Page:The corn law question shortly investigated.djvu/10

8 in supporting domestic industry. The capital which sends British goods to Portugal, and brings back Portuguese goods to Great Britain, replaces, by every such operation, only one British capital. The other is a Portuguese one. Though the returns, therefore, of the foreign trade of consumption should be as quick as those of the home trade, the capital employed in it will give but one half of the encouragement to the industry or productive labour of the country."

This passage shews the opinion of Adam Smith, that foreign, as compared with home trade, gives but one half the encouragement to the productive labour of a country; and a similar doctrine is laid down by the French economist, Monsieur Say, as follows:—"The British Government seems not to have perceived that the most profitable sales to a nation are those made by one individual to another within the nation, for these latter employ a national production of two values,—the value sold, and that given in exchange."

Thus, two of the most eminent writers on the science of political economy agree entirely in the conclusion that home is doubly advantageous to foreign trade.

The question of the comparative value of a home and a foreign trade being thus disposed of, I cannot doubt its being admitted that no trade is more precarious than a foreign, and none so steady and productive as a home one; in fact, the home trade is the barometer of the national weal and prosperity.

Nor can any argument be more absurd than that a repeal of the corn laws would tend to keep steady the prices of grain;—in confirmation of this, it is only necessary to refer to the ill effects, by means of fluctuation in price, which a different system had produced at the latter end of the last and beginning of the present century. From the year 1797 to 1801 there was a fluctuation in prices of 220 per