268 THE ENGLISH CORN LAWS 



to exchange for foreign produce.^ On both grounds they fostered 

 a trade in exported grain. But uncontrolled hberty of sending 

 com out of the country might have raised home prices by depleting 

 home supplies. It may therefore have seemed essential to Tudor 

 statesmen that the royal power of prohibiting exports should be 

 revived in the interest of consumers. The emptiness of the royal 

 treasury drove the Stewarts to seek in this control of the corn- 

 trade an mdependent source of income, and it was one of the 

 complaints against Charles I. that he had exercised the royal pre- 

 rogative in order to swell his revenue. Ultimately the constitu- 

 tional principle triumphed. From the Restoration down to 1815 

 freedom to export home-grown corn was controlled and regulated 

 by the legislature in accordance with scales of prices current in the 

 home market. At the same time the power of the king in Council 

 to suspend the laws regulating both exports and imports of grain 

 was retained in use and sanctioned by Parhament. 



At the Restoration the fiscal pohcy of the country towards 

 corn assumed a more definite shape. Statutes were passed in 1660, 

 1663, and 1670, which regulated both exports and imports of corn. 

 The two sets of regulations cannot henceforward be considered 

 separately. The one was the complement of the other. The Act 

 of 1660 2 allowed home-grown com to be exported Avhen prices at 

 the port of shipment did not exceed, for wheat, 40s. per quarter ; , 

 for rye, peas, and beans, 24s. ; for barley and malt, 20s. ; for oats, 

 16s. The same Act levied a duty of 2s. a quarter on imports of 

 foreign wheat, when home prices were at or under 44s. a quarter : 

 above that price, the duty was reduced to 4d. Proportionate 

 duties were imposed on other foreign grains according to their 

 prices in the home market. These scales of duties and prices were 

 revised in the Act of 1663.^ In the Acts both of 1660 and 1663 the 

 object of the Government seems to have been revenue, for the 

 scales of duties on foreign imports are remarkably low. In 1670, 

 however, this poHcy was changed. In this Act " for the Improve- 

 ment of Tillage " ^ corn might be exported, though the home prices 

 rose above the limit fixed in 1663. At the same time prohibitive 

 duties were levied on imports of foreign corn. When wheat, for 



^ An Act for the Maintenance of the Navy passed in 1562 (5 Eliz. c. 5), per- 

 mitted the export of corn when the price of wheat was at or under 10s. per 

 quarter ; of rye, beans, and peas, 8s. ; of barley, 6s. 8d. See also Appendix 

 III., B. 



" 12 Car. II. c. 4. ' 15 Car. II. c. 7. * 22 Car. II. c. 13. 



