affirming, that, if exportation were
discouraged, we should have no years of plenty. Cheapness is produced by
the possibility of dearness. Our farmers, at present, plough and sow
with the hope that some country will always be in want, and that they
shall grow rich by supplying. Indefinite hopes are always carried by the
frailty of human nature beyond reason. While, therefore, exportation is
encouraged, as much corn will be raised as the farmer can hope to sell,
and, therefore, generally more than can be sold at the price of which he
dreamed, when he ploughed and sowed.

The greatest part of our corn is well known to be raised by those, who
pay rent for the ground which they employ, and of whom, few can bear to
delay the sale of one year's produce to another.

It is, therefore, vain to hope that large stocks of grain will ever
remain in private hands: he that has not sold the corn of last year,
will, with diffidence and reluctance, till his field again; the
accumulation of a few years would end in a vacation of agriculture, and
the husbandman would apply himself to some more profitable calling.

If the exportation of corn were totally prohibited, the quantity,
possible to be consumed among us, would be quickly known, and, being
known, would rarely be exceeded; for why should corn be gathered which
cannot be sold? We should, therefore, have little superfluity in the
most favourable seasons; for the farmer, like the rest of mankind, acts
in hope of success, and the harvest seldom outgoes the expectation of
the spring. But for droughts or blights, we should never be provided:
any intemperature of seasons would reduce us to distress, which we now
only read of in our histories; what is now scarcity would then be
famine.

What would be caused by prohibiting exportation, will be caused, in a
less degree, by obstructing it, and, in some degree, by every deduction
of encouragement; as we lessen hope, we shall lessen labour; as we
lessen labour, we shall lessen plenty.

It must always be steadily remembered, that the good of the bounty is
certain, and evil avoidable; that by the hope of exportation corn will
be increased, and that this increase may be kept at home.

Plenty can only be produced by encouraging agriculture; and agriculture
can be encouraged only by making it gainful. No influence can dispose
the farmer to sow what he cannot sell; and, if he is not to have the
chance of scarcity in his favour, he will take care