ARTES
LIBRARY
VERITAS
OF THE
UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN
CHIM SULAM AMOL,
FROM THE LIBRARY OF
Professor Karl Heinrich Rau
OF THE UNIVERSITY OF HeidelberG
PRESENTED TO THE
UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN
BY
Mr. Philo Parsons
OF DETROIT
1871
(
f
LI
ヨーカート
​J15

Dr von Martins

with the Autheur best regard's.

Feinem Freunde Fene
*
ے کرام مسکر ہے کہ
Martiis
う
​ག
CONSIDERATIONS,
&c.
1
1
1
#
Printed by Nichols, Son, and Bentley,
Red Lion-passage, Fleet-street, London.
10443
CONSIDERATIONS

ON THE
PARSONS
LIBRARY
University of
MICHIGAN
PROTECTION
REQUIRED BY
BRITISH AGRICULTURE,
AND ON THE
INFLUENCE OF THE PRICE OF CORN
ON
EXPORTABLE PRODUCTIONS.
BY
WILLIAM JACOB, Esa. F. R. S.
LONDON:
PRINTED FOR J. JOHNSON AND CO.
ST. PAUL'S CHURCH YARD.
1814.
T
ADVERTISEMENT.
}
WHEN I first determined on submitting
the following considerations to the public,
I intended to have added to them an Appen-
dix, consisting of Tables from various docu-
ments, to show the accuracy of the facts
on which my arguments are grounded; but
I have since been induced to think, that
the additional expence of the publication
of such Tables would have been so great, as
to have impeded, in a considerable degree,
the circulation of the book.
It has become the less necessary, from the
Reports of the two Corn Committees hav-
ing been printed by a bookseller for general
J
vi
ADVERTISEMENT.
use, and thereby becoming accessible to those
who have not opportunities of inspecting
Parliamentary papers. Most of my state-
ments are founded on those Reports and
their Appendices; and having extended my
work beyond the limits originally projected,
though I have aimed at brevity as much as
was compatible with clearness, I hope the
reader who has not seen the Reports alluded
to, will give me credit for fidelity in my
extracts from them.
Chelsham Lodge, Surrey,
Dec. 20, 1814.
W. J.
ERRATA in a few copies. P. 36, line 1. read consumers.-
Ibid. last line, omit of.
By the same Author,
TRAVELS
IN THE
SOUTH OF SPAIN
in 1809 and 1810.
In one Volume, quarto, with plates.
IT is an imperative duty on the Legislature
of every Country to take all possible precau-
tions, that the people subject to its govern-
ment shall be abundantly supplied with all
the necessaries for subsistence, and even with
those articles of luxury, to the use of which
they have been so long accustomed that they
are rendered almost indispensible.
This principle, though generally admitted,
has been diminished or limited in its opera-
tion by some persons who have applauded the
good sense of the French merchants, who,
when M. Colbert inquired if the government
could render any service to commerce, only
replied, “Laissez nous faire” (Let us alone.)
This answer, in the circumstances of these
gentlemen, may have been proper, and might
B
2
be adopted even by us, if our various compli-
cated interests were simplified, and our im-
posts reduced; but is ill calculated for the
situation of a country which has risen to
power and prosperity by legislative enact-
ments, in direct opposition to this maxim.
No accurate observer of passing events
can have failed to remark that the govern-
ment of this Country, far from interfering
prematurely or unnecessarily to form laws
for regulating the interests of commerce and
agriculture, has been rather slow to enact
new, or to alter any existing statutes, until
the investigation has been pressed upon its
attention by the direct application of the par-
ties interested; and it has been the language
of many of those who have required altera-
tions to serve the interests of some particular
branch of commerce, that Government cared
little or nothing for commerce. This lan-
guage, most unjust as is the imputation it
conveys, has been repeated by almost every
party, who, eager to excite an interest equal
to that which they felt for the success of their
projects, have been disappointed when public
men have not been influenced by their views,
3
and have required time to examine the plans
proposed to them, in all their extent and all
their bearings.
The stern resistance to innovation, which
Mr. Burke has justly pronounced to be the
characteristic of Englishmen, has by no con-
duct of the Government been more decidedly
evinced, than by an unwillingness, till after
due and deliberate enquiry into every new
project, to alter the commercial laws of the
country. The practice of letting alone things
that are at rest, of moving no new projects,
is as congenial to the habits of our States-
men as it is to the natural indolence of the
human race. The danger most to be appre-
hended, is, not that Government will unne-
cessarily or prematurely interfere, but that
its habitual dislike of innovation, and love of
ease, may render it tardy on some occasions
which require prompt decision; and that
thus the important interests of some parts of
the community may be unnaturally depressed.
Without entering into any abstract rea-
soning upon the answer of the French mer-
chants to M. Colbert, to show its futility as
a general principle, or without exercising
B 2
4
our ingenuity to ascertain how far it is a
good one, it may, perhaps, be more satisfac-
tory to show in what degree the various ma-
nufacturing and commercial interests which
have so much enlarged our trade and naviga-
tion, are indebted for their prosperity and ex-
tension, if not for their origin, to a course of
conduct in direct opposition to this celebrated
maxim.
Our woollen manufacture, the most an-
cient, and from being composed almost en-
tirely of the produce of our own soil, the
most valuable we possess, was early pro-
tected by the interference of the Legislature;
which, in the 4th year of Edward the Third,
prohibited the importation of foreign cloths;
thus conferring on our own artisans a mo-
nopoly of the home market; and by the re-
moval of all apprehension from foreign com-
petition, giving a stimulus to domestic ex-
ertions, which produced a rapid improvement
of our fabrics, and a gradual, but ultimately
extensive increase in our means of supply;
so that instead of fearing the competition of
foreigners at home, we have been enabled to
rival them even in their own countries.
5
2
As other branches of manufacture have
been established in England, the Legislature
has fostered them, by conferring upon them
the exclusive monopoly of the domestic
supply.
In the reign of William the Third, when
our fabrics of silk were yet in their infancy,
a law prohibited the consumption of silks
made in India; and as our manufactures
have improved, and become adequate to the
supply, similar restrictions have been ex-
tended to silks from other countries; till at
length every species manufactured in any
foreign country has been prohibited in this
kingdom.
Our linens have received similar protec-
tion from the Legislature; and though those
of Great Britain and Ireland do not enjoy
an absolute monopoly, yet the high duties
imposed on the linens of Germany and
Holland give to our own manufacturers
all the advantages which such monopoly
could afford, as far as regards the inter-
nal supply; and in the consumption of our
colonies, the home manufacturers have the
advantage of receiving a bounty, whilst the
}
6
foreign linens are charged with a duty, that
nearly increases the price of most species to
an equality with our own.
Our cotton manufactures, which have
risen with astonishing rapidity to a degree of
prosperity exceeding all previous calculation,
have been early and carefully protected by the
laws.
The importation of India calicoes
and muslins has been checked by excessive
imposts upon all that are permitted to be
consumed at home, and many articles are ab-
solutely prohibited from being used within
the United Kingdom.
The manufactures of iron have not been
brought to their present flourishing condi-
tion, without being guarded by imposts and
monopolies applied to foreign iron-ware. The
importation of iron in its crude state, from
Sweden and Russia, is indeed permitted, but
subject to duties, which, whilst they admit
its use where it is indispensible, prevent its
being applied to the most general purposes;
thus giving a decided superiority to the Bri-
tish iron-masters. In most of those articles
made from iron, in which the skill and
labour of the artisan are of more value than
7
the raw material, an absolute monopoly has
been conferred on the home manufacturer.
Our statute book beginning in the third year
of Edward the Fourth, and enlarged in al-
most every subsequent reign to the present
time, contains laws for excluding from our
home consumption, nearly the whole of those
articles of foreign workmanship, of which
iron, and the other cheap metals, form the
principal basis.
It would be difficult to point out among
the numerous articles of British manu-
facture, any considerable one which has
not been protected and stimulated by legis-
lative exclusions and monopolies; and even
the more minute ones have been early and
constantly protected, as appears by laws
passed in the reigns of Edward the Fourth,
Richard the Third, and Elizabeth, prohibit-
ing the introduction of foreign sadlery, cut-
lery, caps, glass, and numerous other ar-
ticles.
It is not only in our manufactures, that
the beneficial effect of restrictions has been
felt, but in our navigation the same causes
have not failed to produce similar results.
8
The law, so well known by the name of the
Navigation Act, and which has been highly
praised by that eminent writer hereafter tó
be noticed, is a monopoly of the most rigid
kind in favour of British ship-builders, and
British sailors; the restrictions it contains,
never waved but in favour of the captors of
enemies vessels in time of war, have been
found by the experience of a century and a half
so highly beneficial to the national interest,
that this law has been considered by States-
men of every party as a sort of Palladium;
and the wildest votaries of theory and system
have never recommended its repeal, though
it is notorious that ships may be built cheaper
than by British ship-builders, and navigated
cheaper than by British seamen. The mo-
nopoly created by this celebrated law is al-
most as extensive in its effect as it is in the
power of the Legislature to make it. Unless
a ship be British-built, and unless the master
and two-thirds of the mariners are British
subjects, she is not permitted to trade from
one port to another in these islands; nor are
any other vessels allowed to trade with our co-
lonies, or even to bring to us the productions
9
of any other country except of that in which
such vessels were built.
By subsequent laws the produce of the
fisheries is either prohibited to be brought
here by foreigners, or, if brought, is subject
to such heavy imposts, as almost amount to a
prohibition; and no one doubts that, by the
restrictions applied to this branch of indus-
try, we have been enabled to exceed the
French in the Newfoundland, the Dutch in
the Greenland, and the Americans in the
Spermaceti or Southern whale fishery.
In our colonial regulations, from the ear-
liest period of our possessing colonies, we
have adopted, and hitherto adhered to, the
system of restrictive protection.
The West India Islands, whose produc-
tions have been the means of creating our
commercial navy, whose consumption of our
domestic fabrics has given such a stimulus
to our manufacturing exertions, and whose
valuable commodities form a basis for our
revenue, have been cultivated and brought to
their present state, by possessing a monopoly
of British consumption, as far as regards
their most important productions; for though
10
East India sugar may be imported, it is
charged with so heavy a duty as almost to
create a prohibition, and accordingly the
consumption of it is very trifling.
Thus, whilst a monopoly of British con-
sumption has been yielded to our West In-
dia Islands, the manufacturers, ship owners,
and merchants of the mother country, have
enjoyed the advantage of similar restrictions
to the total exclusion of all foreigners.
The whole of our trade with the East In-
dies is a monopoly of a very rigid kind; and
the implicit disciples of Adam Smith have
usually exercised upon it all the abuse and
raillery that injustice and oppression could
have merited; but after the full and fair in-
vestigation which the whole system of India
has lately received in Parliament, after the
opponents of the Company having, as the
investigation proceeded, become less vehe-
ment in their opposition, and after the Le-
gislature has, with fewer dissenting voices
than any great measure usually receives,
enacted the continuance of the system, with
but some trifling concessions, it is but fair
to presume, that the monopoly is attended
11
with more advantages, and fewer evils, than
a system of unrestrained commerce.
It would carry the reader far from the ob-
ject of the present essay, to enter into a dis-
cussion of the Indian and Chinese monopoly;
but not to have noticed it at all in this review
of the great interests of the country, might
have been attributed to a consciousness of
defect in the system, which the writer is far
from feeling.
After this cursory review of the actual po-
licy of this country for a long series of years,
it might be deemed sufficient to pass to the
principal subject of this essay, without ad-
verting to the opinions of some of our politi-
cal economists, who appear to have been
misled by theory, to the total neglect of the
results which have followed from our existing
practice.
The name and opinions of Adam Smith
have deservedly too great weight in the pub-
lic estimation to admit of any writer treating
them with neglect or contempt; but whilst it
must be cheerfully allowed, that on every
subject to which he has directed his attention,
he has thrown a degree of light which only
12
acuteness, reflection, and industry like his,
could have bestowed; it may be contended,
that on the subject of restraints on importa-
tion, and on bounties, (Book 4th, Chap. 3
and 5) there is more obscurity, and more in-
accurate phraseology, than in any other part
of his work. As the Earl of Lauderdale, in
his Letter on the Corn Laws, has most suc-
cessfully pointed out the fallacy of his reason-
ing, it may be the less necessary to advert to
it; but it may deserve consideration, that this
country is arrived at a state, which neither
Smith, nor any man, at the time he wrote,
could have contemplated. Our national debt
of one hundred millions, our revenue of about
ten millions, and our expenditure of nearly
the same amount, have increased sevenfold,
our coin has disappeared, the exchanges with
almost every part of the world have been ex-
tremely unfavourable, and till very lately we
were excluded from every port on the Continent.
Has not this singular and unprecedented
state of affairs been productive of reasonings
and calculations in political economy, very
different from any which that celebrated
writer could have formed?
13
Can we now be guided by principles de-
duced from a state of affairs such as that
which existed in 1773 before the first war
with America, the Revolutions of France, or
before the late Continental System had been
created? What would have been our situa-
tion had we, during the existence and opera-
tion (slight as the actual operation was) of
the Berlin and Milan decrees, acted upon the
principles of Adam Smith?
A writer without the affectation of inge-
nuity certainly might, from the concessions
made by Adam Smith, show that restrictions
on commerce, and even monopolies, can be
defended by his authority. He allows that
where taxes are levied on any domestic pro-
duction, it is but justice that those who
pro-
duce such articles, should be secured from
foreign competition, by equivalent taxes being
laid on the same articles of foreign growth.
Now, as it can be shewn, that the land-tax,
the property tax, the poor rates, the tithes,
the horse duty, and some others, are direct
taxes on the productions of the land, it must
be conceded by his most implicit followers,
that a duty equivalent to those taxes should
L
14
be laid on such foreign commodities as come
in competition with our own agricultural pro-
duce; and it may be contended that a great
proportion of the indirect taxes fall on the
productions of the land, and to that amount
the duties on foreign articles of the same
nature ought in justice to be extended.
Instead, however, of abstract reasoning, it
will be more consistent with the plan intended
to be pursued, to proceed at once to the con-
sideration of our demand for subsistence; and,
when we have ascertained the extent of that
demand, to consider the most uniform and
certain means for its supply.
Enquiries into the wants and supplies of a
great country are attended with peculiar dif-
ficulties; and after the most careful investiga-
tion of all the facts that can be ascertained on
such subjects, it is seldom that strict accuracy
can be attained; the student in political arith-
metic can only hope for such an approxima-
tion to exactness, as may prevent any very
fallacious views of the subject; and even if he
be very diligent, he will still be suspicious of
his own calculations, and diffident of his own
results.
+
15
A considerable approach has been made
towards perfect accuracy on one of the most
important of these subjects, by the population
tables collected under the authority of the
Legislature in 1801 and 1811, and the re-
sults show the fallacy of all preceding cal-
culations on that interesting subject, the
amount of our population; we now smile at
the errors of Brackenridge and Temple-
man, and our surprise is excited at the mu-
tual asperities of Price and Howlett, who in
all their calculations so much underrated
the number of the inhabitants of this King-
dom.
The truth being ascertained on one branch
of political arithmetic, will greatly assist
us to avoid the errors of former writers on
the other branches of the subject. Con-
siderable assistance in political arithmetic
has also been afforded by the reports to the
Board of Agriculture; by Sir John Sinclair,
whose laudable enquiries have been well an-
swered by the Clergy of Scotland; and by
the various evidence which the diligence of
Parliament has collected and produced in
its numerous reports; from these and other
16
sources, a degree of information has been
collected, which has increased and rendered
more accurate the knowledge of the political
arithmetic of our own country, though we
must still rely with much hesitation upon
some of our calculations.
With such data as we possess, we may
attempt to estimate, without fear of any
material error, the demand for subsistence
which the increase of our population creates.
It appears by "the comparative statement
of the population of Great Britain,” laid be-
fore Parliament in January 1812, that the
inhabitants of this Island, since the enumera-
tion in 1801, have increased 1,611,882 (being
a greater number than the whole population
of Scotland amounted to ten years before)
and were in 1811, 12,552,144.
This great body of human beings is ac-
customed to live with a degree of comfort,
which is not enjoyed by the corresponding
ranks of society in any other country, and
which was unknown to our ancestors in every
preceding age. Of those who subsist by
their labour, in this country, with the ex-
ception of the northern parts of the Island,
+
17
almost every one is fed with wheaten bread,
and that generally of the finest quality, whilst
in the north and east of Europe the same
class is generally fed on rye or barley, in the
south on chesnuts, maize and fruits, and in
Asia and Africa on rice or maize. It is
well known, that till within a few years the
working class of people in England usually
subsisted on barley bread; and the gradual
improvement of their situation, by which
every humane man must be gratified, has
continued for so short a time, that persons
arrived at middle age can remember, when
in country villages in the south of England,
barley was as generally eaten by the pea-
santry, as wheat is at this time.
In estimating the quantity of provisions,
and the means of supply necessary for a
given number of people, the mode in which
they live is of considerable importance; not
because an equal quantity of land will not
subsist as many persons upon wheat, as upon
barley or oats, but because the former grain,
having a tendency to exhaust the soil more
than the latter, cannot be made to recur so
C
18
frequently in the course of cultivation on the
same spot.
It has been usual to calculate, that each
individual in this country consumes annually
one quarter of wheat, and it may be
be pre-
sumed that this computation is just, from
the fact that the Magistrates, in allotting the
rates of parish allowance to the poor, gene-
rally fix them at the price of two quartern
loaves per
per week, for each individual in a fa-
mily; and, as the sack of flour of 5 bushels
(which is the produce of from 6 to 6
bushels of wheat) will make 84 quartern
loaves, it follows that 104 quartern loaves
must require a little more than a quarter of
wheat of 8 bushels. As the allowance of the
Magistrates is calculated for paupers, in the
extreme of indigence, who are supposed to
have no means of obtaining any sustenance
but bread, it may be suggested that to calcu-
late on each human being consuming an
equal quantity of wheat, is rather extrava-
gant; and it may be further urged, that in
some of the northern counties of England, as
well as in a great part of Scotland, the lower
19
classes of the inhabitants are generally fed
on oaten bread.
To these objections it may be replied, that
among the higher classes the quantity of flour
consumed in pastry and confectionary, and
that wasted by luxurious domestics, will pro-
bably make the average of their consumption
amount annually to nearly a quarter of wheat
for each member of a family; that the
number of the poor who feed on oaten bread
cannot exceed one million and a quarter,
or a tenth of the whole number of the con-
sumers of corn; and, as we have seen, that
the allowance of two quartern loaves per
week amounts to more than a quarter of
wheat annually; the quantity consumed by
the most numerous class, beyond the above
calculations, will nearly compensate for the
other sorts of food made use of by the smaller
number. To this may be added, the quantity
of wheat employed in the articles of starch,
hair-powder, and paste.
A great variety of calculations might be
made, to prove that this computation of a
quarter of wheat for each individual in Great
Britain (deducting one million and a quarter
c 2
20
for those who feed on oats) approximates as
nearly to truth as is possible in such es-
timates; and as this calculation has been
made by the most respectable authorities,
and of late years contested by none, we may
safely assume as a fact, that the annual
consumption of wheat in Great Britain is
11,000,000 quarters.
It will occur to every reflecting person, that
this estimate is made on an average of years,
and that the quantity actually consumed is
subject to some, though not very material,
variations. In a season of great plenty, and
consequently of low price, an allowance
must be made for greater profusion; and in
a year of scarcity, and consequent high
price, for that more rigid system of economy
which such seasons induce.
The consumption of wheat is not so much
affected by variations in price as might at
first appear probable: the most numerous
class of the community, the largest consu-
mers of wheat, who enjoy in seasons of
plenty the luxuries of meat, tea, sugar, and
spirits, are obliged in seasons of scarcity
to abandon such indulgences, and subsist
1
21
almost wholly on bread. Among the higher
classes, indeed, much parade and some prac-
tice of abstinence from the use of wheat has
been adopted, in times of scarcity, but pro-
bably what has been saved by them, has
been balanced by many, who in other times,
had occasionally meat for their humble meals,
but in a season of dearth, have been obliged
to confine themselves almost entirely to
bread.
To the quantity of wheat thus required
for subsistence, an addition must be made
for a demand equally indispensable; to pro-
duce 11,000,000 quarters of wheat, accord-
ing to all former estimates, about 4,000,000
acres of land must be annually sown; and
the quantity of seed requisite for this extent
of land, reckoned at two bushels and three
quarters to an acre, which may be considered
a fair average of the sowings (taking the
heavy and poor lands which require more,
and the better cultivated lands, or where the
drill system is practised, which require less
seed) will amount to about 1,400,000 quar-
ters. We may thus fairly assume, that the
quantity of wheat wanted for the consump-
22
tion of Great Britain, is twelve million four
hundred thousand quarters annually.
It is much more difficult to approach to
accuracy, in calculating the quantity of oats
required for the supply of this Kingdom.
The principal consumption of this grain, is
as food for horses, excepting in a small
portion of the most northern part of England,
and a great part of Scotland, where about
1,250,000, or a tenth of the population of
the whole island, may probably be fed on
oats in different forms.
The number of horses kept in England
and Wales, as nearly as can be ascertained,
is 1,975,981, and in Scotland, 243,489,
which in the whole Kingdom, may be stated
at about 2,200,000.
The common allowance for agricultural
horses, as they are kept by the best farmers,
is two bushels a week for each horse, which
is 13 quarters annually; but as the excellent
practice of soiling during the summer months
prevails very extensively, though not univer-
sally, a saving of three quarters for each
horse is occasioned, wherever that mode is
adopted.
23
Horses kept by gentlemen, by stage coach
and post masters, by carmen, brewers,
coal merchants, and others, in the great
towns, and even by some farmers, consume
considerably more, which perhaps brings to
the same average that number of horses,
which, from the poverty of their proprietors,
subsist on a smaller allowance.
Attempts have been made to introduce
potatoes, Swedish turnips, carrots, and
other roots, as food for horses, all of which
have tended, but not in any great degree, to
lessen the quantity of oats required. It can-
not be very erroneous, under all these circum-
stances, to estimate the subsistence of each
horse at ten quarters of oats annually,
which consequently, requires a
requires a supply of
22,000,000 quarters.
