The demand of the year must depend solely on its own produce; and the price of the spring corn is not to be expected to fall very soon, or at any time very low.

Uxbridge is a great corn market.  As I came through that town, I found that at the last market-day barley was at forty shillings a quarter.  Oats there were literally none; and the inn-keeper was obliged to send for them to London.  I forgot to ask about pease.  Potatoes were 5_s_. the bushel.

In the debate on this subject in the House, I am told that a leading member of great ability, little conversant in these matters, observed, that the general uniform dearness of butcher’s meat, butter, and cheese could not be owing to a defective produce of wheat; and on this ground insinuated a suspicion of some unfair practice on the subject, that called for inquiry.

Unquestionably, the mere deficiency of wheat could not cause the dearness of the other articles, which extends not only to the provisions he mentioned, but to every other without exception.

The cause is, indeed, so very plain and obvious that the wonder is the other way.  When a properly directed inquiry is made, the gentlemen who are amazed at the price of these commodities will find, that, when hay is at six pound a load, as they must know it is, herbage, and for more than one year, must be scanty; and they will conclude, that, if grass be scarce, beef, veal, mutton, butter, milk, and cheese must be dear.

But to take up the matter somewhat more in detail.—­If the wheat harvest in 1794, excellent in quality, was defective in quantity, the barley harvest was in quality ordinary enough, and in quantity deficient.  This was soon felt in the price of malt.

Another article of produce (beans) was not at all plentiful.  The crop of pease was wholly destroyed, so that several farmers pretty early gave up all hopes on that head, and cut the green haulm as fodder for the cattle, then perishing for want of food in that dry and burning summer.  I myself came off better than most:  I had about the fourth of a crop of pease.

It will be recollected, that, in a manner, all the bacon and pork consumed in this country (the far largest consumption of meat out of towns) is, when growing, fed on grass, and on whey or skimmed milk,—­and when fatting, partly on the latter.  This is the case in the dairy countries, all of them great breeders and feeders of swine; but for the much greater part, and in all the corn countries, they are fattened on beans, barley-meal, and pease.  When the food of the animal is scarce, his flesh must be dear.  This, one would suppose, would require no great penetration to discover.

This failure of so very large a supply of flesh in one species naturally throws the whole demand of the consumer on the diminished supply of all kinds of flesh, and, indeed, on all the matters of human sustenance.  Nor, in my opinion, are we to expect a greater cheapness in that article for this year, even though corn should grow cheaper, as it is to be hoped it will.  The store swine, from the failure of subsistence last year, are now at an extravagant price.  Pigs, at our fairs, have sold lately for fifty shillings, which two years ago would not have brought more than twenty.