558

ON THE POLITICAL ECONOMY

scarcity or famine is prevented, by the liberty of importingforeign grain. In a country, however, situated as GreatBritain is at present, where the taxes, directly or indirectlyaffecting agriculture, are so high, the admission of foreigngrain, except under very great limitations, would be attend-ed with very ruinous consequences. This has already beenseverely felt: for though the rate of importation for wheat,was raised 4 s. 6 d. per quarter in 1791, and 13 s. per quartermore in 1804, yet neither of these were adequate to the in-creasing expences attending the cultivation of that commodi-ty. This is the more to be lamented, as the price of corn,and consequently the whole agricultural interests of the coun-try, may now be considered as entirely regulated by the rateat which importation is permitted.

Bounties on exportation .—With the view of promotingagriculture, bounties on the exportation of corn, in seasons ofplenty, have been granted. Dr Adam Smith and others havemaintained, that these bounties have produced no good effect.“ The extraordinary exportation occasioned by the bounty,”Dr Smith says, “ not only, in every particular year, dimini-shes the home, just as much as it extends the foreign marketand consumption, but, by restraining the population and in-dustry of the country, its final tendency is to stunt and re-strain the gradual extension of the home market, and there-by, in the long-run, rather to diminish than to augment thewhole market and consumption of corn Malthus has ablyrefuted these doctrines by observing, “ That a cultivation soextended, as to prepare an annual excess for a foreign vent, isthe best provision against those recurring years of deficiency ofcrop which may ever be expected, at no very long intervals;because, by suspending exportation, and confining to domes-tic supply, the product of that cultivation, which the foreignvent had excited, this greater breadth of cultivation will tend

* Wealth of Nations, Book 4 , e. 5.