Page:Vindication of a fixed duty on corn.djvu/22

16, a duty of 10s. per quarter would place the Foreign and British growers upon a level.

The ports I have selected represent the cost of wheat in the two chief corn-growing countries of Europe: at the less important markets, prices might be found, some higher, some lower, but the result would not be very different were they all brought into account.

Whether with an open trade the prices of corn abroad would have averaged higher or lower is an interesting question, but one which must remain matter of conjecture; in my judgment, however, they would have been higher, for this reason the demand being then more constant, would have heightened the prices generally, (although the inordinate pressure at particular periods being removed, the extreme prices quoted would not have been obtained;) and the yearly averages, being the mean of the combined weekly or monthly prices, would have formed a higher aggregate, when constantly influenced by a moderate demand, than when (as in the last ten years) they present the results of alternate stagnation and excitement. Again, the prices quoted abroad being comparatively nominal when low, and the sales considerable when prices were high (the rise being the effect of a demand for this country) the comparison is favourable to our agriculturists, when made between foreign averages and our own, in framing which the quantity sold is taken into consideration, as well as the price.