202 Of Corn- Laws. Bk. iii. 



turing advantages, and destroyed or driven away 

 our capital before it had spread itself on the soil, 

 and become national property. 



As it is, the practical restrictions thrown in 

 the way of importing foreign corn during the war 

 have forced our steam-engines and our colonial 

 monopoly to cultivate our lands ; and those very 

 causes which, according to Adam Smith, tend to 

 draw capital from agriculture, and would cer- 

 tainly have so drawn it if we could have conti- 

 nued to. purchase foreign corn at the market 

 prices of France and Holland, have been the 

 means of giving such a spur to our agriculture, 

 that it has not only kept pace with a very rapid 

 increase of commerce and manufactures, but has 

 recovered the distance at which it had for many 

 years been left behind, and now marches with 

 them abreast. 



But restrictions upon the importation of foreign 

 corn in a country which has great landed re- 

 sources, not only tend to spread every commer- 

 cial and manufacturing advantage possessed, 

 whether permanent or temporary, on the soil, and 

 thus, in the language of Adam Smith, secure and 

 realize it; but also tend to prevent those great 

 oscillations in the progress of agriculture and com- 

 merce, which are seldom unattended with evil. 



It is to be recollected, and it is a point of 

 great importance to keep constantly in our minds, 

 that the distress which has been experienced 

 among almost all classes of society from the sud- 

 den fall of prices, except as far as it has been 



