Were the farmer (or rather the landed proprietor) to gain all that the
consumer loses by the corn monopoly,--if it were only taking from one,
and giving to another--without any national loss; though this of itself
would be bad enough,--it is perhaps the smallest part of the loss which
the manufacturer sustains; for the same law which hinders him from going
to the best and cheapest market to purchase his food, at the same time
necessarily excludes him from a market for the produce of his industry;
and by diminishing the demand for his labour, lowers his wages or throws
him out of employment.

But one abuse leads to another. Those who are interested in the corn
monopoly, or think themselves so, cannot well oppose the sugar monopoly
while they require the aid of the West India planters to enable them to
obtain this advantage at their country's expense; and so it is with all
the other monopolists, they naturally unite together, and it requires
their mutual aid and all their combined power and influence to preserve
a system which they know stands upon rather an insecure foundation, and
if once broken in upon would soon fall to pieces; and thus it is that we
are subjected to the sugar monopoly, and though it is manifestly our
interest to buy this important necessary of life (as well as every
other) in any quarter of the globe where we can find it best and
cheapest, we are restricted to a small portion of the earth's surface,
and have to pay a third part more than we might obtain the article for
without any loss to the revenue. By this narrow-minded system of buying,
we deprive ourselves of valuable markets for our manufactures, as you
have shown is likely to be the case with the Brazils on the expiry of
the commercial treaty with that country if the matter is left in the
hands of Ministers, "and no effort made to avert so great an evil." The
agriculturists have to pay directly for this monopoly in common with all
the other classes in the addition to the price of the sugar they
consume; but the manufacturers suffer the still greater disadvantage of
having the market for the produce of their labour narrowed, and thus the
agriculturist will also suffer indirectly by their customers being
thereby still farther disabled to consume.

But these and all other monopolies and restrictions in trade not only
lessen the demand for our manufactures abroad, but they diminish the
consumption at home, to an extent greater perhaps than we