money
price of all commodities, which is in this case peculiar to that
country, tends to discourage more or less every sort of industry which
is carried on within it, and to enable foreign nations, by furnishing
almost all sorts of goods for a smaller quantity of silver than its own
workmen can afford to do, to undersell them, not only in the foreign,
but even in the home market."

I have elsewhere attempted to shew that a partial degradation in the
value of money, which shall affect both agricultural produce, and
manufactured commodities, cannot possibly be permanent. To say that
money is partially degraded, in this sense, is to say that all
commodities are at a high price; but while gold and silver are at
liberty to make purchases in the cheapest market, they will be exported
for the cheaper goods of other countries, and the reduction of their
quantity will increase their value at home; commodities will regain
their usual level, and those fitted for foreign markets will be
exported, as before.

A bounty therefore cannot, I think, be objected to on this ground.

If then, a bounty raises the price of corn in comparison with all other
things, the farmer will be benefited, and more land will be cultivated;
but if the bounty do not raise the value of corn relatively to other
things, then no other inconvenience will attend it, than that of paying
the bounty; one which I neither wish to conceal nor underrate.

Dr. Smith states, that "by establishing high duties on the importation,
and bounties on the exportation of corn, the country gentlemen seemed to
have imitated the conduct of the manufacturers." By the same means both
had endeavoured to raise the value of their commodities. "They did not
perhaps attend to the great and essential difference which nature has
established between corn, and almost every other sort of goods. When by
either of the above means, you enable our manufacturers to sell their
goods for somewhat a better price than they otherwise could get for
them, you raise not only the nominal, but the real price of those goods.
You increase not only the nominal, but the real profit, the real wealth
and revenue of those manufacturers--you really encourage those
manufactures. But when, by the like institutions, you raise the nominal
or money price of corn, you do not raise its real value, you do not
increase the real wealth of our farmers or country gentlemen, you do not
encourage the growth of corn. The nature