l; but the monopoly of capital is the contrary. It is a great
benefit, and a benefit particularly to the poor. A tradesman who has but
a hundred pound capital, which (say) he can turn but once a year, cannot
live upon a _profit_ of ten per cent, because he cannot live upon ten
pounds a year; but a man of ten thousand pounds capital can live and
thrive upon five per cent profit in the year, because he has five
hundred pounds a year. The same proportion holds in turning it twice or
thrice. These principles are plain and simple; and it is not our
ignorance, so much as the levity, the envy, and the malignity of our
nature, that hinders us from perceiving and yielding to them: but we are
not to suffer our vices to usurp the place of our judgment.

The balance between consumption and production makes price. The market
settles, and alone can settle, that price. Market is the meeting and
conference of the _consumer_ and _producer_, when they mutually discover
each other's wants. Nobody, I believe, has observed with any reflection
what market is, without being astonished at the truth, the correctness,
the celerity, the general equity, with which the balance of wants is
settled. They who wish the destruction of that balance, and would fain
by arbitrary regulation decree that defective production should not be
compensated by increased price, directly lay their _axe_ to the root of
production itself. They may, even in one year of such false policy, do
mischiefs incalculable; because the trade of a farmer is, as I have
before explained, one of the most precarious in its advantages, the most
liable to losses, and the least profitable of any that is carried on. It
requires ten times more of labor, of vigilance, of attention, of skill,
and, let me add, of good fortune also, to carry on the business of a
farmer with success, than what belongs to any other trade.

Seeing things in this light, I am far from presuming to censure the late
circular instruction of Council to lord-lieutenants, but I confess I do
not clearly discern its object. I am greatly afraid that the inquiry
will raise some alarm, as a measure leading to the French system of
putting corn into requisition. For that was preceded by an inquisition
somewhat similar in its principle, though, according to their mode,
their principles are full of that violence which _here_ is not much to
be feared. It goes on a principle directly opposite to mine: it presumes
that the market is