Page:Craik History of British Commerce Vol 2.djvu/148

146 was 49,056; and in the ten following years, while it rose in 1706 to 188,332, it never was under 74,000, till 1710, when it fell to 13,924. In the ten years from 1711 to 1720 it ranged from 71,800 quarters to 176,227, except in 1717, when it was only 22,954. In 1722 it was 178,880; in 1723, 157,720; in 1724, 245,865; and in 1725, 204,413. But in 1727 it had fallen to 30,315; and in 1728 to 3,817; nor in 1729 was it more than 18,993. After this, with the exception of a few unproductive years (1740, 1741, 1757, and 1758), in which it was very insignificant, it was seldom less than from 200,000 to 400,000, and sometimes it was considerably more: thus, in 1733 it was 427,199: in 1734, 498,196; in 1737, 461,602; in 1738,580,596; in 1748, 543,387; in 1749, 629,049; in 1750, 947,602 (which was the highest amount it ever reached); and in 1751, 661,416. It has often been contended, and formerly it was an opinion almost universally held, that, by the extension of tillage which it occasioned, the system of bounties upon the exportation of corn in fact operated to keep down the price of the commodity in the home-market. "In other states," observes the Count de Boulainvilliers, "private persons pay the government for the exportation of grain; England acts quite otherwise, and pays them. All common means made use of to that time to increase the fruits of the earth had been insufficient, or at least of little use. Before that epoch the agriculture of England was of little account in Europe. As long as that monarchy thought only of its own subsistence, it always found itself short of the necessary; it was very often obliged to have recourse to foreigners to make up the deficiency of the growth of the nation; but, when it made its agriculture an object of commerce, the cultivation of its land became one of the most abundant in Europe. Without that stroke of slate, the best concerted of all those which have yet appeared in modern politics, England had never sown but for herself; for what could she have done with the surplus of her grain? It was the bounty only which could assure her of the sale in foreign markets, and, for that reason, be the only source of the