The Grounds of an Opinion on the Policy of Restricting the Importation of Foreign Corn | Page 5

least ought not to be, about the losses and profits of farmers, and the present condition of landholders compared with the past. It may be necessary, perhaps, to make inquiries of this kind, with a view to ulterior objects; but the real question respects the great loss of national wealth, attributed to a change in the spirit of our legislative enactments relating to the admission of foreign corn.
We have certainly no right to accuse our farmers of rash speculation for employing so large a capital in agriculture. The peace, it must be allowed, was most unexpected; and if the war had continued, the actual quantity of capital applied to the land, might have been as necessary to save the country from extreme want in future, as it obviously was in 1812, when, with the price of corn at above six guineas a quarter, we could only import a little more than 100,000 quarters. If, from the very great extension of cultivation, during the four or five preceding years, we had not obtained a very great increase of average produce, the distresses of that year would have assumed a most serious aspect.
There is certainly no one cause which can affect mercantile concerns, at all comparable in the extent of its effects, to the cause now operating upon agricultural capital. Individual losses must have the same distressing consequences in both cases, and they are often more complete, and the fall is greater, in the shocks of commerce. But I doubt, whether in the most extensive mercantile distress that ever took in this country, there was ever one fourth of the property, or one tenth of the number of individuals concerned, when compared with the effects of the present rapid fall of raw produce, combined with the very scanty crop of last year.(2*)
Individual losses of course become national, according as they affect a greater mass of the national capital, and a greater number of individuals; and I think it must be allowed further, that no loss, in proportion to its amount, affects the interest of the nation so deeply, and vitally, and is so difficult to recover, as the loss of agricultural capital and produce.
If it be the intention of the legislature fairly to look at the evils, as well as the good, which belongs to both sides of the question, it must be allowed, that the evidence laid before the two houses of Parliament, and still more particularly the experience of the last year, shew, that the immediate evils which are capable of being remedied by a system of restrictions, are of no inconsiderable magnitude.
2. In the Observations on the corn laws, I gave, as a reason for some delay in coming to a final regulation respecting the price at which foreign corn might be imported, the very uncertain state of the currency. I observed, that three different importation prices would be necessary, according as our currency should either rise to the then price of bullion, should continue at the same nominal value, or should take an intermediate position, founded on a fall in the value of bullion, owing to the discontinuance of an extraordinary demand for it, and a rise in the value of paper, owing to the prospect of a return to payments in specie. In the course of this last year, the state of our exchanges, and the fall in the price of bullion, shew pretty clearly, that the intermediate alteration which, I then contemplated, greater than in the case first mentioned, and less than in the second, is the one which might be adopted with a fair prospect of permanence; and that we should not now proceed under the same uncertainty respecting the currency, which we should have done, if we had adopted a final regulation in the early part of last year.(3*) This intermediate alteration, however, supposes a rise in the value of paper on a return to cash payments, and some general fall of prices quite unconnected with any regulations respecting the corn trade.(4*)
But, if some fall of prices must take place from this cause, and if such a fall can never take place without a considerable check to industry, and discouragement to the accumulation of capital, it certainly does not seem a well-chosen time for the legislature to occasion another fall still greater, by departing at once from a system of restrictions which it had pursued with steadiness during the greatest part of the last century and, after having given up for a short period, had adopted again as its final policy in its two last enactments respecting the trade in corn. Even if it be intended. Finally, to throw open our ports, it might be wise to pass some temporary regulations, in order to prevent the very great shock which must take place, if