Ch. xii. Restrictions uj)on Importation. 205 



to grow its own supplies, and to import merely 

 in periods of scarcity, is not only certain of 

 spreading every invention in manufactures and 

 every peculiar advantage it may possess from its 

 colonies or general commerce on the land, and 

 thus of fixing them to the spot and rescuing them 

 from accidents ; but is necessarily exempt from 

 those violent and distressing convulsions of pro- 

 perty which almost unavoidably arise from the 

 coincidence of a general war and an insufficient 

 home supply of corn. 



If the late war had found us independent of 

 foreigners for our average consumption, not even 

 our paper currency could have made the prices of 

 our corn approach to the prices which were at 

 one time experienced.* And if we had conti- 

 nued, during the course of the contest, indepen- 

 dent of foreign supplies, except in an occasional 

 scarcity, it is impossible that the growth of our 

 own consumption, or a little above it, should 

 have produced at the end of the war so universal 

 a feeling of distress. 



The chief practical objection to which restric- 

 tions on the importation of corn are exposed is a 

 glut from an abundant harvest, which cannot be 



* According to Mr. Tooke (High and Low Prices, p. 215), if 

 the last war had found us with a growth beyond our consumption 

 we should have witnessed a totally different set of phenomena con- 

 nected with prices. It will be found upon examination, that the 

 prices of our corn led the way to the excess and diminution of our 

 paper currency, rather than followed, although tlie prices of corn 

 could never have been either so high or so low if this excess and 

 diminution had not taken place. 



