Regulations affecting the Grain Trade

The general principles which govern the commerce of all other commodities, should be equally applicable to the commerce of grain.

But grain, or whatever else may happen to be the staple article of human subsistence to any people, deserves more particular notice.

Thus, the French consumer must necessarily have suffered by this monopoly= and so, in fact, he did. But, at any rate, it will be supposed, the company must have benefited. Just the contrary= the company was itself ruined; in spite of the mo- nopoly of tobacco, the lotteries, and other subsidiary grants bestowed on them by the government. 192 “In short,” says Voltaire, 193 “all that remained to France in the East was the regret of having, in the course of forty years, squandered enormous sums, to bolster up a company that never made a sixpence profit, never made any dividend from the resources of its commerce, either to its share-holders or creditors; and supported its establishments in India, solely by the underhand practice of pillage and extortion upon the natives.”

Populations increase in proportion to the supply of subsistence. The abundance and cheapness of provisions are favourable to the advance of population; their scarcity is productive of the opposite effect; 194 but neither cause operates so rapidly as the annual succession of crops. The crop of one year may, perhaps, exceed or fall short of the usual average, by as much as 1/5 or 1/4 but a country, that, like France, has thirty millions of inhabitants one year, cannot have 36 millions the next; nor could its population be reduced to twenty- four millions in the space of one year, without the most dreadful degree of suffering. Therefore it is the law of nature, that the population shall one year be superabundantly supplied with subsistence, and another year be subjected to scarcity in some degree or other of intensity.

The only case in which the establishment of an exclusive com- pany is justifiable, is, when there is no other way of com- mencing a new trade with distant or barbarous nations. In that case, the charter is. a kind of patent of invention, and confers an advantage, commensurate to the extraordinary risk and expense of the first experiment. The consumers have no reason to complain of the dearness of products, which, but for the grant of the charter, they would either not have en- And so, indeed, it is with all other objects of consumption; but, as the most of them are not absolutely indispensable to existence, the temporary privation of them amounts not to the absolute extinction of life.

The high price of a product, which has wholly or partially failed at home, is a powerful stimulus to commerce to import it from a greater distance and at a greater expense. But it is unsafe to leave wholly to the providence of individuals the care of supplying an article of such absolute necessity= the delay of which, but for a few days, may be a national calamity; the transport of which ex- ceeds the ordinary means of commerce; and whose weight and bulk would make its distant transport, especially by land, double or triple its. average price. If the foreign supply of corn be relied upon, it may happen to be scarce and dear in the exporting and importing country at the same moment. The government of the exporting country may prohibit the export, or a maritime war may interrupt the transport.

But the article is one the nation cannot do without; or even wait for a few days longer. Delay is death to a part of the population at least.

success? I am aware, that, in a few very limited communities, blessed with a very economical government, like some of the Swiss cantons, public granaries for storing a casual surplus have answered the purpose well enough. But I should pro- nounce them impracticable in large and populous countries. The advance of capital and its accruing interest would affect the government in the same manner as private speculators, and even in a greater degree; for there are few governments, that can borrow on such low terms as individuals in good credit. The difficulties of managing a commercial concern, of buying, storing, and re-selling to so large an extent, would be still more insuperable. Turgot, in his letters on the com- merce of grain, has clearly proved, that, in matters of this kind, a government never can expect to be served at a reason- able rate; all its agents having an interest in swelling its ex- penditure, and none of them in curtailing. It would be utterly impossible to answer for the tolerable conduct of a business left to the discretion of agents without any adequate control, whose actions are, for the most part, governed by the supe- rior dignitaries of the state, who seldom have either the knowl- edge or condescension requisite for such details. A sudden panic in the public authorities might prematurely empty the granaries; a political measure, or a war, divert their contents to quite a different destination.

For the purpose of equalizing the average consumption to the average crop, each family ought literally to lay by, in years of plenty for the deficiency of years of scarcity. But such provi- dence cannot be reckoned upon in the bulk of the population. A great majority, to say nothing of their utter want of fore- sight, are destitute of the means of keeping such a store in reserve sometimes several years together; neither have they the accommodations for housing it, or the means of taking it along with them on a casual change of abode.

Generally, there is no safe dependence for a reserve of supply against a season of scarcity, unless the business be confided to the discretionary manage- ment of mercantile houses of the first capital, credit, and in- telligence, willing to undertake the purchase, and the filling and replenishment of the granaries upon certain stipulated terms, and with the prospect of such advantages, as may fairly recompense them for all their trouble. The operation would then be safe and effectual, for the contractors would give se- curity for due performance; and it would also be cheaper ex- ecuted in this way than in any other.

Different establishments might be contracted with for the different cities of note. These being thus supplied in times of scarcity from the stores in reserve, would no longer drain the country of the subsis- tence destined to the agricultural population.