can reduce the price of provisions within her own kingdom.

But it may be said, that this reduction of the price of provisions,
which seems so desirable in one view, may be found injurious in
another; and that it is at least as expedient to encourage agriculture
as manufactures. I agree in the principle, though not in the
application. Going back to my first position, that the man who labors
gets a bare subsistence, for the moment he does more, the number of
laborers in that kind (provided his employment does not require
uncommon skill) increases, and his labor is not more profitable, than
that of the other laborers of the country. It will follow then, that
so far as he consumes what he raises, the price will be entirely out
of the question. If a bushel of grain a day is necessary for the
support of his family, he will equally raise and equally consume that
grain, whether it sells for a penny or a pound. But as there are other
articles necessary for the use of his family, that he must purchase,
this purchase can only be made by the excess of what he raises beyond
his own consumption. If he purchases the manufactures of the country,
and they rise in proportion to the value of provisions, it must be a
matter of indifference to the husbandman, whether the price of the
latter is high or low, since the same quantity will be necessary to
purchase what his necessities demand in either case; unless indeed his
provisions are carried to foreign markets, and the manufactures he
wants imported, in which case the price of his grain will become an
object of moment, and operate as an encouragement to agriculture. But
it would also in the same proportion operate as a check on the
manufactures, population, and navigation of the country. On the first,
for reasons which have been already explained; on the second, because
manufactures require more hands than agriculture; and on the third,
because the expense of labor, which increases with the diminution of
population, and the price of victualling the vessels employed in the
transportation of their produce, will enable nations, who can maintain
their subjects cheaper, to navigate their vessels at a lower rate, and
of course to engross this branch of business, unless the laws of the
State, such as acts of navigation, shall forbid, in which case those
acts will operate so far as a discouragement upon agriculture; the
advanced freightage being so much deducted from the husbandman's
profit.

T