for instance, exempt themselves from taxes, and, there that the exit of paper money would reduce fore, a level of prices should be established, the circulating medium to one tenth of its which would, as nearly as possible, leave present amount. In that case, one tenth no party to enjoy the benefits of society, of the taxes and rents now collected in without contributing towards its expences; money, would necessarily yield as much and far less to accumulate fortunes by its real revenue to the state and the landmiseries; as farmers, dealers, and bankers holders, as the whole ten tenths now pro must continue to do while they are allowed duce, while nine tenths of the collectors the use of such facilities as paper money would be at liberty to join the bankers, gives them to fix the rate of price at any &c. in cultivating the land, and multiply. level they please. Should the interest of ing the real revenue of their country, at the farmers, &c. be pleaded as a bar to least to the amount of their own consump the application of this means of lowering tion of it. But should avarice or igno prices, it will immediately occur, that im- rance lead government and the land portation would deprive them of the pro-holders to extort the whole ten tenths of hts on which they calculate from public misery, and that this remedy can do no more. But this is not the point on which national honour and national interest will suffer the question to turn. The pivot on which the question turns is this; shall we, at the hazard of every thing, that is dear to us as a nation, and as individuals, submit to the degradation of begging our bread their present nominal revenue, or even more than a tenth of it, while the farmer and the tradesman can sell their produce at but one tenth of its present price, then indeed the consequences of parting with paper money will be unnecessarily calamitous; and the only change produced is, hat government and the landholders have snatched the hatchet from the hands of the bankers, and became themselves the exe- C. S. no argument for rejecting any good to assert, that it is not complete.-As to the second, their extraordinary desire to prec serve the constitution, it is a complete piece of sophistry; and consists, as all sophistry does, in an endeavour to impose words for things. They wish to preserve the constitution, without saying that any EDINBURGH REVIEWERS. good would result from its preservation. They abhor a change, and yet would inSIR;-As your correspondents complain troduce a change to prevent a change. of the manner in which the Edinburgh The truth is, they hate only a change for Reviewers have treated of Parliamentary the better, and would not object to any Reform; of the length of their details; of alteration on the present system which the collateral subjects which they have would add to its rottenness. Any thing, introduced; of the refinement of their ar- Mr. Cobbett, will they call the British guments, and the other means by which constitution which favours their own views, they have endeavoured to bewilder and and nothing will they call by that name mislead their readers, I think an ana- which does not.-The foundation of their lysis of their system may be of use. By second argument is indeed the assumption reducing it to a narrow compass, we shall that all the power of the state resides at see it in a naked state, stripped of its present in the House of Commons. But meretricious trappings, and be enabled to I believe the House of Commons possess determine that degree of weight which it no other power than they ever did; the ought to have in fixing our opinion.- power of granting or withholding the supThey begin by enumerating, in a very plies. If recent circumstances have alsystematic manner, the evils under which lowed this to be the real power of the we at present labour: 1st, The burden of state, they prove nothing more than what taxes; 2ndly, The influence of the crown; has been and should be the case. In this and 3rdly, The monopoly of the power of consists all the liberty of which we borst; the state by a few. The first of these and whenever the Commons are deprived evils is necessarily included in the last; of this power, the constitution is indeed for whatever, abuses exist with regard to lost and gone. That the other branches taxation originate in the corruption of the of the legislature see their own comparagovernment, and whatever part of them tive insignificance, and wish to share the can be removed, must be by Parliamen-power of the Commons, is no reason for tary Reform. The second, they themselves dismiss, by saying that the king has no power. There remains, then, only one question for us to discuss, namely, the last, or that of Parliamentary Reform. On this, the main subject of their consideration, they have, in 30 pages of close print, only two arguments: 1st, That the people are corrupt, and that no reform could render them otherwise; 2nd, That, " as the whole substantial power of government is now manifestly vested in the House of Commons, the balance of the constitution is preserved, and can only be preserved, by being transferred into that house; where a certain proportion of the influence of the crown and of the great families of the land is advantageously, though somewhat rregularly, mingled with the representation of the people."