We have already seen that about 1,250,000
people subsist chiefly on oats; and estimating
their annual consumption at 13 bushels each,
the demand for this purpose will amount to
2,031,000 quarters.
A considerable quantity of oats is em-
ployed for the feeding of hogs and poultry,
:
24
for fattening lambs, and other domestic
purposes, the amount of which it would
be difficult to calculate, but if stated at
2,000,000 quarters, there can be no very
important error affecting the view we are
now taking of the subject.
The quantity required for seed may be
estimated in the following manner: the dif-
ferent reporters to the Board of Agriculture,
state the produce of lands sown with oats at
different rates, which when added together,
make an average of 4 quarters and 2 bushels
per acre; and when we consider how much
land is sown with oats, not because it is
calculated for that grain, but because the
cultivators are too poor, or too idle, to pre-
pare it for a more valuable crop, we have not
stated the average too low. Taking, then,
4 quarters 2 bushels as the produce of an
acre, it will require 5,176,647 acres to yield
the supply required, which, sown at the
average rate of 5 bushels to the acre, will
occasion a demand for 3,235,400 quarters.
Supposing this view of the subject to be
correct, the demand will be thus:
1
25
For Horses
22,000,000
For the Inhabitants
2,031,000
For various minor purposes
purposes
2,000,000
For seed
3,235,400
Quarters, 29,266,400
As this estimate of the quantity of oats
necessary for our consumption, is much greater
than has been stated by former writers on
this subject, it may be proper to remark,
that it is in some measure sanctioned by Sir
John Sinclair's General Report of Scotland,
from which it appears that instead of the
land sown with oats exceeding, as stated
in this estimate, a little more than a fourth
of the quantity sown with wheat, the pro-
portion in the whole of that part of the King-
dom is nearly as ten to one, wheat being
140,095 acres, and oats 1,260,362 acres.
It may
be further remarked that for the last
twenty years, the balance of the imports
beyond the exports of oats, has considerally
exceeded that of wheat, and that, particularly
in the period from 1792 to 1812, whist
Ireland furnished us only with 883,892 qua? -
ters of wheat, she supplied us with 6,329,892
quarters of Oats.
26
The rich fen lands which have lately been
brought under tillage, have produced a much
larger quantity of oats than of wheat, and
the poorer soils, which the late high prices
of corn have brought into cultivation, have
generally been in the first instance sown
with oats, and will probably in the northern
parts of England especially, continue for
some years to bear a much larger proportion
of oats than of the other corn crops,
In estimating the quantity of barley
annually consumed in England, the re-
turns of the quantity of malt paying the
excise duty, are very useful guides; it ap-
pears, by papers laid on the table of the
House of Commons, that in the year 1807 the
duty was paid on 3,446,177 quarters of malt
in England, which allowing an increase
of one eighth in the process of malting, is
the produce of 3,015,405 quarters of barley.
It
that the distilleries use also a con-
siderable quantity of unmalted barley, in the
manufacture of British spirits, varying in
different houses, but which may be esti-
mated at 10 quarters to the tun of 252 gal-
lons. As in the year 1807, the quantity of
appears
27
spirits was 15,180 tuns, it must have con-
sumed 150,000 quarters of barley. It ap-
pears by the amount of the duty on malt and
spirits, that an increase of about 10 per cent
has taken place since the year 1807, and if
this be added to the quantities before men-
tioned, it will make the consumption of barley,
in the breweries and distilleries of England,
3,481,945 quarters. It is difficult to ascer-
tain the quantity of barley which is con-
sumed by pigs, poultry, and dogs, and ap-
plied to various minuter purposes, but in
estimating it at one seventh of the quantity
used by brewers and distillers, we cannot
err very materially, and it will then amount
to 497,420 quarters.
The quantity of land in Scotland appro-
priated to the growth of barley, according to
Sir John Sinclair, is 280,193 acres; and as
with the excellent culture generally adopted
there, the average produce may be calculated
at 5 quarters to the Scotch acre (which is
one fifth larger than the English acre) it will
yield 1,541,062 quarters.
As the average increase of barley through
Great Britain, cannot be estimated at more
1
28
than eight for one, it will require one seventh
of the annual produce to be sown, which will
amount to 788,632 quarters, and the demand
for barley will stand thus:
Breweries and Distilleries of
England,
3,481,945
Pigs, Poultry, Dogs, and other
purposes in ditto,
497,420
Growth of Scotland,
1,541,062
788,632
Seed for Great Britain,
Quarters 6,309,059
In addition to the great articles of wheat,
oats, and barley, there is a consumption in
beans, pease, and rye, which though small,
must not be omitted in this estimate; it will
be evident that there must be more dif-
very
ficulty in ascertaining the quantities of these,
than of the larger articles. If the relative
quantities that have been imported, may be
taken as a criterion of consumption, it will
appear that in a period of twenty years,
from 1792 to 1812, there have been supplied
from foreign countries, of both
pease and
beans about one third the quantity of barley,
and that the quantity of rye imported, equals
29
that of pease and beans united. Rye, how-
ever, is very little grown in Scotland, and to
no great extent in England, so that it is
probable its import bears a greater propor-
tion to its growth than either of the other
species of grain. Under these circumstances,
it cannot be very inaccurate to state the con-
sumption of rye, pease, and beans, as equal
to half that of barley, or about 3,000,000;
but as in the calculation for feeding horses
no deduction from the quantity of oats was
made, on account of the other grain which is
occasionally substituted for that species, we
may subtract from these three articles one
third, leaving it at 2,000,000 quarters; and
then the whole demand for the annual con-
sumption of Great Britain will
appear thus:
Wheat
12,400,000
Oats
29,266,400
Barley
6,309,059
Beans, Pease, and Rye
2,000,000
Quarters 49,975,459
Before we proceed to enquire, whether
our own territory may be made to produce
this very enormous quantity of corn, it may
30
not be amiss to consider, what dependance we
ought to place on material assistance from
foreign countries; what proportion we have a
right to calculate on importing from every
part of the globe, in the greatest probable
failure of our own harvest. Let us sup-
pose, that our own country should in any
season produce only three fourths of our usual
demand, that in every other part of the
world the crops should be abundant, and the
countries stocked with corn. Is it possible
by the temptation of the highest prices, to im-
port sufficient to compensate for our domestic
deficiency?
3
It
appears that in the
that in the year ending on the
5th of January, 1811, in which the shipping
that arrived from foreign countries far ex-
ceeded every preceding year, the whole
number of vessels, British and foreign, that
entered the ports of England and Scotland,
from all parts of the world, was 20,433,
and the burden of them was 2,785,331 tons;
now on the general estimation that five quar-
ters of corn is equal to a ton burden, the
whole quantity which could be furnished
would be only 13,926,655 quarters, or a little
31
To
more than one fourth of the demand.
obtain a supply, even to this extent, during a
whole year every other commercial operation
must be suspended, our East and West India
imports must be given up, and the great re-
venue derived from them abandoned; our im-
portation of naval stores, though in the case
supposed they can be the least dispensed
with, must be neglected; and the ships
which crowd our ports, bearing to us the va-
rious luxuries of the globe, must be freighted
to bring the means of subsistence for the
inhabitants of this Island.
A harvest so scanty as is here supposed,
would not till two or three months had
elapsed, be so clearly ascertained, as to in-
duce those who have the direction of our
mercantile shipping, to forego every other
object of commerce, for the sake of import-
ing corn; and therefore a great part of the
shipping would be dispatched to other desti-
nations, than to the ports where corn is ex-
ported, before the extent of the deficiency
could be known. Many of the vessels would
not arrive in our ports till half the year had
elapsed, and many of them, like our East
32
India ships and coasters, would be totally unfit
to be converted into corn vessels, under any
circumstances: it may therefore be safely as-
serted that with the greatest exertions, with
every inducement that the highest freights
could offer, it would be impossible, with the
present disposable shipping, to obtain by im-
port more than 1,400,000 tons, or 7,000,000
quarters of corn.
In a very extreme case, a case only to be
supposed, to shew the inadequacy of foreign
imports to supply this great country, we may
affirm, that if Great Britain were absolutely
destitute of corn, all the mercantile shipping
of Europe and America would be utterly in-
capable of supplying her demand.
By the last accounts laid before Parliament,
the whole shipping of the British dominions,
European and colonial, amounted to 2,500,000
tons. From a document presented by the
Secretary of the Treasury to the President of
the United States of America, before that
country attacked us, it appears that their
commercial shipping amounted to 1,140,000
tons. It cannot be supposed that the whole
of the nations of Europe, with the addition
33
of South America, possess a quantity of mer-
cantile shipping equal to one half of that which
is navigated under the British flag. The
whole amount of tonnage cannot exceed, if it
equal, 5,000,000; if one half of these ships
were loaded twice, and the other half once,
with corn, not more than 38,000,000 quar-
ters could be imported, which is little more
than two thirds of our annual consumption.
To return, however, from extreme and
supposed cases, we are enabled from past
experience, and the clear evidence of facts,
to calculate what proportion of our consump-
tion may be depended upon from abroad, in
any future deficiency.
We know that it is the expectation of in-
creasing their gains, which induces mer-
cantile men to abandon one pursuit, and
direct their attention to another; if the
prospect of augmenting their profit, is but
little more than their usual employment of
capital and attention affords, very few will
exchange an old for a new course; but as this
probability increases, the quantity of capital
and attention will also increase. In the se-
veral
years of scarcity which we have unfor-
D
34
tunately experienced, the prospect of advan
tage, from sending corn to this country, has
been so great that a large share of the capi-
tal, and skill, not only of our own, but of fo-
reign merchants, has been applied to this
purpose; the enormous prices in Great Bri-
tain acted as a magnet, to attract hither all
the corn that could possibly be sent from
other countries; every mode which ingenuity
could invent was exercised, every application
of capital that could be effectual was made,
and neither bribes nor influence were spared to
evade the laws of those countries where there
was any corn, for the purpose of sending it
here, and yet, with all this stimulus, and
with all the exertions that it created, the
whole quantity which we received bore but a
very inadequate proportion to our extensive
consumption.
In the years 1800 and 1801, the greatest
scarcity was experienced in England that
has been known since, from an exporting,
we became an importing country. The ave-
rage price of wheat in those years was 18s.
the bushel; at one period (March 1801) it
was as high as 22s. ; and yet the whole quan-
35
1
tity brought into this country during these
two years amounted but to 2,689,286 quar-
ters of wheat, and 1,855,992 quarters of
other grain, which is to our present consump-
tion, in the proportion of about one eighth
of wheat, or six weeks supply, and one for-
tieth, or less than two weeks supply, of other
corn.
In the year 1810, another
year of want,
when the high prices presented inducements
almost as great as in the preceding years,
the quantity of wheat which we obtained
from abroad bore nearly the same proportion
to our wants, as that which was imported
in 1800 and 1801. This quantity was
1,454,906 quarters of wheat, about six weeks
consumption, whilst the supply of the other
species of grain, was far less than in the
former years, though the price was much
higher the whole quantity, deducting that
portion which was re-shipped, amounted only
to 646,034 quarters, being the consumption
of less than four days; and for this inadequate
supply we paid to foreigners no less a sum
than £.7,000,000, whilst for equal quantities
in the years 1814, the English growers of corn
D 2
36
were paid by the consumers only 3,700,000
pounds!
If it should be objected that, though we
have not at present a reasonable expectation
of a supply from abroad, sufficient to feed
half our population, yet that by the stimulus
created by such a market as Great Britain
being at all times accessible, an increase
might take place, which in a short period
would be adequate to supply our deficiency;
we reply, that even waving the difficulty
which the insufficient means of transport
present, and overlooking the impolicy of pay-
ing a bounty to encourage foreign agriculture,
undoubted facts oppose themselves to this
supposition, and show the fallacy of such ex-
pectations.
If we take a slight survey of the different
countries of Europe from which we can form
any prospect of a supply, we shall find, that
their surplus growth of corn has, for some
years past, been entirely sent to this country;
for it appears that the pressing demands of
Spain and Portugal have been supplied, as
far as Europe has supplied them, by corn
which had been previously sent to this
37
Kingdom, from the northern ports of the
Continent; and as the average of the im-
ports from those ports, for the last twenty
years, has not exceeded 1,000,000 quarters
annually, what reason is there to expect
that, under any encouragement, this quantity
can be increased tenfold, which it must be,
to produce one fourth of our consumption?
Itis well known that France, though a fertile,
and if late reports be credited, a well cultivated,
country, does not on an average of years pro-
duce more corn than is sufficient for her own
consumption: on some few occasions exports
for a limited time, and from particular dis-
tricts, have been permitted, but no depend-
ance can be placed on any supplies from
thence, since Flanders, the most productive
in corn of any of the countries lately included
in her dominions, has been separated from her.
It is difficult to estimate what quantity of
corn has been furnished to us from Flanders,
because in our official documents, the imports
from Flanders and France are classed to-
gether, and it appears that both have only
furnished us in the last ten years, with a
supply of 431,827 quarters of corn of every
38
description, and of this, three fourths arrived
in one year (1810). Under the new arrange-
ments, it is possible that the agricultural pro-
sperity of Flanders may increase, and that she
may be enabled to export to England, a larger
quantity of grain than she has ever before
done; at the same time it must be considered
that its population is greater, in proportion
to its extent of territory, than any other
country in Europe, except Holland, amount-
ing to 252 persons to a square mile, or one to
two acres and a half of land.
Though the greater part of this country is
rich, and in a very high state of cultivation,
yet a considerable tract to the eastward is
comparatively barren; in the part which is
best cultivated, much land is destined to grow
flax, and other articles not calculated for food;
a considerable part is occupied by cities,
towns, rivers, canals, and forests, so that
bably not more than two acres to each person
may be cultivated, to furnish both vegetable
and animal food; as the cattle will require at
least four sevenths of the land for their sub-
sistence, that part destined to furnish corn
cannot amount to so much as half an acre for
pro-
39
each human being; and if each acre produce
four quarters of corn, or 3,600,000 quarters,
and 2,000,000 of human beings consume each
one quarter, the whole quantity that could be
spared from that fertile country, would not ex-
ceed 1,600,000 quarters of corn of all descrip-
tions; and even this is founded on the sup-
position, that every portion of the land is to
be cultivated with the care and expence of a
garden, that no competition is created by the
urgent wants of other countries, and that no
years occur peculiarly detrimental to the
growth of corn.
The case of Flanders is stated thus strongly
because it is the nearest country to us, it is
accessible at every season, it is most highly
productive, and the present political state of
Europe promises, that in its new connexion,
it will continue in the strictest alliance with
us; and yet we see that on the most favour-
ble supposition, it would be incapable of
yielding us any very considerable supply.
Holland is, generally speaking, a grazing
country, and though a part of it is cultivated
with oats, and though few horses are kept
there, it is not, on an average of years, capa.
40
corn;
ble of supplying its own population with
it has ever been an importing country:
but, as its ports have been at all times open
for free exportation, as well as importation, it
has been a depôt for the countries on the up-
per parts of those great rivers, which empty
themselves into the sea within its territory.
It has also been made an entrepôt for Ger-
many and Poland; and from these causes, we
have in years of great scarcity, been furnished
with corn, though in no great quantities, from
thence. The two largest importations were
in the years 1809 and 1810, in the former of
which, we drew 94,056 quarters of wheat,
and 213,690 quarters of other grain, and in
the latter 189,016 quarters of wheat, and
77,796 quarters of all other corn:
It will readily be perceived that the inha-
bitants of a country, destined by the nature of
its soil, and especially of its climate, to feed
cattle, and to produce butter and cheese, can-
not by any inducement which high prices
may occasionally offer be tempted to turn
their attention from cattle to corn.
The north of Germany, including those
parts whose produce is shipped from the ports
*
41
in the Baltic, as well as those bordering on
the Ems, the Elbe, and the Eyder, are by no
means naturally productive in corn, except
East Friesland, which abounds in oats, and
part of the Dutchy of Mecklenburgh Schwe-
rin, whose agricultural capital, having re-
ceived a great addition from the high prices
obtained for corn in England during our
scarcity, has since that period considerably
increased its growth of wheat, though its
capacity of exporting is still but small.
During ten years, from 1803 to 1812 inclu-
sive, the whole quantity brought to Great
Britain from Germany and Heligoland,
amounted only to 761,276 quarters of
oats, and 258,481 quarters of wheat. As the
quantity of oats was nearly equal in all the
years, when the ports were open, we may
fairly presume that the exports were the real
surplus production; but as the quantity of
wheat in the year 1810 was 176,014 quarters,
or nearly equal to the other nine years, we
may conclude that it was an unnatural export
attracted by the excessive price in England.
We cannot, then, calculate that until the
cultivation of land is greatly improved, the
42
annual supply from Germany will much ex-
ceed 25,000 quarters of wheat, and 80,000
quarters of oats.
There are few countries in Europe where
we can, with less reason, look forward to
agricultural improvement, than in the part of
Germany now under consideration. Though
there are some extensive districts of good
land, which are devoted to the fatting of
oxen, and which would be less profitable
to the occupiers in an arable state, the far
greater part of the soil is a sandy heath, bear-
ing little; and only capable of being brought
into cultivation, by expending more on the
land than it would be worth after the im-
provements; even the cultivation of green
crops, that powerful corrective of sterility,
cannot here be carried on with more prospect
of success, than on Bagshot-heath, and the
capital which it would require, is so difficult
to be obtained, that no distant prospect of re-
imbursement could divert it into the channel
of agriculture.
Denmark, Norway, and Sweden, scarcely
deserve to be noticed in this review, as their
wants forbid their scanty subsistence to be
43
sent to other countries; and though it ap-
pears by documents that 609,339 quarters of
corn have been imported from those countries,
within the last ten years, one third of which
was in the year 1810, yet it is well known, that
by far the greater part had been previously
imported from Poland and Russia, and from
the political circumstances of the world at
that period, was sent to Great Britain with
clearances from Swedish or Danish ports.
The islands which since the cession of Nor-
way to Sweden form the most important
part of the Danish dominions are indeed to-
lerably cultivated, and are usually enabled to
export a portion of grain, but the urgent and
regular demands of Norway and Sweden,
will more than absorb any surplus quantity
that can be produced in them.
The Russian Empire, though extensive, is
thinly peopled, and badly cultivated; and a
country so circumstanced, has seldom the
power of raising more subsistence than its
own demand requires. With a good govern-
ment, with inducements to its inhabitants to
exert their powers, and with an abundant
capital, it undoubtedly might become an ex-
44
cellent resource to this Country in times of
scarcity, but the motives to exertion are want-
ing, and we can contemplate no very great
improvement in a short period; we can only
judge of what supplies of corn she can yield
us, from looking at what we have received
from her on an average of years, which may
be considered its natural surplus, and at what
she afforded when the pressure of scarcity here
raised the prices to an excessive height. In
the seven years from 1803 to 1809 both inclu-
sive, our imports from Russia were 279,968
quarters of corn, of which six sevenths were
wheat; but the year 1805 was a year of com-
parative scarcity, and then the importation
was equal to that of the other six. The
quantity sent here during the three years
ending in 1812, amounted to 244,550
quarters, to which may be added two thirds
of that which by the custom-house books ap-
pears to have arrived from Sweden, Denmark,
and Norway, making 492,428 quarters, or
164,144 quarters annually, which is nearly
the same as was furnished under the former
pressure.
}
45
We may then, fairly conclude, that the
natural superfluity of Russia can supply us
with 30,000 quarters, and when the prices
are raised to an enormous height, we may
expect a supply of 160,000 quarters. It is
impossible to calculate what Russia may
hereafter become, but under any circum-
stances likely to arise in a few years, we can-
not depend on a much larger supply.
It has been supposed that Poland contains
inexhaustible stores of provisions, and that
this country may at all times depend on such
supplies from thence, as ought to banish the
apprehension of scarcity, if the sea be freed
from a superior navy, and her ports not closed
by the forces of some continental enemy.
There are few countries of whose interior
economy and resources we are less informed
than of Poland; it is generally known only,
that the country is by nature fruitful, that it
is wretchedly governed, and that the popula-
tion is smaller, in proportion to its extent,
than in almost any other part of Europe.
The divisions which, at different periods,
have been made of this unfortunate country,
by the three powers who appropriated different
46
portions of its territory, will give us some
means of forming an estimate of its power of
affording supplies to this and other countries.
Russia acquired by the partition of Poland in
1773, a district containing 1,226,966 in-
habitants; in 1793, another containing
3,745,663; and in 1795, the final partition
added to the Russian dominions 1,407,402;
making in all 6,380,031, or nearly half of its
people. The corn produced in this extensive
country has been shipped from the ports of
Russia, and has been allowed for in the view
taken of the exports of that country, so that
it requires no notice at present.
The accession of territory acquired by
Austria in the different partitions of Poland,
consisting of Eastern Galicia, Western Galicia,
and Lodomeria, contains a population of
3,903,297 inhabitants. The distance from
this division of Poland to Dantzic, the place
of exportation, must render the transport of
corn excessively expensive, and as it must
pass though the states subject to Russia, and
to Prussia, it is not extraordinary that its ex-
port should be very considerably diminished.
One of the witnesses before the Lords Com-
47
mittee (Mr. Barandon) accordingly states,
that the importations from Cracow and San-
domir, and indeed from the whole of Poland,
have not been so large as they were in former
years; the nature of his examination did not
lead to the particular fact, but it may fairly
be inferred, from his naming two specific
places, that the greatest diminution of import
must be from their vicinity, that is, from the
part of Poland now annexed to Austria.
Mr. Solly "states that about the
year 1801
or 1802, (probably he means 1800)" when
a bounty was given upon such a plan that it
secured to the importer a given price, at that
time the increase was incalculable, and the
exertions to bring corn out of Galicia were
very great:" from this we may infer, that the
distance and consequent expence of trans-
port, acts as a bar to a supply from thence,
unless under the pressure of extraordinary
scarcity, and excessively high prices.
