178 Of Cor?i-Laws. Bk. iii. 



under circumstances favourable to its efficiency, 

 might be expected to operate, and this seems to 

 have been the manner in which it really did operate 

 in the only instance where it has been fairly tried. 

 Without meaning to deny the concurrence of 

 other causes, or attempting to estimate the relative 

 efficiency of the bounty, it is impossible not to 

 acknowledge that, when the growing price of corn 

 was, according to Adam Smith, only 28 shillings 

 a quarter, and the corn-markets of England were 

 as low as those of the continent, a premium of 

 five shillings a quarter upon exportation must 

 have occasioned an increase of real price, and 

 given encouragement to the cultivation of grain. 

 But the changes produced in the direction of 

 capital to or from the land will always be slow. 

 Those who have been in the habit of employing 

 their stock in mercantile concerns do not readily 

 turn it into the channel of agriculture ; and it is a 

 still more difficult and slower operation to with- 

 draw capital from the soil, to employ it in com- 

 merce. For the first 25 years after the establish- 

 ment of the bounty in this country the price of 

 corn rose 2 or 3 shillings in the quarter; but 

 owing probably to the wars of William and Anne, 

 to bad seasons, and a scarcity of money, capital 

 seems to have accumulated slowly on the land, 

 and no great surplus growth was effected. It was 

 not till after the peace of Utrecht that the capital 

 of the country began in a marked manner to in- 

 crease; and it is impossible that the bounty should 

 not gradually have directed a larger portion of 