-In answer to the first of these, it is sufficient to say, that a Parliamentary Reform would undoubtedly emedy the corruption of the people as far as it can be remedied; and that it is quietly permitting the encroachments, or for confounding all the separate divisions of the state in one illegal intermixture. Yet this adulterous intercourse is the only expedient which the Edinburgh Reviewers recommend for preserving the mutual controul of the different branches of the legislature, and for enabling the king to withstand the encroachments of a democratical House of Commons. According to their doctrines no encroachment indeed remains to be made, and the king, and lords, (who have always been considered as an appendage of the king), would still preserve all the power in the state, which, by the British constitution, they ought to have, that of swaying the balance between the people and their representatives; for great part of the argument of these Reviewers is made out by dropping, with admirable dexterity no doubt, the distinction between the people who chuse, and those who deliberate and judge for them, and calling both by the general so long accustomed to admire your sense of public duty, your discernment of the true interests of nations, and your quick perception of the immediate and remote effects of the various measures of Statesmen, that I really feel an almost insuperable degree of reluctance in questioning the expediency of that project which you have distinctly pronounced to be indispensably requisite to the welfare and stability of the British Empire: I mean a Reforma tion of Parliament.-But, Sir, were I to decline provoking a more minute discus sion of that momentous project than it has, as yet, to my knowledge, undergone, those considerations which actually dispose me to deprecate a general pursuit thereof, must inevitably continue to operate with unabated and effective force; and thus fix me, with reference to one subject at least, in a distressing state of opposition to a person with whom I am solicitous to concur the contrary of which, in the event of such discussion, though extremely improbable, I shall certainly not presume to say is utterly impossible. appellation of a Democratical House of Commons. As to insurrection and civil war arising from the king's negativing the bills of the House of Commons, it may be remarked, that this prerogative of the king's is the most rarely used of any. It is for the advantage of the different branches of the legislature, as for people in common life, to practise a mutual forbearance, and to prevent, by timely concessions, all rude collisions in the political machine; and there is no reason to suppose that a reformed House of Commons would urge the king to an exercise of this prerogative more than a corrupt. The king, I believe, has more to fear from Borough-mongers than from his people. The prerogative, which, in case of a difference with his parliament, he would use, is rather that which the Reviewers wish to keep out of view, viz. an appeal to the people by a dissolution. On a new parliament being returned which persisted in passing the same bills, the king, it is to be understood, would concede, if he had not an interest different from the nation; and here it is to be remarked, that this is not the age in which the people are supposed to be made for princes, but princes for the people. The exccutive is only the hand which ministers to the head or deliberative body of the state; and a good government will always be ordered so as that a king will find his interest to be the same with that of his peo- | ple. But to conclude this letter, which has been already drawn out to too great length, the doctrines of the Edinburgh Reviewers may be summed up in this, that the House of Commons have assumed a power in the state consistent neither with the constitution nor with expediency, and that the evil can be corrected by nothing but an infusion of royal and aristocratical influence into that assembly to an indefnite extent; while I copied, and every person may perceive, that the House or Commons has assumed no new power, but that the other branches of the legislature have made encroachments on that house consistent neither with the congitution|ties in Faritadent may be obtained by nor expediency, and that nothing can purge it of aristocratical influence and restore it to purity but a Parliamentary Reform. W. Y. PARLIAMENTARY REFORM. SIR;-I have been so long in the habit of applauding the principles which apparently direct your political conduct, and That the influence of the Ministers of the Crown is enormous; that this influ ance has already proved detrimental, in several respects; and may ultimately become ruinous, are truths, which no in genuous person, capable of due reflection, can find himself satisfactorily prepared to refute. It falls under the observation of every man conversant in public affairs, that taxes the most burdensome and vexations are, without difficulty, imposed and continued; that scrupulously comprehen sive enquirics irio the expenditure of public money are either thwarted or ren dered abor.ive; that jobbing, peculation, and corruption, in various shapes, prevail; that the tutelary laws of British liberty are occisi mully suspended without urgent no. costly; that every measure, how yo prudential and popular, which happens to originate among die opponents of administracion, is enviously and contumelious y resisten with elbet; that decisive major any Minister, on any question; and that the afflrs of the Empire are micst ineptly conducted, and its resources mod eprously and dangerously mismanaged. It is a truth too obvious to require illustra tion, that all these and other evils are impotable solely to that influence which the Ministers of the Crown are enabled to ex• ercise. And to aflina that this pernicious influence, operating thus, has already, to a |