The highest price of English white wheat is set down at
45s. per quarter; all foreign wheat is marked considerably lower:
Russian is quoted at from 31s. to 33s.; whilst Egyptian and Turkish
are marked from 24s. to 26s. per quarter; and fine American flour is
quoted at a price considerably under 'English Households.' These are
not signs of decrepit or faint-hearted farming.
Being so near, we may as well look in for a few moments at the New
Coal Exchange opposite Billingsgate Market; a sightly, circular
building, of rich interior decoration, that will well repay a visit.
It is one of our newest 'lions,' and is certainly a very significant
sign and monument of the enormous and swiftly-increasing commercial
activity of the country. On the tesselated wooden floor--with the
anchor in the centre, an emblem not long to be appropriate to such a
place, as we shall presently see--thousands of tons of coal are
disposed of with marvellous rapidity; the days of sale being the
same as those of the Mark-Lane Market.
There was a coal-tax, popularly known as the Richmond duty, which
was levied for many years, for the benefit of one family, but was
abolished some time ago. Its origin, and the especial circumstance
which, gossip saith, more immediately led to its infliction, are not
a little curious, perhaps instructive. The first Duke of Richmond of
the present line was a son of Charles II. by Louise Rene de
Pennevant de Querouaille, a French lady, better known to us as the
Duchess of Portsmouth, to whom Otway dedicated his 'Venice
Preserved' in such adulatory terms.
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