166 Corn and Corn Products Trades 



men of the metropolis about 1760.^ The great corn merchants of 

 the first half of the eighteenth century effected very broad and exten- 

 sive organizations, establishing resident buyers in the chief corn dis- 

 tricts, and resident factors to do their selling in the chief markets; 

 besides doing a banking and exchange business to facilitate their 

 mercantile pursuits. During the Restoration period the export corn 

 business of London tended to concentrate in the hands of a few 

 merchants. The records show that Moore, Sturt and Buckle must 

 have done a considerable proportion of the trade.- 



The most celebrated corn merchants of the later period were the 

 Coutts firm of Edinburgh and London. They had private resident 

 agents in Northumberland, in the various grain-raising counties of 

 Scotland, in all parts of England and Wales, in Ireland, and some- 

 times they bought from Dantzig and Konigsberg. The ports they 

 used in particular as shipping points were Yarne, Stockton, Lynn 

 Regis, Fakenham, Yarmouth, Haverford-west, Hilton, Belfast and 

 Drogheda.^ They developed a very extensive system of correspond- 

 ence for gathering intelligence respecting the prices of corn in the 

 various markets, and for doing their banking and exchange opera- 

 tipns. Without these broad connections it would have been impos- 

 sible to join successfully so risky a business as dealing in corn with 

 that of banking, which requires special and consistent caution. The 

 combination of country' banking and mercantile pursuits was the 

 order of the day about 1750.'* 



If the testimony of hostile contemporary pamphleteers may be 

 trusted, the corn merchants were not altogether passive, equalizing 

 differences of prices between markets. It was granted they did a 

 great service in equalizing prices from season to season, and from place 

 to place. Oftentimes they bought up the grain at the beginning of 

 the year or just after harvest when the price was low, and sold it back 

 again at a later season possibly to the same individuals. When the 

 poorer farmers were pressed for money to pay their rents, they sold 

 to the export factors, who thus advanced the needed capital,'' and such 

 purchases and sales amounted to a loan and its collection. But it 

 seems that the merchants sought wilfully to raise and lower the price 



' '"Considerations on the Present," II. 

 ' Rep. XVI, 138. 



^ Bourne, Eng. Mer., 336, contains a quotation, source not specified, from which 

 these statements are drawTi. 

 ' See Chapter VII. 

 5 Weldon, Hints, 16-17; Smi!h, on Com Trade, 11-13. 



