Page:Vindication of a fixed duty on corn.djvu/23

17 Assuming then the duty to be fixed at 10s. per quarter, I proceed to consider the protection it would afford.

The agriculturist cannot ask to be put in a better position now than when, with a lesser population to supply, he had the monopoly of being their purveyor, and, taking one year with another, the ability to supply them. Then, if a superabundant harvest occurred, either the excess was reserved to compensate for a deficient season, and thus equability of price and consumption was maintained, or the excess was thrown upon the market; the price fell, and the consumer got more bread for the same money. If the harvest proved deficient, and no reserve from a former year remained, the price rose, and the consumer got less bread for the same money. The farmer was compensated in the first case, by increased quantity for diminished price; in the second, by increased price for diminished quantity. Now, there exists a population of two millions whom he cannot feed; we may suppose them represented by the inhabitants of the metropolis, and that their demand of the agriculturist is this—

"Allow us to purchase abroad, on the best terms we can, the corn which you cannot provide, but which is indispensable for our subsistence; it shall pay on its admission such a duty as shall make its price to us equal to that paid by our countrymen in other parts of the kingdom, but this duty must be fixed, or we shall neither be able