135 



give the most correct ideas, how much could be brought to mar- 

 ket, if required, making, perhaps, some little addition for improved 

 knowledge in agricultural matters. 



Yet it should not be overlooked, that a fair remunerating price, 

 upon which the quantity brought to market must ultimately de- 

 pend, is also a point of relative estimation. \\ hat might be 

 thought remunerating at present, would not probably be so con- 

 sidered, if the prices advanced, and continued so for some time, 

 for rents would tend to rise, and the expense of living and of 

 production to increase accordingly ; and at the time when the 

 Cultivators have received 40s. to 50s. per quarter, or more, for 

 their Wheat, they assuredly would not have thought 30s. or 35*. a 

 remunerating price, as they might do at this moment, when rents 

 have decreased, and their wants have, from necessity, been cur- 

 tailed greatly. The higher price of one production of the soil 

 naturally tends to raise that of other productions : the greater 

 expenses tend to have a like effect on all ; and these circum- 

 stances operate on each other reciprocally. Did the price of 

 Wheat in Prussia and Poland bear a fair proportion to the price 

 in England, the want of the Cultivators, in the respectivecountries, 

 would increase in like proportion ; all the attendant expenses in 

 these parts would rise, and it needed not be feared, that the 

 Prussian and Polish Cultivators would undersell the English, in 

 their own market, to a great extent. The more free the Corn 

 trade was, the less would this need to be apprehended in the long 

 run, as by prices in Prussia and Poland rising more on a level 

 with those in England, it would become a greater consideration, 

 whether the speculation might answer, which would operate as a 

 control ; and were an import duty, for the first, imposed in 

 England, importation would be checked the more, unless in dear 

 times. Such duty might tend to confine the importation to the 

 finer qualities, and in some degree to exclude the inferior from 

 Prussia and other parts ; thus diminishing the quantity imported. 



The subjoined Tables of the quantity of Wheat exported from 

 Dantaic and Elbing, during a series of years, and the average 

 price at Dantzic (at Elbing they are much the same), will show 

 the little fear there is of an inundating quantity from this quarter, 

 even if the cultivators received Like prices. In fact, it was only 

 an increase of price, or the prospect of it, that produced an 

 increase of quantity, and which again became smaller as the price 

 declined. It is to be observed, that the supplies during that 

 period were greater than in former times, as will be seen from a 

 table of the Exports, for nearly two hundred years back, from 

 Dantzic, which had too in early times a much greater portion of 

 the Polish trade than latterly. 



But it would evidently be for the advantage of Britain, as a 

 mercantile country, to enable the people of Poland and Pi 



