A prohibition against importation from abroad, or a protecting duty, is plainly of no value whatever to the producers of such commodities as are exported, without the aid of a bounty, to other countries. Those who can afford to undersell foreigners in the foreign market, have certainly nothing to fear from their unrestricted competition in the home market. And, fortunately, this is the case with the manufacturers of Britain. A prohibition against the importation of foreign manufactured goods is really of no more consequence to them, than a prohibition against the importation of foreign corn would be to the farmers and landlords of Poland or of Russia! All our principal manufactured commodities, such, for example, as woollens, cotton stuffs and yarn, hardware, leather, &c. &c. can be produced cheaper here than in any other country; and the proof of this is, that we are able to export them with profit, not only to our immediate neighbours, but to the remotest districts of China and Hindostan. The duties intended to protect them, may, therefore, be entirely repealed without the slightest inconveni ence; they are, to all intents and purposes, a mere dead letter; and serve only to incumber the statute-book, and to afford, as in this case, the shadow of an argument to real monopolists. And such, we are truly gratified to have to remark, is the view that is now almost universally taken of their operation by our manufacturers and merchants. In 1820, petitions were presented to Parliament from London, Liverpool, Glasgow, Manchester, Leeds, Bristol, and all the other great commercial towns in the empire, in which the petitioners distinctly and strongly stated their conviction of the impolicy and injustice' of the restrictive and prohibitive system, and prayed for a total repeal of all such prohibitions and duties as had, for their object, to exclude foreign competition. Even the silk manufacturers, who were supposed to be particularly interested in the support of the prohibitive system, instructed Mr Ellice, the member for Coventry, to state in his place in the House of Commons, that they would not oppose the throwing open of the ports to the free importation of French and other silks, provided Government would reduce the duties on raw and thrown silk to the same level with the duties charged on them in France! It is in vain, therefore, that the agriculturists endeavour to apologize for the restrictions on the importation of foreign corn, by telling us that they are necessary to place agriculture in the same situation as the other branches of industry. The restrictions on the importation of foreign manufactured products are almost universally without effect; and those for whose protection and advantage VOL. XXXVI. NO. 72. Hh

they were intended, have themselves come forward and petitioned Parliament for their abolition.

But, even if it were true, which it is not, that any of our principal manufactures are berefitted by the exclusion of foreign competition, that would be no good reason why agriculture should be placed in the same situation. A prohibition against the importation of foreign manufactures may prevent our purchasing them in the cheapest market, but it cannot raise their price in the home market. Whatever may be the sum for which cloths, hats, or any other manufactured commodity could be produced in this country, when there was no restriction on their importation from other countries, they would be brought to market for precisely the same sum after the restriction. The restriction would not raise the cost of producing them; it would only attract a greater quantity of the national stock into those departments than might have flowed into them had the ports remained open to importation from abroad. But this is not the case with corn. A prohibition against importing corn into a comparatively populous country, does not merely attract a larger share of the national capital to agriculture, but it causes a considerable and positive increase of the cost of producing corn. The reason is, as we have already shown, that when you exclude foreign corn from a country like Britain, you force recourse to be had to inferior soils to obtain the necessary supplies, and consequently raise the cost of producing them. There is, therefore, a complete and radical distinction between agriculture and commerce and manufactures. The price of the raw produce obtained from the one has, because of the absolute necessity of resorting to poor soils, a constant tendency to rise as society advances; while, on the other hand, the price of manufactured products has, because of the continued improvements in machinery and the arts, a constant tendency to fall. It is idle, therefore, to talk about placing the one species of industry in the same situation as the other! And, although it were as true as it is false, that some of our principal manufactures derive advantage from the restrictions on foreign importation, that would afford no apology for imposing a restriction which must, by raising the cost of producing the principal necessary of life, sink the rate of profit, and create a powerful inducement to transmit capital to foreign countries.

We think that, by this deduction, we have completely established two points. The first is, that so long as the restrictive system is maintained-that is, so long as we succeed, by imposing restrictions on the importation of foreign corn, in sustaining its average price in this country at a higher level than its average price in surrounding countries-we shall be exposed to

a ruinous fluctuation of prices. In years when the crop is luxuriant, the impossibility of exportation, and the consequent depression of price, will involve the agriculturists in the same difficulties with which they are now struggling. And, on the other hand, when the crop is deficient, as it is sure to become after a period of great depression, prices will rise to the famine level, and the manufacturing and commercial classes will be driven to despair! The resolutions agreed to at some of the late agricultural meetings, disclaim any intention of seeking additional protection; and so far they deserve our commendation. But the Legislature must not stop here. It would be insanity to impose additional restrictions; but it is nothing less to maintain those already in existence. Until they are entirely abolished, it is worse than absurd to expect either the tranquillity or prosperity of the country. So long as the present wretched system is maintained, our ears will, at one time, be stunned with the complaints of the agriculturists, and, when these have subsided, they will be assailed with the louder and still more piercing cries of the manufacturing population-with the noise of radical rebellions, and fresh suspensions of the Habeas Corpus act! It was the exclusion of foreign corn that was the cause of the high price of 1817 and 1818; and it was this high price which was the real cause of those popular commotions which were made the pretext for the late encroachments on the Constitution. Of all rebellions,' says Lord Bacon, THOSE OF THE BELLY ARE THE WORST. The first remedy or pre⚫vention is, to remove, by all means possible, that material cause of sedition of which we speak, which is WANT AND POVERTY in the estate.'

