Should we continue the corn laws?

Should we continue the corn laws?

The answer depends on 3 points:

1. Would Great Britain and Ireland grow an independent supply of corn if corn importation and exportation were made totally free?

2. Should local corn production be artificially increased?

3. To increase local corn production, should foreign corn be restricted?

The supply of corn depends on the size, soil, facilities of culture, and demand for corn in the country in question.

Almost all small, populated states import their corn.

Even a large landed nation, abounding in a manufacturing population, and having cultivated all its good soil, might find it cheaper to purchase a considerable part of its corn from overseas where the supply, compared with the demand, was more abundant.

The accumulation of capital, skill, and population in particular districts, might give some facilities of culture not possessed by poorer nations.

But such facilities could not be expected to make up for great differences in the quality of the soil and the expenses of cultivation.

There are very great inequalities in the demand for corn in different countries, caused by a very great difference in the accumulation of mercantile and manufacturing capital and in large towns.

This makes an equalization of price unrealistic.

According to Oddy’s European commerce, Poland can afford to bring their corn to Danzig at 32 shillings a quarter.

The Baltic merchants think that the price is not very different at present.

If the corn growers in the neighbourhood of the Baltic could look forward to a permanently open market in the British ports, they would raise corn expressly for the purpose.

The same observation is applicable to America. Under such circumstances it would answer to both countries, for many years to come, to afford us supplies of corn, in much larger quantities than we have ever yet received from them.

During the five years from 1804 to 1808, both inclusive, the bullion price of corn was about 75 shillings per quarter.

Yet, at this price, it answered to us better to import some portion of our supplies than to bring our land into such a state of cultivation as to grow our own consumption.

The price of corn affects the price of labour and some of the other expenses of cultivation slowly and partially.

If the prices of corn are equalized by corn importation to 45-50 shillings a quarter, should we go on improving our agriculture with our increasing population, or even to maintain our produce in its actual state?

It is a great mistake to suppose that the reduction of cultivation, from a fall in the price of corn, can be fully compensated by a reduction of rents.

A rich land which yields a large net rent, might be maintained despite the fall in the price of its produce.

This is similar to how a reduction of rent can compensate this fall and all the additional expenses that belong to a rich and highly taxed country*.

But in poor land, the fund of rent will often be not enough.

A lot of land in Britain needs such a high expense in cultivation that, together with the outgoings of poor rates, tithes and taxes, they will not allow the farmer to pay more than 1/5 or 1/6 of the value of the whole produce as rent.

If the prices of grain falls from 75 shillings to 50 shillings the quarter, the whole of such a rent would be absorbed.

• This is even if the price of the whole produce of the farm did not fall in proportion to the price of grain, and making some allowance for a fall in the price of labour.

The regular cultivation of such land for grain would of course be given up.

Any sort of pasture, however scanty, would be more beneficial both to the landlord and farmer.

But a reduction in the real price of corn would prevent the future improvement of land, than in throwing land, which has been already improved, out of cultivation.

In all progressive countries, the average price of corn is never higher than what is necessary to continue the average increase of produce.

Most of the improved lands of most countries has a disposable produce, as called by the French economists.

• It is a portion which can be taken away without interfering with future production.

Yet, in reference to the whole of the actual produce and the rate at which it is increasing, there is no part of the price so disposable.

The French Economists made a fatal mistake of considering merely production and reproduction, and not the provision for an increasing population.

• This made their territorial tax an obstacle.

Great Britain would likely not be able to naturally grow an independent supply of corn from:

• the expenses attending enclosures
• the price of labour
• the weight of taxes

Instead, foreign corn will support:

• a part of our present population
• nearly the whole future population from the next 20-25 years

This will happen as long as:

• the prices of wheat in Great Britain were reduced by free importation nearly to a level with those of America and Europe
• our manufacturing prosperity continued increasing