Such a step, we think, at the present moment, would be attended with mischief in more ways than one. There can be no pretext of a famine at present, immediately after harvest; and the natural course of events in operation is this, that the dear prices are inducing a stream of corn from every producing quarter towards Britain. In such circumstances, if you raise a cry of famine, and suspend the corn-laws, that stream of supply will at once be stopped. The importers will naturally suspend their trade, because they will then speculate, not on the rate of the import duty, which will be absolutely abolished by the suspension, but on the rise of price in the market of this country. They will therefore, as a matter of course--gain being their only object--withhold their supplies, until the prices shall have, through panic, attained a famine price here; and then they will realize their profit when they conceive they can gain no more. In the course of things at present, the price of fine wheat is so high, that a handsome surplus would remain to foreigners, though they paid the import duty. Remove that duty, and the foreigner will immediately add its amount to the price of his own wheat. The price of wheat would then be as high to the consumer as when the duty remained to be paid; while the amount of duty would go into the pockets of the foreigner, instead of into our own exchequer. At present, the finest foreign wheat is 62s. in bond--remove the present duty of 14s., and that wheat will freely give _in the market_ 80s. the quarter. It is, therefore, clear that such an expedient as that of suspending the corn-laws merely to include the bonded wheat to be entered for home consumption, would, in no degree, benefit the consumer. The quantity of wheat at present in bond does not exceed half-a-million of quarters--the greatest part of which did not cost the importer 30s. per quarter. At least we can vouch for this, that early last summer, when the crop looked luxuriant, 5000 quarters of wheat in bond were actually offered in the Edinburgh market for 26s., and were sold for that sum, and allowed to remain in bond. It still remains in bond, and could now realise 62s. Here, then, is a realisable profit of 36s. per quarter, and yet the holder will not take it, in the expectation of a higher.