4o8 History of the English Landed Interest. 



opened the ports to foreign produce the agriculturists, being 

 more heavily burdened than the other classes of the com- 

 munity, would require compensation. " Whatever amount of 

 duty," said McCulloch, " may be laid on foreign corn, for the 

 equitable purpose of countervailing peculiar burdens laid on 

 the corn raised at home, an equivalent draiohack should be 

 allowed on exportation."^ "In allowing," said Eicardo, "this 

 drawback we are merely returning to the farmer a tax which 

 he has already paid, and which he must have to place him in 

 a fair state of competition in the foreign market, not only with 

 the foreign producer, but with his own countrymen who are 

 producing other commodities. It is essentially different from 

 a bounty on exportation in the sense in which the word 

 bounty is usually understood ; for by a bounty is generally 

 meant a tax levied on the people for the purpose of render- 

 ing corn unnaturally cheap to the foreign consumer, whereas 

 what I propose is to sell our corn at the price at which we 

 can really afford to produce it, and not to add to its price a 

 tax which shall induce the foreigner rather to purchase it 

 from some other country, and deprive us of a trade which, 

 under a system of free competition, we might have selected." 



The whole difficulty seems to have been then as it is now, 

 that, in order to develop trade and allow even the poorest man 

 to live, we must submit to a system which hands over the 

 profits of the landlord and farmer to the foreign producer. As 

 long as the manufacturer can obtain raw material from some- 

 where, it does not concern him what soil yields it. Thus the 

 interests of the English commercial man are as much allied 

 to those of the foreign producer as they are opposed to those 

 of the native producer. The prosperity of a large manufac- 

 turing population depends upon the ability of the manufacturer 

 to undersell the foreigner in the world's market. Everything 

 therefore, like cheap food, that tends to reduce his cost of 

 production helps towards this end. On the other hand, the 



^ Compare Protection of Agriculture, p. 53. D. Ricardo. Statements 

 Illustrative of the Policy and Probable Consequences of the Proposed 

 Jiepeal of the existing Corn Laws. T. R. McCulloch. 



