whose sole business it was to purchase corn by
wholesale, to collect it into a great magazine,
and to retail it again.
The law which prohibited the manufacturer
from exercising the trade of a shopkeeper, endeavoured
to force this division in the employment
of stock to go on faster than it might
otherwise have done. The law which obliged
the farmer to exercise the trade of a corn
merchant, endeavoured to hinder it from going
on so fast. Both laws were evident violations
of natural liberty, and therefore unjust;
and they were both, too, as impolitic as
they were unjust. It is the interest of every
society, that things of this kind should never
either be forced or obstructed. The man who
employs either his labour or his stock in a
greater variety of ways than his situation renders
necessary, can never hurt his neighbour
by underselling him. He may hurt himself,
and he generally does so. Jack-of-all-trades
will never be rich, says the proverb. But the
law ought always to trust people with the care
of their own interest, as in their local situations
they must generally be able to judge better
of it than the legislature can do. The law,
however, which obliged the farmer to exercise
the trade of a corn merchant was by far the
most pernicious of the two.
It obstructed not only that division in the
employment of stock which is so advantageous
to every society, but it obstructed likewise the
improvement and cultivation of the land. By
obliging the farmer to carry on two trades instead
of one, it forced him to divide his capital
into two parts, of which one only could be
employed in cultivation. But if he had been
at liberty to sell his whole crop to a corn merchant
as fast as he could thresh it out, his
whole capital might have returned immediately
to the land, and have been employed in
buying more cattle, and hiring more servants,
in order to improve and cultivate it better.
But by being obliged to sell his corn by retail,
he was obliged to keep a great part of
his capital in his granaries and stack-yard
through the year, and could not therefore cultivate
so well as with the same capital he might
otherwise have done. This law, therefore,
necessarily obstructed the improvement of the
land, and, instead of tending to render corn
cheaper, must have tended to render it scarcer,
and therefore dearer, than it would otherwise
have been.
After the business of the farmer, that of the
corn merchant is in reality the trade which, if
properly protected and encouraged, would
contribute the most to the raising of corn. It
would support the trade of the farmer, in the
same manner as the trade of the wholesale
dealer supports that of the manufacturer.
The wholesale dealer, by affording a ready
market to the manufacturer, by taking his goods
off his hand as fast as he can make them, and
by sometimes even advancing their price to him
before he has made them, enables him to keep
his whole capital, and sometimes even more
than his whole capital, constantly employed in
manufacturing, and consequently to manufacture
a much greater quantity of goods than
if he was obliged to dispose of them himself
to the immediate consumers, or even to the
retailers. As the capital of the wholesale
merchant, too, is generally sufficient to replace
that of many manufacturers, this intercourse
between him and them interests the owner of
a large capital to support the owners of a great
number of small ones, and to assist them in
those losses and misfortunes which might otherwise
prove ruinous to them.
An intercourse of the same kind universally
established between the farmers and the
corn merchants, would be attended with effects
equally beneficial to the farmers. They would
be enabled to keep their whole capitals, and
even more than their whole capitals constantly
employed in cultivation. In case of any of
those accidents to which no trade is more liable
than theirs, they would find in their ordinary
customer, the wealthy corn merchant,
a person who had both an interest to support
them, and the ability to do it; and they would
not, as at present, be entirely dependent upon
the forbearance of their landlord, or the mercy
of his steward. Were it possible, as perhaps
it is not, to establish this intercourse universally,
and all at once; were it possible to turn
all at once the whole farming stock of the
kingdom to its proper business, the cultivation
of land, withdrawing it from every other employment
into which any part of it may be at
present diverted; and were it possible, in order
to support and assist, upon occasion, the
operations of this great stock, to provide all
at once another stock almost equally great; it
is not, perhaps, very easy to imagine how great,
how extensive, and how sudden, would be the
improvement which this change of circumstances
would alone produce upon the whole
face of the country.
The statute of Edward VI. therefore, by
prohibiting as much as possible any middle
man from coming in between the grower and
the consumer, endeavoured to annihilate a
trade, of which the free exercise is not only
the best palliative of the inconveniencies of a
dearth, but the best preventive of that calamity;
after the trade of the farmer, no trade
contributing so much to the growing of corn
as that of the corn merchant.
The rigour of this law was afterwards softened
by several subsequent statutes, which
successively permitted the engrossing of corn
when the prices of wheat should not exceed
20s. and 24s. 32s. and 40s. the quarter. At
last, by the 15th of Charles II. c. 7, the engrossing
or buying of corn, in order to sell it
again, as long as the price of wheat did not
exceed 48s. the quarter, and that of other
grain in proportion, was declared lawful to all