Prussia in the different partitions, though
she has acquired the least population, appears
to have added to her dominions that portion
of the country which is the most important,
in the particular view in which we are now re-
48
garding it; the exported corn is principally
grown in the countries newly named, Eastern
Prussia, Western Prussia, Southern Prussia,
and New Eastern Prussia, containing together
3,261,625 souls.
It appears by all the evidence, both before
the Committee of the Lords, and Commons,
that this country is divided among great pro-
prietors, whose slaves till the ground partly
for their own subsistence, which is almost ex-
clusively rye, and partly for their Lords, who
draw their revenues from the wheat sold to
foreigners; that the land is so fertile, and so
adapted to the growth of wheat, as to require
but little labour, and the quantity of new
ground so extensive, as to render manure un-
necessary; that after growing
that after growing a crop of wheat,
the land is suffered to return to its former
neglected state, and in a few years becomes
again covered with firs, and other brush
wood.
These facts were corroborated by the dif-
ferent witnesses who, though contradicting
in the most direct manner the assertions of
each other on some points, appear to have
agreed on these topics. One of the witnesses
49
(Mr. Solly) says the corn is so badly har-
vested that, unless a high price induces the
grower to re-stack it in the ensuing spring, it
is suffered to perish; another (Mr. Barandon)
states that he never knew a country, in
which so much pains are taken to preserve
the corn as in Poland, that it is never put in
stacks, but directly into warehouses in the
straw, and thrashed during the winter. The
former gentleman says there is not an estate
without a distillery; another (Mr. Drewe)
says, that in the parts he visited, at the
houses of the different nobility, there were
no distilleries at all, though he afterwards
states, that they drink brandy made in the
country from corn.
Allowing for such variation in testimony
as must arise from different people, seeing the
same country under different views, or visit-
ing different districts of so extensive a country,
we may thus far ascertain, that sufficient spi-
rituous liquors are distilled from grain, to
supply the consumption of the more nume-
rous body of the inhabitants, who cannot in-
dulge in foreign luxuries, and who are as
E
50
much attached to spirits as their Russian
neighbours.
The lower classes of the inhabitants ap-
pear to subsist almost wholly upon rye bread,
or an inferior kind of pulse; and we may,
with some apparent probability, assume that
the agricultural labour of that part of Poland
now annexed to Prussia, peopled by 3,260,000
inhabitants, is directed to three principal ob-
jects: first, to the production of corn for its
own food; secondly, to the growth of corn to
supply the domestic distilleries; and, thirdly,
to produce wheat for foreign consumption.
It is certainly difficult to ascertain, what
quantity of produce might be expected from
land of the richest description, never exhausted
by corn crops; but the small population of
Polish Prussia, and especially the enslaved
condition of that population, forbid us to form
a very high estimate of its surplus produce.
However badly the people may be fed, cloathed,
and lodged, however little brandy they may
be allowed, all is drawn by their own labour
from their own soil, and the consumption
must be nearly equal to the production.
1
51
À country abounding in horses kept for
show, for pleasure, or for war, must con-
sume large quantities of corn, and it would
not be difficult to show that 3,600,000 per-
sons, supposing half of them to be employed
in agriculture, could not on any soil, with
which we are acquainted, produce a surplus
beyond their consumption of two bushels of
wheat per
head. We are not, however, dri-
ven to the necessity of making so tiresome a
calculation; for though one of the witnesses
before the Lords (Mr. Solly) asserted “ that
this country does not consume more than two
thirds of the quantity which Poland generally
exports;" yet we know from better autho-
rity, that the whole exports from Dantzic in
eleven years, from 1793 to 1803, inclusive,
were only 315,139 lasts, or 3,387,730 quar-
ters, which is little more than three months
of our consumption in eleven years, instead
of sixteen years consumption as he stated it*.
*Export of wheat from Dantzic, from the year 1793 to
1803, inclusive, taken from annual accounts published in
that city, in lasts of 10 quarters 6 bushels.
Years.
1793..
1794..
England. Other countries.
.9,451...
.5,963..
6,244....
12,529.
Total.
15,414
18,973
E 2
52
This statement is further supported by
evidence given before the Committee of the
House of Commons, by a native of that
country, though a resident in this : Mr. Hen-
nings being asked if the quantity produced
could be considerably increased, replied,
"the quantity of land could produce consi-
derably more, but from want of population
and capital, no considerable increase can be
expected." On being asked what quantity
of wheat could, upon an average year, be
drawn from Poland, his answer was, "I have
known of from 30 to 50,000 lasts in one
year from Poland, the last being ten quarters."
From the return here presented of the ex-
ports in seasons of past distress from the
Dantzic custom-house document, and from
the evidence of an intelligent native, we may
rest satisfied with the conclusion, that from
Other countries.
Years.
1795....
1796..
1797..
1798...
•
England.
.4,283.
20,407..
17,496.
18,357.
.9,491.
·
Total.
13,774
•
6,474..
26,881
•
•
1799..
16,713..
1800.
37,202..
1801...
1802..
33,748..
27,028..
.6,398..
.7,991..
8,311..
.3,661.
.3,855.
25,388..
23,894
26,349
•
25,024
40,963
•
.37,603
52,416
1803..
P
11,725,.
22,424.
34,149
315,139
53
the boasted cultivation of Poland no prices
have drawn, or could draw, more than
500,000 quarters, or fourteen days consump-
tion of wheat.
America has been considered by some per-
sons as a source from whence, in a period of
scarcity, we might calculate on receiving a
large supply of flour and wheat; but if we
examine the exact quantity with which she
has furnished us, we shall place little re-
liance on that country. In the ten years
from 1803 to 1812 inclusive, we have re-
ceived from thence only 236,376 quarters of
corn, and 1,858,815 cwts. of flour, equiva-
lent to 743,526 quarters of wheat; or taking
the average of the ten years, we have im-
ported annually about 98,000 quarters of
corn, being scarcely the consumption of three
days.
By a return from the Executive Govern-
ment to the Legislature it appears, that the
whole of the exports of corn from the United
States to all parts of the world, in 1805, was
as follows:
777,513 barrels of flour.
18,041 bushels of wheat.
54
1,474 bushels of rye.
55,400
7,185
861,501
of oats.
of barley.
of indian corn,
56,836 tierces of rice.
If the whole of this quantity had been
sent to Great Britain, the wheat, flour, and
rice, would have been about one week's con-
sumption of bread corn; and of the other
articles, not sufficient for one day.
It is, however, well known that the greater
part of the surplus corn of America must ne-
cessarily be sent to the West Indies; the dif-
ferent European settlements there never grow-
ing sufficient grain for their own consumption;
and however high the price may be raised in
England, the West India market will be
equally high, and being much nearer to Ame-
rica a quicker return can be obtained, and
therefore that market will be preferred.
It has been thought necessary to take this
cursory view of the extraneous supply of pro-
visions which may be drawn hither, because
most of those who have written on the corn
trade, and corn laws, have either passed it
very slightly, or have tacitly admitted as a
55
fact, what is here proved to be false; viz.
that in case of a scarcity at home, produced
either by unfavourable seasons, by the in-
crease of our population, or by sacrificing our
agricultural to our commercial interests, we
might depend on a supply from abroad, at
no other sacrifice than paying a higher price
for it than it would cost if raised on our own
soil.
There are few Severer evils to a comm!-
nity, than great fluctuations in the price of
articles of the first necessity; among the vul-
it is the source of discontent and exaspe-
gar
ration against the government, and fre-
quently against those by whom they are fed,
and to all classes it is injurious in a very
high degree. Now there is great reason to
apprehend, that ignorance of the relative
quantity of grain which is produced at home,
to that which is imported from other coun-
tries, has been the cause of the greatest fluc-
tuations.
When we have had a harvest rather
scanty, yet not so deficient as to justify the
fear of famine, if the ports of the continent
have been shut against us, or even if the bare
56
apprehension of such exclusion has existed, it
has caused a rise in the price of corn beyond
what could have taken place, if the compa-
rison between our own growth and foreign
importation had been familiarly reflected on;
and from not estimating how small any sup-
ply from abroad must necessarily be, a panic
has prevailed; and both in 1805 and 1812,
the prices of corn were raised far beyond
what the deficiency in the quantity grown
could have justified.
After a plentiful harvest, and an appre-
hension of an inundation of corn from the
continent, a contrary panic has been created,
which, if the relative supplies had been un-
derstood, could not have existed. Each far-
mer has pressed with his grain to the market,
and the consequence has been an unnatural
depression, as little justified by the supply,
as the unnatural elevation that preceded it.
Another ill consequence of ignorance as to
the relative quantity of our growth to our
consumption has been produced in foreign
countries; for, whenever an opinion of defi-
ciency in our harvests has prevailed on the
continent, the extent of our wants being
57
magnified, such an advance has taken place
in corn, as to make us pay much more for
the quantity demanded, than we should
otherwise have done. It appears, therefore,
to be of material importance, both to the le-
gislature and to the public, to ascertain, as
accurately as possible, what are our wants;
what supply we can obtain from other coun-
tries; and what reasonable expectations we
have of raising sufficient at home, not only
for our present consumption, but to meet
that increased demand which our increasing
population will require.
From this view of the relation between our
foreign and domestic supply, we shall be en-
couraged to hope for a return of the circum-
stances, which till the year 1766, had long
existed in this country; when we had not
only sufficient for our own consumption, but
had usually a surplus quantity of corn for that
of other countries*; to this surplus recourse
could always be had in unfavourable sea-
* The excess of our exports, above our imports, in eight
years ending 1766, was 2,401,195 quarters of wheat, or an
annual average of 300,149 quarters; the excess of imports,
above the exports, in eight years ending 1812, was 3,770,387
quarters of wheat, or an annual average of 471,293 quarters.
58
sons, by stopping the exportations, and thus
the superfluity of a productive be made to
supply the deficiency of an unproductive
harvest.
This most desirable state of affairs, can
only be made to return, from our dependance
being mainly placed in our own supply, and
from security being given that capital de-
voted to agriculture shall be subject to no
other risk of depreciation than that which
may arise from improvident expenditure,
from negligent indolence, or from such un-
fruitful seasons as in the course of
be reasonably expected to occur.
years must
It is not a deficiency of knowledge, an ob-
stinate adherence to ancient practices, or a
scarcity of labourers, that have kept agricul-
ture from progressive improvements, similar
to those which have taken place in manu-
factures, and other branches of national in-
dustry and ingenuity, but a want of that ca-
pital, which is the moving principle in every
concern.
The profits of capital employed in agricul-
ture, under any circumstances, fall short,
both in prospect and in reality, of those
59
which manufactures and commerce usually
promise; the most sanguine cultivator does
not flatter himself with great gains, and the
principal inducement to employ money in
such operations is the belief, that though the
profit is small, it is tolerably secure, the risk
of the loss being less than in concerns
which present a more flattering prospect;
and that the expences of domestic establish-
ments are much lower than those which are
incurred by persons, who from their com-
mercial concerns reside in large cities.
In general, then, we may assert that the
increase of agricultural capital must be looked
for, not from those of sanguine tempera-
ment, who form high expectations of gain,
but from the more calm and sober-minded
part of the community, from those who look
to security as their first object, and who will
lay out no considerable portion of their for-
tune, where they see any prospect of risk.
To increase the productions of the earth,
we must give such encouragement to agri-
culture, as will convince the most cau-
tious, that in embarking their property in
such operations they shall be secured, as far
60
as legislative enactments can secure them,
from any
any risks but such as arise from their
own negligence, or from unfruitful seasons;
and as the dread of competition with those,
who, from various causes, can raise corn
cheaper than the British husbandman, acts
as a check on our cultivation, the rendering
such a competition impossible, would give
the strongest stimulus to those who have
property to embark in agriculture.
The lands in Great Britain already under
cultivation, are certainly more productive than
they have been in any former period, but they
are almost all capable of such further improve-
ment, as may increase their produce far be-
yond its present quantity, and render it fully
equal to the wants of a still greater popula-
tion than this Island at present contains.
Even if the land in cultivation had reached
its maximum of improvement (a point which,
perhaps, has in no country, at any period,
been attained) we have a resource in lands at
present in an uncultivated state, which with
the requisite capital might be made capable
of producing sufficient sustenance for several
millions beyond our present population; but
61
whilst a competition is permitted, which
places the price of corn not at what it costs
the British farmer, but at what the foreigner,
who cultivates without his expences and his
taxes, can raise it, the best cultivated lands
must become less productive by the with-
drawing of capital; and the waste lands, from
the want of capital, must continue in their
present uncultivated state.
It has been shown that almost every
branch of our various manufactures is protect-
ed from foreign competition; the question
whether we can purchase any article cheaper
of foreigners than of our own countrymen,
has never influenced the Legislature, nor
have even the consumers of such articles
wished for their admission on that account;
but on the contrary, our manufacturers of
silks, muslins, linens, stuffs, and many other
articles, have procured restrictive laws to be
enacted, on the simple ground that foreign-
ers were able to make such articles so much
cheaper as to undersell them in our own
markets. This may be wise and good policy;
but if it be wise and just to enact protecting
laws in these smaller concerns, how much
62
more wise and just is it to enact similar laws
for the protection of the great interests of the
state, in the prosperity of which the major
part of the population, and of the property of
the kingdom is involved?
The actual effect of the competition in corn,
which has existed for the last twelve months
between the foreign and the British grower,
has been so injurious to the latter, that he has
been compelled to sell his crop at a price,
that not only fails to yield him an interest for
his capital, or even a subsistence, but subjects
him to a considerable loss; and when we
consider the number of persons interested in
the prosperity of agriculture, and the amount
of property invested in it, that alone entitles
it to serious and immediate attention; if this
state of things continue, and the agricultural
interest be suffered to yield to the clamour of
the large towns, the inhabitants of those
towns will themselves ultimately feel its most
distressing effects.
Our population is now certainly increasing,
and no events are likely to occur in a few years
to check that increase; but unless agriculture
be protected, our means of subsistence must
63
diminish, and then with a more numerous
population, and less sustenance, we shall find
that the foreign supplies to which our own
landed interests have been sacrificed, will be
very inadequate to the maintenance of our
numerous inhabitants.
It is easy to trace the consequences that
must follow, from the agriculture of the
country being kept in its present depressed
condition. The first step in the train of evils
has already begun to operate, though so
silently as not to be generally remarked; the
steps which had been taken for bringing the
waste lands into cultivation are already sus-
pended. Since the last decision of the House
of Commons no measures have been pursued
to bring them into culture, nor will there be
any whilst there is a certainty, as there is
at present, that the capital expended on them
will be utterly lost.
on
The next step in this direction will be,
that prudent men engaged in Agriculture,
will gradually contract their expenditure
the land, as a means of withdrawing part of
their capital; the most obvious way to do
this will be, to lay down their corn land to
64
grass, and thereby dispense with the plough,
always an expensive implement, whether
worked by horses, or by oxen. Breeding
and fatting cattle will then take place of
cultivating grain, and thus the land will yield
only one part in four of its present aliment;
for it is ascertained, that a given quantity of
land will subsist four times as many human
beings on corn as on meat.
It may be thought that diminishing tillage,
and increasing grazing, if it render corn dear,
will render meat cheap; but this is a delusive
error; for nothing is more certain, than that,
by the convertible system of husbandry, as
practised by the best farmers, who have ade-
quate capitals, the land will support as much
cattle as can be fed on permanent pasture, be-
sides a quantity of corn, the power of which
in sustaining human life, will be equal to that
of the cattle; or in other words, that the ap-
plication of capital in the way of convertible
husbandry, will double the produce of the
land: by thus compelling the farmers to lay
down their land to grass, the country will be
deprived of a very large proportion of its food.
A considerable portion of the lands of Eng.
65
land generally denominated cold clay land,
has been of late enclosed, and brought under
the plough, and, with considerable expendi-
ture, has been made to produce wheat, and
other grain; the property vested in such un-
dertakings has been embarked with the
reasonable expectation, that, in a few years,
the produce would replace the expenditure;
but if the price of the produce be suffered to
sink below the cost of cultivation, as it has
done in the last twelve months, such lands
must return to their original state, and pro-
duce only as much grass as will afford a scanty
subsistence to an inconsiderable number of
cattle: now as the greater part of the recently
enclosed districts are of this description, we
may fairly conclude, that, in a very few years,
the country will be deprived of every advan-
tage which it has of late received, from the
application of a portion of its capital and in-
dustry to the improvement of the waste lands,
and with the additional calamity, that the
whole expenditure having been a complete
loss, no improvement will again be attempted
till a capital equal to what has been annihi-
F
!
66
lated be again procured, and applied to give
activity to the same quantity of labour.
Some of the lately enclosed lands are light
and sandy soils, which have indeed cost less
at first to bring them into a productive state
than those of the former description; but, on
the other hand, they require a more frequent
renewal of the expense, and without constant
labour and manure, will speedily return to
their original sterility.
These two descriptions of land are calcu-
lated to have produced one eighth part of the
corn grown in Great Britain in the years 1813
and 1814; and if the occupiers of them are
compelled, by the depreciated price of their
produce, to give up their cultivation, it will
create a deficiency greater than any importa-
tion can supply.
The frequent recurrence of green crops in
the course of husbandry, is a well known
means of increasing fertility; but, by protract-
ing the period when a return is to be received
for the expence incurred, a large proportion
of capital is required. From the late prices of
produce, the farmers have incurred a loss of
part of their capital, and if the same state of
67
things should continue but a few years
longer, the remainder must be greatly dimi-
nished, if not wholly absorbed; their necessities
will thus compel them to grow corn crops in
much quicker succession than they do at pre-
sent, because they will be unable to wait the
slow but sure process of better husbandry;
the consequence will necessarily be, that
though their returns will be more quick, they
will be less abundant, and the lands by this
course of husbandry will gradually deterio-
rate; as it is well known, that, if the soil be
impoverished by too frequent repetition of ex-
hausting crops, a long course of careful at-
tention, and a considerable expenditure, be-
come necessary to restore it to its former fer-
tility.
The diminution of agricultural capital,
which though it has yet but begun, and its
operation is not very extensively felt, will, if
the present state of the markets continue, ope-
rate with increasing rapidity: the first to suf-
fer will be the labourers in agriculture; as
the capital of the farmer diminishes, he will,
from having less to expend, employ fewer
hands; this is the first, and to him the most
F 2
68
obvious step, in the progress of economizing
his resources. The want of employment by
those who can turn their labour to no occu-
pations but those of agriculture, will be felt in
the increase of pauperism, and its conse-
quence, the advance of the poor rates,
which will take place in a degree scarcely to
be calculated.
From the labourers the calamity will ex-
tend to the smaller cultivators, whose capitals
must be speedily exhausted, and they, instead
of contributing, must become partakers of
the parochial assessments. This is no fancied
picture of anticipated evils, but a real repre-
sentation of facts, which have already begun
to be evident to every observing man, con-
versant in rural affairs. On most farms the
number of labourers is already diminished,
and the agricultural poor are consequently
more destitute of employment than they
have been within any recent period, a cir-
cumstance that can only be attributed to the
depressed condition of their employers. As
the employers are deprived of their capital,
the number of labourers to be paid must
proportionally diminish; and as labour is
69
diminished, the productive powers of the
land will decrease, for it is the eternal law of
nature, that by the labour of man the earth
must be replenished.
It would be easy to show, that a depressed
state of agriculture, a state in which the price
of its productions is regulated, not by the
cost to the British grower, who is charged
with heavy imposts and expences, but by the
cost to persons in a distant country, freed
from his expences and burdens, and who,
consequently, are enabled to produce it
cheaper than he can, must extend its baneful
effects far beyond the immediate sphere of
its operations. The landed proprietors, the
clergy, the merchants, and the tradesmen
whom they employ, must all generally be-
come involved in the sufferings of the farmer,
and with them will be involved, ultimately,
the inhabitants of our manufacturing and
commercial cities, who, when British agricul-
ture is so depressed as to be deficient in the
means of supply, will look in vain to that
scanty assistance which importation can fur-
nish to relieve their necessities.
In the state of things we are now antici-
pating, and to which we must come if our
70
agricultural interests are to be sacrificed for
the supposed encouragement of our manufac-
turing exports, the increase of our popula-
tion, which we have been accustomed to con-
sider as a proof of our increasing prosperity,
will become an augmentation of our misery.
The check to population will not be felt, till
a scarcity of aliment has made the evil irre-
mediable, and a numerous unemployed popu-
lation without sufficient subsistence, will be a
calamity far beyond any we have ever felt ;
if to this should be added a foreign war, a
circumstance which no man, in the present
state of Europe, will put entirely out of his
calculation, we may anticipate a period of
woes of the most alarming kind, brought on
by abandoning the system pursued in this
country till 1766.
Many who are ready to admit the evils
that must arise from the depressed state of
the agricultural parts of the community, and
would gladly have recourse to any proper
measures to remedy such evils, have ex-
pressed doubts of the fact, that the present
and late prices of corn have been, and still
are, so low, as to leave a loss instead of a
71
profit to the grower. As such persons cannot
have considered the subject thoroughly, or
have not been sufficiently informed to ascer-
tain the truth, it merits some consideration.
The examinations before the Committees of
both Houses of Parliament, which have been
published, contain the opinions of some of
the most able and experienced agriculturists
in England and Scotland, some of whom
have merely given their opinions, and others
have furnished very minute and accurate cal-
culations. The opinions of such men are of
much weight; but, instead of dwelling on
bare opinions, we may now have recourse to
such plain statements as every man may un-
derstand, and, if there be a fallacy in them,
easily detect it.
It should, however, be previously consi-
dered, that the different agricultural wit-
nesses who were examined by the Commit-
tees, appear to be men whose property, and
mode of cultivation, is much superior to that
of the great body of English farmers; they
appear also to be employed on lands, either
naturally, or by their improvement, of a su-
perior quality; and from these circumstances
72
it will be obvious, that, in making an esti-
mate of the price at which corn can be
grown, they have calculated what it costs on
lands of a similar quality, and with modes of
cultivation of similar excellence to their own;
now it is certain that with such good culti-
vation, corn costs the grower less than it
costs those, who having inferior lands, or
less capital, are compelled to practise inferior
systems of management; in fact, such agri-
culturists as these gentlemen, raise corn at a
price at which it cannot be raised by the
great mass of cultivators, because on the
same breadth of land, they produce a much
greater quantity of corn, as well as of food
for cattle.
