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THE NATURE AND CAUSES OF

five shillings, therefore, which they contribute to the pay-ment of the first tax, they must contribute six pounds fourshillings to the payment of the second. So very heavy a taxupon the first necessary of life, must either reduce the subsis-tence of the labouring poor, or it must occasion some aug-mentation in their pecuniary wages, proportionable to thatin the pecuniary price of their subsistence. So far as it ope-rates in the one way, it must reduce the ability of the labour-ing poor to educate and bring up their children, and must, sofar, tend to restrain the population of the country. So far asit operates in the other, it must reduce the ability of the em-ployers of the poor, to employ so great a number as theyotherwise might do, and must, so far, tend to restrain the in-dustry of the country. The extraordinary exportation of corn,therefore, occasioned by the bounty, not only, in every par-ticular year diminishes the home, just as much as it extendsthe foreign market and consumption, but, by restraining thepopulation and industry of the country, its final tendency isto stint and restrain the gradual extension of the homemarket; and thereby, in the long run, rather to diminish,than to augment, the whole market and consumption of corn.

This enhancement of the money price of corn, however, ithas been thought, by rendering that commodity more profit-able to the farmer, must necessarily encourage its production.

I answer, that this might be the case if the effect of thebounty was to raise the real price of corn, or to enable thefarmer, with an equal quantity of it, to maintain a greaternumber of labourers in the same manner, whether liberal,moderate, or scanty, that other labourers are commonly main-tained in his neighbourhood. But neither the bounty, it isevident, nor any other human institution, can have any sucheffect. It is not the real, but the nominal price of corn, whichcan in any considerable degree be affected by the bounty.And though the tax which that institution imposes upon thewhole body of the people, may be very burdensome to thosewho pay it, it is of very little advantage to those who receive it.

The real effect of the bounty is not so much to raise the realvalue of corn, as to degrade the real value of silver; or tomake an equal quantity of it exchange for a smaller quantity,not oidy of corn, but of all other home-made commodities :for the money price of corn regulates that of all other home-made commodities.

It regulates the money price of labour, which must always