The second point we have established, is the unreasonableness of the existing restrictions on the corn trade, on the principles of the agriculturists themselves, and on the supposition that fluctuation could be avoided. We have shown that, instead of enabling the country to bear the enormous load of taxes by which it is oppressed, the Corn Laws really constitute our heaviest burden; that taxation does not affect agriculture more than it affects any other department of industry; and that the manufacturers derive no benefit from, and are ready to relinquish, the restrictions and prohibitions intended to protect them from foreign competition.-In short, that if we mean to place agriculture in the same situation as the other departments of industry, we must, instead of framing new restrictions, abolish those already in existence.

Before bringing this article to a close, we must be permitted to express our approbation of the manner in which the Report

of the Agricultural Committee is drawn up. It evinces a familiar acquaintance with many of the soundest, though not the most obvious, principles of economical science, and is, on the whole, liberal and enlightened. The principles laid down by the Committee all conspire to establish the injustice and impolicy of restricting the trade in corn. But instead of recommending, as they ought in consistency to have done, that the restrictions should be abolished, and the trade thrown open, the Committee suggest, that such a fixed duty should be imposed on the importation of foreign corn as might compensate the grower for the loss of that encouragement which he received during the late war, from the obstacles thrown in the way of importation.' In making this supposition, Mr Huskisson, who framed the Report, has doubtless sacrificed his own better judg ment to the prejudices of the majority of the Committee. It would be impossible to estimate what ought to be the amount of such a duty with any degree of precision. And if it were imposed, it would, by restricting importation, and elevating the home produce, occasion those fluctuations whose disastrous effects we have described. But supposing it were possible to get rid of these effects, why should such a boon be granted to the agriculturists at the expense of the rest of the community? The commercial and manufacturing classes have been deprived of whatever advantages they enjoyed in consequence of the hostilities in which we were so long engaged; and why should not the agriculturists, who have shared equally with the others in all the blessings of peace, also bear their fair share of the revulsion it has occasioned? We should doubtless have considered the French Government as little better than insane, had they attempted, after the intercourse with the West Indies was renewed, to secure to the raisers of sugar from the beet root, a continuance of all the advantages they had enjoyed during the exclusion of colonial produce from the Continent! But sugar is not one of the principal necessaries of life; and any measure for keeping up its price, however absurd it may appear, must be infinitely less prejudicial than a measure which goes to maintain the price of corn at a forced elevation. In justice, however, to the Committee, we must say that they do not themselves seem to have been much captivated with this suggestion. And it has evidently got a place less on account of its own presumed worth, than that it might serve to soften the indignation of the agriculturists against those parts of the Report which make so strongly in favour of the only sound principle on which the trade in corn can ever be conducted that of PERFECT FREEDOM!

ART. VII. Œuvres Completes de Demosthene et L'Eschine, en Grec et en Français. Traduction de L'Abbé AUGER, de l'Academie des Inscriptions et Belles Lettres de Paris. Nouvelle Edition, Revue et Corrigée par J. PLANCHE, Professeur de Rhetorique au Collége Royal de Bourbon. Tome dixieme. Paris. Année 1821.

EVE VERY great master of the Art of Speaking or Writing, is, in some degree, a mannerist. By this, however, we would not be understood as implying a servile and continued imitation of some admired model, or a constant and affected recurrence to some favourite turn and peculiarity of expression. Our sense of the phrase extends to cases of a much higher order, and to persons of a far different degree of merit,-to those, in short, whose compositions are, generally, agreed to be the most faultless and perfect. Who, for instance, was ever more just in his conception of a subject, or more fortunate in the choice of his expressions, than Virgil? Generally speaking, would any critick presume to say, that he is above or below the point,-too hot or too cold,-too vulgar or too refined,-too long or too short, too passionate or too tame,-any thing, in one word, but what is right? If no such hypercritick has yet appeared, and almost every reader will be found to concur in the opinion, that he approaches, perhaps as nearly as possible, to the standard of true taste; it follows, pretty much of course, that it cannot, with any truth, be asserted, that there is any thing singular and peculiar, except that exquisite delicacy of judgment and feeling, which is the foremost of those transcendent qualities and excellences which excite such general admiration. Yet is he, assuredly, however exempt from eccentricity or oddity, most per fectly like himself. He cannot be mistaken. No one, of ordinary proficiency in literature, and with the most moderate acquaintance with this Poet, can, possibly, read a dozen lines indifferently chosen, and doubt whose they are. He could not, in guessing, blunder upon Ovid, or Lucretius, or Claudian, or Lucan, or Silius, or Catullus-or any one else. The bustling conflicts of the Bees, and the more durable battles of the Men, -the story of Dido's unhappy love, in all the minute tenderness of its detail, and the short, but sweet, allusion to Orpheus and Euridice, the visit to the shades in the Georgicks, and the like in the Æneid, are all portraits of the same master. They are Virgil all over.

Now, this manner, constituting, as it were, the identity of each author, is what the Translator ought to catch; and is, never