Mr. Buxton from Essex laid before the
Lords' Committee, a variety of calculations,
apparently made with much accuracy, the re-
sult of which is, that wheat should sell at
from 95s, to 100s. per quarter, barley from
40s. to 45s, and oats from 30s. to 35s. to pay
the expence of the farmer. Mr. Driver, an
eminent land surveyor, states his opinion
that five pounds per quarter for wheat is the
price necessary as a protection to the
grower;
73
but as he communicated no calculations or
documents, we may pass over his evidence
without any other remark, than that as he
has not confined his observations to the best
lands, and the best cultivators, but in the
course of his practice must have surveyed
much inferior land, and bad cultivation, he
is more likely to be correct than those who
have confined their views to more improved
farms.
Mr. Arthur Young, so well known to the
agricultural world by his diligence and ta-
lents, presented to the Committee the result
of the enquiries of the Board of Agriculture,
by which it appears that the cost of wheat is
87s. of barley 44s. and of oats 34s. per quarter,
allowing 10 per cent for the interest of the
capital employed. It
It may be worthy of re-
mark, that the calculations of the Board are
made on the supposition of land producing
three quarters of wheat per acre, whereas it
is well known that the average produce of
the whole Island is considerably less.
The very accurate calculations laid before
the Committee by Mr. Lake, from Kent,
prove most clearly that wheat at 84s. beans
74
at 42s. and oats at 32s. per quarter, will
create a loss to the farmer of 7s. 4d. per acre;
and in another series of estimates for six
years, it is shown by the same gentleman,
that if no rent were paid, and wheat sold
at 75s, beans at 36s. and oats at 28s. per
quarter, the profit would be only 9s. 4d. per
acre per annum.
Three considerable farmers from Scotland,
the produce of whose land bespeaks a very
high degree of cultivation, and where they
are neither subject to poor rates, nor tythes,
estimate the remunerating price for wheat at
$4s. barley 42s. and oats 33s. per quarter;
and from the clearness of their mode of esti-
mating, there can be no reason to doubt its
accuracy.
Mr. Dale, of Tottenham, in Middlesex,
presented a statement, by which, calculating
his produce of wheat to be the great quantity
of 4 quarters, and his oats of 6 quarters to the
acre, and selling the former at 80s.. and the
latter at 30s. his profit in the wheat would
be 21. 6s. and in the oats 9s.
per acre; but
in his calculation he has taken no notice of
the interest of his capital. From being near
75
London, he sells his straw at 41.
per acre.
The far greater part of English farmers sell no
straw, but consume it with cattle, or convert
it into manure; now if this gentleman were
at a distance from a great town, and sold no
straw, it would not be fair to calculate that
article as worth more than two pounds per
acre, and then at the prices of wheat 80s.
and oats 30s. he would lose on the first crop,
allowing 17s. 6d. for interest, 11s. 6d. per
acre, and on the second, allowing 12s. 6d. for
interest, his loss would be 27. 3s. 6d. per acre.
Mr. Benett, from Wiltshire, in his evi-
dence before the House of Commons, pro-
duced a very detailed statement of the ex-
pences and produce of a farm in that county
of 945 acres, in which, taking the price of
wheat at 96s. and barley at 48s. there appears
a loss sustained of 667. 18s. but as he allows
interest on the capital employed at the rate
of 10 per cent, which on 66971. 8s. is
6697. 14s., if that then be reduced to 5 per
cent, the profit, beyond interest, would be
2671. 18s. By another calculation of the
same farm it appears that estimating wheat
at 80s. and barley at 40s. the annual loss
would be 3597. 11s. 8d.
76
Thus far the whole tenor of the evidence
from various descriptions of people, and from
different parts of the country, has been uni-
formly the same; and though it has been
deemed necessary only to abridge what was
stated by those, who supported their opi-
nions by documents and calculations, yet on
examining the whole body of the evidence, it
will be found that no one person entertained
an opinion that wheat would remunerate the
grower at less than 80s. per quarter, whilst
all who produced any calculation thought a
much higher price necessary.
One gentleman, Mr. Mant, however,
thought that if the property tax was taken
off, and the price of labour reduced, 72s. per
quarter for wheat would be a protecting price,
but with the present expences it would be in-
sufficient. Mr. Mant appears to be a consi-
derable merchant in London, and occupies a
farm in Hampshire of 192 acres: it is fair to
suppose that, in the calculations he has made,
if any error should appear, it is the result of
his giving his principal attention to his most
important concern, and not from any wish
or design to mislead the Committee.
77
In his calculations of
expences and
pro-
duce, the former appear to be very consider-
ably under-rated, and the produce of wheat is
taken at four quarters to the acre, which is at
least one third more than the average
of Eng-
land. By this calculation he makes a capital
of £.2400 to produce a profit of £.342, but
it is material to remark, that his profit on the
250 sheep which cost £.400, and whose feed
cost £.60, and which, including the wool, sells
for £.931. 5s. is no less a sum than £.471.5s.
or £.130 more than the whole profit of his
farm; so that by his own showing there is a
loss on his corn, though it happens to be
more than balanced by his uncommon success
in breeding and fatting sheep. Some other re-
marks might be made on this
pro forma es-
timate, which would clearly shew its fallacy,
but as it seems to have been made without
much consideration, it would appear invi-
dious to dwell on it longer, and it seems less
necessary to notice the other parts of the cal-
culation, because it is professedly founded on
the supposition of the abandonment of the
property tax, and a reduction of the price of
labour, neither of which have yet taken place,
78
It
may
be objected, perhaps, to the whole
of this evidence, that all the persons who ap-
peared before the Committees, were either
landholders, farmers, meal-men, or land
agents, and therefore their testimony is sus-
picious, as they may be thought to have
an interest in keeping the produce of the
land at very high prices. If such an objec-
tion should be made, it will naturally be
asked of whom can information be obtained
on the subject of the cost of corn, but from
those who have been conversant with its
growth? Can any information be obtained
from the tradesmen of Cheapside, from the
nailors of Dudley, the fustian-cutters of Man-
chester, or
or the shearmen of Wiltshire?
Though all of them have, and will readily
again petition against any reform in the corn
Laws.
Every man may understand the calcula-
tions submitted to the Committees, and it is
competent to any one, with a very small de-
gree of knowledge of rural affairs, to detect
any mistatement, if such exists. By the
whole of this voluminous evidence, which the
diligence of the two Committees has col-
lected, it appears most clearly that the
79
growers of corn, for the last twelve months,
instead of reaping a profit on their capital, or
a reward for their industry, have incurred
a loss of full twenty-five per cent, or one
quarter on the whole of the produce; no
statement has been attempted that contra-
dicts, or, in the least degree, renders this ac-
count suspicious; the Committee pressed for
evidence on the part of those who had pre-
sented the numerous petitions against altera-
tions in the corn Laws, without effect, nor
has any writer attempted to prove, or even
ventured to assert, that the loss to the farmer
on the whole of his crop has not been consi-
derable.
It is most certain, that this state of things
cannot continue, even for a few years, with-
out most calamitous effects, both on the in-
dividuals who suffer such losses, and ulti-
mately on every other part of the community,
which will soon feel the evils of scarcity, and
the additional sufferings that it is too late to
remedy that evil. Perhaps it will not be far
from correct, to state that the returns of agri-
culture are about two thirds of the capital
employed in it: now if a man with £2000
80
loses annually of that sum, one quarter of his
return, or twenty-five per cent out of £1400,
and has to support himself and his family
from his capital, however great his economy
may be, the whole will be exhausted in five
or six years in the meantime he will, by
lessening the expences of his establishment,
by keeping less cattle, by employing fewer
labourers, and by cultivating in an inferior
manner, endeavour to protract the period of
his ruin; but by those very steps, which in
the man himself may be wise and prudent,
the public will shortly be most severe suf-
ferers, the land will be choaked with weeds,
and become less productive, improvements
will be stopped, agricultural capital be di-
minished, and the country be dependent on
foreigners for even the scanty pittance they
can afford, in return for sums of money which
we shall be ill able to furnish.
It is of importance to remark that this re-
presentation of what must happen, is prin-
cipally applicable to the most numerous class
of farmers, to those who, with small capitals,
labour with persevering industry to support
themselves and their families, and who scarcely
81
anticipate for their successors any other course
than the patient pursuit of the same laborious
industry: these men, the most numerous of
their profession, when reduced from their
present condition to that of day-labourers,
will seldom again emerge from that state, and
thus will be annihilated one of the most im-
portant links in the chain of British society.
If this should happen, and it is inevitable
without some improvement in their state, no
persons will be found to fill up the station
from whence they have been driven; and the
proprietors of lands, deprived of their tenan-
try, the plain Yeomen of England, will seek
in vain for substitutes in any other class of
society: their lands must be tilled by labourers
hired by themselves, or remain uncultivated
till new arrangements have been formed, and
the whole order of society be recast*.
"Princes and Lords may flourish, or may fade,
A breath can make them as a breath hath made,
But a bold Yeomanry, their country's pride,
When once destroy'd can never be supplied.”
* In one parish in Kent, near the author's residence, three
farms, of nearly 400 acres, are now uncultivated: their leases
expired at Michaelmas, and though offered at low rents not
tenants have been found for them.
G
}
82
Among many who seem sensible of the
evils of the present state of affairs, we fre-
quently hear the landed proprietors censured
for having raised the rent of their lands, and
such persons exclaim, "the rents must be
lowered:" this, therefore, requires some con-
sideration.
A considerable class in the country, pos-
sessors of estates derived from their ancestors,
important to the community by their rank,
by their education, and by their virtues, from
which has hitherto been drawn the far greater
portion of our statesmen, our magistrates,
our clergy, and the officers of our Navy and
Army, have been compelled by the increased
expence of every article, both of necessity
and luxury, to follow the march of circum-
stances, and to increase their revenues, not by
any force, but by voluntary conventions with
their tenants, who on their part have cheer-
fully agreed to give an increased income, the
advance on their productions enabling them
to do so without injuring themselves; now
without any abatement in the cost of those
articles, which are indispensable in their
125
1
:
83
any
rank, without reduction on the imposts,
which bear with peculiar pressure on them,
these respectable members of the community
are expected to reduce their incomes, and to
descend from the rank they have hitherto
held in society, whilst the stockholder, the
merchant, and the manufacturer, retain the
full amount of the incomes they enjoy.
What reason or justice can there be in such
an expectation? Does the man who now
possesses a thousand acres of land, at the in-
creased rent, enjoy more luxuries, accumulate
more money, or maintain a higher relative
station in society, than the possessor of the
same portion of land did fifty years ago?
Does he draw a greater revenue from his ca-
pital, than the man who has the same value
of property vested in government or private
securities? Do the taxes, which government
has been compelled to impose, fall with the
same pressure on the fund-holder, as on him?
Must the newly-acquired proprietors of land,
who have invested their capital in purchases,
which produce much less annuity than they
could have obtained from other modes of in-
G 2
84
vestment, see their incomes reduced to a still
lower standard, and that whilst the stock-
holder is to suffer no reduction?
In valuing land, one third of the net pro-
duce was formerly considered as the fair pro-
portion to appropriate as rent to the landlord;
it is now scarcely a fourth, and in many in-
stances not a fifth. Is the proportion to be
still further reduced till the landlord has no
rent left? Or must he give up the whole,
in order that corn may be as cheap in Eng-
land as it is in Poland?
Every attempt to reduce the fair income
of property, whether accruing from land,
from commerce, or from the funds, ought to
be met with the most marked reprobation,
but surely if, to reduce the price of the ne-
cessaries of life, it be requisite to diminish
the income of any order of men by legisla-
tive interposition, the first class that presents
itself for reduction is that of the stockholder.
If the taxes, which have been the principal
cause of the increase in all articles of con-
sumption, were abolished, the farmer could
afford to reduce the price of the necessaries
of life, and the landlord would be satisfied
85
with less rent; but would it be right for this
reason to say to the public creditors, provi-
sions must be lowered, and therefore taxes
must be abolished, and you must agree to
accept half
your
usual dividend? Would or
ought the stockholder to acquiesce in this un-
just proposition? And yet this is the very
proposition made to the more important, the
more productive, and the more numerous
class of society, when they are told that they
"must lower their rents."
It ought to be remembered that the increase
in the price of land was not the cause, but the
effect, of the high prices of provisions; that
rents were only raised when an increase of tax-
ation had previously raised the productions of
the land; that the greatest portions of land
were let on leases, which when renewed, were
increased in some, but not in full, proportion
to the increase of their produce; that in gene-
ral, especially among the larger proprietors,
the competition among farmers has not been
used as the instrument of raising rents to the
full amount that might have been obtained,
but that the moderation of the landlords has
checked, rather than encouraged, the ten-
86
dency, which was at one time too prevalent, to
offer unreasonable prices for farms,—a fact
allowed before the Committees, and confirmed
by every one who has attended to rural eco-
nomy.
If we could suppose that either by legis-
lative enactment the landholders could be
compelled, or that they could be induced,
voluntarily to reduce their rents to one half
the present amount, all the taxes continuing
as they now are, the reduction, if put in the
pockets of the farmers, would not be suffi-
cient to enable them to cultivate corn, and
sell it at the prices they have obtained for
twelve months past, without suffering a loss.
The Board of Agriculture has delivered to
the Committee of the House of Lords, replies
to queries addressed to fifty-two occupiers of
lands, in different counties, at a distance from
each other, showing the relative expence
of rent to the other expences of cultivation,
on a farm of one hundred acres.
The rate
of rent, of taxes, of tithes, and of labour,
vary in every return; in some few cases the
whole expence
is not more than three times
as much as the rent, but in many it is from
87
six to seven times the rent: the result of the
whole fifty-two reports, as averaged toge-
ther, is that 100 acres of land paying a
rent of £.161. 12s. 7d. per annum, incurs,
besides rent, other expences amounting to
£.601. 15s. 1d. thus making the whole cost
of cultivation, £.763. 7s. 8d.; if then the
productions of the 100 acres of land, which
costs £.760, have been sold (as for the last
twelve months) at a loss of twenty-five per
cent. the defalcation will amount to £.190,
and an abatement of half the rent or £.80,
would still leave the farmer minus £.110,
which would be sufficient to give an effectual
check to cultivation.
It is necessary to contemplate an increas-
ing population, for which provisions can
only be raised by bringing into cultivation
a greater portion of the waste lands, and
a reduction of rent would in this case pro-
duce no effect. The expence of cultivating
those of the waste lands called cold clays,
will for some years be ten times as much as
the rent; and whilst the produce is selling
at such a los as is at present incurred, the
sacrifice of the whole rent would present no
88
inducement to any rational person, to em-
ploy capital to bring them into cultivation.
It has been frequently noticed by accurate
observers, that very low rents have not been
favourable to good cultivation: the ambi-
tion to occupy a large extent of land, na-
tural enough, perhaps, among farmers, in-
duces them very frequently to take a greater
number of acres than they have capital to
cultivate beneficially; and where land is let
at a cheap rate, this inducement to extend
the quantity, rather than improve the qua-
lity, is increased; but such conduct is nei-
ther of advantage to the public, nor to
individuals.
We see in many parts of England, consi-
derable tracks of country attached to farms,
under the denomination of downs, which are,
perhaps, let for less than five shillings per
acre, and only occupied by a flock of sheep,
whose manure is used but upon a small part
of the farm, which becoming, from that im-
provement alone, highly productive, is, per-
haps, valued at five times as much as the
downs: now did the tenants pay a higher
rent, they would not neglect these extensive
CASAD
EL
89
fields, but' by bringing them under the
plough, to which a higher rent would com-
pel them, raise, by the convertible system of
husbandry, as much artificial green crops as
would maintain their present flocks, and de-
vote as much to the growth of corn as would
be employed to feed their sheep. As rents
have increased, though certainly more as
agricultural capital has increased, the portion
of down land destined solely for feeding
sheep has diminished; and in Sussex espe-
cially, very large crops of wheat are grown
on land, the fee simple of which, a few
•
years ago, was not equal in value to a crop
which in one year (moderately productive,
and of medium prices) has been raised on it.
In fact, the profit of farming arises
from the abundance of produce, and the
abundance of produce depends more on the
capital expended, than on any other circum-
stance. On lands of middling and inferior
quality the rent is the least part of the ex-
pence, and many instances are known, where
withdrawing one fourth of the capital would
do more injury to the cultivator, than could
be compensated by giving up the whole of
the rent.
1
90
In the eastern parts of England, especially
in the county of Norfolk, the rent of land
has very much advanced, and that without
checking the spirit of agricultural improve-
ment; it has, perhaps, been owing to the
wise policy of the great Landholders of that
County in preferring tenants with abundant
capital, that they have been enabled to in-
crease so much the revenues derived from
their estates. Had the tenantry been defi-
cient in capital, though the rents had re-
mained as they were thirty years ago, the
example even of Mr. Coke would have been
insufficient to create those abundant supplies
of corn which have contributed to feed less
improved districts.
In the cultivated parts of Scotland the
rent of land is much higher than in any part
of England; but owing to the liberal appli-
cation of capital, which creates a most abun-
dant produce, and to the conviction that a
smaller portion of land highly cultivated, is
more profitable than a larger one negligently
managed, the agriculture of that country has
advanced towards perfection with unex-
ampled rapidity, in spite of an inclement
elimate, and a soil not naturally fertile.
91
In considering the present depressed state
of the agricultural part of the community,
our attention is necessarily directed to tithes,
an incumbrance, which those who talk so
lightly of reducing rents, consider with equal
levity, and would, perhaps, in their specula-
tions, as easily reduce, or even abolish. That
the tithing system is an impediment to agri-
culture must be allowed, and if any mode
could be adopted for removing the evil with-
out violating the rights of the holders, it
would be a great national benefit, and one
in which the clerical proprietors would most
cordially rejoice; but whatever view we take
of the subject, it must appear that the right
to property of that kind, is as sacred, and
ought to be as carefully protected, as that
of any other species whatever.
The greater part of the tithes of England
are in the hands of laymen; and either they
or their ancestors have paid their conventio-
nal value, the increase of which value makes
it not less sacred, than if it had remained sta-
tionary; and all who have purchased or inhe-
rited property subject to tithes, have ac-
quired it with full knowledge of that deduc-
tion from its value.
92
Clerical titheholders equally merit protec-
tion to their property, with laymen; their
patrons acquired the right of presentation,
and enjoy it under the sanction of the laws;
and to deprive either the patron or the
incumbent of his right would be as foul a
robbery as can be committed upon pro-
perty, to say nothing of the injury which
would thereby be done to piety, virtue, and
learning.
The system of tithes is one of the few
evils, which, amidst innumerable benefits,
have been transmitted to us by our ancestors.
The exercise of it is sometimes accom-
panied with rigour by the lay-holders, less
frequently so by the clerical ones; but if the
whole were confiscated to the state, it would
be found that the exciseman would collect
one tenth of the produce with a rigidity of
which, at present, we have little conception.
If the tithes were conveyed to the proprietors
of the land, they would more easily ascertain
the value, than the present possessors, and
as there would be no odium attached to them,
they would, in most cases, exact more than
those who at present enjoy them.
93
If, however, some mode could be adopted
to commute tithes for an equivalent, which
should entitle the possessors to all the bene-
fits which may hereafter be derived from any
increase in their value, it would be an ad-
vantageous measure; and the legislator who
could contrive and accomplish such a plan,
would merit the gratitude of his country.
It may appear almost ridiculous to notice
an opinion, which, however, those who have
conversed on the corn laws must have some-
times heard stated. It has been said that
the country bankers, by the facility with
which they circulate their notes, create a pa-
per capital, which they lend to farmers, and
thus enable them to withhold their produce
from the markets, thereby increasing prodi-
giously the price to the consumer.
If it be true, which is very doubtful, that
the country bankers are so accommodating to
the farmers, and if the view which we take
of the subject be correct, that the great desi-
deratum to enable us to increase the produce
of the land is additional capital, then it must
follow, that such bankers as supply that ca-
pital, are the greatest public benefactors.
ने
(
94
}
The withholding of corn from the market,
which Adam Smith compares to the imagi-
nary sin of witchcraft, and to which the
country bankers are supposed to be accessary,
can in no case injure the public, though, if
the man who does so be mistaken, he may
injure himself.
If the supply of corn be more than suffi-
cient for the consumption, he who retains it
must afterwards sell it at a lower price, and
the consumer cannot thereby be injured; if a
scarcity exists, he who withholds his produce
does it with the expectation of selling it after-
wards at a higher price, when the demand for
subsistence shall become more pressing; and
in doing this, acts the same part as the cap-
tain of a ship, who, on a long voyage, find-
ing a deficiency of provisions, puts his crew
on a shortened allowance very early, in
order that the deficiency may be equally
divided between the whole period, and thus
the pressure of the scarcity be more easily
endured.
In a year of actual scarcity it must be be-
neficial to raise the price as early as possible;
95
the earlier it is raised the sooner will a system
of rigid econony be adopted, and the greater
inducements will foreigners have to crowd to
our ports with their corn. Thus, in such
periods, the forestaller or withholder of corn,
though he intends only to benefit himself, is
really a benefactor to the public.
We have seen that the whole produce of
the harvest of 1813, that has been disposed
of, has been sold at an enormous loss; and
though the harvest of the present year has
been far below an average one, yet the quan-
tity of grain imported, and the still greater
quantity expected, has kept the price much
lower than the cost to the English grower.
Whatever difference of opinion there may
be as to the extent of the loss incurred by the
cultivators, however near or distant the crisis
may appear to which this state of things may
conduct us, it will be allowed by all, that the
continuance of the present state of agricul-
tural calamity, must, as far as it does operate,
be highly prejudicial to the most valuable
interests of the community: that
any check
to the improvement of our soil, any hindrance
to the increase of the necessaries of life, must,
96
even if it continue but for a short time, pro-
duce much durable mischief.
