In every district which Mr. Jacob visited, he found the trade in corn, and especially in wheat, extremely depressed. The agriculturists were complaining of ruin from falling prices; and the dealers who bought to sell, and the creditors who took the produce of the soil in payment of the debts which were charged upon it, were either compelled to hoard it from the impossibility of procuring the prices in expectation of which they had accepted it, or to sell at a grievous loss. In the interior of Poland, along the course of the Vistula, the warehouses were actually empty. After a statement in detail, of the quantities of wheat stored in the various ports above-mentioned, the following is given as a summing up of the whole :

'The whole stock of wheat may be now brought into one point; and appear as follows:

'Of the wheat to which we have referred, as accumulated in the several ports, I was assured nearly one-fourth part is of so bad a quality, as to find no market in this country, except in seasons of uncommon dearth. If, then, out of the whole 741,473 quarters, 556,330 quarters were to be sent to England, it would not be more than the consumption of ten days.' p. 12.

This is to form the tremendous "inundation" which is to desolate England if the corn laws be removed or mitigated! But even this is more than could, according to ordinary calculation, be made to bear upon us. Much of what is thus warehoused could not be exported without the temptation of very high prices, nor without materially interfering with the supply required for other purposes than exportation. We are furnished in this report with the means of knowing the proportion which the quantity exported bears to the whole quantity stored. The total bulk of wheat stored at Dantzic and Elbing, we have seen, was 361,500 quarters. In page 51 is a table, from which it appears that the quantity of the same grain actually exported from those places during five years, was as follows:

The largest quantity exported during any of these five years did not amount to one-third of the whole bulk warehoused when Mr. Jacob obtained his returns from Dantzic and Elbing; so that, supposing the proportion in other places to be the same, and the supply not designed for exportation to remain undiverted from its usual channels, and adopting Mr. Jacob's estimate with that correction, we shall find remaining, to deluge England, as much as would afford its inhabitants about three days' consumption. It must not, indeed, be forgotten, that a sudden demand from England might be such as to force the whole stock into the channels destined for her supply; but neither must it be forgotten that this could only be effected by an advance in prices. How far this increase in prices might proceed, and how far the supply might be increased by a demand from England, are questions to which a large portion of the report is devoted.

Mr Jacob's account of the provinces of Prussia and of Poland, which export their produce through the harbours of the Vistula, is by far the best piece of statistics we possess of those countries. The state of agriculture and manufactures; the condition of the peasantry and of the higher classes, and the social and political relations subsisting between them; the general state of society; the value of property; the rate of interest, taxation, and wages;-indeed, all the subjects that can interest one who reads a book of travels, as much for the sake of instruction as for the gratification of curiosity, are discussed briefly, but with great clearness and intelligence.

A peasantry can seldom be found in extreme wretchedness where agriculture has made much improvement, and still more seldom where manufactures flourish. Even if no details were given, the state of agricultural industry, and the progress made in the arts which give comfort and dignity to social life, might be inferred from the condition of the lower classes in these Prussian provinces, of which Mr. Jacob treats somewhat at large. The peasantry are poor and degraded, enjoying little more than a mere animal existence, apparently unambitious of improvement, and even ignorant of the value of the political rights that were given to them at the memorable period of 1807, when the genius, vigour, and patriotism of Von Stein, laid the foundations of that political system of which, unhappily, only a few corner-stones now remain. They have ceased to be adscripti glebæ; they have been raised to the rank of free

labourers; they have been invested, to a very great extent, with the right of property in the land on which they formerly worked as slaves; yet they continue to be marked by a listlessness and slovenly indolence, which was natural to their former character, and which,' Mr. Jacob adds, 'their new condition has not had time to remove.' We may remark, in passing, that nineteen years are a pretty long period for trying the effect of a political change upon a degraded people; and that there must be some leaden weight, lying at the heart of the nation, preventing enterprize and paralyzing industry, or the impulse given by the great statesman, to whom we have alluded, would have urged Prussia to a far different stage of social existence from that in which she now stands still.

Except upon the royal domains, or on very fertile patches of land, near large towns, or on the banks of great rivers, there is in Prussia no class of agriculturists corresponding to our farmers. At the period, before referred to, of the emancipation of the peasantry from feudal servitude, a composition was made, compulsory upon the lords, but optional with the vassals, by which, in lieu of certain prescriptive claims of the latter, a proportion of the soil they inhabited, varying according to the amount of these claims, was given to each vassal who chose, on those terms, to be made free. This composition was carried into effect very generally, but not universally; some of the peasants preferring servitude to independence! The result has been, that, with the exceptions stated, every occupier is his own landlord, and cultivates his property with his own hands, or, in the case of richer proprietors, by means of hired labourers, usually paid in kind.

The value of land, if sold in (what we would term) fee-simple, varies from about fifteen shillings to about forty shillings per acre. This, however, is to be considered as its present value, at a time when all agricultural property is greatly depreciated. The degree of fertility may be judged from the average rate of increase in the various kinds of grain, which, taking all descriptions of grain together, is estimated at about four times the seed. Mr. Jacob ascribes this want of productiveness, in a great measure, to the small number of cattle in proportion to the extent of soil; that proportion being three times less than in England. The general course of cultivation is

for

'to fallow every third year, by ploughing three times, when designed rye, or five times if intended for wheat, and allowing the land to rest without any crop during the whole of the year, from one autumn to the next. Most of the land is deemed to be unfit for the growth of wheat, under any circumstances. Where it is deemed adapted to that grain, as much as can be manured, from their scanty supply of that article, is sown with wheat, and the remainder of the fallow ground with rye. The portion which is destined for wheat, even in the best farms, is thus very small; and, as on many none is sown, the whole of the land devoted to wheat, does not amount to one-tenth of that on which rye is grown.'—p. 15.

