Page:Vindication of a fixed duty on corn.djvu/39

33 these distressing alternatives; nor can it be otherwise so long as the corn trade is thus precarious. In the corn trade itself no man could have been long engaged without experiencing the fearful vicissitudes to which it is subject under the influence of the sliding scale, yet such is the ingenuity of party advocates that they have extolled the "speculative nature of the trade" as one of its merits; a merit, indeed, which may be duly appreciated by professed gamesters, but is hardly qualified to find favour on the Royal Exchange. Within my own knowledge an individual upon some importations of wheat realized a profit of 100 per cent, (the slide had reached its lowest point just as the wheat arrived). At another period, wheat, which he had ordered in time of scarcity, arrived only when the slide had risen to a prohibitory duty; it remained many years in granary, and he lost 50 per cent. He gave up the trade, for he was one of those old-fashioned merchants who prefer safety and moderate profits to the enormous gains and ruinous losses of a "speculative trade." Were there no other objection to the sliding scale this ought to suffice, that it forces those engaged in the corn trade to encounter risks equal to those of gambling; and the agriculturist cannot justly ask to be protected by means which operate so injuriously upon another class of his countrymen.

So long as we have the interest of our debt to pay, taxes must be raised; so long as protection is