so vast and so sudden an importation. Had the English ports been opened for a year, it is probable that the importation would not have been much greater, but it would have been more gradual, and consequently not SO ruinous; a moderate advance on the continent, and a moderate reduction in England, would have taken place. The consumer in England has alone profited, the importers from the continent having on the whole lost much money by the speculation. The net price produced from England has been found insufficient to pay the moderate price of the continental farmer.

"The result, therefore, of this transaction, has been a ruinous depression in the markets here, and a very heavy loss to all engaged in the importation." 43. Your Committee cannot but remark that this importation, large as it was, amounted to no more than 726, 873 quarters; and that our annual consumption of oats has been estimated, for Great Britain only, at near 30 millions of quarters; thus forcibly illustrating the effect of a comparatively trifling excess in a market of grain already abundantly supplied.

44. If such be the consequences of the present system, they sufficiently point out the nature of those inconveniences to which it may expose the grower, the dealer at home, and the foreign importer in his speculation, abroad. When Your Committee finds for instance, in the seventeen months which passed between January 1816 and June 1817, the price of wheat varying from 53s 1d. to 112s. 7d. and again, in the three months which ensued from June to September 1817, from 112s. 7d. to 74s. they cannot but ask, whether fluctuations so rapid and extensive have existed in any other commodity of universal supply and demand, or in any other country? and whether these fluctuations may not have been aggravated by some of the effects of the present law?

45. With respect to the effects which may be produced in this country, all the internal and commercial transactions of which so mainly depend on circulating credit, by a sudden revu!sion in the foreign exchanges, the experience of the last thirty years is a sufficient warning. Your Committee therefore feel a confident assurance, that when the attention of the House is called to the subject, it will examine with a jealous care for the public

interest, how far the present system of the corn trade has a tendency to bring upon the country the renewal of this calamity.

46. They are the more anxious to press upon the attentive consideration of the House, the possible tendency of this system of alternation between absolute prohibition and unlimited competition, from feeling that it is not founded upon a principle which has the sanction of long usage in its favour. Both the alternatives of the present system, in their present full extent, may be said to have been introduced, for the first time, by the Act of 1815. Until that period positive prohibition was unknown to our corn laws, and importation was never permitted without the payment of some duty. The amount of that duty, it is true, when grain was above certain prices, which were reckoned the incipient indications of an inadequate supply from our own growth, was very little more than nominal; at prices somewhat lower, it was very moderate; and it was only when the prices had fallen, and remained for some time below that second stage in the scale, that any duty sufficiently high to check the importation attached, but subject to that duty the trade still continued to be free. The scale for instance, by which importation was regulated in the article of wheat, up to the year 1815, was as follows:-When the average price was at or above 66s. duty on importation 6d. a quarter; between 66s. and 63s. duty on importation 2s. 6d. below 638. duty 24s. 3d. The latter duty, Your Committee think it fit to observe, operated generally as a prohibition during the short periods that it was payable.

47. This was the principle of our Corn Law, as far as relates to importation, ever since the year 1773, although the scale at which the different rates of duty commenced had more than once been raised. Its practical operation appears to have been as follows:-That from the year 1773 to the year 1814,-during which period the total imports of corn have greatly exceeded the total exports, the former amounting to 30,430,189 quarters, and the latter to 5,801,440 quarters,-the ports have been constantly open and the trade free, upon the payment of a duty merely nominal, with the excoption of a few short intervals when the high duty was demandable :-that from

the year 1773 to the year 1792, (with the exception of the years of the American war, in which freights and insurance might be somewhat increased) the only advantage of protection which the British grower had over the foreigner, was in the amount of this nominal duty, together with the ordinary expence of peace freights, and other charges of conveyance in bringing the foreign grain to market;-and that from the year 1792 to 1814, that protection continued the same, so far as related to the duty, but was, in fact, considerably enhanced by the high rates of charge incident to the late war, and particularly by the peculiar circumstances of the continent, during the last ten years of that war. It is also to he remarked, that, up to the year 1806, the trade in corn with Ireland was under restriction; and that, since the operation of the wise law passed in that year, the importation of grain from that part of the United Kingdom, free from any charge or duty, has amounted, up to the 5th of January last, to 12,304,730 quarters, whereas the whole import from Ireland in thirty-two years, between 1773 and 1806, was only, 7,534,202 quarters.

