VALUE OF THE HOME AND FOREIGN MARKETS. 243 



of native productions, agriculture and horn e-commerce can 

 never flourish. The prevailing distress is attributed to those 

 legislative enactments which have rendered hopeless the 

 farmer's attempt to realize a fair profit upon his capital em- 

 ployed. Although the justice of this opinion must be ac- 

 knowledged ; yet with the present protective duties, and the 

 united determination of the agricultural body to render the 

 soil subservient to their wants, utter ruin may be averted. 

 The finger of an all-bountiful Providence points to that soil as 

 congenial to the growth of all the necessaries and many of the 

 luxuries of life. Our fruitful fields and splendid factories 

 evince the superiority of our tillage, our arts, and our sciences. 

 Yet, under the specious pretext of cheap food, we find that the 

 manufacturing interests are raging after low-priced foreign 

 corn ; and the agricultural, after low-priced wares of every 

 description ; each party being regardless of the misery around 

 them, and, at the same time, blind to their own welfare. For 

 instance, let foreign flour be offered at only \d. per stone less 

 than that made from English wheat, and our own produce is 

 driven from the market. Or let the vender of foreign manu- 

 factures but offer them at a trifle less than those made at 

 home, and the preference is immediately given to the former. 

 Thus the two great bodies of the community, the agricultural 

 and commercial, flock to the cheapest market, falsely so called : 

 no reciprocity of interests, nor regard to the claims of an un- 

 employed population, being recognised by either ; and thus the 

 labourer who works in the field, and the operative in the city, 

 are sacrificed. 



However great the tide of our exported manufactures 

 may appear, the streams of home-commerce are, in fact, 

 infinitely greater. These, flowing through the kingdom in 

 every direction, would soon swell into rivers, provided the 

 working classes received wages adequate to their services. 

 Through them all native productions are raised; they also 

 are the source of our gains, and comprise the main body of con- 

 sumers. In proportion as the working classes are paid does 

 money flow from the country to the town, and from the town to 

 the country, to the incalculable benefit of both. If agriculture 

 and home-commerce be the main pillars of national prosperity, 



R 2 



