208 Of Corn-Laws. Bk. 



111. 



One objection however to systems of restriction 

 must always remain. They are essentially unso- 



in the Review above adverted to : " If there be a bad harvest," it is 

 said, " in one country, there is a good one in another, and the sur- 

 " plus produce of the latter supplies the deficiency of the former, 

 " &c. &c." Nov(^ there are the best reasons for believing that 

 these statements are decidedly contradicted by the most enlarged 

 experience. In the first place, if they vrere true, and if the general 

 plenty alluded to were only prevented by the want of a free trade in 

 corn, we should necessarily see a great rise of prices in one country, 

 contemporaneous with a great fall in others ; but a slight glance at 

 the prices of corn in the countries of the commercial world for the 

 last one or two centuries will be suflScient to convince any impartial 

 person that, on the contrary, there is a veiy remarkable sympathy 

 of prices at the same periods, which is absolutely inconsistent with 

 the truth of the above statements. Secondly, all travellers who 

 have paid any attention to the seasons, agree in stating that the same 

 sort of weather often prevails in different countries at the same time. 

 The peculiar and excessive heats of the very last summer not only 

 prevailed generally over the greatest part of Europe, but extended 

 even to America. Mr. Tooke, On High and Low Prices, (p. 247. 

 2d Edit.) quotes a passage from Mr. Lowe's work on the Present 

 State of England, in which he observes, that " The public, particu- 

 " larly the untravelled part of the public, are hardly aware of the 

 " similarity of temperature prevailing throughout what may be 

 " called the corn-country of Europe, we mean Great Britain, Ire- 

 " land, the North of France, the Netherlands, Denmark, the north- 

 " west of Germany, and in some measure Poland and the north- 

 " east of Germany.'' He then goes on to state instances of scar- 

 city in different countries of Europe at the same time. And in the 

 justness of these remarks, on the prevalence of a general similarity 

 of seasons in Europe within certain latitudes, Mr. Tooke says he 

 perfectly concurs. Many of the corn-merchants examined before 

 the Committees of the two Houses, both in 1814 and 1821, ex- 

 pressed similar opinions ; and I do not recollect a single instance of 

 the opinion, that good and bad harvests generally balance each 

 other in different countries, being stated by any person who had 

 been in a situation to observe the facts. Such statements, there- 



