Page:The Three Prize Essays on Agriculture and the Corn Law - Morse, Greg, Hope (1842).djvu/27

 fortunes. It was to both a period of unmixed and gratuitous benefit, and they had not the slightest ground or pretence to ask of the nation to perpetuate such a state of things. They had derived all the profits from the high prices, and when the natural causes of the high prices no longer existed, it was but reasonable and just that high prices should cease. The war had left no taxes or burdens that were not more than shared by the rest of the community; and though some expenses of farming had risen with the high prices, yet most would speedily have fallen and adjusted themselves to low prices. Labour would not perhaps have fallen in the same ratio with corn for reasons which I shall presently give, but horsekeeping, tithes, poor-rates, seed corn, and rents, must all have fallen in a very near proportion to the price of corn. The farmer had not been encouraged by acts of parliament to pay a high rent, nor could he have complained of parliament not doing that which it had never promised to do. The men who had profited most by the high prices might not have been the identical men who were in occupation of their farms in 1815; but then it would have been as fair that the farmers of 1815 should have borne the loss as the farmers of 1822, or the farmers of 1835. But still the loss to the farmer was not a question as to time altogether, it was a question of amount also, for we have had lower prices occasionally since, than we ever should have had with a free trade; and it is also unquestionable that the loss would have been largely shared by the landlord, had it taken place in the first instance.

It will hardly be disputed that the corn laws have not been successful in preventing very low prices of corn, or that they have not succeeded in maintaining a rising price, which, of all things, is of the most essential benefit to the farmer. That a free trade would operate powerfully in accomplishing these ends there are very good reasons to suppose. Upon a view of the situation of this country as to the importation of corn, we find that in years of abundance the prohibitory duties have so operated as to prevent any importation at all, and that the trade in corn has been of such a precarious nature, and of so small an amount, as not to form an article of regular and increasing supply from abroad; and in one year, since the passing of the law of 1828, we have actually been an exporting country. Now the interest of the farmer is to maintain and encourage such an amount of importation as shall, from the increased wealth and population of the country, render it absolutely impossible that the home-growth could ever equal the demand. Let the quantity grown at home be ever so great, it is still the interest of