Whatever remedy it may be necessary to
oppose to this mischief, will not admit of
delay; it requires prompt and decided atten-
tion; and the evidence before the two Com-
mittees has been so copious and accurate, that
no information beyond it is necessary, to de-
termine what steps ought to be taken.
The cultivators of the land have as fair a
claim to the protection and support of the
government, as the manufacturers of silks, of
cottons, of woollens, or of iron; and their
claim is strengthened, rather than weakened,
by the consideration that the articles they
produce are not merely ornamental or useful,
but of such indispensable necessity, that their
diminution will be more severely felt by the
community at large, than the absolute priva-
tion of the productions of the other classes of
the community.
In urging their claims to attention and to
speedy relief, they have been neither cla-
morous nor querulous; and the patience with
which they have suffered will never bè em-
ployed by a British Legislator, as an argu-
97
ment for suspending the relief which their
condition requires, till, by petitions and com-
plaints, they make known their distress.
From the frequent mention of the absolute
prohibition to import from abroad those ma-
nufactures which may interfere with our own,
an intention to recommend the exclusion of
foreign corn under all circumstances, may,
perhaps, be inferred; but as, from its being
indispensible, there is a material difference
between corn and every other production,
there can be no difficulty in ascertaining
when the importation of foreign corn ought
to be permitted, and when it ought to be ex-
cluded from sharing the markets of Great
Britain, with that which is the produce of our
own soil.
It is the duty of government to afford
pro-
tection to the property of its own country;
and the landed and agricultural interests,
-though the greatest in number, the largest
in value, and the principal contributors to the
exigencies of the state, ought only to require
that no foreigners shall, in this country, be
allowed a competition with them, whilst the
price of corn is lower than will afford them a
H
98
}
moderate profit. Whenever it is below that
price, all foreign competition ought to be
rigidly prohibited, and that not solely for the
sake of the growers, though their condition
ought to have considerable weight, but for
that of the whole community, who must
severely suffer from any discouragement given
to cultivation.
The labours of the two Committees have
sufficiently ascertained what price is at present
necessary to protect the British grower of
corn; and by preventing all external com-
petition below that price, though the culti-
vator will not then receive the same protec-
tion as is given to other branches of industry,
yet he will be satisfied, and encouraged in
his pursuits.
If a year of unusual abundance occur, he
will sell his produce at a reduced price, but
the additional quantity will be equivalent, or
nearly equivalent, to the reduction in price;
but should a year of great scarcity occur, he
will not receive a price sufficient to compen-
sate for the deficiency in quantity, because,
before it can reach a remunerating price,
foreigners will be admitted to the market,

99
PARSONS
LIGUAR,
University
MICHIGAN
and prevent him from reaping the pecuniary
benefit of the season. This, though an evil
to the British grower, ought to be submitted
to, because it is of more importance that the
public should be fed, than that he should be
indemnified for any loss sustained by an un-
propitious season.
The only way to have a sufficiency of corn
at all times is to secure a superfluity in years
of ordinary productiveness; this can only be
done by protecting the grower, and stimula-
ting him to the greatest exertions, by encou-
raging every addition to capital employed in
agriculture, so that the quantity of waste
land may be diminished; and, if possible, by
lessening those direct taxes which fall with
weight on the agricultural interest.
If, in addition to this, the old practice of
giving a bounty on the exportation of corn,
when below a certain price, was resorted to,
we might reasonably expect, notwithstanding
our increased and increasing population, that
the abundance of corn produced in ordinary
years, would enable us to export large quan-
tities, and that by stopping the exportation
in unfavourable seasons, the supply arising
H 2
100
from former superfluity would so much lessen
the pressure, as scarcely to allow it to be felt.
This was the state of affairs from the year
1697 to 1766; during the whole of which
period of seventy years, only four occurred in
which this country did not export more wheat
than it imported, and the excess of imports
above the exports in three out of those four
years, only amounted to 103,198 quarters, or
an average of 34,399 quarters per annum;
whilst during the ten years from 1745 to
1754 inclusive, the exportation amounted to
4,589,004 quarters. During the whole period
of seventy years the annual average of ex-
ports above imports was 203,762 quarters;
whereas during the next forty-six years, from
1767 to 1812 inclusive, the annual average
excess of imports above exports was 310,286
quarters.
If we were to judge solely from the opera-
tion of the laws during these two periods, we
should conclude that the encouragement to
agriculture here recommended would have
the effect of reducing the price of corn; the
price of wheat having been in the former
period of seventy years at the annual average
101
of 5s. 2d. per bushel; and in the latter period
of forty-six years at 8s. 4d. per bushel; but the
increase of our population, the augmentation
of the national debt, and the consequent
weight of taxation, forbid us to form the ex-
pectation that the price of wheat can be re-
duced to even the latter average, for any con-
siderable period.
If the importation be suffered to continue
it will have the effect of keeping the prices
down for a short time; but the defalcation in
our own produce, on which we must chiefly
rely, will soon create a scarcity for which no
importation can compensate. As the nume-
rous small farmers, having before that time
exhausted their capital, will be incapable of
raising the adequate quantity of corn, the
richer cultivators, who have been enabled to
bear the losses of the preceding years, will
be perhaps more than compensated by the
enormous prices which this scarcity will
create.
Fluctuation in price, especially when so
great as we have seen within the last twenty
years, is a much greater calamity, than any
permanent high price. The consequence to
102
..
the land-owner is difficulty in fixing rents at
every renewal of leases: which, if accurately
and reasonably adjusted at one time, become
oppressive to one of the parties at a subse-
quent period. The tenants in times of de-
pression become dispirited, the prices of
labour are regulated with difficulty; when
the value of produce is low, the quantity of
labour is lessened, and, in consequence, til-
lage is neglected.
If fluctuations continue as they have done for
some years past, the practice of letting lands
for a term of years will probably be very con-
siderably diminished, the farmers will become
yearly tenants, and then little or no improve-
ments will be made, the lands will either conti-
nue stationary or retrograde, for no occupier
will expend capital which cannot bring him
adequate returns till the expiration of three
or four years, if before that time he may be
removed, and another reap the benefit of his
labour and expenditure.
After a period of low price, if corn rises
much, the lower classes in the large towns,
who are merely " Fruges consumere nati,”
and are ignorant of the means by which they
103
are fed, become factious and riotous, threaten
the property of the miller, the baker, and
the farmer, frequently interrupt the supply
of the markets, and the free circulation of
grain, and sometimes place the military under
the necessity of exercising the most distress-
ing duties of their profession, by acting
against a hungry mob.
These are effects which cannot be produced
if prices are tolerably stationary; even if the
point at which they remain should be some-
what higher than the average of years. During
the last fourteen years the average price of
wheat has been 11s. 4d. per bushel; within
that period we have seen it as low as 7s. 3d.
and as high as 22s. Can it be surprising
that the ignorant should attribute this great
difference, not to the defect of the laws, or
to the variation of seasons, but to the ima-
gined monopolizing and forestalling of the
corn merchants, the farmers, the mealmen,
and the bakers? Or can it be unnatural that
those bent on mischief, should have availed
themselves of the clamours, which such fluc-
tuations have occasioned, to kindle the resent-
ment of the populace against the government,
104
and raise themselves into notice, by directing
the storm against those whom they affect
to consider as enemies?
If, during the last fourteen years, the
price of wheat had been nearly stationary,
fluctuating only from 11s. to 12s. the bushel,
would the distress we have felt in several
years of that period have been experienced,
or the miseries of the poor been so excessive?
A nation, depending for its subsistence on
foreign supply, must be peculiarly subject to
great fluctuations: a winter of unusual seve-
rity, the uncertainty of the means of trans-
port, a year of scarcity in those places from
which a supply is commonly drawn, an un-
usual demand in other countries, or the cir-
cumstances of war or peace, must all create
those irregularities in price which produce
great mischief; but if to any or all of these
be added an increasing deficiency at home,
from the depressed condition to which the
cultivators are reduced, excessive fluctuations
may be followed by absolute famine, and a
period of suffering be encountered, which a
superabundant population would greatly ag-
gravate.
1
105
-
It will, perhaps, be asked, if the whole
of the corn imported from foreign coun-
tries is so disproportionate to the wants,
and to the growth of this country, how can
giving free permission to the import of so
small a quantity, produce the evils that have
been pointed out? This question is so na-
tural that it deserves a detailed reply.
It has been before stated that the only
security for a constant supply, and a price
with little variation, must arise from giving
to British agriculture such encouragement
as will induce the capitalist to vest a por-
tion of his money in the improvement of
the land; this will increase the annual
stock of agricultural produce till it reaches
such a point, that in years of abundance,
there shall be more than the consumption
requires, in
in years of medium productive-
ness, a quantity adequate to the demand,
and in the worst years, be no greater
deficiency than may be supplied from the
superfluity of the years of abundance: this
requires such a capital as shall enable the
farmer, like the merchant, to withhold his
stock till the price will yield him a profit;
→
106
and in no other hands can this stock be held,
but in that of the farmer; there can be no
efficient store-house (as will hereafter be
shown) but in his stack-yard. Were suffi-
cient capital vested in land, this course could
not be pursued whilst the importation of fo-
reign corn is admitted; no man will withhold
his corn in years of plenty, if he knows that
before it reaches a price to repay him, an
unknown, and therefore magnified quantity,
may be brought from some other country,
and prevent him from reaping that fair
compensation for the inactivity of his ca-
pital, to which, with every other man, he
is entitled.
Withholding corn in years of abundance,
as a resource against future years of scarcity,
that wise policy, which we are told in sacred
writ was recommended to the King of Egypt
by divine inspiration, is here rendered im-
practicable, by the habit of depending on
other countries. In a year of the greatest
abundance, the apprehension of what may
be imported creates a panic, that deters every
one from holding a stock; the markets be-
come crowded with sellers, the prices are
107
depressed, low prices lead to profusion; that
which should be hoarded, is dissipated; and
when a season of scarcity returns, instead of
having a supply at home, we are under the ne-
cessity of ransacking every part of the Globe,
to furnish our population with food at enor-
mous prices, which timely economy and pru-
dence would have enabled us to have
pre-
served in our own stores, and to have dis-
pensed at moderate rates.
}
If foreign corn were excluded, except in
years of scarcity, which the price would early
indicate, the unoccupied capital of the farmer,
and sometimes of the speculator, would be
employed in purchasing corn in cheap sea-
sons; it would be withdrawn from the
market till it was wanted, and then it would
seasonably come forth, and, like Pharaoh's
seven years store, make food moderately
plentiful, without depending on the uncer-
tainty of extraneous supply.
It has been the policy of some small states,
both in ancient and modern times, to lay up
in store houses, at the expence of the go-
vernment, a stock of corn sufficient to meet
the wants of the people, on every return of
108
unfruitful years. It is not worth discussing
how far such a system was beneficial in the
cases in which it was adopted, as it is only
practicable in countries, whose government
is richer in proportion to its population, than
in any of the larger kingdoms of Europe.
In this country to do it effectually, a sum
must be raised either by loans, or by taxes,
to which the government is totally incompe-
tent; but such a quantity of corn divided
among fifty thousand occupiers and proprie-
tors of land, had they sufficient capital (and
the capital is only withheld from the appre-
hension of foreign competition) would benefit
themselves, and enable them to serve the
country when it stood in its greatest need.
Our fluctuations and our scarcities have
arisen from our having no accumulation of
corn; from our trusting each year to the
produce of the preceding one, and not daring,
till compelled by necessity, to contemplate
that, which, in a series of years, must
occur,—a season of scarcity; but as we ought
to look forward to a return of such seasons, we
should now determine, whether we will meet
them in future, as we have hitherto done,
109
unprepared and unprovided, or by giving
security to the agriculturists of this kingdom
against foreign competition, encourage a suf-
ficiency of capital to flow in that channel, till
our average harvests shall equal our con-
sumption, and till the farmers, the only na-
tural preservers of the surplus, shall be ena-
bled to hold it till adverse seasons shall
require and repay their prudence and fore-
sight.
The erection of national granaries, which
has been recommended, when under the
pressure of scarcity we could feel but not
reason, has not been lately proposed; but
whenever want shall again be felt, we shall
probably have it urged with the usual perti-
nacity.
On such a subject we cannot do better than
quote the words of that great man, who illu-
minated every subject that he touched; and
though the quotation be long, there is no
danger of its tiring the reader: "I hear that
a measure has been proposed, and is under
deliberation; that is, for government to set
up a granary in every market town, at the
expence of the State, in order to extinguish
110
the dealer, and to subject the farmer to the
consumer, by securing corn to the latter, at
a certain and steady price. If such a scheme
is adopted, I should not like to answer for
the safety of the granary, of the agents, or
of the town itself in which the granary was
erected, the first storm of popular frenzy
would fall on that granary.
"So far in a political light. In an œcono-
mical light, I must observe, that the con-
struction of such granaries throughout the
kingdom, would be at an expence beyond all
calculation. The keeping them up would be
at a great charge. The management and
attendance would require an army of store-
keepers, clerks, and servants.. The capital
to be employed in the purchase of grain
would be enormous. The waste, decay, and
corruption, would be a dreadful drawback on
the whole dealing, and the dissatisfaction of
the people at having decayed, tainted, or
corrupted corn sold to them, as must be the
case, would be serious.
"The climate (whatever others may be)
is not favourable to granaries, where wheat
is to be kept for any time. The best, and
ย
111
*
indeed the only good granary is the rick-yard
of the farmer, where the corn is preserved in
its own straw, sweet, clean, and wholesome,
free from vermin and from insects, and com-
paratively at a trifle of expence. This, and
the barn, enjoying many of the same advan
tages, have been the sole granaries of Eng-
land from the foundation of its agriculture to
this day. All this is done at the expence of
the undertaker, and at his sole risk. He
contributes to government, he receives no-
thing from it but protection, and to this he
has a claim.
"The moment that government appears
at market, all the principles of the market
will be subverted. I don't know whether the
farmer will suffer by it, as long as there is a
tolerable market of competition; but I am
sure that in the first place, the trading go-
vernment will speedily become a bankrupt,
and the consumer in the end will suffer. If
government makes all its purchases at once,
it will instantly raise the market on itself. If
it makes them by degrees, it must follow the
course of the market. If it follows the course
of the market, it will produce no effect, and
112
1
the consumer may as well buy as he wants-
therefore all the expence is incurred gratis.
"But if the object of this scheme should
be to destroy the dealer, commonly called
the middle man, and by incurring a volun-
tary loss to carry the baker to deal with
government, I am to tell them that they
must set up another trade, that of a miller,
or a mealman, attended with a new train of
expences and risks. If in both these trades
they should succeed, so as to exclude those
who trade on natural and private capitals,
then they will have a monopoly, in their
hands, which under the appearance of a mono-
poly of capital, will in reality be a monopoly of
authority, and will ruin whatever it touches.
The agriculture of the kingdom cannot stand
before it." Burke's Thoughts and Details
on Scarcity.
The introduction of a quantity of foreign
corn which though not large, in comparison
with our annual consumption, is so as it re-
gards the temporary demand, is felt severely
by the more indigent class of farmers. To
pay their rent, and to discharge their annual
bills, such men are obliged to sell a large
113
proportion of their corn, between the harvest
and the end of the year; the same necessity
prompts the continental farmers to send their
produce early to market; these two classes
thus meeting at the same period create a
competition very injurious to our smaller
agriculturists, which, by rendering the poor
still poorer, tends to hasten the period when
they must descend to the condition of day-
labourers; whilst those, who, with more
ample means, are enabled to protract the
time of sale till the foreign competition is
over, obtain prices approaching nearer to the
cost of their produce, and though better en-
abled to bear a loss, suffer less than their
more indigent neighbours.
The depression of the market by the intro-
duction of foreign grain at the precise mo-
ment when it is most injurious, is increased
from its being almost wholly imported into
London, whose prices affect all the country
markets, and extend the evil far beyond the im-
mediate vicinity that is supplied by foreigners.
A writer, who has obtained considerable
celebrity by his work on the Principle of
Population, in his observations on the corn
I
114
أمر
laws, has, without sufficient examination,
expressed an opinion, that " in the present
state of things we must give up the idea of
creating a large average surplus of corn:" if
he means large, in comparison with our con-
sumption, there can be no reason to refuse
acquiescence in the opinion; but if he means
large, in proportion to the quantity we have
imported, even on an average of the worst
seven years we have ever experienced, there
can be no doubt that he has been misinformed
in his facts, or hasty in his conclusions.
The period of the greatest importation of
wheat was from 1796 to 1802 inclusive: dur-
ing that time our whole importation, includ-
ing what came from Ireland, was 4,159,752
quarters, forming an annual average of
594,270 quarters. Let us suppose, that to
have always a surplus, it is necessary to aug-
ment the quantity grown at home by double
as much as we have imported in these worst
periods, and that, to provide for a still in-.
creasing population, it is necessary to grow
half as much more as our imports were, this
would make our requisite average growth
about 1,500,000 quarters of wheat greater
115
than it was in the worst seven years we have
ever experienced; and as this increase would
supersede the necessity of importation, would
afford a fund for exportation of equal amount,
and still suffice for any reasonable increase of
inhabitants, it is important to ascertain, how
we can increase the growth one tenth of our
average crops of the last twenty years, or
one eighth of the average of the seven most
unproductive years.
It has been stated by the most experienced
agriculturists that the lands of Great Britain,
instead of being capable of augmenting their
growth of corn one eighth or one tenth, are
susceptible of improvements which would
increase their production full one third be-
yond what they at present yield; and a very
cursory review of our agricultural resources
will shew that they have not been too san-
guine in their calculations.
The best tillage lands in the kingdom have
not yet, by any means, reached their ne plus
ultra of cultivation; and improvements may
be made on the best managed properties
which would carry their produce to a degree
far beyond what they have yet reached.
1 2
116
The increase of green crops, additional
stercoration, with a better rotation of crops,
would undoubtedly afford more sustenance
for man and beast, than is at present raised,
and the lands, instead of being exhausted,
would become improved by each successive
series of crops.
We have in all parts of Great Britain, but
principally in England, a great quantity of
lands in permanent pasture, which requiring
less capital than tillage, a greater number of
tenants are capable of occupying them: this
creating a greater competition for them than
exists for tillage lands, the proprietors obtain
higher rents in proportion to their intrinsic
value.
Of these lands, more than five millions of
acres might be brought under the plough,
and, by adopting on them the convertible
system of husbandry, they would be enabled
to support a proportion of cattle equal to that
which they at present maintain, besides a
large quantity of corn raised in successive
crops, which would be clear gain to the
general subsistence. Clover, turnips, tares,
ruta baga, mangel wurzel, and other plants,
117
acre,
will produce more food for cattle on one
if well cultivated, than two acres of
grass land of equal quality will afford if
then these were grown in alternate years,
and the intervals occupied in raising corn
crops, the whole of the lands so circum-
stanced, would contribute a supply of corn
more than equal to all our wants, in the
most calamitous season.
It may, perhaps, be objected, that these
five millions of permanent pasture would
produce less to the landlord under the
plough, than in their present state; but if we
consider the high rents paid for land in Scot-
land, by those who have best practised the
convertible husbandry, our apprehensions on
that head will be removed.
Prices are there given for whole farms, as
high as are paid in England for some of the
best meadow lands, and the occupiers, besides
the interest on their capitals, have made
larger profits than have commonly accrued
in England from the richest pastures.
The improved condition of many of the
downs in Sussex, and the sands of Norfolk,
shows what may be accomplished on the
118
extensive tracts of land of those descriptions,
which in the various counties of England re-
main at present under a system of husbandry,
little beneficial either to the occupiers or
to the community.
very
The commons and wastes, which with
proper
protection might be made tolerably produc-
tive, will add their share to the mass of addi-
tional subsistence; for though at present the
operations of inclosing and cultivating them
are suspended, such encouragement as might
be afforded without injuring any of the great
interests of the community, would again give
life and vigour to the possessors, and the
spirit of improvement would proceed with
its former alacrity.
In this review Ireland must not be over-
looked some of the English cultivators, in-
deed, regard that country with a degree of
jealousy which she does not merit, and ap-
prehend from the cheapness of labour, and
the freedom from poor's rates, and various
other imposts which the English farmer pays,
she may increase her productions to such a
degree, as to send corn here at a much lower
price than it can cost the English grower,
119
and thereby produce the same calamity, as
he now suffers by a competition with the
foreign agriculturist. It should, however, be
remembered, that Great Britain and Ireland
are so united that the prosperity of either,
must benefit both, and that, improved as Irish
agriculture has been, and as it is hoped it
will continue to be, a long time must elapse
before such an addition to our supply can
come from thence, as to warrant the feeling
here reprobated. The more rapidly Ireland
increases in agricultural prosperity, the sooner
she will be enabled to bear a share of the
public burdens more nearly approaching to
her proportion of population, than she does at
present, and the stimulus applied to the agri-
culture of Ireland, by exporting to Great Bri-
tain annually, as she now does, 100,000 qrs. of
wheat, and 400,000 qrs. of other corn, free
of duty, or even double that quantity, ought
not to be withheld or be clogged by counter-
vailing duties, equivalent to the difference of
taxation between the two kingdoms.
Dismissing, then, all ideas of rivalry be-
tween two countries, whose interest in
most points is the same, we may look to the
120
picture given us by the report of the Corn
Committee of 1813 with much satisfaction,
as it presents us with the prospect that our
sister kingdom will so improve her genial
soil, as to meliorate the condition of the great
body of her labourers, and yet afford con-
siderable aid, if necessary, to the wants of
Great Britain.
In describing the agricultural resources of
this country it is difficult not to be diffusive:
the powers we possess of increasing subsis-
tence are so great, that it would occupy a
volume to enumerate and illustrate them all;
but the slight view we have taken of the most
prominent points is sufficient to shew, that
with proper encouragement, a population
very far exceeding our present numbers
might be easily supported from our own soil.
