Page:The Three Prize Essays on Agriculture and the Corn Law - Morse, Greg, Hope (1842).djvu/9

 which restricts the energies of the people to the supply merely of the home market, necessarily of a limited character; or compels them to leave the home of their fathers and their affections, to seek a livelihood in distant colonies, and endure all the rigours and hardships of a first settlement in a wilderness.

A short review of some of the principal enactments regarding grain may not be uninteresting. At one period of the history of Britain the only law relating to grain was the prohibition to export it. The "wisdom of our ancestors" at that time did not imagine that a country could possibly be ruined by an over abundance in the supply of either corn, beef, or mutton. This discovery was reserved for later days. In the reign of Edward IV. the first act was passed prohibiting the importation of foreign grain, but only when the price of wheat did not exceed 6s. 8d. per quarter. It was said to be for the benefit of the "poor farmers," (this cant phrase is not of yesterday,) as they might be ruined from the plentifulness of the supply. Then, as yet, I suppose "poor landlords" had no interest in high prices, and the "poor buyers" could always shift for themselves. King William, in 1688, secured the firm alliance of the landed interest, by not only extending the acts prohibiting importation, but by granting bounties on grain exported. Millions sterling were thus expended, which both raised the prices at home and enabled foreigners to eat British food at least 20 per cent. lower than the resident native could do. The Corn Laws of 1773 and 1791 were improvements upon this barbarous policy, both allowing importation at nominal duties, the former when wheat reached 48s. per quarter and the latter at 50s. and 54s. per quarter. But the laws prohibiting importation were practically inoperative, principally from a deficiency in the machinery for ascertaining the averages until a short time previous to the year 1773. By the law of 1815, however, importation was wholly prohibited until wheat reached 80s. per quarter. This was done with the avowed purpose of bolstering up the price to something about that sum. Farmers were found, and brought from various parts of the kingdom, to state in evidence to Parliamentary Committees that unless they obtained 80s. or 90s. per quarter for wheat, the great bulk of the wheat-growing lands would be thrown out of cultivation, and the whole population might ultimately be starved, as the world could not supply us with a single month's provision. Fortunately, however, the result has since shown that high money rents were the only things incompatible with lower rates. The law of 1815 was the first that practically secured a monopoly of the home market to the British grower. It was then thought that, as we could not grow a sufficient quantity of food for