The Evils of the Corn Trade

What are the evils from the corn trade?

1. They say that security is still more important than wealth.

• A great country will likely excite the jealousy of others if it becomes dependent on them for foreign corn.
• It risks having corn cut off at its greatest need.

I reply that such a risk is not very great.

Those nations who raised the superabundant supply of corn would not want the commerce interrupted.

A rich country, which could afford to pay high for its corn, would not be likely to starve.

Governments act from passion rather than interest.

The recurrence of such a state of things is hardly to be expected, yet it must be allowed that if anything resembling it should take place in future, when, instead of very nearly growing our own consumption, we were indebted to foreign countries for the support of 2 millions of our people, the distresses which our manufacturers suffered in 1812 would be nothing compared with the wide-wasting calamity which would be then experienced.

According to the returns made to Parliament in the course of the last session, the quantity of grain and flour exported in 1811 exceeded the imports.

In 1812, the average price of wheat was 125 shillings the quarter.

• But the balance of the importations of grain and flour was only about 100,000 quarters.

From 1805, the price of grain had risen so high as to encourage our agriculture. The rise was due to:

• partly the corn laws passed in 1804
• more from from the difficulty and expense of importing corn from Europe and America

With the powerful assistance of Ireland, we had been rapidly approaching to the growth of an independent supply.

The danger of getting cut off from foreign corn is not so great.

2. An excessive manufacturing population does not seem favourable to national quiet and happiness.

The wages of manufacturing labour fluctuated greatly during:

• the last 4-5 years
• the whole course of the war

Sometimes they have been excessively high, and at other times proportionably low.

Even during peacetime, they have always fluctuated from:

• the caprices of taste and fashion, and
• the competition of other countries.

These fluctuations naturally tend to generate discontent and tumult and the evils which accompany them.

The situation and employment of a manufacturer and his family are even in their best state unfavourable to health and virtue.

And so it is not desirable that a very large proportion of society should consist of manufacturing labourers.

Wealth, population and power are only valuable if they improve, increase, and secure the mass of human virtue and happiness.

I reply that the condition of the individual employed in manufacturing is not desirable.

Yet most of the effects of manufactures and commerce on society are very beneficial.

They:

• infuse fresh life and activity into all classes
• afford opportunities for the inferior orders to rise by personal merit and exertion
• stimulate the higher orders to depend for distinction on other grounds than mere rank and riches
• excite invention
• encourage science and the useful arts
• spread intelligence and spirit
• inspire a taste for conveniences and comforts among the labouring classes
• above all, give a new and happier structure to society by increasing the proportion of the middle classes

The liberty, public spirit, and good government of every country mainly depends on the middle class.

A manufacturing society is superior to an agricultural one.

But it does not follow that the manufacturing system may not be carried to excess.

Beyond a certain point, its evils may increase further than its advantages.

The question is whether a manufacturing society would be happier than an agricultural one.

Many of the questions both in morals and politics are problems de maximis and minimis in fluxions.

• In them, there is always a point where a certain effect is the greatest, while on either side of this point it gradually diminishes.

I think that a country’s agriculture should keep pace with its manufactures, even at the expense of retarding in some degree the growth of manufactures.

But the natural course of things should not be broken just to produce and maintain such an equalization.