234 ADAM SMITH. 



carrier or importer for re-exportation. These trades 

 may be carried on separately or together. 



1. The interest of the consumer, as well as of the 

 producer, is clearly served by the first class of traders ; 

 nor can anything be more clear than that, where they 

 raise the price, which they have no power of doing 

 unless there is a scarcity either begun or impending, 

 they benefit the people by putting them on short 

 allowance, and preventing dearth from being exchanged 

 for famine. The gross injustice, and revolting absur- 

 dity, of all the laws now happily abrogated, against 

 forestalling and regrating, intended to keep down prices 

 but in reality keeping them up, by discouraging trade, 

 by discouraging agriculture, and by discouraging thrift, 

 it is needless to illustrate either by reason or example. 



2. The trade of the importer is likewise beneficial to 

 the community by somewhat lowering the price of 

 corn ; and though this may lower the nominal revenue 

 of the home producer, it likewise lessens his expenses, 

 and so leaves his net income the same, not to mention 

 that in common years there is never much more than 

 the six hundreth part of our consumption imported 

 from abroad. One thing, however, requires to be 

 observed as to the admission of foreign corn. The 

 producers have for a long course of years received a 

 money income higher than a free trade in grain might 

 leave it Hence the difficulty of reducing that income, 

 when all their settlements, and all their mortgages, and 

 all their other time bargains, as well as the rents paid 

 by their tenants on existing leases, have been calcu- 

 lated and augmented upon the foot of higher prices. 

 The importance of the landed interest to any country 

 is not easily overrated. Dr. Smith himself, on every 

 occasion, puts it much higher than that of any other 

 of the great classes of the community. In a form of 

 government, and frame of society, such as ours, it is 

 to be carefully considered. The burthens peculiar to 

 the owners and cultivators of the soil are likewise to 



