rrency being scarce, of course the
price will be low. Lastly, Countries which have vast inland tracts, like
Russia, Austria, France, and America, especially if no extensive system
of water communication exists in their interior, have little reason to
apprehend injury from the most unrestricted commerce in grain; because
the cost of inland carriage on so bulky and heavy an article as corn is
so considerable, that the produce of foreign harvests can never
penetrate far into the interior, or come to supply a large portion of
the population with food.

The countries which have reason to apprehend injury, and in the end
destruction, to their native agriculture, from the unrestricted
admission of foreign corn, are those which, though they may possess a
territory in many places well adapted for the raising of grain crops,
are yet rich, far advanced in civilization, with a narrow territory, and
their principal towns on the sea-coast. They have every thing to dread
from foreign importation; because both the plenty of currency, which
opulence brings in its train, and the heavy public burdens with which it
is invariably attended, render labour dear at home, by lowering the
value of money, and raising the weight of taxation. If long continued,
an unrestricted foreign importation cannot fail to ruin agriculture, and
destroy domestic strength in such a state. Italy and Greece stood
eminently in such a situation; for all their great towns were upon the
sea-coast, their territory was narrow, and being successively the seats
of empire, and the centres of long-continued opulence, money was more
plentiful, and therefore production dearer than in those remote and
poorer states from which grain might be brought to their great towns by
sea carriage. In the present circumstances of this country, we would do
well to bear in mind the following reflections of Sismondi, "It is not
to no purpose that we have entered into the foregoing details concerning
the state of agriculture in the neighbourhood of Rome; for we are
persuaded that a universal tendency in Europe _menaces us with the same
calamities_, even in those countries which at present seem to adopt an
entirely opposite system; _only the Romans have gone through the career,
while we are only entering upon it_."[47]

The times are past, indeed, when gratuitous distributions of grain will
be made to an idle population, as under the Roman emperors, or bread be
sold for centuries by government