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rising, and will soon become prohibitory, the importer is obliged to enter it at once, and bring it upon a market where it is not required, and which, consequently, it must tend unduly to depress.
Moreover, this happy invention, the sliding-scale, not only exposes the farmer to the risk of more foreign wheat coming in than is required, but of much coming in when none at all is required. The corn merchant is obliged to act beforehand in an estimate of probabilities. If he conceives that the harvests are likely to be deficient, he does not wait, as under a free trade he would be able to do, till the deficiency is ascertained,—but he sends out his orders for foreign corn to come in at the period when the duty is usually the lowest, and the price the highest, viz. just before the harvest. But it sometimes chances, that he is mistaken in his anticipations,—that the crop turns out a fair average, and that importations are not needed. But his orders are executed, and the foreign corn comes pouring in. He dares not wait for the chance of the duty rising to a point which shall make his speculation overwhelmingly ruinous: he must liberate his corn on the best terms he can, and bring it to market as early as he can, whether wanted or not, before the full effect of the harvest in depressing prices has had time to operate.
This, then, is the fourth count of the farmer's indictment against the corn-laws:—that they introduce foreign corn at the worst possible moment;—that they introduce more than is wanted;—and they they introduce it when not wanted at all.
VI. Thus far we have considered the effect of the corn-laws on the interests of the farmer, considered merely in his capacity of a producer;[1] and as a producer, we have shown them to be in every way injurious to him. Either they raise the average price of corn, or they do not. If they do not, it is clear that neither he nor his landlord has any interest in maintaining them. If they do, we have seen that his landlord reaps the benefit, because he calculates his rent accordingly. But the farmer is a consumer as well as a producer,—an eater of corn as well as a grower of it; and, in this capacity, low prices, and not high prices, are desirable for him. Nay, more; he is a consumer to a greater extent than any other individual in the community; for to his own consumption must be added the far larger quantity required for seed-corn, and for feeding his cattle. High prices, therefore, not only add materially to his household expenses; they increase his cost of production, and thereby diminish the profits of his occupation. This point is too clear to need any further elucidation. As consumers, we repeat, farmers are more interested in low prices than any other class of men in the country.
But farmers are consumers in another point of view. They have
- ↑ It should be borne in mind, that the farmer is a producer of other articles besides corn: he is a producer of meat, of milk, of cheese, of butter; and in proportion as the price of corn rises, must the people's consumption of the other articles be reduced.—But our limits prevent us from dwelling upon this point at present.
