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enjoyed and lost, and which we must expect to lose as we have long enjoyed it.

There is some danger, lest our neglect of Agriculture should hasten its departure. Our industry has for many ages been employed in destroying the woods which our ancestors have planted. It is well known that commerce is carried on by ships, and that ships are built out of trees; and therefore, when I travel over naked plains, to which tradition has preserved the name of forests, or see hills arising on either hand barren and useless, I cannot forbear to wonder, how that commerce, of which we promise ourselves the perpetuity, shall be continued by our descendants; nor can restrain a sigh, when I think on the time, a time at no great distance, when our neighbours may deprive us of our naval influence, by refusing us their timber.

By Agriculture only can commerce be perpetuated; and by Agriculture alone can we live in plenty without intercourse with other nations. This, therefore, is the great art, which every government ought to protect, every proprietor of lands to practise, and every inquirer into nature to improve.

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CONSIDERATIONS

ON

THE CORN LAWS. *

By what causes the necessaries of life have risen to a price at which a great part of the people are unable to procure them, how the present scarcity may be remedied, and calamities of the same kind may for the future be prevented, is an enquiry of the first importance: an enquiry before which all the considerations which commonly busy the legislature vanish from the view.

The interruption of trade, though it may distress part of the community, leaves the rest power to communicate relief: the decay of one manufacture may be compensated by the advancement of another:

* These " Considerations," for which we are indebted to Mr. Malone, who published them in 1808, or rather to his liberal publisher, Mr. Payne, were, in the opinion of Mr. Malone, written in November 1766, when the policy of the parliamentary bounty on the exportation of Corn became naturally a subject of discussion. The harvest in that year had been so deficient, and corn had risen to so high a price, that in the months of September and October there had been many insurrections in the midland counties, to which Dr. Johnson alludes; and which were of so alarming a kind, that it was necessary to repress them by military force.

defeat may be repaired by victory: a rupture with one nation may be balanced by an alliance with another. These are partial and slight misfortunes, which leave us still in the possession of our chief comforts. They may lop some of our superfluous pleasures, and repress some of our exorbitant hopes; but we may still retain the essential part of civil and of private happiness, the security of law, and the tranquillity of content. They are small obstructions of the stream, which raise a foam and noise where they happen to be found, but at a little distance are neither seen nor felt, and suffer the main current to pass forward in its natural course.

But SCARCITY is an evil that extends at once to the whole community: that neither leaves quiet to the poor, nor safety to the rich: that in its approaches distresses all the subordinate ranks of mankind, and in its extremity must subvert government, drive the populace upon their rulers, and end in bloodshed and massacre. Those who want the supports of life will seize them wherever they can be found. If in any place there are more than can be fed, some must be expelled, or some must be destroyed.

Of this dreadful scene there is no immediate danger; but there is already evil sufficient to deserve and require all our diligence and all our wisdom. The miseries of the poor are such as cannot easily be borne: such as have already incited them in many parts of the kingdom to an open defiance of government, and produced one of the greatest of political evils-the necessity of ruling by immediate force.

Cæsar declared after the battle of Munda, that he had often fought for victory, but that he had that

day fought for life. We have often deliberated how we should prosper; we are now to enquire how we shall subsist.

The present scarcity is imputed by some to the bounty for exporting corn, which is considered as having a necessary and perpetual tendency to pour the grain of this country into other nations.

This position involves two questions: whether the present scarcity has been caused by the bounty, and whether the bounty is likely to produce scarcity in future times.

It is an uncontroverted principle, that sublatâ causâ tollitur effectus: if therefore the effect continues when the supposed cause has ceased, that effect must be imputed to some other agency.

The bounty has ceased, and the exportation would still continue, if exportation were permitted. The true reason of the scarcity is the failure of the harvest; and the cause of exportation is the like failure in other countries, where they grow less, and where they are therefore always nearer to the danger of

want.

This want is such, that in countries where money is at a much higher value than with us, the inhabitants are yet desirous to buy our corn at a price to which our own markets have not risen.

If we consider the state of those countries, which being accustomed to buy our corn cheaper than ourselves when it was cheap, are now reduced to the necessity of buying it dearer than ourselves when it is dear, we shall yet have reason to rejoice in our own exemption from the extremity of this wide-extended calamity; and if it be necessary to enquire why we

suffer scarcity, it may be fit to consider likewise, why we suffer yet less scarcity than our neighbours.

That the bounty upon corn has produced plenty, is apparent,

Because ever since the grant of the bounty, agriculture has encreased: scarce a sessions has passed without a law for enclosing commons and waste grounds:

Much land has been subjected to tillage, which lay uncultivated with little profit:

Yet, though the quantity of land has been thus encreased, the rent, which is the price of land, has generally encreased at the same time.

That more land is appropriated to tillage, is a proof that more corn is raised; and that the rents have not fallen, proves that no more is raised than can readily be sold.

But it is urged, that exportation, though it encreases our produce, diminishes our plenty that the merchant has more encouragement for exportation than the farmer for agriculture.

This is a paradox which all the principles of commerce and all the experience of policy concur to confute. Whatever is done for gain, will be done more, as more gain is to be obtained.

Let the effects of the bounty be minutely considered.

The state of every country with respect to corn is varied by the chances of the year.

Those to whom we sell our corn, must have every year either more corn than they want, or less than they want. We likewise are naturally subject to the same varieties.

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