Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 6.djvu/440

Rh 410 CORN L A W S increase of pauperism, and by the introduction of the mer ciful but wasteful remedy of the Toor Laws. The corn legislation of Elizabeth remained without change during the reign of James, the civil wars, and the Commonwealth. But on the restoration of Charles II. in 1660, the question was resumed, and an Act was passed of a more prohibitory character. Export and import of corn, while nominally permitted, were alike subjected to heavy duties the need of the Exchequer being the paramount consideration, while the agriculturists were no doubt pleased with the complete command secured to them in the home market. This Act was followed by such high prices of corn, and so little advantage to the revenue, that Parlia ment in 1663 reduced the duties on import to 9 per cent. ad valorem, while at the same time raising the price at which export ceased to 48s., and reducing the duty on export from 20s. to 5s. 4d. per quarter. In a few years this was found to be too much free-trade for the agricultural liking, and in 1670 prohibitory duties were re-imposed on import when the home price was under 53s. 4d., and a duty of 8s. between that price and 80s., with the usual make-weight in favour of home supply, that export should be prohibited when the price was 53s. 4d. and upwards. But complaints of the decline of agriculture continued to be as rife under this Act as under the others, till on the accession of William and Mary, the landed interest, taking advantage of the Revolution as they had taken advantage of the Restoration to promote their own interests, took the new and surprising step of enacting a bounty on the export of grain, which continued to infect the corn laws of the kingdom, varied, on one occasion at least, with the further complication of bounties on import, until a comparatively recent period. The duties on export being abolished, while the heavy duties on import were maintained, this is pro bably the most one-sided form which the British corn laws ever assumed, but it was attended with none of the advan tages anticipated. The prices of corn fell, instead of rising. There had occurred at the period of the Revolution a depreciation of the money of the realm, analogous in one respect to that which marked the first era of the corn statutes (1436-1551), and forming one of the greatest difficulties which the Government of William had to encounter. The coin of the realm was greatly debased, and as rapidly as the mint sent out money of standard weight and purity, it was melted down, and disappeared from the circulation. The influx of silver from South America to Europe had spent its action on prices before the middle of the century ; the precious metals had again hardened in value ; and for forty years before the Revolution the price of corn had been steadily falling in money price. The liberty of exporting wool had also now been cut down before the English manufactures were able to take up the home supply, and agriculturists were consequently forced to extend their tillage. When the current coin of the kingdom became wholly debased by clipping and other knaveries, there ensued both irregularity and inflation of nominal prices, and the producers and consumers of corn found themselves equally ill at ease. The farmers com plained that the home-market for their produce was unremunerative and unsatisfactory; the masses of the people complained with no less reason that the money wages of labour could not purchase them the usual necessaries of life. Lord Macaulay, in his History of England, says of this period, with little exaggeration, that &quot; the price of the n-ecessariea of life, of shoes, of ale. of oatmeal, rose fast. The labourer found that the bit of metal which, when he received it, was called a shilling, would hardly, when he purchased a pot of beer or a loaf of rye bread, go as far as sixpence.&quot; The state of agriculture could not be pros perous under these conditions. But when the Government of William surmounted this difficulty of the coinage, as they did surmount it, under the guidance of Sir Isaac Newton, with remarkable statesmanship, it necessarily followed that prices, so far from rising, declined, because, as one reason, they were now denominated in a solid metallic value. The rise- of prices of corn attending the first years of the export bounty was consequently of very brief duration. The average price of wheat in the Winchester market, which in the ten years 1690-99 was 2, 10s., fell in the ten years 1716-25 to 1, 5s. 4d., and in the ten years 1746-55 to 1, Is. 2|d. These figures are enough to dispel much illusion as to the effect of promoting particular branches of industry by legislative and fiscal protection. The system of corn law established in the reign of William and Mary was probably the most perfect to be conceived for advancing the agricultural interest of any country. Every stroke of the legislature seemed complete to this end. Yet it wholly failed of its purpose, because no industrial interest whatever can by any artificial means prosper, save in harmonious con nection with the progress of other interests. If the price of wheat again rose in 1750-60 and 1760-70 to 1, 19s. 3|d. and 2, Us. 3|d., it was simply because many causes had meanwhile been at work, as invariably happens in such economic developments, the operation of which no statutes could embrace, either to control or to prevent. Between the reign of William and Mary and that of George III., the question of bounty on export of grain had, in the general progress of the country, fallen into the background, while that of the heavy embargoes on import had come to the front. Therefore it is that Burke s Act of 1773, as a deli berate attempt to bring the corn laws into some degree of rea son and order, is worthy of special mention. This statute permitted the import of foreign wheat at a nominal duty of 6d. when the home price was 48s. per quarter, and it stopped both the liberty to export and the bounty on export together when the home price was 44s. per quarter. There was probably an error in stopping export and cutting off bounty on export at the same point of price. But apart from this passing blemish, the statute of 1773 was worthy of the genius of Burke, and it would have been well for the country to have imbibed more fully its spirit and principles. Fewquestions have been more discussed or more differently interpreted than the elaborate system of corn laws dating from the reign of William and Mary. Even so careful an observer as Malthus was of opinion that the bounty on export had enlarged the area of subsistence. But a bounty on export is obviously liable to the same objection as a heavy duty on foreign import. It fails to create a natural, and therefore permanent, market for the favoured produce. The foreigner is induced at the expense of the exporting state to take the commodity at less cost than it can be pro duced. A bounty on export consequently never adjusts itself to the real conditions either at home or abroad. That the bounty on export of corn had large operation is sufficiently attested by the fact that, in the years from 1740 to 1751, bounties were paid out of the Exchequer to the amount of 1,515,000, and in 1749 alone they amounted to 324,000. But the trade thus forced was of no perma nence, and the British exports of corn, which reached a maximum of 1,667,778 quarters in 1749-50, had fallen to 600,000 quarters in 1760, and continued to decrease. Burke s Act lasted long enough to introduce a regular 1701- import of foreign grain, varying with the abundance or scarcity of the home harvest, yet establishing in the end a systematic preponderance of imports over exports. The period, moreover, was marked by great agricultural improve ments, by extensive reclamation of waste lands, and by an increased home produce of wheat, in the twenty years from 1773 to 1793, of nearly 2,000,000 quarters. Nor had the course of prices been unsatisfactory. The average price