Ch, xi. Bounties upo/i Eivportation. 169 



thousand quarters, instead of fifteen hundred 

 thousand or two millions of quarters. If the pre- 

 sent year (1816-17) had found us in a state in 

 which our growth of corn had been habitually far 

 short of our consumption, the distresses of the 

 country would have been dreadfully aggravated. 



To provide against accidents of this kind, and 

 to secure a more abundant and, at the time, a 

 more steady supply of grain, a system of corn- 

 laws has been recommended, the object of which 

 is to discourage by duties or prohibitions the 

 importation of foreign corn, and encourage by 

 bounties the exportion of corn of home growth. 



A system of this kind was completed in our 

 own country in 1688,* the policy of which has 

 been treated of at some length by Adam Smith. 



In whatever way the general question may be 

 finally decided, it must be allowed by all those 

 who acknowledge the efficacy of the great prin- 

 ciple of supply and demand that the line of argu- 

 ment taken by the auther of the Wealth of Nations 

 against the system is essentially erroneous. 



He first states that, whatever extension of the 

 foreign market can be occasioned by the bounty, 

 must in every particular year be altogether at the 

 expense of the home market, as every bushel of 

 corn which is exported by means of the bounty, 

 and which would not have been exported without 



* Though the object here stated may not have been the specific 

 object of the law of 1688, it is certainly the object for which the 

 system has been subse(]iiently reconmiended. 



