out of employment the artisans and mechanics engaged in fabricating the articles which are now sent abroad; and this deficiency of employment, acting as a natural and irresistible check upon the population of this country, or as a stimulus to make a portion of it emigrate into other countries in quest of work, will, by degrees, have the effect of reducing this population to the level of our home productions, and not of raising our home productions to the level of our population. Thus, in such a case, this country would undoubtedly possess a capacity of production equal to the wants of all its inhabitants; this all, however, which it would supply, would not be the number of manufacturers which are now employed in fabricating wrought goods for the foreign as well as the home market-it would supply a reduced number, barely sufficient to manufacture the wrought goods required for the home demand.

The line of argument by which an attempt has been thus made, to show that the free and unrestrained importation of foreign wheat, can have no effect in altering the proportion of demand and supply, and, consequently, cannot affect the money price of wheat, in the English market, will apply only to a period of some length. It is probable, that a very large and a very sudden increase in the quantity of foreign grain imported into England, may, for a time, have the effect of depreciating, to a certain degree, the value of that which is of home growth. But this effect, if produced at all, can never last for any length of time. The introduction of this foreign grain will make an early, if not an instantaneous, addition to the foreign demand for English manufactures; and there can be little doubt, that the addition thus made to the demand for manufactured goods to be sent abroad, will soon more than counterbalance the effect produced, in the corn market, by the increased supply of agricultural produce imported from abroad. And even while this influence lasts it is not, by any means, so powerful as many people are led to imagine. If no foreign corn had been imported into this country in the years 1819 and 1820, our manufacturers might and would have still continued in the distressed condition to which a deficiency of employment had reduced them in 1817 and 1818; but I do not believe that the absence of this foreign supply, which now sets them at work, would have added one shilling per quarter to the money price of wheat in England. Were there no restrictions on the importation of foreign corn, no sudden overflow could ever take place; the demand and supply would be equal and steady, and its effect would not be felt in the English market. The large and sudden importation of foreign corn, during the years 1819 and 1820, produced, no doubt, some effect on the money price of corn in this country, but this effect

was certainly temporary and inconsiderable. This foreign wave, if it may be so termed, on its first coming in contact with the produce of the British agriculturist, did, perhaps in some degree, affect its money price; but it soon made its way into our manufacturing districts, and has been extensively, as well as powerfully felt, in the vigor which it has infused into our languishing manufactories. The impulse thus given to the operations of our manufacturers, who were literally perishing for want, was seen and still continues to be seen, in the large increase, which has taken place in our export trade: and this increase, in our exports, has more than counterbalanced the influence of this foreign supply. In the year ending the 5th January, 1819, a much larger, quantity of foreign wheat was imported into England than during any previous year since 1792, when the corn return ordered to be printed by the House of Commons in 1821, commences; The year 1811 approaches nearest to 1819 in the quantity of foreign corn imported. I shall extract the quantity of wheat imported during the last eleven years, contained in this return.—

On examining the account of the quantities of several articles charged with duties of excise, in each of the last four years ending 5th January, 1821, printed by order of the House of Lords, it will be seen, that the quantity of malt, beer, spirits, both British and foreign, charged with excise duties in the year ending 5th January, 1819, exceeds the quantity which paid these duties in 1818, 1820, or 1821, the three other years embraced in this statement. If then the importation of foreign wheat was more abundant in the year ending 5th January, 1819, than in any other year, so must also the consumption have been, and this increase of consumption took place, I will not say exclusively, but principally, in the manufacturing districts, where an increase of demand for manufactured goods was created, to send abroad in return for the additional quantity of agricultural produce imported hither.

Comparing then the account of foreign grain imported, with the account of the quantities of the several articles charged with duties of excise, in each of the last four years, ending the 5th January, 1821, it must instantly appear, that the excess of the articles charged with excise duties, in the year ending on the 5th January, 1819, bears a very striking proportion to the excess of foreign grain imported during the same year: an excessive quantity of foreign wheat being imported into this country, during that year, for the purpose of being converted into the manufactured goods wanted for the use of the foreign grower, produced a corresponding increase in the amount of exciseable articles consumed during the same period. This excess of the exciseable articles consumed in that year, was the effect then of the increased demand for manufactured goods required for exportation, in return for the extra quantity of agricultural produce imported from abroad. The demand for corn, to meet the wants of the additional number of manufacturers employed in fabricating the goods thus sent abroad, rose in proportion to the addition made to the home supply by foreign importation. The argument to show that the excessive quantity of corn imported, in the year ending 5th January, 1819, had not the effect which it is generally supposed to have produced on the money price of corn, in the English market, will therefore stand thus: a large excess, over the usual quantity of foreign grain, was imported into England, in the year ending 5th January, 1819: this produced an excess over the usual demand of manufactured goods for exportation. The manufacture of this additional quantity of wrought goods created an increased demand for agricultural produce in the British market, proportioned to the addition made to the average home supply, by the introduction of foreign grain; as an increase of the demand for agricultural produce, in the British market, was effected by the excess of foreign

grain imported, in 1819; and as this additional demand could not have taken place if this foreign produce had been excluded, it follows that the relative proportion of the whole of the demand, to the whole of the supply, was not at all disturbed, and the money price of wheat in the English market, could not, therefore, be affected by this circumstance.