48. The necessary consequence of the trade in corn having been virtually open with the continent, and the importation allowed at duties merely nominal, during this period of forty years, has been, that the general price, at the shipping ports on the continent, has not, upon an average, been materially lower than the price in England, except to the amount of the charges to be incurred in bringing the foreign corn to the markets of this country. The price, at a distance from those shipping ports, and in the districts which have not the benefit of good roads or internal navigation, it is true, has been much lower, but this difference was absorbed in the expence and risk of transporting it from those districts. The quantity that can be supplied, without incurring that expence, is limited; and in proportion as the prices in England have been high, has the interior circle on the continent from which the supplies have been drawn, been extended.

which those scarcities respectively occasioned whilst the mode in which every rise in the price at home adds to the power and inducement of increasing the foreign importation, shows that any increase of the rates, at which the import commences under the present system, would only tend, whenever the ports should open, to aggravate the fluctuation, and the other inconveniences which appear to your Committee to appertain to the principle of alternate monopoly and free impor tation.

50. Your Committee are the more anxious to impress upon the attention of the House the real state of our trade in foreign corn, between the years 1773 and 1814, as it appears to them, taken in counexion with the progress of general prosperity in the country, and more especially with the great improvements in agriculture, and its highly flourishing condition during that period, to suggest to Parliament, as a matter highly deserving of their future consideration, whether a trade in corn, constantly open to all nations of the world, and subject only to such a fixed duty as might compensate to the grower the loss of that encouragement which he received during the late war from the obstacles thrown in the way of free importation, and thereby protect the capitals now vested in agriculture from an unequal competition in the home market,-is not, as a permanent system, preferable to that state of law by which the corn trade is now regulated. It would be indispensable, for the just execution of this principle, that such duty should be calculated fairly to countervail the difference of expence, including the ordinary rate of profit, at which corn, in the present state ofthis country, can be grown and brought to market within the United Kingdom, compared with the expence, including also the ordinary rate of profit, of producing it in any of those countries from whence our principal supplies of foreign corn have usually been drawn, joined to the ordinary charges of conveying it from thence to our markets.

of the present moment for attempting such a change, when, owing to the general abundance of the late harvests

in Europe, and to the markets of this country having been shut against foreign corn for nearly thirty months, a great accumulation has taken place in the shipping ports on the continent, and in the warehouses of foreign corn in this country; and when that accumulation, from want of any vent, is held at very low prices, and might tend still further to depress the already overstocked markets of this country, if allowed to be introduced at this period, except at such a high rate of duty as it would be inexpedient to attempt, and moreover very difficult to determine. The present market price of the corn thus accumulated. is not the measure of the cost at which it has been produced, or of the rate at which it can be afforded by the foreign grower, but the result of a general glut of the article, of a long want of demand, and of extreme distress and heavy loss on the part of those by whom it has been raised, and of those by whom it is now held, either in the warehouses of the continent or of this country.

52. Assuming, therefore, that under the present circumstances of the case, Parliament would not now deem it expedient to abandon entirely the principle of the existing law, Your Committee have anxiously directed their attention to the possibility of, in some degree, modifying its operation, so as to remedy that inconvenience to which they have more particularly referred in the earlier part of their Report;-which consists in the sudden and irregular manner in which in many cases foreign corn may be introduced upon the opening of the ports, under circumstances inconsistent with the spirit and intention of the law. They conceive that this object might be attained by the imposition of a fixed duty upon corn, whenever, upon the opening of the ports, it should become admissible for home consumption. It would, however, be necessary, in case this suggestion should be carried into effect, that the present import price should be fixed at a lower rate, because it is obvious that the duty would otherwise not only check the sudden and overwhelming amount of import, but also enhance the price beyond what it might reach under the present law; an effect which Your Committee are so far from desirous of producing, that they think it would probably be expedient additionally to guard against it, by providing, that, after corn should have reached some

given high price, the duty should cease altogether.

