%']g2. parliament. Corn bill. • ipi 



and become incapable of sustaining a population, greatly 

 inferior to that for wliich it formerly produced abundance 

 aiidto spare. We know for certain, that Spain, about three, 

 hundred years ago, contained not lefs than twenty-five mil- 

 lions of people, who were abundantly supplied witli food 

 from the produce of their own fields. At present, eight 

 nullions of people are often reduced to the danger of star. 

 %'ing for want of food. How absurd then is it to reason 

 from the present state of the produce of any country, to 

 its pofsible future produce ! By injudicious fiscal regula- 

 tions, the present produce may be diminilhed to an asto- 

 nilhing degree \ — by a wise and judicious policy, it may 

 be augmented beyond the power of calculation. — Let us 

 no longer then be amused with such chimerical reasoning, 

 nor (hut our eyes against the clearest light. . Our industry 

 has been, in too many cases, reprefsed by laws grounded 

 on such absurd reasoning. — Let us expose its futility I — 

 Let us examine, with the spirit of men endowed with ra- 

 tional powers, the tendency of every fiscal regulation, that 

 is to be obligatory upon us. Where their tendency is 

 pernicious, — let that baneful tendency be exposed, that 

 thus a check may be given to the empirf of folly, and 

 the miserable consequences that it ingenders may be dl- 

 miniilied. 



From the facts above stated, without having recourse 

 to many others that might easily be adduced, we are au- 

 thorised to pronounce, without hesitation, that the infe- 

 rence drawn by the committee of privy council, from tha 

 single fact on which the whole was grounded, is totally 

 erroneous ; and that, though the present produce of Bri- 

 tain, fliould fall far (hort of what is nccefsary to sustain its 

 whole inhabitants, it might still be capable of rearing a- 

 bundance to supply a much greater number of people, 

 fliould it ever become necefsary to do so. As well might 

 I say, that a farmer, who rents a thousand acres of rich 

 pasture-land, on the banks of tlie Severn, but who does 

 not find it his interest to rear a single acre of corn, but is 

 obliged to purchase what he wants for the subsistence of 

 his family from another quarter, could not, if it were ne^ 

 cefsary, find subsistence from his own farm, in corn, as 

 vNellas other articles ? One would imagine, that such a 



j^e of reasoning was only calculated for the meridian of 



