Page:An Essay of the Impolicy of a Bounty on the Exportation of Grain (1804).djvu/36

Rh this sufficient to secure to every trader the profit which belongs to his business? Is it not absolutely necessary, by the very nature of things, that this should do so?

All those persons who are capable of estimating a statesman by the knowledge he displays of the genuine principles of national prosperity, will not forget the declaration of Mr. Pitt in the House of Commons, on a day when the price of wheat in Mark-lane was 70s. the quarter, “that the price of corn was not nearly high enough.” This declaration was founded on one of the most vulgar of all vulgar prejudices; “that a high price of corn is useful to encourage the raising of corn;” a prejudice which we should suppose that, after a moment's reflection, no man of common sense could entertain. Who does not know that it is the profit of farming stock, which forms the encouragement of the farmer? And who does not know that the profit of farming stock may be as high, or higher, when corn is sold cheap as when it is sold dear? That therefore the encouragement of agriculture may be greater when the price of corn is low than when it is high? Is it found that, the profit of other trades rises in proportion to the price of the article? So far from it, that the very reverse is in general found to be the case.

Mr. Burke, from whom it were to be wished that many of those, who have so well learned anti-jacobinism from him, would learn something else, has admirably observed in that Tract to which we