IC2 Extracts from the Replies to 



dependant, it is said, it will be on other nations for supply ; but is it admitted, that 

 whatever might be the encouragements, this island can never be able to produce a 

 sufficiency for its own inhabitants? You, my dear Lord, have made yourself so 

 much master of the subject, that if our opinions differed, I would submit mine to 

 )OLirs; but now that experience has taught me, how much more than the farmer's 

 average crop (with his slovenly feeble tillage) can be produced, by an expense of 

 labour and capital from the same surface, I incline to the idea, that we have within 

 ourselves the means of supporting at all times, even in the worst seasons, a far 

 greater population than we have at present. As an excitement to industry, and to 

 the application of capital to land, we must however have good prices for our pro- 

 duce. Prosperity and low prices are incompatible. What does the Manchester 

 cotton-spinner mean, when he says his trade is dull? he means what the purchaser 

 of his cottons would think a very good thing, that his muslins and his dimities are 

 very cheap. But high prices can never take place while consumption is thought 

 an evil. Let us part from the principle that England can grow corn enough for 

 its population in a good year; let ns suppose its soil improveable, and its crops, 

 by labour and industry, capable of increase; it may then be allowed, that we 

 might produce a great deal more corn than we want in a good year. Enough say, 

 to maintain our population in a bad year. Where can be the policy then (if all this 

 be granted) of teaching our people to consume as little corn as possible ; and if 

 those taxes which diminish the demand for it, the most fertile country in the world 

 might experience a famine, if no more corn was produced in it in a good year, than 

 the inhabitants could barely consume; in truth, if government has ever thought it 

 wise to encourage exportation, it has declared that it would be wise to encourage 

 consumption ; for the sending the corn out of the kingdom was never done with any 

 other view than that of increasing the farmer's profitj I have therefore only to wonder 

 it should have been the only mode of raising the price of corn ever resorted to. 

 Now, if no prohibition existed against the use of beer, as a beverage for the whole 

 country, and the use of horses of every kind and description, you would have an 

 immediate increase of demand for corn, which, if you checked importation, would 

 throw up the prices as high as any farmer in conscience could desire, and we should 

 have twice the quantity sown next year that we have now, certainly a great deal 

 more ; and let the next year to that be as bad a year as possible, the common 

 people would only have to give up their beer, and the rich to dispose of some of 



