272 THE ENGLISH CORN LAWS 



with the cheapness or fell Avith the clearness of bread.. On the 

 other hand, the interests of producers of corn were now represented 

 by a comparatively small and dwindling class of landowners and 

 farmers, who in recent years had enormously raised their own 

 standard of living. Numerically small, but politically powerful, 

 this class was convinced that the war-prices yielded only reasonable- 

 profits. The great majority of the population was convinced to 

 the contrary. 



/' Yet it would be unfair to represent that the protective poUcy of 

 the later Corn Laws was entirely maintained by a Parhamentary 

 majority swayed by selfish motives. It was supported, up to a 

 certain point, by many who stood outside the circle of the landed 

 interests, and ranked as disciples of Adam Smith. It never entered 

 into their calculations that Great Britain could ever become depen- 

 dent for its food supply on foreign countries. On the contrary, the 

 view was strongly held that every prosperous nation must in 

 ordinary seasons rely for its means of subsistence on its own resources, 

 and must meet the growth of numbers with a corresponding increase 

 in the supply of food. This doctrine was almost universally 

 accepted. Porter, the author of The Progress of the Nation,^ was 

 an advanced Free Trader. But he argued that " every country 

 which makes great and rapid progress in population must make 

 equal progress in the production of food." He quotes the example 

 of Great Britain in support of his view. By comparing the growth 

 of population with the increase in the quantity of imported wheat, 

 he shows that improvements in agriculture had, to a remarkable 

 extent, enabled the country to keep pace with its increasing needs. 

 Thus in 1811, when the population of Great Britain was ascertained 

 to be 11,769,725, only 600,946 were fed by foreign wheat. At the 

 end of the next decade, 1811-20, the population had risen to 

 13,494,217, and the home supply was enough for all but 458,576. 

 At the close of the third decade, 1821-30, the population had 

 grown to 15,465,474 ; yet only 534,992 depended on the foreign 

 supply. In 1841, the numbers had increased to 17,535,826 ; but 

 home-grown wheat fed all but 907,638 persons. In other words, 

 British wheat, in 1811, had fed a population of 11,168,779 ; in 

 1841, enough wheat was produced at home to feed a population of 

 16,628,188. Thus in thirty years British land had increased its pro- 



^ The Progress oj the Nation in its various social and economical relations from 

 the beginning of the Nineteenth Century, by G. R. Porter, ed. 1847, p. 136. 



