756 



FARMERS' REGISTER. 



[No. 12 



to procure information of the amount of the crops, 

 and of the demand of foreifrn countries.] It was 

 from tiiese unseasonable inquiries, in September 

 1788, tiiat all tlie mischief was derived. They 

 pervaded the whole kiiiiidoni, and spread an uni- 

 versal alarm ; \he price in consequence arose ; and 

 when once it arises in France, mischief immedi- 

 ately follows, because the populace render the in- 

 ternal trade insecure and dangerous. The busi- 

 ness of the minisier was done in a moment ; his 

 consummate vanity, which, li-om having been con- 

 fined to his character as an author, now became 

 the scourge of the kingdom, prohibited the export 

 for no other reason, than because the archbishop 

 of Sens had the year before allowed it, in contra- 

 city of a system to be new-moulded every moment, 

 "selon le temps and selon les circonstances!" And 

 who is to judge of these seasons and circumstances? 

 A minister? A g;overnment? These, it seems, are to 

 promul2;ate laws, in consequence of their having made 

 inquiries into the state of crops and stocks on Hand. 

 What presumption; what an excess of vanity must it 

 be, which impels a man to suppose, that the truth is 

 within the verge of such inquiries ; or, that he is one 

 line, one point nearer to it, after he has made them 

 than before he began. Go to the Intendant in France, 

 or to the Lord Lieiitenant in England, and suppose him 

 to receive a letter from government dilecting such in- 

 quiries; — pursue the intelligence, — follow him to his 

 table for conversation on crops, — or in his rides among 

 the farmers (;in idea that may obtain in England, but 

 never was such a ride taken by an Intendant in France) 

 in order to make inquiries; mark the desultory, bro- 

 ken, and falss specimens of the intelligence he receives, 

 and then recur to the si mpU at y of the system that is to 

 be founded on such inquiries. Mons. Necker writes 

 as i! we are ignorant of the sources of his information. 

 He oujht to have known, that ministers can never prd- 

 cnre it ; and that they cannot be so good an authority 

 for a whole kingdom, as a country gentleman, skilled 

 in agriculture, is for his own parish ; yet what gentle- 

 man would presume to pronounce upon a crop to the 

 360lh part of its amourrt, or even to the 20th ? But it 

 must be observed, that all Mons. Necker's simple ope- 

 rations, which caused an unlimited import, at an un- 

 limited expense, atfected not the 200th part of aj'ear's 

 consumption by the people, whose welfare he took 

 upon him to superintend. It this plain fact — the un- 

 doubted ignorance of every man what the crop is, or 

 has been, in such fractions as one-twentieth, one-thir- 

 tieth, one-fortieth, and much more one-two-hundredth, 

 be well considered, it will surely follow, that an abso- 

 lute and unbounded liberty in the corn trade is infinite- 

 ly more likely to have effect, than such paltry, deceit- 

 ful, and false inquiries as this minister, with his system 

 of complex simplicity, was forced, according to his own 

 account, to rely upon. Let the reader pursue the pas- 

 .sage, p. 369, the prhoyance of government — applica- 

 tion — hater le mouvement du commerce — attrail prochain 

 — calculs. A pretty support for a great nation ! Their 

 subsistence is to depend on the combination of a vision- 

 ary declaimer, rather than on the industry and energy of 

 their own exertions. Mons. Necker's performance de- 

 serves an attentive perusal, especially when he paints 

 so pathetically the anxieties he suffered on account of 

 the want of corn. I wish that those who read it would 

 only carry in their minds this undoubted fact, that the 

 scarcity which occasioned these inquietudes w"as abso- 

 lutely and solely of his own creatin'^ ; and that if he had 

 • not been minister in France, and that government had 

 taken no step whatever in this affair, th^re would not 

 have been such a word as scarcity heard in the king- 

 dom. He converted, by his management, an ordinarily 

 short crop into a scarcity ; and he made that scarcity a 

 famine ; to remedy which, he assumes so much merit, 

 as to nauseate a common reader. 



diction to that mass of errors and prejudices which 

 Mons. Necker's book upon the corn trade had dis- 

 seminated. It is curious to see him, in hi? Ifemoire 

 instriictif, asserting, that France, in 1787, etnit 

 livree uu commerce des grains dans tout le rmjaume, 

 acec plus d^artlvite, que jamais et Von avoii en- 

 voye dans Petranger une quantite considerable de 

 grains. [The corn trade was more active than 

 ever, and that there had been exported a consid- 

 erable quantity of grain.] Now, to see the in- 

 vidious manner in which this is put, let us turn 

 to the register of the Bureau General de la balance 

 du Commerce, where we shall find the Ibllowing 

 statement of the corn-trade lor 1787: 



Imports. 

 Wheat, 8,116.000 liv. 

 Rice, 2,040,000 



Barley, 375,000 



Legumes, 945,000 



J^xpnrts. 

 Corn, 3.165,600 liv. 

 Wheat, 6,5.59,900 

 Legumes, 949,200 



10,674,700 

 11,476,000 



This account shows pretty clearly how well found- 

 ed the minisier was, when he attempted to throw 

 on the wise measures of his predecessor the mis- 

 chiefs which arose from his own pernicious pre- 

 judices alone ; and how the liberty of conmierce, 

 which had taken place most advantageously in 

 consequesice of the Iree trade in 1787, had been 

 more an import trade than an export one ; and, of 

 course, it shows, that when he advised his sove- 

 reign to prohibit that trade, he acted directly con- 

 trary even to his own principles ; and he did this at 

 the hazard of raising a general alarm in the king- 

 dom, which is always of worse consequence than 

 any possible export. His whole coniluct, there- 

 fore, was one continued series of such errors, as 

 can, in a sensible man, be attributed only to the 

 predominant vanity that instigated him to hazard 

 the welfare of a great nation to defend a treatise of 

 his own composition. But as this minister thought 

 proper to change the system of a natural export and 

 iujport, and to spread, by his measures, an alarm 

 amongst the people, that seemed to confirm their 

 own apprehensions, let us next examine what he 

 did to cure the evils he had thus created. He im- 

 ported, at the enormous expence of 45,543,697 liv. 

 (about 2,000,000 sterling) the quantity of 1,404,463 

 quintals ofcorn of all sorts, which, at 240 lb. make 

 585,192 septiers, sufficient to feed no more than 

 195,064 people a year. At three septiers per head, 

 for the population of 26 millions of mouths, this 

 .supply, thus egregiously boasted of, would not, by 

 55,908 septiers, feed France even for three days ; 

 for her daily consumption is 213,700 septiers : nor 

 have I the least doubt of more persons dying of 

 famine, in consequence of his measures, than all 

 the corn he procured would feed for a year.* So 

 absolutely contemptible is all importation as a re- 

 medy for famine! and so utterly ridiculous is the 

 idea of preventing your own people fl'om being 

 starved, by allowing an import, which, in its 

 jrreatest and most forced quantities, bears so tri- 

 fling a proportion to the consumption of a whole 

 [icople, even when bribed, rather than bought, 

 li-om every country in Europe! But a conclusion 



* At a moment when here was a great stagnation in 

 every sort of employment, a high price of bread, in- 

 stead of a moderate one, must have destroyed many ; 

 there was no doubt of great numbers dying lor want in 

 every part of the kingdom. 



