extraordinary demand for it, and a rise in the value of paper, owing
to the prospect of a return to payments in specie. In the course of
this last year, the state of our exchanges, and the fall in the
price of bullion, shew pretty clearly, that the intermediate
alteration which, I then contemplated, greater than in the case
first mentioned, and less than in the second, is the one which might
be adopted with a fair prospect of permanence; and that we should
not now proceed under the same uncertainty respecting the currency,
which we should have done, if we had adopted a final regulation in
the early part of last year.(3*) This intermediate alteration,
however, supposes a rise in the value of paper on a return to cash
payments, and some general fall of prices quite unconnected with any
regulations respecting the corn trade.(4*)

But, if some fall of prices must take place from this cause, and if
such a fall can never take place without a considerable check to
industry, and discouragement to the accumulation of capital, it
certainly does not seem a well-chosen time for the legislature to
occasion another fall still greater, by departing at once from a
system of restrictions which it had pursued with steadiness during
the greatest part of the last century and, after having given up for
a short period, had adopted again as its final policy in its two
last enactments respecting the trade in corn. Even if it be
intended. Finally, to throw open our ports, it might be wise to pass
some temporary regulations, in order to prevent the very great shock
which must take place, if the two causes here noticed, of the
depreciation of commodities, be allowed to produce their full effect
by contemporaneous action.

3. I stated, in the Observations on the corn laws, that the
cheapness and steadiness in the price of corn, which were promised
by the advocates of restrictions, were not attainable by the
measures they proposed; that it was really impossible for us to grow
at home a sufficiency for our own consumption, without keeping up
the price of corn considerably above the average of the rest of
Europe; and that, while this was the case, as we could never export
to any advantage, we should always be liable to the variations of
price, occasioned by the glut of a superabundant harvest; in short,
that it must be allowed that a free trade in corn would, in all
ordinary cases, not only secure a cheaper, but a more steady, supply
of grain.