166 ADAM SMITH. 



too, some reasoners extend several of Dr. Smith's argu- 

 ments in favour of countervailing duties, and his view of 

 further exceptions being allowed to the rule of free 

 importation by the consideration that other things may 

 be more important than wealth, and, possibly, that the 

 support of the internal institutions may be as much a 

 fair object of care as its external defence of a country. 

 On this inquiry I do not enter. The subject of steadiness 

 of price is not considered by Dr. Smith, though it forms, 

 at least in our times, the main topic of those who defend 

 the corn laws. The tendency of the importation, by open- 

 ing our market to the growers of Poland and the Ukraine, 

 though not in terms referred to, must have been in his eye, 

 because in no other way could the free importation of corn 

 permanently reduce its price, the opening of our markets 

 having the inevitable eifect of raising its price abroad. 

 But as Poland and the Ukraine can only increase their 

 production of grain gradually in the gradual advance of 

 their population, it seems evident that the permanent fall 

 in prices must be the work of time, and could not easily 

 occasion any great or sudden shock to our internal system. 

 3. The free export of corn, whether home-grown or 



and thus on the merchant and manufacturer as well as on the land- 

 owner and farmer, seems quite inconceivable. Suppose them right 

 in stating that half the poor rates fall on house-rent, still, as the 

 landowner and farmer pay this also, there would remain above three 

 millions exclusively laid on them. No man of common reflection 

 can be ignorant that the manufacturer is rated at the rent of a 

 building worth to him, perhaps, 20,000 1. a year, that rent being 

 1000 Z. or 1200Z., while the landowner whose income is the same 

 pays in the proportion ten or twelve times more. It is equally in- 

 accurate to reckon the excise, customs, stamps, as burthens falling 

 on the rest of the community and not on the land. The landowner 

 pays his share of these largely, and the stamps are peculiarly burthen- 

 some to him. 