It will be natural to inquire, what kind
and degree of encouragement is requisite to
increase our means of subsistence to such a
state, that we shall not only have sufficient to
support our own inhabitants, but, in
years of
abundance, a large surplus.
During the last twenty years, whilst our
population has gone on increasing, our means
121
of feeding that population must have kept
nearly an equal pace, or we should have felt
more difficulty than we have done in provid-
ing for its necessities. The inducements
which have prompted this increase of agri-
culture must have been the advances of price.
As the average price of wheat during those
twenty years was only 10s. 1d. per bushel,
we may conclude that price is sufficiently high
to maintain our agriculture at a point capable
of producing food for the consumption of fifty
weeks in the year, this being actually the case
during the period; our importation (inclusive
of Ireland) being on an average only 479,086
qrs. of wheat, and 442,785 qrs. of other
corn, or two weeks consumption.
But we are to ascertain, not what will keep
the agriculture of the country nearly station-
ary, but what will augment it from an average
supply for fifty weeks consumption, to an
average of fifty-five or fifty-six weeks, which
would enable us to export corn to the full ex-
tent of what during the period of twenty
years we have imported.
If we consider the great additional quantity
of land, brought under tillage in the period
122
C
of fourteen years, ending with 1812, and the
consequent growth produced by the harvests
of 1812 and 1813, and recollect that the ave-
rage price of wheat during that term was
11s. 4d. per bushel, we may fairly conclude,
that this price is a sufficient stimulus to bring
our agricultural produce to the quantity re-
quired.
The sufficiency of this price is confirmed,
by the fact that the great increase in the
number of inclosure bills began in the year
1807, before wheat had risen to the price of
11s. 4d., and those bills were, probably, pro-
jected on a calculation of the five years im-
mediately preceding, in which the average
was somewhat lower.
Assuming, then, that an average price of
about 11s. per bushel for wheat, and the
correspondent prices for other grain, will be
a sufficient stimulus to the cultivator to in-
crease his productions, and an inducement to
the capitalist to invest larger portions of his
money in agricultural pursuits; and presum-
ing, that by legislative restrictions on foreign
corn, and bounties on our own, it may be kept
at that price with little variation, we may
123
proceed to inquire what interests of the com-
munity will thereby be affected.
It is a step of some, though not of much
importance, in this inquiry to ascertain how
much higher this presumed price of 11s. per
bushel is, than that of the same quantity in
the different countries on the continent of
Europe. It must be owned that our means
of information on this subject are very slight,
and it does not appear to have attracted the
attention of the Committees so much as might
have been wished.
Mr. Arthur Young stated before the Com-
mittee of the House of Commons, on the au-
thority of his son, recently returned after a
residence of nine years in Russia, that the
price of corn there had been gradually rising;
and that, taking two averages, one from 1781
to 1782, and the other from 1790 to 1803,
the price of the latter period was about 40
per cent.-above that of the former, which is
the same increase as has taken place in Eng-
land in the two respective periods; if the
same should have occurred in the other parts
of Europe, the increase in England becomes
of less consequence.
124
By the list of prices at Dantzic, as given
by Mr. Wilson, a considerable corn-factor, it
appears that in the year 1803, wheat was at
nearly the same price as in England; that in
1804 it was somewhat higher, in 1805 about
one shilling and sixpence lower, and in June
of this
year about two shillings lower. These
are indeed but slight data on which to form
a calculation; but as far as they go, they
establish one fact, that the price at Dantzic,
though from local or temporary circumstances
it may be occasionally higher than in Eng-
land, is not, when our ports are open for im-
portation, at a much lower rate, than the
expences of freight, insurance, and other
charges of conveyance to England.
It may, perhaps, be said that from the rate
of exchange being unfavourable to us, the
difference in price appears less than it really
is; but it seems to be agreed by all the evi-
dence, that as the rate of exchange has be-
come more favourable to us, the price of
wheat abroad has increased.
The prices at Konigsberg and at Ham-
burg, according to the accounts from those
ports, do not vary much from those of
125
Dantzic, and seem to be scarcely more than
the amount of freight and charges, below
the current prices of England; and as far as
private information can be depended on, the
wheat which has been imported from France,
Flanders, and Holland, since the peace, has
not left a large profit to the importers.
Though Spain cannot be deemed a country
deserving great consideration, in this parti-
cular point of view, it may not be unworthy
attention, that the price of wheat has there,
as in England, been gradually rising. Tak-
ing two averages of six years each, the first
from 1793 to 1798, and the second from
1799 to 1804, the average price of wheat of
the latter period above the former, was
about 58 per cent. and the increase in the
price of barley, in the same time, was about
40 per cent. As oats are but little grown
in the peninsula, but barley is used for feeding
horses, we have no list of their prices.
If importation was forbidden in England,
the prices might fall in those countries which
have hitherto supplied us; but there is no
reason to believe that wheat could, under
any circumstances, fall on an average of
126
years much below 6s. 6d. per bushel, in the
parts of the continent accessible to naviga-
tion, even if there was no demand for Spain
and Portugal.
Provisions of all kinds have for many years
past been much dearer in England than on
the continent, and they must ever be dearer
in a rich than in a poor country; we may,
then, ask what injury would be sustained by
any of the important interests of this king-
dom, if, whilst wheat is at 6s. 6d. per bushel
on the continent, it should be at 11s. in
Great Britain ?
It appears almost superfluous to assert,
that the great mass of the inhabitants of this
island, those who subsist by their daily la-
bour, cannot be injured by such a state of
things; for it is well known that, if the price
of corn does not immediately, and in its
full extent, regulate the price of labour,
it has a certain and gradual influence upon
it. Corn is supposed to constitute half the
expenditure of a labourer's family; and it
has been generally remarked, that something
near to this calculation has usually regulated
the price of agricultural labour: if when
127
wheat was at 10s. per bushel the day's work
was valued at 2s., when it rose to 20s. the
day's work became worth 3s: if rent, cloth-
ing, fuel, and those articles which constitute
the other half of the expenditure, remained as
before.—Labour, like every other commodity,
will, indeed, be in a great degree governed by
the want, or the abundance, of it; now if
the agriculture of the country be depressed,
there will be less demand for labour, and the
price will fall. If agriculture be flourishing,
the demand for labour will be greater, and
the price will rise; and these effects will
extend from the agricultural to the manufac-
turing poor; if the number of the unem-
ployed labourers be excessive, it will depress
the wages of the artisans, by filling the lower
departments in the manufactories, which re-
quire strength more than skill, with a super-
abundance; whilst the less skilful will en-
croach a little on their superiors, till the
effect becomes general on all who exist by
their labour. On the other hand, if there
be a scarcity of agricultural labourers, the
lower class of manufacturers will transfer
their labour to the farms, and the value of
128
the skill of all classes of artisans will be
increased.
It has, indeed, been stated that if corn
be higher in England, than in other coun-
tries, labour will also be higher; that this
will, by increasing the price, obstruct the
sale of our exportable commodities; and that
this evil may be ultimately so great, as to
counterbalance the effects of our extraordi-
nary skill, capital, and machinery.
This view of the subject having been
brought forward by an author of the me-
rited reputation of Mr. Malthus, requires to
be discussed more at large, than if it had
been stated by an inferior writer.
Before entering particularly and minutely
into this subject, it may not be improper to
remark that, during the whole progress of the
increase of our exportable commodities, the
prices both of provisions and labour in the
manufacturing countries on the continent
have been full as much lower than those in
England, as they would be if wheat was here
at 11s. and in those other countries at 6s. 6d.
In spite of this continual difference, our ex-
portable commodities have increased; and there
129
can then be no reason to conclude that the
continuance of the same difference will alone
create any considerable defalcation. It may
be farther remarked, that at or after periods
of high prices of corn, exportations have not
diminished, nor have they increased with low
prices.
Political events of various kinds may, in-
deed, to a great extent influence the quantity
of British exports, and cause a considerable
diminution in their amount: for this every one
must be prepared, who considers that the
supply of the French and Dutch colonies has
lately been almost monopolized by our manu-
facturers, but that from those markets, they
will, probably, be wholly excluded in future.
If the government of Portugal should return
from Brazil to Europe, and the former coun-
try be placed under the old colonial system,
a considerable diminution in the consump-
tion of our manufactures must take place in
that quarter. If the settlements of Spain,
in the western world, return under subjection
to the mother country, that circumstance
would also considerably lessen the exporta-
K
130
tion of our manufactures. But, above all, the
state of the countries of Europe, which, from
having been so long occupied in war, have had
no inducement to carry on any but the indis-
pensable domestic manufactures, being now
materially changed, and tranquillity restored
to them, will tend to lessen our exports of
all kinds. In Spain this has already begun
to operate, to the exclusion of cotton goods.
Some of the capital of France, Flanders,
Holland, and Germany, will doubtless be
turned to manufacturing articles for exporta-
tion, which may in time supplant ours in
some of the markets, of which we have lately
had exclusive possession. Though these
effects may be produced, and even to a
very alarming extent, they have nothing
to do with our view of the subject; they
would take place, even if corn and labour
could be kept down in England to as low a
price as they are in the other countries of
Europe.
In considering our exports, we may take
the year 1810 as the standard; because, with
one exception, it is that in which their
amount was greatest, and consequently the
131
most unfavourable to the argument we mean
to pursue. We shall consider not the official,
but the real value, according to the estimate
presented by the Customs to the House of
Commons, and which was ordered to be
printed the 16th of June, 1812.
It appears that in the year 1810, our ex-
ports had attained the highest point, and
amounted to the sum of £.62,702,409. Of
this sum the amount of the foreign produc-
tions which were re-exported, including re-
fined sugar, was £.15,307,755, leaving the
amount of British produce and manufactures
exported at £.47,304,654, the price of
which consisted more or less of British labour,
and might therefore be susceptible of increase
or diminution in cost, according to the high
or low price of that labour.
It is a circumstance highly favourable to
our manufactures, that a very considerable
part of them is guarded by such restrictions
and monopolies, that no foreign competition
can prevent their consumption to a very great
extent; and thus any small increase of price,
arising from a higher rate of labour, will
scarcely diminish that consumption.
K 2
}
132
The countries to which British produce or
manufactures were exported, without fear of
rivalry, and the amount sent to them in the
year under consideration, was as follows:
Ireland, Guernsey, Jersey,
and the Isle of Man,
East Indies,
Africa,
West Indies,
British America,
f
4,214,513
2,977,366
595,031
9,176,552
7,601,227
24,564,689
It thus appears, that in the year 1810, the
amount of British produce and manufactures
exported to countries, where no rival com-
petitors can meet us, exceeded that which
was exported to parts of the world where such
competition may hereafter arise. In the pre-
ceding and subsequent years this excess has
been much greater.
Our whole produce and manufactures
exported to countries where others can
rival us, amounted in the greatest year to
£.22,739,965; this amount has since been
considerably reduced, and that by circum-
stances totally independent of the price of
British labour.
133
The war which so long desolated Spain,
having destroyed her internal manufactures,
and deranged the affairs of the Phillipine
company, caused a vent in that country for
the cottons of Great Britain, of which our
merchants eagerly availed themselves, and
crowded every part of the peninsula with the
produce of our looms. The circumstances
which have recently occurred, oblige us to
expect, that, in future, there will be no
exportation of British cottons to Spain, ex-
cepting small quantities, which may be in-
troduced by illicit trade: we may then rea-
sonably calculate, that a defalcation will take
place in our exports of cottons alone, to the
amount of what was sent to Spain in the two
years of 1809 and 1810, when the party in
opposition to France opened the ports to
our fabrics.
This amounted on the average of the two
years to £.4,630,420, a deficiency we can in
no other quarter expect to make up, for,
though the ports in the north of Europe are
open to our ships, the prohibitions opposed
to our cotton as well as woollen goods exist
134
M
in the Austrian and Prussian dominions*,
and if Saxony becomes dependent on either of
those powers, no doubt can be entertained,
that the same prohibitions will be adopted to
favour the manufactures of that country.
On account of the number and powers of
our mills for spinning, and the capitals of
their owners, we may increase our export of
cotton yarn, but to no amount that can com-
pensate for the deficient export of the finished
goods. During the whole period of the war,
and when our exclusion from the continent
was the most rigid, the exportation of cot-
ton yarn varied less than that of any other
article; and if it should now increase, which
is highly probable, it will operate, as far as
to diminish the exportation of those
it
goes,
* The following anecdote will show the rigid system
adopted by the Prussian government towards British manu-
factures. The author, a few years ago, on entering Berlin,
had his carriage searched at the gate, and the officer having
found in one of the pockets an article of dress, made of Eng-
lish kerseymere, which had never been worn, seized it, and
sent it to the Pack-hoff, and though on an introduction to the
minister Struensee, it was allowed to be given up, on satisfy-
ing the officer, it was not delivered to the owner in the Prus-
sian dominions, but sent to Brunswick by the post to meet
kim there.
135
goods made in Great Britain from yarn spun
here.
We cannot, then, calculate on less than the
sum of £.4,630,000, as the probable deduc-
tion from the amount of our exports in 1810;
and there will then remain, as nearly as can
be calculated, an average exportation of Bri-
tish produce and manufactures, to countries,
in which foreign competition creates a rivalry,
of the value of £.18,109,000. Various
other articles, the produce of this island, but
rather raw materials than manufactures, must
make a still farther deduction from the
amount of those exportable commodities, in
which we need fear no rivalry. Coals, salt,
lead, tin, and many small articles, experience
no competition, as they are exported to coun-
tries which can be nowhere else so well sup-
plied with them; these will amount to at
least £.1,000,000, and reduce the last valua-
tion to £.17,100,000.
It is now necessary to proceed another
step, and endeavour to ascertain, what is the
value of the human labour expended in ma-
nufacturing the articles for which this sum
of £.17,000,000 is paid. The amount of
136
cotton wool imported into this country in six
years, from 1805 to 1810, both
years inclu-
sive, was 465,772,000 pounds, or an ave-
rage of 77,628,000 pounds annually. Esti-
mating this at 2s. 6d. per pound, it would
amount to £.9,750,000. The value of the
cotton goods, including cotton yarn, exported
in the same series of years, amounts to an
annual sum of £.15,279,000. It is usually
estimated, that of the cottons manufactured
in Great Britain, three fifths are consumed
out of the kingdom; if this be correct, and it
cannot be far removed from the truth, our in-
ternal consumption of £.10,000,000, would,
when added to the quantity exported, show that
from about £.10,000,000 of raw materials, we
create goods to the amount of £.25,000,000.
To the raw material, however, must be added
the cost of the various bleaching and dyeing
drugs, and of the coals used in the manufac-
tory, all which cannot be over-rated at
£.1,000,000. The profits of the merchant or
wholesale dealer, on the whole sum vended,
will be nearly the same, whether provisions be
higher or lower here than on the continent of
Europe; and in estimating it at 5 per cent, on
*
137
the total of the manufacture or £.1,500,000,
which cannot exceed the amount, it would
appear that the labour is half the value of
the sum for which the cotton goods are sold.
If the amount of the labour be one half,
or fifty per cent, on the sale price of the
goods, we must next estimate what part of
that labour is performed by machinery. In
goods of the finer quality, such as the supe-
rior kinds of muslin, almost the whole value
arises from the fineness of the spinning,
which does not depend on human labour,
but on machinery, and, consequently, in that
description of goods, the value of more than
half the labour depends rather on the capital
employed, than on the price of the food con-
sumed by the working people. Almost all
the inferior branches of the cotton manufac-
ture are executed by mechanism as far as the
spinning goes, and it is well known that,
except in some few articles, the spinning
costs more than the whole of the other labour.
It will not, then, be improper to estimate the
value of the labour which does not depend
on the price of food, as equal to that which
fluctuates with provisions.
138
Supposing we have made no material er-
ror in this calculation, we arrive at the con-
clusion, that in the cotton manufacture the
amount of that portion of labour which de-
pends on the price of the subsistence of the
labourer, is one quarter, or twenty-five per
cent, on the price at which the goods are
sold when finished.
It has been calculated with much pains and
acuteness by Sir F. M. Eden, that the purchas-
ing of corn is nearly one half the expenditure
of the family of the labourer; and thus, if his
rent, fuel, cloathing, and the other parts of
his expences, continue the same, and they
are little liable to fluctuation, the increase or
depression in the price of corn can affect only
one half the value of his labour, and, conse-
quently, one half of his subsistence, and thus
only twelve and a half per cent of the selling
price of the goods, will be affected by the
fluctuations in the price of corn.
An author of Glasgow, not disposed to
lessen the importance of the cotton manu-
facture, stated a few years since the sum an-
nually paid for wages in that branch to be
£.13,000,000. If this be a correct state-
139
ment, and we have no reason to attempt to
represent it as less than this sum, we may
calculate that subsequent circumstances have
increased it to about £.15,000,000. Ac-
cording to our view of the subject, then, the
value of wages will be
Consumed by the inhabitants of
Great Britain
6,000,000
by monopolized fo-
reign markets
3,600,000
by foreign markets of
competition
5,400,000
per an-
As we cannot estimate the wages of each
individual, including children, occupied in
this manufacture at less than £.10
num, the number employed in producing
goods for open foreign markets will be
540,000, or one twenty-sixth part of the
pulation, whilst those occupied in supplying
the other two markets will amount to nearly
one million.
po-
Let us suppose this number of individuals
may consume annually one quarter of wheat,
or an equivalent quantity of other grain; if
this 540,000 quarters of wheat were to be
increased in price 20s. per quarter, and the
140
whole of that price to become an addition to
the cost of the goods, amounting to 9,000,000
exported to markets of competition, it would
advance them about 6 per cent.
Though we have thus allowed the fact as-
sumed by the Glasgow manufacturer, there
may be considerable reason to doubt its accu-
racy, and perhaps, it might be possible to
prove, as clearly as such subjects admit of
proof, that he has greatly overstated the
amount of wages actually paid; if, however,
his statement be true, as our amount of
imported raw material, and of exported
goods, are drawn from official sources, and
may therefore be relied on, it will follow
that the amount of goods manufactured is
much larger than we have estimated it; and
then this consequence will result, that we
have calculated the home consumption too
low, and that, in reality, it exceeds the
whole of the foreign consumption.
If, then, so small a portion as one eighth
part of this branch of our exportable manu-
factures is affected by the price of corn, and
if that price be one half as much more in
this island as it is in the countries which
141
will attempt to compete with us, the only
effect will be, that our cotton goods will meet
theirs in the open markets at a cost about
four per cent. higher than that of our rivals.
If, however, the price of corn in Great
Britain should be double that which it bears
in the country of the rival manufacturers,
the effect would be, that British goods would
arrive at the market costing about six per
cent. more than those of their competitors.
As the machinery used to abridge human
labour is in some measure composed of that
labour, it may be reckoned that it will be
affected by the price of provisions, and there-
fore, some allowance must be made for it.
The most costly parts of every factory are
the stream of water, the rights of which are
frequently very valuable, and the buildings
for the reception of the machinery, which,
together generally constitute from one half
to two thirds of the whole expence, and the
interest on this capital will form a large por-
tion of the price of the work executed, which
will not be affected by any fluctuation in the
price of corn,
t
142
As, however, it is undoubtedly proper to
make some allowance, it will perhaps be suf-
ficient to calculate that the work performed
by machinery is liable to be affected by the
price of corn, to the extent of one half of
what we have calculated its effect to be on
that portion produced simply by human la-
bour. In this view the whole increase in the
cost price of the finished goods would be six
per cent. if corn is one third higher, or nine
per cent. if double the price in England that
it is in the rival countries.
Need we ask if the capital, and the skill
of this country, with previous possession of
the habits of the people for whom such arti-
cles are destined, will more than counterba-
lance such a difference as this amounts to?
It has been deemed necessary to enter
more minutely into this branch of our ex-
portable produce, because it forms by far
the largest in our class of commodities for
foreign use, and is the only one, of which
the external exceeds the internal consump-
tion; it is also the one in which the price
of corn (allowing it to have as much influ-
ence as some suppose) may be presumed
143
to produce the greatest effect, because the
portion of labour in its production is greater,
in proportion to the raw material, than in
most of the other important kinds of goods
which we export*.
A more cursory view of the other branches
of our exportable commodities will suffice,
after the long detail which the cotton branch
has occupied, especially as, in general, the
proportion which the raw material bears to
human labour, though varying in each, may
on the average be brought to the same
standard without any important error.
Our woollens of all kinds, except the thin-
ner sorts of stuffs, have a proportion of raw
materials exceeding the value of the labour;
and though great improvements have been
made, and, in spite of clamour and opposi-
tion, are likely to proceed, the quantity of
* In attempting to calculate the effect of this large branch
of manufacture, we have no disposition to lessen its impor-
tance, or to deny its beneficial effect as a source of national
wealth, though it may be contended, that it has not contri-
buted to produce a healthy, a virtuous, and, consequently, a
happy population, or, though it may be denied, that its im
portance is such as to justify the payment of £.350,000 annu-
ally in bounties, to encourage the exportation of a small part
of it.
144
labour performed by hand, especially in the
coarser goods, bears a greater proportion to
that performed by machinery than in the
cotton manufactories; but these circumstances
taken together, would lead to the same con-
clusion upon the effect produced on the goods
by the price of corn in a foreign market,
where rivals are to be encountered. This
branch differs materially from the cotton, as
two thirds of the raw material is the product
of our own soil, and two thirds of the con-
sumption is within the Island of Great
Britain.
The next production in amount is that of
hardware, including iron, raw and wrought,
and the various articles of cutlery, toys, and
trinkets, which give support to those popu-
lous places Birmingham, Sheffield, and the
towns and villages in their vicinity. In these
articles the cost of the raw material is trifling;
and the labour principally performed by ma-
chinery, in that exported, is the greater por-
tion of their expence. Though we have
stated these articles as manufactured at Bir-
mingham and Sheffield, it is material to re-
mark, they are confined to no one part of the
་
145
Island, but carried on in every town, village,
and hamlet in the Kingdom; and the internal
consumption is supposed to be ten times the
value of the whole that is exported. That
portion made by the country smith, the larger
part of the manufacture, is composed almost
wholly of human labour; but in that which
forms the exportable part, the use of machi-
nery is, perhaps, greater than in any other
branch of industry, and therefore the price of
corn can have no more, or very little more
influence than in the two other branches
which we have reviewed.
