grower of corn of the foreign market, which, previous to 1815, it appears from the annexed table, he enjoyed to the extent of one sixth and more of the quantity imported; a fact confirmed by the Agricultural Committee of 1821.*

The amount of export in the fifteen years ending in 1800 was very little less than the amount of the export in the thirteen years ending in 1785; so that it appears, that the export in the fifteen years which followed 1785 had improved, and the export in the fifteen years ending. in 1815 was very nearly equal to the export in the fifteen preceding years. Whether the state of our agriculture, therefore, is to be judged of from the continuance of the diminution of the imports of corn, or the prevalence of its exports, both afford unerring evidence of its improvement from 1773 to 1815. The export did not fall off

The Agricultural Committee of 1821, state our total imports to have amounted to 30,438,189 quarters, in the forty years ending in 1814; during which forty years, they also state our total exports to have been 5,801,440 quarters. It appears, from the annexed table, that, in the forty-two years ending in 1815, our total imports of corn were 45,404,387 quarters; and our total exports 7,229,937 quarters, which gives nearly the same proportion.

+ The export in 1813, in which the Custom House was burnt, could not be given. If to the amount returned onefourth be added to the exports in the five years ending in 1815, the exports in these fifteen years amount to 2,426,807 quarters, which brings the amount to within 45,568 quarters of the export of the fifteen years ending in 1800.

to much in the five years ending in 1820 as is did afterwards; because the depreciation of our currency, until that year, kept our bullion prices on a par with those on the Continent: but now our export of corn has dwindled to nothing.

This consequence alone would afford a sufficient reason why the present corn laws should be repealed; because no branch of domestic industry can be in a wholesome state when, by operation of law, its products cannot be exported.*

*It may not be unprofitable, at the present time, to recur to the consequences which followed the prohibition of the exportation of corn at a remarkable period of our history. In the year 1596, a judicious paper was drawn up by a magistrate of the county of Somerset, preserved by Strype, and adverted to by Hume, in an Appendix to the volume which contains the history of the reign of Elizabeth, in which the author says, that "forty persons had been there executed "in a year for robberies, thefts, and other felonies; thirty"five burnt in the hand; thirty-seven whipped; one hun"dred and eighty-three discharged: that those who were "discharged were most wicked and desperate persons, who "never would come to good, because they would not work, "and none would take them into service; that, notwithstanding the great number of indictments, the fifth part of "the felonies committed in the county were not brought to "trial: the greater number escaped censure, either from the "superior cunning of the felons, the remissness of the ma"gistrates, or the foolish lenity of the people; that the rapines committed by the infinite number of wicked, wan"dering, idle people, were intolerable to the poor country"men, and obliged them to keep a perpetual watch on their

But the laws passed in and since 1815 not only prevent the exportation of corn, but en

"sheepfolds, their pastures, their woods, aud their corn"fields; that the other counties in England were in no better "condition than Somersetshire, and many of them even in a "worse; that there were at least three or four hundred "able-bodied vagabonds in every county who lived by theft "and rapine, and who sometimes met in troops, to the "number of sixty, and committed spoil on the inhabitants; "that if all the felons of this kind were assembled, they "would be able, if reduced to good subjection, to give the "greatest enemy her majesty has a strong battle; and that "the magistrates themselves were intimidated from exe"cuting the laws upon them: and there were instances of "justices of the peace who, after giving sentence against 66 rogues, had interposed to stop the execution of their own 66 sentence, on account of the danger which hung over them "from the confederates of the felons."

The exportation of corn had been prohibited by the 34 Ed. 3. c. 20., and the 1 & 2 Ph. & M. c. 5., as well as by the 5 Eliz. C. 5. § 26. ; 13 Eliz. c. 13.; and 35 Eliz. c. 7. § 23., to which these consequences are ascribed by Hume. They may serve to account for the numerous acts passed, in the reigns of the Tudors, for the encouragement of tillage, rendered unprofitable by the impossibility of exporting its produce; and for the numerous acts passed in these reigns relative to the poor, deprived of work through the operation of restrictive corn laws, finally made permanent by the 43d Eliz. c. 2., generally supposed to have been rendered necessary by the abolition of the monasteries.

The consequences of the non-export of corn in the time of Queen Elizabeth, from the operation of prohibitory laws, may also serve to account for the burnings of agricultural produce in Normandy, under the operation of restrictive corn laws

courage the importation of it, by conferring upon the dealer in foreign corn an advantage, and exposing the home grower of corn to an inequality of competition which he cannot sustain.

The dealer in foreign corn has always the foreign market open to him, which is shut against the home grower. He can also avail himself always of the home market when he chooses, after the importable price is reached, under circumstances favourable to him and disadvantageous to the home grower; while the home grower has only his own market to resort to, in which he is interfered with by the dealer in foreign corn, when such interference is most inconvenient and most disastrous to him. There being a deficiency of growth in Great Britain, the dealer in foreign corn is certain that, sooner or later, the price must rise to the importable price, and he will enter his foreign corn for home consumption at the time when he can gain most by a rise in the price, and by saving upon the duty. Moreover, he knows the state

even worse than our own; and for the disturbances in our agricultural districts that occurred two years ago,which were ascribed to seditious agitators, as the burnings in Normandy were ascribed to the excitement produced by the Parisian three days of July, 1830; though these burnings happened three months before the events of these three days.

of the market much better than the home grower, whom he can always deprive of a good price, at the time when it is most necessary to him, and when he has counted most upon it. The advantage is thus always on the side of the foreign dealer, and the disadvantage on the part of the home grower, who cannot escape loss under this inequality of competition.

Every farmer knows, that, in bad seasons, a high price does not compensate for the smaller quantity; and the inferior quality of the grain he can send to market. The attempt made by the Corn Laws to ensure to him a high price in plentiful seasons has deprived him of a high price in bad seasons. It has, moreover, made every season operate as a bad season to him: his crops are becoming every year more scanty, through the operation of restraining Corn Laws, which, in place of preventing, progressively increase the importation of foreign corn. A high price, in Great Britain, if it were suffered to arise from natural causes, and to operate abroad as it does at home, would always ensure to him a preference in the home market; but, produced by artificial means, the higher it is raised by such means, it only enables the more distant foreign grower to come into competition with the nearer foreign grower, and all to come into competition