(NO. 187.) SECOND READING. (Hansard, 13 July 1882)

§ LORD SUDELEY

, in moving that the Bill be now read a second time, said: The Bill to which I have to ask your Lordships to give a second reading is one of a very technical character, and is intended solely to amend the machinery by which corn averages were determined, and about which complaints have been made for some years by agriculturists. The Bill does not interfere in the smallest degree with the Tithe Settlement of 1836, and avoids all proposals for the disturbance of that measure. What it is designed to do is by improving the machinery of the Corn Acts to obtain a proper Return of actual prices from fairly representative market towns; so that there can be no doubt that The Gazette averages are fair representations of the average current prices of English corn sold in the markets. The chief provisions of the Bill are—First (under Clause 4), to give power to the Board of Trade to increase the number and alter the market towns from which the Returns are obtained, provided they are not less than 150 or more than 200 in number, so that all important markets may be included, and the quantity of corn on which the price is calculated may thus be increased. The reason for the proposed alteration is owing to the fact that many towns have largely changed their character as market towns for British corn since the present places were selected—principally owing to the great increase of railway communications; and these selected places must, therefore, from time to time, stand in need of revision. Secondly (under Clauses 5 and 6), it proposes to increase the quantity of corn returned, and to secure the fairness of the average by improving the machinery both for collecting returns and for prosecuting defaulters. Thirdly (under Clause 8), as a large amount of corn is now sold by weight, it provides a fair conversion for the returns of prices made 258 by weight, so that the tithes may not be unfairly increased by being calculated on the prices of a measure larger than the Imperial bushel. These weights have been most carefully settled, after consultation with all the best authorities on the subject. It is hoped by this Bill to remedy the three subjects of complaint which have been made of late years—namely, the falling off in the quantity of corn returned; the alleged insufficiency of the quantity returned to give a true average; and the alleged difference which large quantities of corn being now taken by weight instead of measure are supposed to produce. The provisions of the Bill are those which were approved by Mr. Little, one of the Assistant Commissioners, in his evidence before the Royal Commission. It has passed the House of Commons without any opposition, and I trust your Lordships will give it a second reading.

LORD DENMAN

said, that he was glad that the Bill did not apply to Ireland or Scotland. The averages were a most important subject; and the quantity of wheat grown in England should be known, for the diminution of the growth of corn was very serious. In 1815, when rioters pulled down the house of the Father of the present Viceroy of India, a Relative of his (Lord Denman's) wrote— There is a false notion that Corn Laws tend to starve the people. I have a farm (of 400 acres) on which only enough wheat is grown for the good of the family, so am an impartial judge, and hold a Corn Law to he necessary. For years such statesmen as Lord Fitzwilliam, and Sir James Graham, and his late lamented Relative, advocated and prayed for a fixed duty as against Free Trade; but it was too long delayed, and the sliding scale, by means of the averages, prevented the country from importing corn, and the farmer from receiving the value of his wheat, because the average price of corn was, by fictitious sales, raised just before the harvest, so as to make the duty low; and at the time of harvest, the price being low, no corn could come in. The late Sir Robert Peel never confessed the failure of his sliding scale, when, apparently, it was at its best; and Lord John Russell, by a published letter, made a fixed duty impos- 259 sible by that letter dealing with abolition. The. late Premier (the Earl of Derby) in 1852 and 1867, alone suggested the practicable course of opening the ports during the potato famine, and waiting to settle the course for the future in calmer moments. In fact, if they forced owners and occupiers of land to turn cornfields into pastures, the growth of corn would be less; and as a good harvest was deemed prosperous, so the dependence on foreign supplies for a larger quantity each year would tend to starve the people.