The proportion of wheat grown upon a great part of the country which Mr. Jacob visited, was small, and had been of late years declining. It is not deemed a profitable crop, except for exportation. This is an important fact, and Mr. Jacob seems to have bestowed some pains in ascertaining that it was not confined to particular places. It can only arise from the incapacity of the soil to produce this grain without a sacrifice not to be made unless on occasions of extensive demand and high prices. And it leads irresistably to the conclusion, which is enforced in other parts of the report, that no very great additional supplies of this article could be yielded, without a rapid impoverishment of soil, in a country having such scanty means of renovating its fertility by manure. So little, indeed, is wheat used for consumption in the north of Europe, that Mr. Jacob says:

From the time I left the Netherlands, through Saxony, Prussia, Poland, Austria, Bavaria, and Wurtemberg, till I entered France, I never saw, either in the bakers' shops, in the hotels, or private houses, a loaf of wheaten bread. In every large town, small rolls made of wheaten flour, could be purchased, and they were to be seen at the tables at which foreigners were seated. In the small towns and villages only rye bread can be obtained; and travellers commonly take in their carriages sufficient wheaten rolls to supply them from one large town to the next. Wheat is only used by the natives for making, what our English bakers would call fancy bread, or in pastry and confectionery. If there be no foreign demand for wheat, the difficulty of selling it, at any price, is great; and that little, which the very limited demand of other countries of late years has required, has been confined to wheat of the best quality; for rye, on the other hand, sales may be always made at a market price; and the price of that grain has not been depressed in the same proportion as the price of wheat.'-pp. 15, 16.

The proprietors of land in Prussia are described as in a most lamentable state of distress. In the year 1794 the Landshaft, or States, a local assembly of the principal proprietors, made a valuation, upon a low scale, of certain estates which were then intended to be mortgaged, and upon this valuation debentures were given to the lenders, with a right of priority over all other claims. At some periods in the interval that has since elapsed, these debentures bore a high per centage, and subsequent mortgages were created on many estates charged with them. Such has been the fall in the value of property, that some estates, so far from being adequate to the secondary incumbrances, are incapable of keeping down the interest on the debentures, and, although a sequestration is generally deemed a ruinous process to both debtor and creditor, have been subjected to that proceeding. If the landholders of England apprehend ruin from the industry of the Prussian nobles, these last ascribe all their misfortunes to the former. The Landshaft, in their session of last year, made a very pathetic appeal to the king, imploring his majesty to wreak vengeance upon the English for their pertinacious adherence to the corn laws, by-prohibiting the in

troduction of British goods! We might be tempted to smile at the remedy devised by these sages for the drooping industry of their country, if, unhappily, the very same sort of empiricism were not in vogue with a certain school of political doctors among

ourselves.

The provinces of Poland which Mr. Jacob visited, though differing in local circumstances and in national character from the Prussian states, and enjoying, in some parts, a higher degree of fertility, exhibited the same scene of agricultural distress and declining cultivation. Society, indeed, and the arts that contribute to its advancement, are there in a still more backward state than in those portions of Prussia which he describes. The whole population is divided into two classes, the nobles and the peasants. There is no middle order, unless it be said to consist of the Jews, or the German artisans, who, with other foreigners, have, of late years, settled in the country, attracted by some feeble attempts to encourage manufactures. The Jews drive their old trade of money dealing, and, though despised and deprived of many of the privileges of citizenship, contrive to engross almost the whole traffic of the country. The condition of society is thus described by Mr. Jacob:

'Among the real Poles, there is no regular gradation of ranks between the noble proprietor and the wretched peasantry. There may be, and visibly are, differences in the condition of the peasantry, depending on the personal character of their lords, and upon the more or less embarrassed state of the property on which they may be settled. There is also a difference between the landed proprietors, owing to the different degrees of activity, economy, and attention that they exercise; but there is not a middle class of Poles. The Polish gentry are too proud to follow any course but the military career; and the government, by its large standing army, encourages the feeling, though the pay is scarcely sufficient to supply the officers with their expensive uniforms. The church has too few prizes, among many thousand blanks, to induce any but the lower classes to enter on that profession. The offices of government can employ but few, and those are ill paid, and said to depend on small peculations, rather than on their salaries. Whatever difficulties may present themselves to the placing out young men of good family, none have had recourse to commerce: and if they had, such would be treated by others as having lost their caste, and descended to a lower rank of society. The manufacturers and the artisans in Poland are almost all of the German nation. If a joiner, painter, mason, tailor, shoemaker, or a person of other similar occupations, including too the medical profession, is wanted, he will commonly be found only among the Germans. The merchants, bankers, and traders, are nearly as exclusively of the Jewish race; and that, too, of all classes, from the importer of wines and colonial produce to the dealers in rags and old clothes; from the monied man, who traffics in foreign loans and foreign exchanges, down to the lender of small sums, which the poor can obtain by pledging their miserable furniture or implements.'-p. 33.