day fought for life. We have often deliberated how we should prosper; we are now to enquire how we shall subsist.

The present scarcity is imputed by some to the bounty for exporting corn, which is considered as having a necessary and perpetual tendency to pour the grain of this country into other nations.

This position involves two questions: whether the present scarcity has been caused by the bounty, and whether the bounty is likely to produce scarcity in future times.

It is an uncontroverted principle, that sublatâ causâ tollitur effectus: if therefore the effect continues when the supposed cause has ceased, that effect must be imputed to some other agency.

The bounty has ceased, and the exportation would still continue, if exportation were permitted. The true reason of the scarcity is the failure of the harvest; and the cause of exportation is the like failure in other countries, where they grow less, and where they are therefore always nearer to the danger of

want.

This want is such, that in countries where money is at a much higher value than with us, the inhabitants are yet desirous to buy our corn at a price to which our own markets have not risen.

If we consider the state of those countries, which being accustomed to buy our corn cheaper than ourselves when it was cheap, are now reduced to the necessity of buying it dearer than ourselves when it is dear, we shall yet have reason to rejoice in our own exemption from the extremity of this wide-extended calamity; and if it be necessary to enquire why we

suffer scarcity, it may be fit to consider likewise, why we suffer yet less scarcity than our neighbours.

That the bounty upon corn has produced plenty, is apparent,

Because ever since the grant of the bounty, agriculture has encreased: scarce a sessions has passed without a law for enclosing commons and waste grounds:

Much land has been subjected to tillage, which lay uncultivated with little profit:

Yet, though the quantity of land has been thus encreased, the rent, which is the price of land, has generally encreased at the same time.

That more land is appropriated to tillage, is a proof that more corn is raised; and that the rents have not fallen, proves that no more is raised than can readily be sold.

But it is urged, that exportation, though it encreases our produce, diminishes our plenty: that the merchant has more encouragement for exportation than the farmer for agriculture.

This is a paradox which all the principles of commerce and all the experience of policy concur to confute. Whatever is done for gain, will be done more, as more gain is to be obtained.

Let the effects of the bounty be minutely considered.

The state of every country with respect to corn is varied by the chances of the year.

Those to whom we sell our corn, must have every year either more corn than they want, or less than they want. We likewise are naturally subject to the same varieties.

When they have corn equal to their wants, or more, the bounty has no effect for they will not buy what they do not want, unless our exuberance be such as tempts them to store it for another year. This case must suppose that our produce is redundant and useless to ourselves; and therefore the profit of exportation produces no inconvenience.

When they want corn, they must buy of us, and buy at a higher price in this case, if we have corn more than enough for ourselves, we are again benefited by supplying them.

But they may want when we have no superfluity. When our markets rise, the bounty ceases; and therefore produces no evil. They cannot buy our corn but at an higher rate than it is sold at home. If their necessities, as now has happened, force them to give an higher price, that event is no longer to be charged upon the bounty. We may then stop our corn in our ports, and pour it back upon our own markets.

It is in all cases to be considered, what events are physical and certain, and what are political and arbitrary.

The first effect of the bounty is the encrease of agriculture, and by consequence the promotion of plenty. This is an effect physically good, and morally certain. While men While men are desirous to be rich, where there is profit there will be diligence. If much corn can be sold, much will be raised.

The second effect of the bounty is the diminution by exportation of that product which it occasioned. But this effect is political and arbitrary: we have it wholly in our own hands: we can prescribe its limits, and regulate its quantity. Whenever we

feel want, or fear it, we retain our corn, and feed ourselves upon that which was sown and raised to feed other nations,

It is perhaps impossible for human wisdom to go further, than to contrive a law of which the good is certain and uniform, and the evil, though possible in itself, yet always subject to certain and effectual

restraints.

This is the true state of the bounty upon corn: it certainly and necessarily encreases our crops, and can never lessen them but by our own permission.

That, notwithstanding the bounty, there have been from time to time years of scarcity, cannot be denied. But who can regulate the seasons? In the dearest years we owe to the bounty that they have not been dearer. We must always suppose part of our ground sown for our own consumption, and part in hope of a foreign sale. The time sometimes comes, when the product of all this land is scarcely sufficient but if the whole be too little, how great would have been the deficiency, if we had sown only that part which was designed for ourselves.

"But perhaps, if exportation were less encouraged, the superfluous stores of plentiful years might be laid up by the farmer against years of scarcity."

This may be justly answered by affirming, that, if exportation were discouraged, we should have no years of plenty. Cheapness is produced by the possibility of dearness. Our farmers at present plough and sow with the hope that some country will always be in want, and that they shall grow rich by supplying. Indefinite hopes are always carried by the frailty of human nature beyond reason. While therefore exportation is encouraged, as much corn

will be raised as the farmer can hope to sell, and therefore generally more than can be sold at the price of which he dreamed, when he ploughed and sowed.

The greatest part of our corn is well known to be raised by those who pay rent for the ground which they employ, and of whom few can bear to delay the sale of one year's produce to another.

It is therefore vain to hope that large stocks of grain will ever remain in private hands: he that has not sold the corn of last year will with diffidence and reluctance till his field again: the accumulation of a few years would end in a vacation of agriculture, and the husbandman would apply himself to some more profitable calling.

If the exportation of corn were totally prohibited, the quantity possible to be consumed among us would be quickly known, and being known, would rarely be exceeded: for why should corn be gathered which cannot be sold? We should therefore have little superfluity in the most favourable seasons; for the farmer, like the rest of mankind, acts in hope of success, and the harvest seldom outgoes the expectation of the spring. But for droughts or blights, we should never be provided; any intemperature of seasons would reduce us to distress, which we now only read of in our histories: what is now scarcity, would then be famine.

What would be caused by prohibiting exportation, will be caused in a less degree by obstructing it, and in some degree by every deduction of encouragement: as we lessen hope, we shall lessen labour; as we lessen labour, we shall lessen plenty.

It must always be steadily remembered, that the