Page:The Three Prize Essays on Agriculture and the Corn Law - Morse, Greg, Hope (1842).djvu/24



To protect and encourage agriculture has for many years been regarded by our legislators as the stepping stone to prosperity, and the foundation of wealth and power; but whatever may have been the results of its supposed encouragement and protection, nothing can be more clear, than that though for a time the profits of tenant farmers may be raised by a law unduly raising the price of corn, yet that in the end the profits of farming must be regulated, not by the profits of that particular trade, but by the profits and well being of other trades generally. It is impossible to doubt, and indeed every man's experience would tell him, that if the profits of farming are large, and with a prospect of continuance, people from other trades whose profits were not so large, and even farmers themselves, would so bid against one another, as speedily to bring the rent of land to its proper and actual value, according to the increased price of corn.

But it would be wrong to suppose that the profits of farming were always to be estimated by the amount of rent that is paid in any one year, or even series of years, for the history of the prices of corn shows us that it is one of the most variable of all articles of human consumption; and it also shows us, that independently of artificial causes, such as war, a derangement of the currency, or laws regulating the import and export of corn, it is affected by seasons frequently for many years together of a very abundant kind, and these followed again by many very deficient years. To say with any degree of certainty, therefore, what should be the amount of rent for any future year, must always be a matter of the greatest difficulty, but still it is obvious that a period of rising prices, when neither the landlord nor the farmer has calculated upon a rising rent, must be a season of prosperity to the farmer, and a period of falling prices when a farmer is paying a rent calculated on high prices, must be equally a period of great loss to him.

The object of our corn laws, according to the avowed intentions of our legislators, professes to be to maintain a high and steady