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IV.

BOOK as bounties. By encouraging extraordinary dexterity and ingenuity, they ferve to keep up the emulation of the workmen actually employed in those respective occupations, and are not confiderable enough to turn towards any one of them a greater share of the capital of the country than what would go to it of its own accord. Their tendency is not to overturn the natural balance of employments, but to render the work which is done in each as perfect and complete as poffible. The expence of premiums, befides, is very trifling; that of bounties very great. The bounty upon corn alone has fometimes coft the public in one year more than three hundred thousand pounds.

BOUNTIES are fometimes called premiums, as drawbacks are fometimes called bounties. But we must in all cafes attend to the nature of the thing, without paying any regard to the word.

Digreffion concerning the Corn Trade and Corn
Laws.

I

CANNOT conclude this chapter concerning bounties, without obferving that the praises which have been beftowed upon the law which establishes the bounty upon the exportation of corn, and upon that fyftem of regulations which is connected with it, are altogether unmerited. A particular examination of the nature of the corn trade, and of the principal British laws which relate to it, will fufficiently demonftrate

the

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the truth of this affertion. The great importance CHA P. of this fubject muft juftify the length of the digreffion.

THE trade of the corn merchant is compofed of four different branches, which, though they may fometimes be all carried on by the fame perfon, are in their own nature four separate and diftinct trades. Thefe are, firft, the trade of the inland dealer; fecondly, that of the merchant importer for home confumption; thirdly, that of the merchant exporter of home produce for foreign confumption; and, fourthly, that of the merchant carrier, or of the importer of corn in order to export it again.

I. THE intereft of the inland dealer, and that of the great body of the people, how oppofite foever they may at firft fight appear, are, even in years of the greatest scarcity, exactly the fame. It is his intereft to raise the price of his corn as high as the real scarcity of the season requires, and it can never be his interest to raise it higher. By raising the price he discourages the confumption, and puts every body more or lefs, but particularly the inferior ranks of people, upon thrift and good management. If, by raifing it too high, he difcourages the confumption fo much that the supply of the season is likely to go beyond the confumption of the feafon, and to laft for fome time after the next crop begins to come in, he runs the hazard, not only of lofing a confiderable part of his corn by natural causes, but of being obliged to fell what remains of it for much less than what he might have had U 2 for

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BOOK for it feveral months before. If by not raifing the price high enough he difcourages the consumption fo little, that the fupply of the season is likely to fall short of the consumption of the season, he not only lofes a part of the profit which he might otherwife have made, but he exposes the people to fuffer before the end of the feafon, inftead of the hardfhips of a dearth, the dreadful horrors of a famine. It is the interest of the people that their daily, weekly, and monthly confumption, fhould be proportioned as exactly as poffible to the fupply of the feafon. The intereft of the inland corn dealer is the fame. By fupplying them, as nearly as he can judge, in this proportion, he is likely to fell all his corn for the highest price, and with the greatest profit; and his knowledge of the ftate of the crop, and of his daily, weekly, and monthly fales, enable him to judge, with more or less accuracy, how far they really are fupplied in this manner. Without intending the intereft of the people, he is neceffarily led, by a regard to his own intereft, to treat them, even in years of fcarcity, pretty much in the fame manner as the prudent mafter of a veffel is fometimes obliged to treat his crew. When he forefees that provifions are likely to run fhort, he puts them upon fhort allowance. Though from excefs of caution he should fometimes do this without any real neceffity, yet all the inconveniencies which his crew can thereby fuffer are inconfiderable, in comparison of the danger, mifery, and ruin, to which they might fometimes be expofed by a lefs provident

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provident conduct. Though from excefs of CHA P. avarice, in the fame manner, the inland corn merchant should sometimes raise the price of his corn fomewhat higher than the fcarcity of the feafon requires, yet all the inconveniencies which the people can fuffer from this conduct, which effectually fecures them from a famine in the end of the season, are inconfiderable, in comparison of what they might have been expofed to by a more liberal way of dealing in the beginning of it. The corn merchant himself is likely to fuffer the most by this excefs of avarice; not only from the indignation which it generally excites against him, but, though he should escape the effects of this indignation, from the quantity of corn which it neceffarily leaves upon his hands in the end of the season, and which, if the next season happens to prove favourable, he must always fell for a much lower price than he might otherwife have had.

WERE it poffible, indeed, for one great company of merchants to poffefs themselves of the whole crop of an extenfive country, it might, perhaps, be their intereft to deal with it as the Dutch are faid to do with the fpiceries of the Moluccas, to deftroy or throw away a confiderable part of it, in order to keep up the price of the reft. But it is fcarce poffible, even by the violence of law, to establish fuch an extensive monopoly with regard to corn; and, wherever the law leaves the trade free, it is of all commodities the leaft liable to be engroffed or monopolized by the force of a few large capitals, which

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BOOK which buy up the greater part of it. Not only IV. its value far exceeds what the capitals of a few

private men are capable of purchasing, but fuppofing they were capable of purchafing it, the manner in which it is produced renders this purchase altogether impracticable. As in every civilized country it is the commodity of which the annual confumption is the greatest, so a greater quantity of industry is annually employed in producing corn than in producing any other commodity. When it first comes from the ground too, it is neceffarily divided among a greater number of owners than any other commodity; and these owners can never be collected into one place like a number of independent manufacturers, but are neceffarily scattered through all the different corners of the country. These first owners either immediately fupply the confumers in their own neighbourhood, or they fupply other inland dealers who supply thofe confumers. The inland dealers in corn, therefore, including both the farmer and the baker, are neceffarily more numerous than the dealers in any other commodity, and their dispersed fituation renders it altogether impoffible for them to enter into any general combination. If in a year of fcarcity therefore, any of them should find that he had a good deal more corn upon hand than, at the current price, he could hope to difpofe of before the end of the season, he would never think of keeping up this price to his own lofs, and to the fole benefit of his rivals and competitors, but would immediately lower

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