53. If such a change in the operation of the corn laws should have the effect of checking extravagant speculation and extensive import, it would be equally beneficial to the grower and the consumer. It would apply some remedy to the evil of which almost all the Petitions referred to Your Committee so loudly complain, and it bas no tendency, either hastily or prematurely, to affect the principle upon which is rested that protection which the law now gives to the Agricultural interest of the country.

54. It is not the province of Your Committee to specify any precise permanent duty for the protection of the British grower; nor should they perhaps, be adequately prepared so to do without further inquiry; nor until the obstacle to that inquiry, created by the present accumulation and glut, shall be removed. At the same time, they incline to the opinion, that leaving to every part of the United Kingdom the inestimable public benefit of the most full and free competition in the home market, without regard to the difference of fertility in the soil or of expense in its cultivation, either from a difference in the price of labour, or in the amount of local and public burthens directly affecting the land; it may, perhaps, be difficult, if not impossible, putting rent out of the question, for the occupiers of some of the poorest and most expensive soils now under tillage in Great Britain, to bring their produce to market in competition with the more fertile lands of this country, and especially of Ireland. Your Committee would be anxious to suggest, for the consideration of Parliament, as the principle and basis of the trade in foreign corn, such a protecting duty upon the produce of other countries, as would not aggravate to the occupiers of such soils the present difficulty of that competition. The general question, how far the forced cultivation of some of those inferior lands may have been expedient or advantageous for the public interest, is one upon which it is unnecessary to offer a positive opinion. They can, however, have no difficulty in stating that, within the limits of the existing competition at home, the exertions of industry and the investment of capital in Agriculture, ought to be protected against any revulsion, but that the

protection ought not to go further;---and that, if protected to that extent, the growth of our population, the accumulation of our internal wealth, affording increased employment to that population, and consequently increased means of purchasing all those articles of consumption and enjoyment, which must be derived from the soil of this country, will continue to give, as they have given during the last 60 years, the most effectual stimulus and encouragement to the progressive improvement of our Agriculture, and to the consequent value of the landed property of the kingdom;-that, under such a system, there can be no apprehension that either will permanently retrograde, (except in so far as rents may be nominally affected by the resumption of cash payments) or even be for any time stationary,-so long as our institutions continue to afford, to capital and industry, that superior degree of security and protection which they have hitherto found in this country,- —so long as public credit and good faith keep pace with that security and protection, and as we avoid any course which, in a time of peace, and possibly of improving confidence in the stability of the institutions of other countries, might drive capital to seek a more profitable employment in foreign states. It is under the impression that the present Corn Law, together with the amount of our taxation, by diminishing the profits of capital, have such a tendency, that your Committee suggest the modifications which have been pointed out, as fit for further inquiry and investigation; and that they feel it their duty, also, to accompany that suggestion with a most earnest recommendation, that every opportunity should be watched, and every practical measure adopted, for reducing the amount of the Public Expenditure; as the only means of approximating to a state of Finance, which, without impairing the credit of the country, may lead to a diminution of the existing burthens of the People.

55. Your Committee have abstained from urging, in favour of an open intercourse in foreign corn, those general principles of freedom of trade, which are now universally acknowledged to be sound and true, in reference to the commerce of nations. If it be for the wisdom of the House, on the one hand,

to endeavour to revert to those principles as far as practicable, in this, and in all other cases: on the other, it is also for its prudence and its justice to take care, in that application, to spare vested interests, to deal tenderly with those obstacles to improvement which the long existence of a vicious and artificial system too often creates, and sometimes even to modify and limit that principle, in reference to considerations of general policy connected with the institutions, or the safety of the State. Looking to the possible contingencies of war, Your Committee are not insensible to the importance of securing the country from a state of dependence upon other, and possibly hostile, countries, for the subsistence of its population ;-looking to the Institutions of the country, in their several bearings and influence in the practice of our constitution, they are still more anxious to preserve to the landed interest, the weight, station and ascendancy, which it has enjoyed so long, and used so beneficially. Their first wish, therefore, is, that, whatever general suggestions they may offer, should be scrupulously examined with a due regard to these two considerations.

