were to endeavour to retain the prices of the last five years, it is
scarcely possible to suppose that our foreign commerce would not in
a short time begin to languish. The difference between ninety
shillings a quarter and thirty two shillings a quarter, which is
said to be the price of the best wheat in France, is almost too
great for our capital and machinery to contend with. The wages of
labour in this country, though they have not risen in proportion to
the price of corn, have been beyond all doubt considerably
influenced by it.

If the whole of the difference in the expense of raising corn in
this country and in the corn countries of Europe was occasioned by
taxation, and the precise amount of that taxation as affecting corn,
could be clearly ascertained; the simple and obvious way of
restoring things to their natural level and enabling us to grow
corn, as in a state of perfect freedom, would be to lay precisely
the same amount of tax on imported corn and grant the same amount in
a bounty upon exportation. Dr Smith observes, that when the
necessities of a state have obliged it to lay a tax upon a home
commodity, a duty of equal amount upon the same kind of commodity
when imported from abroad, only tends to restore the level of
industry which had necessarily been disturbed by the tax.

But the fact is that the whole difference of price does not by any
means arise solely from taxation. A part of it, and I should think,
no inconsiderable part, is occasioned by the necessity of yearly
cultivating and improving more poor land, to provide for the demands
of an increasing population; which land must of course require more
labour and dressing, and expense of all kinds in its cultivation.
The growing price of corn therefore, independently of all taxation,