The manufacturers of linen, glass, and
earthen ware, leather, stationary, silks, and
many smaller ones, whose bare enumeration
would be tiresome, may be classed under the
same description as hardware, as far as re-
gards the proportion between internal con-
sumption and exportation. The proportion
which foreigners take of them is so trifling,
that if the whole trade to other countries, ex-
cepting that to our own settlements, were de-
stroyed, the loss would scarcely be felt by the
manufacturers. Taking them altogether it
will be a just calculation that the price of
L
146
corn influencing the price of labour to the
full extent of its cost, produces no greater
effect on those goods in the markets, where
rivals may compete with us, than it does in
those articles composed of cotton.
Thus far we have been proceeding, upon
the supposition that the wages of manufac-
turing labour are regulated by the price of
corn, and to the full extent of all the varia-
tions of which corn is susceptible. But this
is by no means the case; the price of labour,
like every other commodity, is regulated by
its own abundance or scarcity, as has been
most luminously shown in the evidence of
Lord Lauderdale and Mr. Milne, which they
both confirmed by delivering to the Com-
mittee the prices of labour, compared with
that of corn, in several periods, showing that
abundance of employment, and not advance
in corn, is the real cause of a rise in the
wages of manufacturers.
To put the case in the way most favourable
to those who erroneously suppose that our
manufacturers will be injured by corn being
at a higher price in Great Britain than it is
on the Continent, it has been thought proper
147
to enter into this calculation, to show, even
upon that supposition, how insignificant and
trifling an effect will be produced.
If we now calculate that proportion of our
various manufactures which is consumed by
the people of this kingdom, and compare it
with that which is sent to those markets
where foreigners can rival us, we shall be
able to judge which is most injurious to our
manufacturers, their paying such a price for
corn as will enable the landed proprietors and
occupiers to exist with their accustomed com-
fort, or such a price as, whilst it reduces
their income and expenditure, shall enable
the small quantity of our productions which
go to markets of competition, to meet their
rivals there on terms a little lower than they
otherwise would do.
We have already estimated the internal
customers of the cotton trade as purchasers
to the amount of 10,000,000 annually, and
the foreign as 15,000,000; of the latter sum
about 6,000,000 are exported to our own do-
minions, where we have no rivals, and about
9,000,000 may be sent to countries where
they may meet competitors, either as in the
L 2
148
United States of America, where internal
manufactories have begun to be established,
or from France and the other countries of
Europe. In the first case we shall have to
contend with those who have not attained
to our perfection in taste or skill, who have
not, and cannot, carry the division of labour
to the same extent, and who must pay for all
manual labour prices far beyond what are given
in this Kingdom, notwithstanding the cheap-
ness of provisions. In the second case we
shall have to contend with those who are ig-
norant of the fancies and caprices of the con-
sumers, who labour under the disadvantages
of their customers, being prejudiced in favour
of their rivals, who have not capital sufficient
to enable them to purchase the raw material
so cheap, or to give such extensive credit,
and who will, in fact, have nothing in their
favour, but that they can procure the mere
manual labour, the smallest portion of the
cost, on terms lower than their competitors.
Can there be any reason for apprehension
that, in these circumstances, this branch of
our exportable commodities, the most of all
exposed to suffer, will sustain any diminution?
149
Is it probable that it can suffer in its sales so
much, as it will do if the landed and agricul-
tural parts of the home consumers are de-
pressed? Will not such depression in the cir-
cumstances of those who consume 10,000,000
in value of these commodities, be more felt by
the cotton manufacturers, than any defalca-
tion that is likely to happen in the markets
of competition in foreign Countries ?
We have before asserted, that two thirds of
the consumers of woollen cloths are at home.
In fact their exportation to all foreign markets
does not amount to more than 4,500,000,
whilst at home their sales amount to at least
12,000,000: thus they will have as little to
dread from rivalry abroad as the cotton manu-
facturers, and will suffer in a much greater
degree, by the reduced condition of their
principal customers in the home market.
In continuing this contrast, and carrying
it through the hardware, linen, leather, glass,
paper, silk, and other minuter manufactures,
which form the total of British exports, we
shall find the internal consumption amount
to ten times the value of that which is vend-
ed in the foreign markets; and
may there-
fore conclude, that they will be more deeply
1
150
affected by injury done to the landholders,
cultivators, and labourers of Great Britain,
than by any evil they would sustain from
a curtailment of their sales in other countries.
The internal traders, from the wholesale
dealer to the village huckster, can feel but little
bad effects from corn being higher in Eng-
land than on the Continent; but, on the
other hand, by corn being kept at a price
which creates a loss to the
grower, their best
customers, the landed proprietors, their te-
nants, and labourers, will be unable to ex-
pend the sums they have been accustomed to
do, and thus this description of people must
become sufferers to a greater extent than
they will be benefited by buying bread some-
what cheaper.
The homely adage that " England is
England's best customer" is so obvious,
that the foregoing details can only be sup-
posed necessary from the frequent allusion
to the export of our manufactures, and from
their increase or diminution being repre-
sented as decisive proofs of our national pros-
perity or adversity. That it may be a proof,
to a certain extent, cannot be denied; but if
151-
2
it be put in competition with the internal
consumption, its importance will be very
much diminished.
The public creditors, the holders of the
funds, require our consideration, and we may
ask, how are they injured by maintaining the
price of corn in this kingdom as high as is
requisite to repay the grower of it for his ca-
pital and his labour, even though it should
be considerably higher than in neighbouring
countries? The greater part of the public
funds have been created within the last twenty
years during that period the average price
of wheat, in this country, has been 11s. per
bushel, a price nearly sufficient to remunerate
the grower at this time; now if it should re-
main stationary, at the price which it bore
when the capital was converted into an an-
nuity, their situation will remain unaltered, as
to the relative value of their capital to corn,
and they will have no reason to complain.
If, on the other hand, the price of corn
be so low as not to repay the growers, if they,
as well as their landlords, become in conse-
quence so depressed as to be compelled to
cultivate less, and to diminish the consump-
152
4
tion of taxable commodities, the defalcation
in revenue will compel the Government to
borrow annually large sums to make up the
deficiency, loans will necessarily tend to di-
minish the value of the public funds, and
thus the funded proprietor, though his an-
nuity may remain the same, will find, when-
ever he wishes to sell it, that his capital is
greatly reduced.
The money price of one species of property
is very materially affected by that of every
other; if we could suppose the whole of the
funded property of the kingdom to be anni-
hilated, the effect would be to lower the
money price of land, of houses, of cattle, of
corn, and every other commodity. If any
other large mass of property were to be anni-
hilated, the effect would be the same, accord-
ing to its relative value; if any large mass of
property, like funds, the land, or the pro-
duce of land, be very considerably reduced in
value, the effect, though less, would be simi-
lar now if the value of the produce of land
be reduced, not by any excess of quantity
raised at home, for in that case the reduction
in price would be made up by the quantity,
153
We
but by foreigners sending their produce here,
the effect would be nearly the same.
have had plentiful harvests, which reduced
the money price of corn, but annihilated no
property, because the quantity compensated
for the lower price; but the introduction of
foreign corn lowered it still more, so that the
whole of that which was in the kingdom
diminished in value, and this produced the
same effect as would have followed the anni-
hilation of a quantity of property equal to
the difference between what our own har-
vests alone would have reduced it to, and that
to which it has been farther reduced by the
introduction of foreign corn.
If the effect of the too late abundant har-
vests in 1812 and 1813, operated to reduce
the money price of wheat to 10s.
per bushel,
and other corn in proportion, and if the in-
troduction of foreign corn operated farther to
reduce it to 8s. per bushel, the difference be-
tween these two prices would be the amount
of the property annihilated. If the annihi-
lation of one species of property, then, lowers
the money price of all others, may not this
in some degree account, not only for the
$
154
depression of lands, but of houses, of the
funds, of canal shares, and almost every other
species of property?
It may be objected to this statement, that,
by a depreciation in the money price of corn,
be it to what extent it may, no property is
annihilated, the consumer only obtains it for
less than he could before, and though pro-
perty may change hands, and that of the
growers pass to the consumers, the commu-
nity loses nothing by the exchange; let this
language be applied to any other description
of property, the funds for instance: by re-
ducing the dividends to one half their pre-
sent rate no property will be annihilated, it
will only change hands, and whilst the stock-
holder is impoverished, those who pay taxes
will pay but half, and be thus enriched to
the same extent as the stock-holder is a suf-
ferer.
It will not be contended in the last sup-
posed case, that the value of all other pro-
perty would not be reduced to a lower money
price by such a decrease of dividend; can it
then happen that the dividend on land and its
produce, should be reduced one half in money
{
155
price, and the other species of property not
suffer similar reduction ?
Whatever weight may be given to this re-
mark, one consideration merits the attention
of the stock-holder; the money price of his
property must be regulated by the proportion
betwixt buyers and sellers: if the depression
of the landed and agricultural interests con-
tinue, instead of accumulating property, and
vesting it in the government securities, they
must withdraw from the public funds what
they hold there, and thus increase the pro-
portion of sellers to buyers, beyond what
can be counterbalanced by any increase of
capital, created by importing even a large
quantity of corn at a cheaper rate than it
can be grown here.
An apprehension has been sometimes ex-
pressed, that, by provisions being higher in
this kingdom than in other countries, a
considerable number of people would be in-
duced to seek other places of residence, and
thus emigrations, to a very injurious extent,
would follow from such a situation of affairs.
If we examine the different classes of in-
habitants that compose our population, it is
156
probable our apprehension of any extensive
emigration taking place, or of any evil aris-
ing from what may take place, can be easily
removed. Our most numerous class, the
labourers in agriculture, have seldom the
power of departing far from their usual places
of residence; a removal from the south to
the north of this island, or vice versa, is ge-
nerally beyond the reach of their
purses; to
remove to a distant country is in most cases,
especially to those with families, almost im-
possible; and the few manufacturing la-
bourers who have left their own for other
countries, have found themselves in such dif-
ficulties, that they have returned with eager-
ness, and given no encouragement to others
to try the experiment.
To say nothing of the difference of lan-
guage, and the very different modes of living
adopted by the lower classes in foreign coun-
tries, our workmen have experienced difficul-
ties, which arise from the high state of im-
provement to which we have attained. The
great advantage this country enjoys in its
manufactures over others is, that with us the
division of labour is carried farther than
157
elsewhere; this, though an advantage to the
community, is unfriendly to the removal of
the individual to a country where the divi-
sion of labour is less minute. The man who
can perform but one, of two or three succes-
sive operations in a manufactory, acquires
thereby a facility in that one which makes
him valuable, where such a division exists;
but if he remove to another spot, where the
two or three operations have been usually
performed by one hand, he becomes of less
value, and the inferior workman, who can
perform the whole, is preferred before him.
Such a workman may not unaptly be com-
pared to one movement in a piece of machi-
nery, which, though valuable and important
when connected with the other parts of the
machine, is of little or no value by itself. In
perfecting our manufactures, we have indeed
reduced our men almost to machines; whe-
ther this be conducive to the health, either of
body or mind, in the individual, is not now
the question, but by reducing him to this
state, we have almost taken from him the
power of removing.
158
The price of labour in every part of the
continent of Europe, especially in Germany,
is so much lower than in England, that, un-
less our labourers could feed on rye instead of
wheaten bread, their wages would not be
equal to their subsistence; the fact is, that in
no part of Europe do the labourers enjoy so
many of the necessaries and the conveni-
ences of life, as in this country, which would
be sufficient to prevent emigration in that
class, were they not prevented by want of
the money to convey them, and by the dif-
ference of language.
The difficulties encountered by those mas-
ter manufacturers, who have endeavoured to
introduce our fabrics into other countries,
have been no less great, and from the same
cause; they have found no workmen accus-
tomed to the mode or divisions of labour
practised in this country, and, with very few
exceptions, and those in the most simple ma-
nufactures, they have become disgusted, and
abandoned the pursuit.
If no apprehensions need be entertained of
the emigration of the labourers, either in
agriculture or manufactures, we need be little
159
apprehensive that the state will suffer by the
long absence of any other description of the
community: a few annuitants, and some of
our military and naval men, may, on account
of the cheapness of living, prefer to pass
their time on the continent; these must ne-
cessarily be a very small portion of the whole,
even of those classes, for few Englishmen
will abandon the comforts of their native
country, for the sake of the additional lux-
uries which may be indulged in France or
Italy.
It is to be lamented that, though Lord
Lauderdale, Sir H. Parnel, Mr. Western,
and some others, have addressed the public
on the subject of the Corn Laws, and though
the petitions presented to parliament last
year were so numerous, no authors have ap-
peared to oppose the views of those writers,
except some anonymous ones in periodical
publications; so that it is difficult to guess
what objections can be made to such regula-
tions as we have endeavoured to show to be
necessary for the good of the community.
Mr. Rose, though he opposed in parlia-
ment the resolutions there offered, and has
160
since published his speech, cannot be consi-
dered as an enemy to such alteration in the
laws, as may appear to be necessary for the
protection of the agricultural interests of the
country, though his speech certainly tended
to delay, but it is hoped, not to defeat, the
object of Mr. Huskisson's plan. He has in-
deed treated the report of the Committee of
1813 with considerable severity, but it must
be confessed that Parliament has not been
accustomed to legislate on such important
subjects without fuller investigation, and
more extensive enquiry, than that report ex-
hibited. His own language, however, on
the subject is all that can be desired, and
there could be no doubt that the fuller reports
of the two Committees of 1814, have deter-
mined the part he will act, even if he had
not pledged himself by such plain expres-
sions as we find in page 31 of his printed
speech. My own view of the subject is,
that the grower of corn should be very effec-
tually protected, to the extent of the price
being high enough to ensure his being able
pay a
fair rent, and to have a reasonable
profit to himself; but when that object shall
to
161
be secured, the consumer should then have
every possible facility of supply at a price not
exceeding the protecting one.
one."
A man like Mr. Rose, who, during a long
and valuable life devoted to the public ser-
vice, has taken unusual pains to attain accu-
racy on every subject connected with his du-
ty, will feel obliged by having any slight de-
viations from that accuracy pointed out, es-
pecially when they are attributed only to the
haste of publication, and to attendance on
public business.
There is, in page 25, an expression which
may
tend to mislead; and, therefore, deserves
some explanation. "It is perfectly well known
that our supply from America is nearly con-
fined to flour; and that in times of great
scarcity we have had an abundant supply of
flour." This supply in the year of greatest im-
portation, 1807, was 493,910 hundred weight,
equivalent to 150,000 quarters of wheat, or
the consumption of the country for about
three days: it may be farther remarked, that
of this quantity, 317,810 hundred weight
was afterwards exported, because it arrived
too late for our necessities, and when the
M
162
price had fallen; thus we had from America
in that
year scarcely one day's supply, accord-
ing to the average of our consumption.
1
In the remarks on the impropriety of in-
cluding the prices of corn in Ireland, in any
average to govern the importation, there
scems to be an inaccuracy. Supposing the
quantity of wheat grown in Ireland to be
equal to that grown in Great Britain; the
price of the former being 66s. and of the lat-
ter 788. the average certainly would be 72s.
as stated in his Appendix D.; but if the
quantity grown in Ireland be one fifth of
that grown in Great Britain, at the same
prices, the average would be 76s. which con-
siderably weakens, if it does not entirely ob-
viate, Mr. Rose's objection.
In whatever way it may be directed by the
legislature that an average shall hereafter be
taken, it ought certainly to be formed on
such principles, that the quantity sold at the
various prices should be attended to in form-
ing the average, which must otherwise be
very inaccurate. If, in districts producing but
a small proportion of grain, the price is suf-
ered to operate equally with other districts
163
which produce a larger proportion, the ave
rage framed from the two prices, without
adverting to their respective quantities, must
mislead instead of informing.
Mr. Rose cannot be considered as oppos-
ing the principle, that our own agriculturists
should have the monopoly of the home mar-
ket for grain, when it is below a fair remu-
nerating price; and as he is the only one of
the opposers of Mr. Huskisson's proposition
who has printed his opinions, we can only
collect from the diurnal or other temporary
prints, or from common conversation, the
theory of those who contend for the impor-
tation of corn at all times, and without any
reference to the price it may cost the Eng-
lish grower.
It appears that the calculation made by the
advocates for the unlimited importation of
corn, is nearly this; if foreign corn be per-
mitted to come here at all times, the price in
England will be reduced to that at which
foreigners can raise it, and, by having always
a market in this Island, they will so increase
their productions that we need never dread a
M 2
164
scarcity when so many more extensive, and
more fertile countries will be ready to supply
our wants. This reduction in the price of
grain, will operate to produce a similar re-
duction in the price of all the other necessa-
ries of life: meat, beer, butter, cheese, fuel,
house-rent, and cloathing, will next follow,
the rent of land will gradually lessen, until
at length every article of home production
will be reduced to half the price it bore in
the
year 1812.
They proceed to prognosticate, that the
labouring classes, without such intense ap-
plication as is at present requisite, will be
enabled to enjoy, in great abundance, all the
necessaries of life; that the annuitant, drawing
his fixed income from the funds or other se-
curities, will be able to live in greater ease
and affluence; and the whole of the com-
munity, having the amount of their ex-
pences thus reduced, will feel the pressure of
the taxes less, and be enabled to increase-
their enjoyments; the increased prosperity
of the foreign agriculturists, arising from
supplying though on cheap terms the corn
for our subsistence, will be such as to induce
165
them to consume a greater quantity of our
manufactures, which, in addition to the lower
price at which they can be made, will give an
increase to our exports, and make them far
exceed what they have hitherto done.
This, as nearly as can be collected, is the
picture presented to the imagination by those
who most strenuously contend for unlimited
importation; and it merits some attention,
not because it is the picture of the most
thinking, but, perhaps, of the most nume-
rous part of the community.
case our
We have before attempted to show the im-
probability, not to say impossibility, of pro-
curing a sufficiency for our subsistence, in
our own agriculture were reduced to
three fourths of its present productiveness
and therefore one season slightly disastrous,
with even a trifling diminution in our own
culture, would be sufficient to destroy all
these pleasing dreams; but supposing it pos-
sible, that, by the stimulus of having our
ports always open to foreigners, their pro-
duce could be so increased as to enable them
always to supply our wants; we may ask
what reason have we to expect that they will
166
not take advantage of those wants, and demand
prices which would be better paid to our own
farmers? May
May we not expect that our dis-
tress would be made an instrument of revenue
by the continental governments, and that, in
addition to high prices, we may be made to
pay taxes to support governments, sometimes
indeed friendly, frequently neutral, but often
inimical to us? If we hope to increase the
consumption of our manufactures, what secu-
rity have we, that, low as their prices may be
reduced, the most friendly of the european
monarchs will permit them to enter their
dominions? Or if they do admit them, will
they not lay duties on them, as well as on the
corn they send us, and thus in both stages of
the transaction render us tributary? It surely
must be more advantageous to offer to our
own cultivators, such inducements to continue-
their exertions, that they, and not foreigners,
shall increase the consumption of the manu-
factures.
When by encouragement to foreign agri-
culture we have reduced the prices of food
and have diminished the supplies furnished
by our own soil, what effect will be produced
167
by a war with any of the great continental
powers? Can we depend on their continuing
to administer to our necessities, when in a
state of hostility? Must we
Must we relinquish that
tone of dignity which we have so long,
and so ably supported, from the apprehen-
sion, that the countries on which we have
rendered ourselves dependant for bread should
inflict the punishment of famine, if we claim
our rights? Is it not, then, in this view im-
portant that our sole dependance should be
on ourselves? In short, to use the language
of Mr. Malthus, "are we ready to encounter
the yet untried risk of making a considerable
portion of our population dependent upon
foreign supplies of grain, and of exposing
them to those vicissitudes and changes in
the channels of commerce to which manufac-
turing states are of necessity subject ?”
Let us, however, suppose this great desi-
deratum accomplished; that by gradual, but
not by slow steps, the prices of all commodi-
ties shall be reduced, the rent of land lowered
one half, provisions of all kinds experience
an equal depreciation, all our manufactures
from domestic raw materials be brought to
168
the same standard, and those composed of
foreign articles be reduced to the price which
half the cost of the present rates of wages
would afford.
If all this could be accomplished, what
benefit to any considerable portion of the
community would it produce?
It will scarcely be contended, that the
classes who subsist by their daily industry
would obtain in this state a larger quantum
of subsistence than they now enjoy; the pro-
bability, as we have before shown, is that, by
the lessened demand for agricultural labour,
they would be paid worse in proportion to the
price of provisions than they are at present.
It has, however, been said, that this low
price for all commodities will increase our
exportable produce to an extent sufficient to
compensate for all the other evils that it will
introduce; that the demand for labour will
be so great, as to ensure constant employment,
and consequently liberal wages; that our
manufacturers, having extensively increased
their exports, the balance of exports will
create favourable exchanges with all other
countries, and thus that we shall obtain their
169
produce at low rates, whilst we can sell our
own at high prices.
Whoever considers the small extent of
country, and the few consumers to which we
can have access, how deficient in general
those countries are in articles suitable to
make adequate returns, how many rivals we
shall have to contend with, and, especially,
how very small is the proportion which
labour bears to the whole value of our manu-
factured goods, will hesitate before he rates
the advantages we can receive from them so
high as to put them in any sort of competi-
tion with the evils which we shall presently
proceed to point out.
It may for a moment be conceded, that
such a state of things as we are supposing
would be highly advantageous to two descrip-
tions of persons certainly constituting a very
numerous body, such as derive their income
solely or principally from the public funds,
and the officers of government, civil and mi-
litary, through all their gradations, from the
minister of state to the lowest exciseman,
from the commander in chief to the ensign
or cornet; these, from the same annuity
}
170
they now receive, would doubtless be enabled
to procure a greater portion of the means of
enjoyment than they have at present; but the
payment of their annuities must depend on
the capacity of government to continue them
at their present rate, on the ability and dis-
position of ministers to maintain the present
revenue, when every article from which it is
derived shall be reduced one half in its money
price, a subject we shall hereafter have occa-
sion to discuss.
