166 Of Corn Laws. Bk. iii. 



and commercial. In one respect, indeed, it will 

 still continue to have a great superiority. It will 

 possess resources in land, which may be resorted 

 to when its manufactures and commerce, either 

 from foreign competition, or any other causes, 

 begin to fail. But, to balance this advantage, it 

 will be subjected, during the time that large im- 

 portations are necessary, to much greater fluctua- 

 tions in its supplies of corn, than countries wholly 

 manufacturing and commercial. The demands of 

 Holland and Hamburgh may be known with con- 

 siderable accuracy by the merchants who supply 

 them. If they increase, they increase gradually; 

 and, not being subject from year to year to any 

 great and sudden variations, it might be safe and 

 practicable to make regular contracts for the 

 average quantity wanted. But it is otherwise 

 with such countries as England and Spain. Their 

 wants are necessarily very variable, from the va- 

 riableness of the seasons ; and if the merchants 

 were to contract with exporting countries for the 

 quantity required in average years, two or three 

 abundant seasons might ruin them. They must 

 necessarily wait to see the state of the crops in 

 each year, in order safely to regulate their pro- 

 ceedings ; and though it is certainly true that it 

 is only the deficiency from the average crop, and 

 not the whole deficiency, which may be consi- 

 dered altogether in the light of a new demand 

 in Europe ; yet the largeness and previous un- 

 certainty of this whole deficiency, the danger of 

 making contracts for a stated quantity annually, 

 and the greater chance of hostile combinations 



