The failure of the French harvest.
--Of the
French harvest a correspondent of the
London Review says,
‘
"it is one of the very worst the country has suffered for a long time,"and another writer adds:"The real truth is that the harvest is a bad one."
’
He continues thus:
‘
"From information carefully collected in different provinces, the result appears to be: That for anything like a parallel to the present harvest, 'it would be necessary to revert at least to the year 1846!' whilst the majority of farmers declare this year to be considerably the worst of the two!
That not only is the yield of the present year inferior as to quantity, but deplorably bad as to quality, the ear being small, light, withered, and dry. That the hard winter having done its work, many agriculturists sought a refuge by sowing in March, but she unnatural heats of June burn up all!
The barley (which in certain localities means beer) is in the same state as wheat, and that oats, which promised the best of the three, have also been parched up just as they were about to be reaped.
That the small yield of corn, giving also of course a small yield of straw manure for the coming year, is deficient, and the immense majority of French farmers will (as they always incline to do) diminish their stock of cattle.
All these things are serious, and all these things are concealed!
The
Times tells of legs of mutton in
Paris rising suddenly from fifteen or sixteen sous to nineteen sous a pound; this is something, certainly; but this is a minor grievance."
Such is the demand for shipment to
France at present that the sales of grain on the
New York Corn Exchange on Friday reached three quarters of a million of bushels.
French buyers, it is stated, have almost controlled prices in the
New York market for some time past, their orders having been on a very extensive scale.
An English writer on
France calls attention to the fact that upon the abundance or failure of the grain harvest in that country, may depend the question of war or peace for
Europe.
With that suspicion and dislike for the Emperor Napoleon to which almost every British journal gives bitter and constant expression, this writer broaches a theory, that, in the event of a short crop, the
French ruler will make war abroad, in order to maintain himself at home and keep his people contented.
’
London Review 
