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 CHAPTER XXI.

HARVEST PROSPECTS.

The belief was general, for a month after this debate, that the harvest, upon which so much depended, would be an abundant one; but there then appeared indications of change, and people began to think that three weeks' rain would change the hope of abundance into gloomy prospects of starvation. The state of the weather excited as much attention in manufacturing and commercial towns as it usually did in the agricultural districts in the north of England, where hay had been cut for ten days without the chance of being safely put into the ricks. My paper of the 19th of July said:—"There is an universal conviction amongst us that the prosperity of manufactures depends mainly on the abundance of the necessaries of life; and while the produce of other lands is excluded from our ports, we look, earnestly and anxiously, to the circumstances which affect the amount of our home agricultural produce. Yesterday the weather was not merely fine but brilliant; and, at the time of our going to press, we have the prospect of its continuance, and of the fair ripening of the crops now promising to be unusually abundant. Would that the time were come, when, knowing that we could command the products of the Mississippi Valley, we should rejoice as much in the rain which gives luxuriant growth and the sun which ripens there, as we do now when such favourable circumstances present them