of corn affects but slowly the price of labour,
and never regulates it wholly, yet it has unquestionably a powerful
influence upon it. A most perfect freedom of intercourse between
different nations in the article of corn, greatly contributes to an
equalization of prices and a level in the value of the precious
metals. And it must be allowed that a country which possesses any
peculiar facilities for successful exertion in manufacturing
industry, can never make a full and complete use of its advantages;
unless the price of its labour and other commodities be reduced to
that level compared with other countries, which results from the
most perfect freedom of the corn trade.

It has been sometimes urged as an argument in favour of the corn
laws, that the great sums which the country has had to pay for
foreign corn during the last twenty years must have been injurious
to her resources, and might have been saved by the improvement of
our agriculture at home. It might with just as much propriety be
urged that we lose every year by our forty millions worth of
imports, and that we should gain by diminishing these extravagant
purchases. Such a doctrine cannot be maintained without giving up
the first and most fundamental principles of all commercial
intercourse. No purchase is ever made, either at home or abroad,
unless that which is received is, in the estimate of the purchaser,
of more value than that which is given; and we may rest quite
assured, that we shall never buy corn or any other commodities
abroad, if we cannot by so doing supply our wants in a more
advantageous manner, and by a smaller quantity of capital, than if
we had attempted to raise these commodities at home.

It may indeed occasionally happen that in an unfavourable season,
our exchanges with foreign countries may be affected by the
necessity of making unusually large purchases of corn; but this is
in itself an evil of the slightest consequence, which is soon
rectified, and in ordinary times is not more likely to happen, if
our average imports were two millions of quarters, than if, on an
average, we grew our own consumption.

The unusual demand is in this case the sole cause of the evil, and
not the average amount imported. The habit on the part of foreigners
of supplying this amount, would on the contrary rather facilitate
than impede further supplies; and as all trade is ultimately a trade
of barter, and the power of purchasing cannot be permanently