We cannot think that Sir Robert Peel would sanction a measure so clearly and palpably unwise, for the sake of liberating only half a million quarters of wheat, which is the calculated consumption of a fortnight. But the late frequent meetings of the Privy Council have afforded an admirable opportunity for the alarmists to declaim upon coming famine. Matters, they say, must be looking serious indeed, when both Cabinet and Council are repeatedly called together; and they jump at the conclusion, that suspension of the corn-law is the active subject of debate. We pretend to no special knowledge of what is passing behind the political curtain; but a far more rational conjecture as to the nature of those deliberations may be found in the state of the potato crop, and the question, whether any succedaneum can be found for it. Perhaps it would be advisable to allow Indian corn, or maize, to come in duty-free; if not as food for people, it would feed horses, pigs, or poultry, and would make a diversion in favour of the consumption of corn to a certain extent; and such a relaxation could be made without interfering with the _corn_-laws, for maize is not regarded as corn, but stands in the same position as rice and millet. We might try this experiment with the maize, as the Dutch have already forestalled the rice market. If the state of the harvest is such as we conscientiously believe it to be, there can be no special reason--but rather, as we have shown, the reverse--for suspending the action of the corn-laws at this particular juncture. If the enactment of that measure was founded on the principle of affording protection to the farmer, why interfere with these laws at a time when any apprehension of a famine is entirely visionary? And since there is a large quantity of food in the country, the present prices are certainly not attributable to a deficiency in the crop, and are, after all, little more than remunerative to the farmers who are raisers of corn alone. The present rents could not possibly be paid from the profits of the growth of corn. It is the high price of live stock which keeps up the value of the land. The aggregate average price of wheat throughout the kingdom is only 58s. 6d., upon which no rational argument can be founded for the suspension of the laws of the country. Besides the working of the corn-laws will in its natural course effect all that is desirable; at any rate it does not prevent the introduction of foreign grain into the market. The present state of the grain-market presents an apparent anomaly--that is, it affords a high and a low price for the same commodity, namely wheat; but this difference is no more than might have been anticipated from the peculiar condition of the wheat crop, which yields good and inferior samples at the same time. It can be no matter of surprise that fine wheat should realise good prices, or that inferior wheat should only draw low prices. The high price will