It has been sometimes said, that the losses at present sustained by
farmers are merely the natural and necessary consequences of
overtrading, and that they must bear them as all other merchants do,
who have entered into unsuccessful speculations. But surely the
question is not, or at least ought not to be, about the losses and
profits of farmers, and the present condition of landholders
compared with the past. It may be necessary, perhaps, to make
inquiries of this kind, with a view to ulterior objects; but the
real question respects the great loss of national wealth, attributed
to a change in the spirit of our legislative enactments relating to
the admission of foreign corn.

We have certainly no right to accuse our farmers of rash speculation
for employing so large a capital in agriculture. The peace, it must
be allowed, was most unexpected; and if the war had continued, the
actual quantity of capital applied to the land, might have been as
necessary to save the country from extreme want in future, as it
obviously was in 1812, when, with the price of corn at above six
guineas a quarter, we could only import a little more than 100,000
quarters. If, from the very great extension of cultivation, during
the four or five preceding years, we had not obtained a very great
increase of average produce, the distresses of that year would have
assumed a most serious aspect.

There is certainly no one cause which can affect mercantile
concerns, at all comparable in the extent of its effects, to the
cause now operating upon agricultural capital. Individual losses
must have the same distressing consequences in both cases, and they
are often more complete, and the fall is greater, in the shocks of