high price compensates grossly the defect of quantity; the overflowing
quantity in turn compensates grossly the low price. And thus it
happens that, upon any cycle of ten years, taken when you will, the
manufacture of grain will turn out to have been moderately profitable.
Now, on the other hand, under a system of free importation, whenever a
redundant crop in England coincides (as often it does) with a similar
redundancy in Poland, the discouragement cannot but become immoderate.
An excess of one-seventh will cause a fall of price by three-sevenths.
But the simultaneous excess on the Continent may raise the one-seventh
to two-sevenths, and in a much greater proportion will these depress
the price. The evil will then be enormous; the discouragement will be
ruinous; much capital, much land, will be withdrawn from the culture
of grain; and, supposing a two years' succession of such excessive
crops, (which effect is more common than a single year's excess,) the
result, for the third year, will be seen in a preternatural
deficiency; for, by the supposition, the number of acres applied to
corn is now very much less than usual, under the unusual
discouragement; and according to the common oscillations of the season
according to those irregularities that, in effect, are often found to
be regular--this third year succeeding to redundant years may be
expected to turn out a year of scarcity. Here, then, in the absence of
a corn-law, comes a double deficiency--a deficiency of acres applied,
from jealousy of foreign competition, and upon each separate acre a
deficiency of crop, from the nature of the weather. What will be the
consequence? A price ruinously high; higher beyond comparison than
could ever have arisen under a temperate restriction of competition;
that is, in other words, under a British corn-law.

Many other cases might be presented to the reader, and especially
under the action of a doctrine repeatedly pressed in this journal,
but steadily neglected elsewhere--viz. the "_devolution_" of foreign
agriculture upon lower qualities of land, (and consequently its
_permanent_ exaltation in price,) in case of any certain demand on
account of England. But this one illustration is sufficient. Here we
see that, under a free trade in corn, and _in consequence_ of a free
trade, ruinous enhancements of price would arise--such in magnitude as
never could have arisen under a wise limitation of foreign
competition. And further, we se