If we select from these two classes all those
who derive larger incomes from other sources
than from the public funds or government
salaries, and consider that the depreciation
on one kind of property will exceed the ad-
vance on the other, we may not be disposed
to rate the real advantage in this respect very
high, or that a great proportion even of these
classes will be benefited.
If, on the other hand, we look to the con-
sequences which will arise from any exces-
sive depreciation in the money price of land,
of houses, of mines, of canals and roads, of
wool, of iron, of machinery, of ships, and
every other species of property, that compose
171
our national wealth, or rather, if we consider
the effect of raising the relative value of mo-
ney to much more than its present power,
which is the same as lowering the money
price of commodities, we shall hesitate be-
fore we even wish it to be accomplished.
As raising the value of money is the object
which those desire to attain, who talk of re-
ducing the prices of commodities till they cau
purchase double the quantity that they can at
present with the same sum of
money, and sup-
posing this object to be attainable, we must
consider how long a period will be required
before this desirable object can be realised.
The greatest mass of the revenue of indivi-
duals is derived from the rent of land and of
houses, and is secured to the proprietors at
its present money price by leases of various
durations, but which, we will
presume, have
on the average seven years longer to run.
This largest description of money revenue
being thus secured for that period, it must
influence every other, and we cannot, there-
fore, calculate that the desirable period when
money shall have attained its maximum, or
commodities their minimum, which is the
172
same thing, will arrive in less than seven
years during the course of that period
then, every
article of life will in popular lan-
guage be continually sinking in value; what
is purchased cheap to-day will be dear to-
morrow; the stock of goods in the hands of
the merchant, the manufacturer, and the
shopkeeper will daily decline in price, and
at the end of each of these seven years he
will find himself in idea poorer than at the
commencement of it.
It will be in vain to tell him, that every
other commodity being reduced equally with
that in which he deals, he is as rich as if
cach had maintained its former price, that
his wealth consists not in its value as com-
pared with money, but as compared with
other commodities, and that instead of being
poorer, as he supposes, he is in reality a
cher man than before. This philosophical,
and, perhaps, just reasoning will have no ef-
fect on him; he has no criterion by which to
judge, but his books, and the valuation of
his stock; and he will, therefore, trust more
to them than to the most profound reasoner
in political economy. This feeling of gra-
173
dual loss will extend to all the productive
members of the community, both agricul-
tural and commercial, in spite of all the spe-
cious or solid reasoning that can be opposed
to it, and its effect on the industry of the na-
tion will be highly detrimental. Who will
feel any energy in exertions which he fore-
sees must produce loss? Who will devote
any portion of his capital to building, to im-
proving, to buying, to tilling, and to ma-
nufacturing, when he sees clearly that, in a
short time, the object on which his capital
has been expended, will bear a less money
price than it had previously cost him? Who
will employ a labourer, or an artisan beyond
what the most urgent necessity shall demand,
when he knows that the production of such
men's labour will fall in money price, even
before it is completed? What will be the
condition of the day labourer during this sep-
tennial purgatory, through which we must
pass to reach paradise? What means have
been planned by those philanthropists who
demand cheap provisions for the sake of the
poor, to induce the rich to employ them,
whilst they will lose by their labour? Must
174
}
not the
poor be greater sufferers whilst this
progress of depreciation is going on, than
they would be by an equal rise, which, mak-
ing their employers suppose they are becom-
ing richer, would induce them to furnish
more abundant employment? Let it be sup-
posed, however, that this process is more ra-
pid; that instead of seven years of gradual
increase in the relative value of money, the
great influx of foreign provisions shall pro-
duce a sudden effect, that money prices for
all commodities shall become instantly less,
will the evil, though shorter in duration, be
less injurious? Or will a shock so violent,
be borne with more tranquillity, than the
slower progress of gradual decay?
Passing, however, the steps which must
lead to the happy era, when every necessary
of life shall be reduced one half in price, and
without noticing any of the calamities which
may attend its progress, let us suppose we
have attained this object, which has been re-
presented to the imagination of the people of
England as the reward of their labours and
their privations. In what situation, then
shall we be placed with a national debt of
3
}
175
nine hundred millions, the interest of which
must be paid, and with a peace expenditure
of forty-five millions?
If the land and houses be reduced to half
their present rent, what defalcation will that
alone create in the public revenue? What
will be the diminution in the receipt of the
customs on ad valorem articles, when such
articles are at half their present value?
What will be deducted from the legacy tax,
when the property bequeathed is of less no-
minal value? What from the other stamp
duties, when the articles conveyed are lessened
in money price? Will not this act as a pre-
mium to illicit traders when the materials of
which spirits, malt, beer, soap, candles, and
other excisable articles are composed, are re-
duced to one half their present cost?
not the disproportion between the tax, and
the cost of the articles taxed, already so great
as to create numberless frauds, and how much
must they increase when the article is les-
sened in value, and the duty continued as
before?
Is
Will not reducing the money price of all
commodities to the extent supposed, have
176
precisely the same effect, as doubling the
amount of the national debt? And will it
not place us under the necessity, either of
doubling every existing impost, or looking
out for such fresh objects of taxation as shall
raise our revenue to double its present amount?
It has been calculated (no matter with what
accuracy) that one fifth of every man's income
is, in this country, extracted for the support
of government is it possible that two fifths
shall be drawn from him, without utter ruin
both to individuals and to government?
We may be told that, when every article of
living shall be reduced one half, then the sa-
laries of the officers of government may be
also lessened; be it so, then one class of those
before supposed to be benefited by the reduc-
tion will cease to draw advantage from it,
and the good of this supposed blessing will
be lessened, and consequently the argument
for it, if it can be called an argument, will
be so far weakened.
None have yet gone so far as to propose
the reduction of the interest of the national
debt to one half, though they have been very
liberal in their plans for lessening the rent of
177
lands, and the income of its cultivators, yet
to this point we must ultimately come, if
money increases to considerably more than
its present relative value, and then the only
remaining class of those supposed to be bene-
fited, will be placed in the same situation as
their fellow sufferers.
If, by the reduction of all the produce of the
country, the government be placed in a situa-
tion of embarrassment, the condition of very
numerous classes of the community will meet
no less difficulty, the situation of creditor and
debtor will be peculiarly alarming: must
debts contracted before the fall of productions
be paid in the same currency as those con-
tracted afterwards? Let us suppose an es-
tate mortgaged before land is reduced in
money price: if it be mortgaged for one
half the value, must the mortgagee take the
whole estate? If it be mortgaged for two
thirds, must the mortgagee take the whole
estate, and then throw the mortgagor into
prison, merely because the value of money is
raised? Let us suppose provision made for
the younger branches of a family, by settle-
ments on property bequeathed to the elder, if
N
178
the settlements now amount to one half the
value, in the case under consideration, the
reduction in the price of produce would give
the whole to the younger branches, and re-
duce the elder to beggary. What will be the
situation of the capitalist, who has lent his
money on life annuities, if the rent be reduced
below the annuity? must his term be conti-
nued till he is reimbursed out of the estate
of the next heir? Or must he be allowed
to ruin the grantor? There would be no end
to the embarrassments introduced into the
whole economy of society by the supposed
reduction of property, and can any reason be
given for creating such a chaos of confusion ?
Thus much may suffice to shew that no
benefit would arise from a general reduction
in the price of commodities; but it is happy
for the community that such reduction is
scarcely within the compass of possibility:
each step of the progress would diminish
production, and as productions are lessened,
prices would again rise; thus a check would
originate in the system itself, which would
destroy the picture that imagination has co-
loured with such brilliant tints.
179
1
It has been too frequent a practice to re-
present the agricultural and commercial bo-
dies of the nation as composed of men with
opposite and contending interests, and not
as they, in reality, are, bodies whose inter-
ests, with few and slight exceptions, are the
same, deriving their prosperity or their adver-
sity from the same causes, and one never
injuring the other without equally injuring
itself.
This practice has arisen from having con-
founded the whole commercial interest of the
country with that which is the most insig-
nificant part of it, the trade of supplying
foreign consumption, which it must be al-
lowed may sometimes be in direct opposition
to the other interests of the community.
To estimate the importance of the classes
or bodies of men whose interest is sometimes
in opposition, we must enumerate the land-
holders, the cultivators, and their labourers,
the whole of our traders in articles of home
consumption, those manufacturers scattered
over the whole surface of the island, whose
articles are consumed at home, the merchants
importers of foreign goods for our home sup-
N 2
180
3
:
ply, the dispensers of those goods to the
consumers, the artificers employed in build-
ings, on canals, roads, rivers, and mills,-
the owners of ships employed in the coasting,
the coal trade, and the fisheries, with the
owners of boats on rivers and canals,-the
proprietors of the West India colonies, and
the owners of the ships they employ: these,
with all the other minuter bodies, must be
considered on one side, as all having a com-
mon interest, as being involved in the prospe-
rity of each other; and to these may be op-
posed, whenever there is any opposition, the
interests of that small body employed in ma-
nufacturing for foreign consumption, and in
transmitting their productions to foreign
countries. It would appear invidious to enter
into a comparison of the weight or the utility
of these two opposing interests, and it is the
less necessary, because, among the whole
body of the British manufacturers, the num-
ber who work solely for foreign consumption
is indeed small; the far greater part work
principally to supply the internal demand,
and in every case where their internal ex-
tends beyond their external trade, they are
bound up with the other interests of the com-
181
munity, and, equally with them, fade or flou-
rish as agriculture is depressed or encouraged.
As there is not in reality, there ought not
in feeling, to be any opposition of interests
between the members of the British commu-
nity. In the vulgar phrase, "we live on each
other," and though by some persons, from want
of consideration, the interests of one part of
the community have been represented as more
important than they really are, and those of
others have not been duly appreciated, yet
reflection will correct such ideas, and every
part of the publick, it is to be hoped, will
concur in the common interests of all.
The manufacturers of this country have
contributed towards forming a national cha-
racter; they have created or called forth ta-
lents, which might otherwise have never
been developed; they have given an impulse
of industry to the whole people, and, by
combining the taste of foreign countries with
the philosophy of our own, have produced
articles of beauty and utility superior to the
best models of other countries. In calicoes
and other goods made of cotton, our manu-
facturers have borrowed, but not servilely
182
copied, designs from Egypt, from Greece,
and from Italy; and, by the help of che-
mistry, have given a brilliancy of colouring,
unequalled even by the pencils of the Hin-
doos, and rendered those tints as durable as
the substances on which they are impressed.
The knowledge of mechanics exhibited by
Arkwright, by Watt, by Bolton, and by
Reynolds, has abridged human labour, and
extended human capacity, whilst the scien
tific labours of Wedgewood have converted
even the most unproductive of our soils, into
articles unrivalled in beauty, and highly con-
ducive to the health, the cleanliness, and
the comfort of mankind.
It is impossible for such energies to be
exerted without producing extensive effects:
it is impossible for the spirit of enterprize, of
industry, of reflection, and of perseverance,
to be excited without communicating a por-
tion of similar spirit wherever it extends;
and it is doing only justice to our British
manufacturers to acknowledge the obliga-
tions which the country owes them. The
enterprise directed by intellect, which they
have fostered, has excited emulation amongst
183
other classes; and even the agriculturists,
naturally slow in improvements, have been
inspirited by the example of their fellow citi-
zens, and, having adopted a portion of their
feelings, have made progressive steps towards
better cultivation, have, in some measure,
made science the hand-maid of agriculture,
and produced effects far beyond the calcula-
tions of their predecessors.
We do not intend to lessen the characters
of our gallant soldiers and sailors, who have
stamped on their country the name of the
deliverer of Europe, when we hint that pro-
bably a part of that spirit, to which the civi-
lized world is so greatly indebted, may have
been imbibed from the activity, combined
with patience, which our manufacturers have
so eminently displayed, and communicated
through all ranks of society. Activity and
perseverance have, indeed, always formed
the prominent features of our national cha-
racter; in the former we have rivalled the
French, and in the latter equalled the Ger-
mans; but it is by the rare union of both
these qualities, that we have surpassed each
of those nations. Without derogating from
184
our former achievements, we may surely as-
sert, that of late we have as far excelled our
predecessors, as they did their contempora-
ries; and is it paying too high a compliment
to our scientific manufacturers, if we attribute
something to their exertions stimulating the
energy and activity of their countrymen ?
Whilst we would cheerfully pay that tri-
bute of applause to which our manufacturers
are entitled, we shall naturally enquire how
they were encouraged and supported in their
pursuits? To what stimulus are they in-
debted for the hopes which inspired their first
projects? On whose fostering protection
did their early efforts depend? From what
source did they expect, and from what did
they receive, the encouragement which ma-
tured their plans, and ultimately remunerated
them for their labour, their skill, and their
capital? Was not domestic consumption the
object to which they looked? Is it not by
this they have been repaid? And is it not to
this they still principally look
nuance of their prosperity? If, besides our
domestic, including our colonial consump-
tion, they have had foreign consumers, could
up
for a conti-
185
they have afforded to supply them with the
long credit they require, unless the profits
on their home trade had first procured by its
quicker returns, the requisite capital?
The more we reflect on this subject, the
more fully we shall be convinced of the inti-
mate union between the interests of agricul-
ture and commerce; if one creates a stimulus,
the other rewards exertion; if one furnishes
luxuries, the other repays with necessaries;
if one feels depression and dejection, the
other languishes and faints; if one becomes
prosperous and elevated, should not the other
partake of its affluence and of its enjoy-
ments?
With this feeling strong on our minds, we
shall not enquire if that portion of industry
and capital which creates an export beyond
the wants of other countries, does not, by
overloading foreign markets, employ that ca-
pital and industry in a direction less beneficial
to the community, than if it were applied to
the improvement of our own soil. We shall
not insinuate, what has been asserted, that
manufacturing for foreign consumption robs
our agriculture of its due portion of capital,
186
nor allow, that so small a proportion of the
great mass of British property, can, even if ill
directed, produce effects deserving of notice.
The great interests of the community,
the landed, the agricultural, and the home
commercial, need feel no jealousy, need fear
no rivalry; they are so connected that they
must stand or fall together; and it would be
descending from their high ground, if they
felt any irritation when the interest of the
comparatively small class (the labourers for
foreign consumption) is put in competition
with theirs.
A little reflection will destroy much preju-
dice, and there is certainly occasion for the
exercise of it, on a subject which excited such
unjust clamours as the attempt made in the
last session of parliament, to provide for
the sustenance of the inhabitants of Great
Britain.
Mr. Rose has thought proper to censure
the report of the committee of which Sir
Henry Parnell was chairman, for omitting to
suggest some permanent provisions to ascer-
tain when distillation shall be discontinued;
and Lord Lauderdale recommends that, be-
187
tween the time when the advance in corn
shall have made it necessary to stop exporta-
tion, and that in which it shall be allowed
to import free of duty, the distilleries should
be stopped.
It
may appear presumptuous to differ from
such authorities, but the quantity of corn
used in the distilleries is a very small propor-
tion of the growth of the kingdom, and ex-
tracting the spirits by no means renders it
totally unfit for other and valuable uses; but
as we may oppose to the opinions of these
gentlemen that of one, never mentioned but
with regret and respect, a quotation from
Mr. Burke will be more to the
purpose than
any thing we can offer. Speaking of the rise
both of corn and meat in the year 1795, he
says,
"Another cause, and that not of inconsi-
derable operation, tended to produce a scar-
city in flesh provisions.
"It is one that, on many accounts, cannot
be too much regretted, and the rather as it
was the sole cause of a scarcity in that arti-
cle, which arose from the proceedings of men
1
188
themselves, I mean the stop put to the dis-
tillery.
"The hogs (and that would be sufficient)
which were fed with the waste produce, did
not demand the fourth part of the corn used
by farmers in fattening them. The spirit was
nearly so much clear gain to the nation. It
is an odd way to make flesh cheap, to stop or
check the distillery.
"The distillery itself produces an immense
article of trade almost all over the world, to
Africa, to North America, and to various
parts of Europe.
"It is of great use, next, to food itself, in
our fisheries, and to our whole naviga-
tion. A great part of the distillery was car-
ried on with damaged corn unfit for bread,
and by barley and malt of the lowest quality.
These things could not be more unexception-
ably employed. The domestic consumption
of spirits, produced without complaints a very
great revenue, applicable, if we pleased, in
bounties to the bringing corn from other
places, far beyond the value of that consumed
in making it, or to the encouragement of its
increased production at home.
189
:
"As to what is said in a physical and
moral view against the home consumption of
spirits, experience has long since taught me
very little to respect the declamations on that
subject: whether the thunder of the laws or
the thunder of eloquence is hurled on gin,
always I am thunder-proof. The alembic in
my mind, has furnished the world a far greater
benefit and blessing, than if the opus maxi-
mum had been really found by chemistry, and
like Midas, we could turn every thing into
gold.
Undoubtedly there may be a dangerous
abuse in the excess of spirits; and at one
time I am ready to believe the excess was
great. When spirits are cheap, the business
of drunkenness is achieved with little time or
labour, but that evil I consider to be wholly
done away.
"Observation for the last forty years,
and very particularly for the last thirty, has
furnished me with ten instances of drunken-
ness from other causes to one from this. Ardent
spirit is a great medicine often to remove dis-
tempers, much more frequently to prevent
them, or to chase them away in their begin-
i.
190
Y
nings. It is not nutritive in any great degree.
But if not food, it greatly alleviates the want
of it. It invigorates the stomach for the di-
gestion of poor meagre diet, not easily aliable
to the human constitution. Wine the poor
cannot touch. Beer as applied to many oc-
casions (as among seamen and fishermen for
instance) will by no means do the business.
Let me add, what wits inspired with cham-
paign and claret will turn into ridicule, it is
a medicine for the mind. Under the pres-
sure of the cares and sorrows of our mortal
condition, men have at all times, and in all
countries, called in some physical aid to their
moral considerations, wine, beer, opium,
brandy, or tobacco.
"I consider, therefore, the stopping of
the distillery, economically, financially, com-
mercially, medicinally, and in some degree
morally too, as a measure rather well meant
than well considered. It is too precious a
sacrifice to prejudice."
It may, perhaps, appear extraordinary,
that in the preceding sheets no notice has
been taken of a subject which so deeply oc-
cupied the attention of the public four years
191
ago,
and which, though the interest it excited
has in a considerable degree ceased, has been
considered by Lord Lauderdale, Mr. Malthus,
and others, as intimately connected with the
price which is necessary to protect the grower
of corn.
The report of the committee appointed to
enquire into the cause of the high price of
gold bullion in the year 1810, is drawn up
with considerable acuteness, as is natural
when the investigation was conducted by
some of the most intelligent and industrious
members of the House of Commons: it
would not be doing justice to the Committee,
or their report to insinuate that it was a mere
measure of party; but it will now scarcely be
deemed uncandid to say, that, if party feel-
ings did not direct in that discussion, there
prevailed in it a spirit scarcely more friendly
to calm investigation--A spirit of proselytism
influenced more or less all the followers of
the sect, and, like all new sectaries, those
who did not imbibe their principles, were
assailed with ridicule, or attempted to be
silenced by contempt.
192
As the practical men, the plain, plodding
merchants and directors of the bank could
not be converted to the new doctrines, it was
represented that they were utterly unfit to
judge on such sublime subjects; that such
blind guides must lead the country to ruin,
and that there could be no salvation but
within the pale of that sect which believed
that bank-notes were a most mischievous
substitute for gold; that the excessive quan-
tity of paper, and not the balance of pay-
ments, being against us, or the demand
which war created for gold, was the cause of
unfavourable exchanges; and that our future
happiness depended solely on diminishing
the issue of the bank by compelling them to
pay in specie in the year 1812.
Another article of the creed of this sect,
the natural consequence of the other doc-
trines, and, indeed, implied in them, was that
the further increase of bank-notes was one of
those dreadful evils, which it was impossible
to think of without horror, and which must
be attended with the most immediate and
fatal effects.
193
In spite, however, of these doctrines, in
spite of the prophetic denunciations which
enforced them, the legislature was not terri-
fied; they left the plain plodding directors of
the bank to follow their accustomed course,
without recommending any submission to
the theorists; and now, strange as it may
appear in the end of the year 1814, two
years after the period pointed out for the re-
duction of the paper medium, and the con-
verting of it into specie, the issue of bank-
paper has been nearly doubled, the exchanges
with all countries have become rapidly less
unfavourable, the relative value of gold, and
especially of silver, to paper is nearly equal,
and the bank directors only wait the sanction
of government to pay in gold or paper at the
option of the holders of their notes.
As the fears which were so vehement four
years ago are now somewhat allayed, and as
the predictions of the sect are not likely to be
accomplished, a little pleasantry may be in-
dulged without apprehension of offending.
"Liberius si
Dixero quid, si forte jocosius, hoc mihi juris
Cum venia dabis."
194
The progressive approximation of bullion
to Bank-notes, may, however, perhaps be
somewhat retarded by large importations of
corn, which will prevent the great quantities
of foreign commodities which were in store
here, and are now sent to the continent, from
producing their full effect on the balance
of payments, which regulates the course of
exchange; the numerous travellers on the
continent drawing remittances from Eng-
land, and a large army in Flanders in British
pay, may also tend to delay the equalization of
specie and bank notes: but as the
peace has
rendered gold less valuable on the continent,
and as some was hoarded here which will
probably come again into circulation, it has
not appeared necessary in these sheets to
consider the state of the currency; which if
of less value than the gold coin, is so slightly
inferior as to be immaterial in the view which
we have taken of the interests of the country.
The subject to which the preceding sheets
relate is in the best hands: the two branches
of the legislature have taken considerable
pains to understand it in all its bearings, and
the publication of the Reports of their Com
195
mittees have done much, and will effect
more, as they become more diffused, in sup-
plying that portion of knowledge which is
alone required to set the great body of the
people right,
THE END.
Printed by Nichols, Son, and Bentley,
Red Lion Passage, Fleet Street, London. -

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