Robert Somers and Thomas Allan Ingram

“ CORN LAWS. In England, legislation on corn was early applied both to home and foreign trade in this essential produce. Roads were so bad, and the chain of home trade so feeble, that there was often scarcity of grain in one part, and plenty in another part of the same kingdom. Export by sea or river to some foreign market was in many cases more easy than the carriage of corn from one market to another within the country. ”

“ The prohibition of export discouraged agricultural improvement, and in so much diminished the security and liberality even of domestic supply; while the intolerance of any home dealing or merchandise in corn prevented the growth of a commercial and financial interest strong enough to improve the means of transport by which the plenty of one part of the same country could have come to the aid of the scarcity in another. ”

“ The feudal system was breaking up; a wage-earning population was rapidly increasing both in the farms and in the towns; but the spirit of feudalism remained, and the iron collar of serfdom was riveted round the necks of the labourers by these statutes many generations after they had become nominally freemen. ”

“ Only at the close of Elizabeth’s reign (1603) did a spark of new light appear in a further statute, which removed the futile provisions in favour of tillage and against enlargement of pastoral farms, and rested the whole policy for promoting an equable supply of corn, while encouraging agriculture, on an allowed export of wheat and other grain at a duty of 2s. and 1s. 4d. when the price of wheat was not more than 20s., and of barley and malt 12s. per quarter. The import of corn appears to have been much lost sight of from the period of the statute of 1463. ”

“ The farmers complained that the home-market for their produce was unremunerative and unsatisfactory; the masses of the people complained with no less reason that the money wages of labour could not purchase them the usual necessaries of life. Macaulay, in his History of England, says of this period, with little exaggeration, that “the price of the necessaries of life, of shoes, of ale, of oatmeal, rose fast. The labourer found that the bit of metal which, when he received it, was called a shilling, would hardly, when he purchased a pot of beer or a loaf of rye bread, go as far as sixpence.” ”

“ Between the reign of William and Mary and that of George III., the question of bounty on export of grain had, in the general progress of the country, fallen into the background, while that of the heavy embargoes on import had come to the front. Therefore it is that Burke’s Act of 1773, as a deliberate attempt to bring the corn laws into some degree of reason and order, is worthy of special mention. This statute permitted the import of foreign wheat at a nominal duty of 6d. when the home price was 48s. ”

“ The corn statutes of the next twenty years, though occupying an enormous amount of time and attention in the Houses of Parliament, may be briefly treated, for they are simply a record of the impotence of legislation to maintain the price of a commodity at a high point when all the natural economic causes in operation are opposed to it. ”

“ In the British colonies probably the only example of an export duty is that on rice in British India; it amounts to 3 annas per maund (4d. per cwt.) . The import of grain into India is free. In Australia, New Zealand, Canada, and all mainly agricultural countries, there is no export duty. In each of these countries, however, there is an import duty ”

“ Foreign Corn Laws.—Freedom of export of corn from customs duties has become the general rule of nearly all foreign countries. It is somewhat curious that Spain saw the advantage to her wheat-producing provinces of freedom of export of wheat as early as 1820, and three years afterwards extended this freedom to all “fruits of the soil” in Spain. The import Spain. duty on wheat, as on other grain, has varied from time to time. The tariff of 1882 fixed the duty at 2s. ”

“ Maize is subject to a duty of 4s. 11⁄2d. per cwt., and rye, oats and barley to one of 3s. 8d. per cwt. By laws of July 1889 and August 1891 the importation of flour was prohibited except in the event of a strike of the mill-hands, and the duty was fixed at 6s. 2d. per cwt. Export and import of France. grain in France were prohibited down to the period of the repeal of the British corn laws, save when prices were below certain limits in the one case and above certain other limits in the other. But export of grain and flour from France has long been free of duty. ”

“ Under this tariff the “general” and “conventional” duties, respectively, on wheat are 3s. 91⁄2d. and 2s. 9d.; on oats Austria-Hungary. and rye, 3s. 61⁄2d. and 2s. 61⁄4d.; on “common baker’s produce,” 8s. 3d. and 5s. 2d. In Austria-Hungary the import duty on wheat and rye is, under the tariff of 1887, 1s. 61⁄4d. per cwt.; on barley and oats, 91⁄4d.; on maize, 6d., and on flour, 3s. 93⁄4d.
The great countries, famous for a production of raw materials much beyond their own means of consumption, are favourable, of course, to the utmost freedom of export. ”