The bounty upon the exportation of corn necessarily operates exactly in the same way as this absurd policy of Spain and Portugal.Whatever be the actual state of tillage, it renders our corn somewhat dearer in the home market than it otherwise would be in that state, and somewhat cheaper in the foreign; and as the average money price of corn regulates more or less that of all other commodities, it lowers the value of silver considerably in the one, and tends to raise it a little in the other.It enables foreigners, the Dutch in particular, not only to eat our corn cheaper than they otherwise could do, but sometimes to eat it cheaper than even our own people can do upon the same occasions, as we are assured by an excellent authority, that of Sir Matthew Decker.It hinders our own workmen from furnishing their goods for so small a quantity of silver as they otherwise might do; and enables the Dutch to furnish theirs for a smaller.It tends to render our manufactures somewhat dearer in every market, and theirs somewhat cheaper than they otherwise would be, and consequently to give their industry a double advantage over our own.
The bounty, as it raises in the home market not so much the real as the nominal price of our corn, as it augments, not the quantity of labour which a certain quantity of corn can maintain and employ but only the quantity of silver which it will exchange for, it discourages our manufactures, without rendering any considerable service either to our farmers or country gentlemen.
It puts, indeed, a little more money into the pockets of both, and it will perhaps be somewhat difficult to persuade the greater part of them that this is not rendering them a very considerable service.But if this money sinks in its value, in the quantity of labour, provisions, and homemade commodities of all different kinds which it is capable of purchasing as much as it rises in its quantity, the service will be little more than nominal and imaginary.
There is, perhaps, but one set of men in the whole commonwealth to whom the bounty either was or could be essentially serviceable.These were the corn merchants, the exporters and importers of corn.In years of plenty the bounty necessarily occasioned a greater exportation than would otherwise have taken place; and by hindering the plenty of one year from relieving the scarcity of another, it occasioned in years of scarcity a greater importation than would otherwise have been necessary.It increased the business of the corn merchant in both; and in years of scarcity, it not only enabled him to import a greater quantity, but to sell it for a better price, and consequently with a greater profit than he could otherwise have made, if the plenty of one year had not been more or less hindered from relieving the scarcity of another.It is in this set of men, accordingly, that I have observed the greatest zeal for the continuance or renewal of the bounty.
Our country gentlemen, when they imposed the high duties upon the importation of foreign corn, which in times of moderate plenty amount to a prohibition, and when they established the bounty, seem to have imitated the conduct of our manufacturers.
By the one institution, they secured to themselves the monopoly of the home market, and by the other they endeavoured to prevent that market from ever being overstocked with their commodity.By both they endeavoured to raise its real value, in the same manner as our manufacturers had, by the like institutions, raised the real value of many different sorts of manufactured goods.They did not perhaps attend to the great and essential difference which nature has established between corn and almost every other sort of goods.When, either by the monopoly of the home market, or by a bounty upon exportation, you enable our woollen or linen manufacturers to sell their goods for somewhat a better price than they otherwise could get for them, you raise, not only the nominal, but the real price of those goods.You render them equivalent to a greater quantity of labour and subsistence, you increase not only the nominal, but the real profit, the real wealth and revenue of those manufacturers, and you enable them either to live better themselves, or to employ a greater quantity of labour in those particular manufactures.You really encourage those manufactures, and direct towards them a greater quantity of the industry of the country than what would probably go to them of its own accord.But when by the like institutions you raise the nominal or money-price of corn, you do not raise its real value.You do not increase the real wealth, the real revenue either of our farmers or country gentlemen.You do not encourage the growth of corn because you do not enable them to maintain and employ more labourers in raising it.The nature of things has stamped upon corn a real value which cannot be altered by merely altering its money price.No bounty upon exportation, no monopoly of the home market, can raise that value.The freest competition cannot lower it.Through the world in general that value is equal to the quantity of labour which it can maintain, and in every particular place it is equal to the quantity of labour which it can maintain in the way, whether liberal, moderate, or scanty, in which labour is commonly maintained in that place.Woollen or linen cloth are not the regulating commodities by which the real value of all other commodities must be finally measured and determined; corn is.The real value of every other commodity is finally measured and determined by the proportion which its average money price bears to the average money price of corn.The real value of corn does not vary with those variations in its average money price, which sometimes occur from one century to another.It is the real value of silver which varies with them.