186 Of Corn- Laws. Bk. iii. 



tation impose no direct tax upon the people. On 

 the contrary, they might be made, if it were 

 thought advisable, sources of revenue to the go- 

 vernment, and they can always, without difficulty, 

 be put in execution, and be made infallibly to an- 

 swer their express purpose of securing, in average 

 years, a sufficient grov^^th of com for the actual 

 population. 



We have considered, in the preceding chapters, 

 the peculiar disadvantages which attend a system 

 either almost exclusively agricultural or exclusively 

 commercial, and the peculiar advantages which 

 attend a system in which they are united, and 

 flourish together. It has further appeared that, 

 in a country with great landed resources, the com- 

 mercial population may, from particular causes, 

 so far predominate, as to subject it to some of the 

 evils which belong to a state purely commercial 

 and manufacturing, and to a degree of fluctuation 

 in the price of corn greater than is found to take 

 place in such a state. It is obviously possible, 

 by restrictions upon the importation of foreign 

 corn, to maintain a balance between the agricul- 

 tural and commercial classes. The question is 

 not a question of the efficiency or inefficiency of 

 the measure proposed, but of its policy or impolicy. 

 The object can certainly be accomplished, but it 

 may be purchased too dear; and to those who do 

 not at once reject all inquiries on points of this 

 kind, as impeaching a principle which they hold 

 sacred, the question, whether a balance between 

 the agricultural and commercial classes of society, 



