Observations on the Effects of the Corn Laws, and of a Rise or Fall in the Price of Corn on the Agr | Page 9

poor land, the fund of rent will often be found quite insufficient
for this purpose. There is a good deal of land in this country of such a
quality that the expenses of its cultivation, together with the outgoings
of poor rates, tithes and taxes, will not allow the farmer to pay more
than a fifth or sixth of the value of the whole produce in the shape of
rent. If we were to suppose the prices of grain to fall from seventy five
shillings to fifty shillings the quarter, the whole of such a rent would be
absorbed, even if the price of the whole produce of the farm did not fall
in proportion to the price of grain, and making some allowance for a
fall in the price of labour. The regular cultivation of such land for grain
would of course be given up, and any sort of pasture, however scanty,

would be more beneficial both to the landlord and farmer.
But a diminution in the real price of corn is still more efficient, in
preventing the future improvement of land, than in throwing land,
which has been already improved, out of cultivation. In all progressive
countries, the average price of corn is never higher than what is
necessary to continue the average increase of produce. And though, in
much the greater part of the improved lands of most countries, there is
what the French economists call a disposable produce, that is, a portion
which might be taken away without interfering with future production,
yet, in reference to the whole of the actual produce and the rate at
which it is increasing, there is no part of the price so disposable. In the
employment of fresh capital upon the land to provide for the wants of
an increasing population, whether this fresh capital be employed in
bringing more land under the plough or in improving land already in
cultivation, the main question always depends upon the expected
returns of this capital; and no part of the gross profits can be
diminished without diminishing the motive to this mode of employing
it. Every diminution of price not fully and immediately balanced by a
proportionate fall in all the necessary expenses of a farm, every tax on
the land, every tax on farming stock, every tax on the necessaries of
farmers, will tell in the computation; and if, after all these outgoings are
allowed for, the price of the produce will not leave a fair remuneration
for the capital employed, according to the general rate of profits and a
rent at least equal to the rent of the land in its former state, no sufficient
motive can exist to undertake the projected improvement.
It was a fatal mistake in the system of the Economists to consider
merely production and reproduction, and not the provision for an
increasing population, to which their territorial tax would have raised
the most formidable obstacles.
On the whole then considering the present accumulation of
manufacturing population in this country, compared with any other in
Europe, the expenses attending enclosures, the price of labour and the
weight of taxes, few things seem less probable, than that Great Britain
should naturally grow an independent supply of corn; and nothing can

be more certain, than that if the prices of wheat in Great Britain were
reduced by free importation nearly to a level with those of America and
the continent, and if our manufacturing prosperity were to continue
increasing, it would incontestably answer to us to support a part of our
present population on foreign corn, and nearly the whole probably of
the increasing population, which we may naturally expect to take place
in the course of the next twenty or twenty five years.
The next question for consideration is, whether an independent supply,
if it do not come naturally, is an object really desirable and one which
justifies the interference of the legislature.
The general principles of political economy teach us to buy all our
commodities where we can have them the cheapest; and perhaps there
is no general rule in the whole compass of the science to which fewer
justifiable exceptions can be found in practice. In the simple view of
present wealth, population, and power, three of the most natural and
just objects of national ambition, I can hardly imagine an exception; as
it is only by a strict adherence to this rule that the capital of a country
can ever be made to yield its greatest amount of produce.
It is justly stated by Dr Smith that by means of trade and manufactures
a country may enjoy a much greater quantity of subsistence, and
consequently may have a much greater population, than what its own
lands could afford. If Holland, Venice, and Hamburg had declined a