nnot, therefore, be prevented or done away, though it may, to a
certain degree, be counteracted. The manner of counteracting it not
being a general manner, but depending on circumstances, shall be
treated of when investigating the increasing danger, arising from this
cause, in the English nation.

It remains at present for us to examine another evil attendant on the
inadequacy of the soil to supply the consumption of a country.

One of the most alarming circumstances attendant on this situation of
things is, that provisions become an object of monopoly, and the most
dangerous and destructive of all objects. The law has interfered in
regulating the interest of money, but not in the rent of houses or of
other use of property. Circumstances may occur, in which the
necessity of procuring a loan of money is so great, as to induce the
borrower to engage to pay an interest that would be ruinous to
himself, and that would grant the lender the means of extortion, or of
obtaining exorbitant profit. The same interference would be just as
reasonable, wherever the same sort of necessity, by existing, puts one
man in the power of another. This is the case with every necessary
article of provision, which, indeed, may be considered as all one
article, for the price of one is connected with the prices of all the
others.

Provisions, indeed, are, in general, articles that cannot be preserved
for any very great length of time; but then, again, they are articles of a
nature that the consumers must have within a limited time also, and
for which they are inclined to give an exorbitant price rather than not
to have. The interference of the law between a man and the use of his
property, ought to be as seldom as possible; but it has never been
maintained as a general principle, that it ought never to interfere. [end
of page #148] If it is at any time, or in any case, right to interfere
legally, the question of when it is to be done becomes merely one of
expediency, one of circumstance, but not one that admits of a general
decision.

A writer of great (and deservedly great) reputation has said so much
on this subject, and treated it in a way that both reason and experience
prove to be wrong, that it is become indispensably necessary to argue
the point. {123} Monopoly, regrating, and forestalling, which two last
are only particular modes of monopolizing, have been considered as
chimeras, as imaginary practices that have never existed, and tha