56. As they have adverted to the state of the country between 1773 and 1814, as connected with the important subject of their enquiry, it may perhaps assist others, in their researches and reflexions, to state, that Your Committee selected that period, because the Year 1773 was, in fact, the commencement of a great change in the practical operation, if not in the avowed policy of our Corn Laws. From that date, the aggregate balance of our imports of grain, taken upon a series of years, began to exceed the balance of our exports. But upon looking back from that year to the period of the revolution in 1688, (a space of 85 years) our exports taken for any number of years, on the contrary, exeeeded our imports. From the year 1697, (the earliest date from which accurate returns have been made) to the year 1773, the total excess of exports was, 30,968,366 quarters; upon which exports bounties, amounting to £6,237, 176, were paid out of the public Revenue. A course, somewhat similar in principle, of exciting an export by a bounty, but more desultory in its application, and more frequently inter

rupted by arbitrary interference, prevailed under the Princes of the house of STUART and if we look to a still earlier period, we find that the same policy of forcing the growth of corn was attempted, by harsher expedients, during the reigns of the TUDORS. Be tween the reign of Henry the 7th and the 39th of Elizabeth, numerous Acts* of Parliament were passed, for the express purpose of encouraging tillage. Those laws proceeded upon the principle of compulsion, limiting for instance, the number of sheep and live stock, prohibiting the conversion of arable into pasture, and enjoining the breaking up of pastures, which had at any previous period been arable, either under a pecuniary penalty, or a forfeiture of half the land, "until the of fence be reformed."

57. These compulsory laws, (all of which it may be observed preceded the introduction of that Act which laid the foundation of the system of our Poor Laws,) appear to have been priucipally suggested by a wish to find employment for the population, and to relieve their misery, by enforcing an extension of cultivation beyond the wants of the country. But, neither under those laws, nor under the subsequent attempt to augment the produce of our Agriculture, by the creation of a fictitious foreign demand, excited by a large bounty on exportation, did the Agriculture of this country make any advance, at all to be compared to that unparalleled prosperity, which began with the decline of that system, about the beginning of the last reign, and which, with some few temporary interruptions, has marked its progress up to the present time. In comparing the two periods, each of nearly equal duration, between the peace of Utrecht and the commence ment of the seven years war, and between the years 1773 and 1814, and recollecting that the first period was one of almost uninterrupted peace; and that nearly thirty years of the latter have passed away in the exertions of two most expensive wars ;that, during the former period, the market interest of money was generally much below, and during the latter, frequently as much above the

* 4 Hen. 7. c. 19.-7 Hen. 8. c. 1. 25 Hen. 8. c. 13.-27 Hen. 8. c. 32. 5 & 6 Edw. 6, c, 5.-5 Eliz. c. 2.-39 Eliz. C. 2.

rate fixed by law;-that during the former, the aim of the legislature was, by artificial means, to divert the ap plication of capital from other employments to that of Agriculture, as well by positive bounties which forced an export of grain to other countries, as by duties which generally altogether precluded its import either from the continent or from Ireland;-that during the latter, Agriculture has, in point of fact, been without either of those stimulants; Your Committee cannot look at these contrasted circumstances, coincident during the first period, with a comparative stagnation of our Agriculture; and during the second, with its most rapid growth and improvement, without acknowledging that there was nothing in the system pursued up to 1773, which necessarily promoted this most essential branch of public industry and national wealth; and also, that there is nothing incompatible with the success of both these objects, in the system which has practically prevailed since that date. If the quantity of wheat, the growth of Great Britain, was truly estimated, as it was estimated in 1773, at four millions of quarters, and if it cannot now be stated so low as at double that amount, it is evident that the change of system has been attended with no defalcation of produce. If, since that year, the number of cattle and sheep has been vastly augmented, their breeds improved, and by those improvements, their size and aptness to fatten, and in sheep their fleeces greatly increased; if, by this augmentation of live stock, a greater quantity of manure has been produced; if all the most important but expensive meliorations of modernhusbandry have been introduced; if scientific drainages have been undertaken, and extensive wastes inclosed, to augment the produce of the land,it cannot be said that there has been a want of encouragement to invest large and adequate capitals in this branch of national industry.

58. If from Agriculture, Your Committee look to the permanent Improvements which have been made in the country itself within the same period, the Bridges which have been built, the Roads which have been formed, the Rivers which have been rendered navigable, the Canals which have been completed, the Harbours which have been made and improved, the Docks which have been created,-not by the