A PROTECTIVE POLICY 273 



ductiveness by 5J million quarters.J Porter evidently expected 

 that this proportionate progress would continue. He himself 

 advocated the repeal of the Corn Laws ; but there were other Free 

 Traders who hesitated to go this length, for fear that improvements 

 should be discouraged, and that the country should mainly depend 

 for its bread upon foreign wheat. 



Agriculturists also argued, and no doubt conscientiously believed, 

 that, if corn in any quantity were brought into the country from 

 abroad, home-prices would cease to yield reasonable profits ; that 

 agricultural land would be forced out of cultivation ; that rents 

 and wages would fall ; that rural employment would diminish ; 

 that the virility of the nation would be impaired by the influx into 

 towns and the consequent depopulation of country districts. To 

 these arguments Parliament lent a sympathetic ear. The limit 

 of home-prices, at which the importation of grain was allowed at 

 nominal duties, was raised in the case of wheat from 48s. in 1773 

 to 85s. in 1815. Below those limits, duties, so heavy as to be 

 practically prohibitive, were levied on imported corn or on its 

 removal from the bonded warehouses for consumption. In 1828 

 the evils of this restrictive legislation, though apparently modified, 

 were really aggravated by the adoption of a sliding scale of duties, 

 which varied with the prices of home-grown grain. The importa- 

 tion of corn became a gamble, and foreign importers combined to 

 raise home-prices in order to pay the lower scale of duties. Yet in 

 spite of this experience the graduated system was maintained in 

 the legislation of 1842 and 1845. 



Meanwhile the whole protective policy, of which the Corn Laws 

 only formed a part, was gradually becoming discredited. In 1815 

 a minority of the Peers had entered a powerful protest against the 

 exclusion of foreign corn. In 1820 the merchants presented their 

 famous petition, which was drawn up by Thomas Tooke, the 

 author of the History of Prices. A war of pamphlets raged con- 

 tinuously. In the treatment of colonial produce especially, there 

 were signs of the abandonment of a rigidly protective policy. The 

 principle of colonial preference, already recognised in 1766, had 

 been acted upon in 1791, 1804, and 1815. Corn from British 

 possessions was allowed to be imported at a nominal duty at a 

 lower limit of home-prices than that fixed for foreign produce. 

 Ten years later, corn from the British possessions of North America 

 was permitted to enter British ports at a constant duty of 5s. 



s 



