An Essay on Profits [8]
driven to such an alternative, and that notwithstanding the war, we should be freely supplied with the corn, expressly grown in foreign counties for our consumption. Buonaparte, when he was most hostile to us, permitted the exportation of corn to England by licences, when our prices were high from a bad harvest, even when all other commerce was prohibited. Such a state of things could not come upon us suddenly; a danger of this nature would be partly foreseen, and due precautions would be taken. Would it be wise then to legislate with the view of preventing an evil which might never occur; and to ward off a most improbable danger, sacrifice annually a revenue of some millions? In contemplating a trade in corn, unshackled by restrictions on importation, and a consequent supply from France, and other countries, where it can be brought to market, at a price not much above half that at which we can ourselves produce it on some of our poorer lands, Mr Malthus does not sufficiently allow for the greater quantity of corn, which would be grown abroad, if importation was to become the settled policy of this country. There cannot be the least doubt that if the corn countries could depend on the markets of England for a regular demand, if they could be perfectly secure that our laws, respecting the corn trade, would not be repeatedly vacillating between bounties, restrictions, and prohibitions, a much larger supply would be grown, and the danger of a greatly diminished exportation, in consequence of bad seasons, would be less likely to occur. Countries which have never yet supplied us, might, if our policy was fixed, afford us a considerable quantity. It is at such times that it would be particularly the interest of foreign countries to supply our wants, as the exchangeable value of corn does not rise in proportion only to the deficiency of supply, but two, three, four, times as much, according to the amount of the deficiency. If the consumption of England is ten million quarters, which, in an average year, would sell for forty millions of money; and, if the supply should be deficient one fourth, the seven million five hundred thousand quarters would not sell for forty millions only, but probably for fifty millions, or more. Under the circumstances then of bad seasons, the exporting country would content itself with the smallest possible quantity necessary for their own consumption, and would take advantage of the high price in England, to sell all they could spare, as not only would corn be high, as compared with money, but as compared with all other things; and if the growers of corn adopted any other rule, they would be in a worse situation, as far as regarded wealth, than if they had constantly limited the growth of corn to the wants of their own people. If one hundred millions of capital were employed on the land, to obtain the quantity necessary to their own subsistence, and twenty millions more, that they might export the produce, they would lose the whole return of the twenty millions in the scarce year, which they would not have done had they not been an exporting country. At whatever price exportation might be restricted, by foreign countries, the chance of corn rising to that price would be diminished by the greater quantity produced in consequence of our demand. With respect to the supply of corn, it has been remarked, in reference to a single country, that if the crops are bad in one district, they are generally productive in another; that if the weather is injurious to one soil, or to one situation, it is beneficial to a different soil and different situation; and, by this compensating power, Providence has bountifully secured us from the frequent recurrence of dearths. If this remark be just, as applied to one country, how much more strongly may it be applied to all the countries together which compose our world? Will not the deficiency of one country be made up by the plenty of another? and, after the experience which we have had of the power of high prices to procure a supply, can we have any