Before the observations on the effect produced by the importation of foreign wheat into this country are finally closed, I must be permitted to say a word or two, with regard to the opinions of those who look forward to the period when England shall become a corn exporting country, as the very summit of that public prosperity to which they wish to see it raised. It is difficult to know exactly, how these worthy persons should be dealt with-they are, it is to be feared, beyond the reach of argument; and, however mistaken in their views, they are still much too honest, too well meaning, and too sincere, to deserve the application of sarcasm and ridicule, as weapons to expose the absurdity of such a wish. I must then be permitted to suggest to them the probability, nay, the certainty, that this bright moment will not arrive till the natural and local advantages, which this island presents to the manufacturer, cease to exist-till our superiority in skill and the mechanical contrivances for the abridgment of human and animal labor, which these advantages have suggested and called into action, shall finally disappear: then, perhaps, Britain may become once more, as it was in the time of our tattooed ancestors, the exporter of the raw and scanty produce of a barren and uncultivated soil. When the island ceases to be dissected, in all directions, with streams and rivulets presenting numberless spots favorable for manufacturing speculation-when the coals which are now dug out of the bowels of the earth, and form, perhaps by far, the most important article in aiding the operations of the manufacturer, shall have been entirely exhausted; or when the energy of private enterprise shall have been crippled, and the direction of private capital diverted and controlled by injudicious fiscal regulations; then, the halcyon days may possibly arrive, when the British agriculturist shall enjoy the envied advantages of exporting the raw produce of his farm to be converted into cotton goods on the banks of the Seine, at no more than four or five times the expense which its conversion into the same manufactured articles would have cost him on the banks of the Mersey or the Ribble.

The ultra exclusionists, to borrow a barbarous term from the slang of modern politics, are not satisfied with the negative success of preventing the foreigner from bringing hither his agricultural produce to be converted into the manufactured articles which he wants, but they aspire to the positive advantage of obliging the VOL. XVIII. Pam. NO. XXXVI. 2 H

English farmer to carry his corn abroad to be exchanged for foreign manufactures: and, I am not sure that the views of the one party are not to the full as rational as those of the other; there are, I conceive, but few, who would give a rush to be allowed to choose between them-I, for one, would as lief strike upon Scylla as be swallowed up by Charybdis. What would those persons, who wish to see England a corn exporting country, say to the conduct of a corn grower in the neighbourhood of Sheffield, who should send his grain to Glasgow to be exchanged for cotton goods, instead of exchanging it at his own door for the hardware which he might transport thither at half the expense of time and labor which sending his corn would require?

Those who are desirous of seeing corn exported out of England, cannot surely, have the most distant conception of the cause which brings foreign corn into this country. It is not brought hither, as many suppose, because it is grown, in other countries, at less expense than its production requires in this-but simply because the local and artificial means which the British manufacturer possesses for the abridgment of human and animal labor, effecting a proportionate diminution in the quantity of agricultural produce consumed in the process, enable him to convert a given quantity of corn into a much larger portion of cotton goods, or any other manufactured articles, than the same quantity of corn could be converted into where these facilities are unknown. Mechanical contrivances for the abridgment of labor enable him to manufacture a given quantity of wrought goods with a much smaller consumption of agricultural produce, than would be required where no part of this process is effected by machinery. England, therefore, sending corn abroad, would act like a corn grower in the neighbourhood of Manchester, who having a surplus quantity of agricultural produce, which he wishes to have converted into cotton goods, instead of availing himself of the mechanical aid which a Lancashire cotton mill offered him, would send this produce to be manufactured into the articles which he wants, into a distant country, where the powerful aid of machinery has not been adopted as a substitute for the labor required in this process. It is scarcely credible, that any man of sane mind should be found capable of recommending such an absurd proceeding, as advantageous to an agriculturist living in the neighbourhood of Manchester; and it is equally incredible, that any person should consider it beneficial, that this country, possessing, as it does, an incalculable superiority over others in the means of applying the resources of mechanism to manufacturing operations, should forego these advantages, and send its agricultural produce abroad, in a raw state, instead of converting it into manufactured goods. The dullest intellect must instantly perceive that agricultural produce, when converted into