ohibited to export abroad, and yet had no means of distributing their
supplies at home so as to realize the highest medium price in England,
must have felt aggrieved, and that their barons and knights of the shire
would have a common interest in making a strong effort to rectify the
injustice in parliament. This object appears to have been in some
measure accomplished by this statute, and twenty-seven years afterwards
(1463) a decided step was taken towards securing to agriculturists a
monopoly of the home market by a statute prohibitory of importation from
abroad. Foreign import was to be permitted only at and above the point
of prices where the export of domestic produce was prohibited. The
landed interest had now adopted the idea of sustaining and equalizing
the value of corn, and promoting their own industry and gains, which for
four centuries, under various modifications of plan, and great changes
of social and political condition, were to maintain a firm place in the
legislation and policy of England. But there were many reasons why this
idea, when carried into practice, should not have the results
anticipated from it.

The import of grain from abroad, even in times of dearth and high prices
at home, could not be considerable as long as the policy of neighbouring
countries was to prohibit export; nor could the export of native corn,
even with the Dutch and other European ports open to such supplies, be
effective save in limited maritime districts, as long as the internal
corn trade was suppressed, not only by want of roads, but by legal
interdict. The regulation of liberty of export and import by rates of
price, moreover, had the same practical objection as the various
sliding-scales, bounties, and other legislative expedients down to 1846,
viz. that they failed, probably more in that age than in later times, to
create a permanent market, and aimed only at a casual trade. When
foreign supplies were needed, they were often not to be found; and when
there was an excess of corn in the country a profitable outlet was both
difficult and uncertain. It would appear, indeed, that during the Wars
of the Roses the statutes of Henry VI. and Edward IV. had become
obsolete; for a law regulating export prices in identical terms of the
law of 1436 was re-enacted in the reign of Philip and Mary (1554). In
the preceding reign of Edward VI., as well as in the succeeding long
reign of Elizabeth, there were unceasing complaints of the