Page:Vindication of a fixed duty on corn.djvu/25

19 assertion—"that a fixed duty in time of scarcity would starve the artizan, and in time of abundance would ruin the labourer and farmer."

If with an average crop the British farmer can sell his wheat at the remunerative price of 57s. per quarter, no one can object to the introduction, at a duty of 10s., of the foreign corn necessary to complete our supply; but a time of abundance arrives, the blessing of Providence has rested on the land, and the farmer finds his fields have yielded five quarters instead of three quarters per acre, and that (deductions made for seed and the consumption of the farm) he has four quarters to sell instead of two, and he sells them at 39s. 4d. per quarter instead of at 57s. yet, although the duty on foreign corn be a fixed one at 10s., how can it cause his ruin? The low price of 1835 was not the effect of the competition of foreign corn, (800,000 quarters imported in 1831, were still in granary, but they were allowed to feed only mice and maggots,) it was the result of the abundance of our own crops; and the lowness of the price was itself the farmer's defence against competition; and although under a fixed duty the imports of 1831 might gradually have been consumed, the people of London, while they could buy British wheat at 39s. 4d., would never use Polish or Russian, which would cost them 57s.