AGRICULTURAL DISTRESS
30 May 1820
Mr. Holme Sumner moved that the petitions upon the subject of agricultural distresses be referred to a select committee. He contended that the corn law of 1815 was inadequate and that new measures were required. Mr. Robinson (President of the Board of Trade) declared that he would oppose the motion unless the enquiries of the committee were confined to abuses which might exist in the execution of the law. Mr. Baring also opposed the motion.
Mr. Ricardo said, that there was one sentiment delivered by an hon. gentleman in the early part of the debate, in which he cordially concurred, namely, that in legislative enactments, the interest of one body of men ought not to be consulted at the expense of others, but that each should receive corresponding consideration in proportion to its importance. He (Mr. Ricardo) would wish to act up to this maxim, and, because he consulted the interests of the whole community, he would oppose the corn-laws. In many of the observations which he intended to make he had been anticipated by his hon. friend the member for Taunton. The agriculturists had contended that they had a right to be protected in a remunerating price for their produce, but they forget that no remunerating price could be fixed. It was in vain to talk of fixing a remunerating price, which must necessarily change with circumstances. If by preventing importation the farmer was compelled, for the national supply, to expend his capital on poor or unprofitable soils, the remunerating price at which he could keep this land in cultivation must be very high, as compared with the price of grain in other countries, where the soil was better, and less labour was required. Open the ports, admit foreign grain, and you drive this land out of cultivation; a less remunerating price would then do for the more productive lands. You might thus have fifty remunerating prices according as your capital was employed on productive or unproductive lands. It became the legislature, however, not to look at the partial losses which would be endured by a few, who could not cultivate their land profitably, at a diminished remunerative price, but to the general interests of the nation; and, connected with this, he would look to the profits of capital. In his opinion a remunerating price might have been so fixed, that 50s. per quarter would have answered the purpose, but at all events he conceived that if the farmers in the country could raise a sufficient supply for the demand, 70s. might be considered as a protecting price. —He would rather have a great quantity of produce at a low rate than a small quantity at a high. By making food cheap, the people would be enabled to purchase a greater quantity of it, and apply a part of their earnings to the purchase of luxuries. The high price of subsistence diminished the profits of capital in the following manner:— the price of manufactured articles—of a piece of cloth for instance—was made up of the wages of the manufacturer, the charges of management, and the interest of capital. The wages of the labourer were principally made up of what was necessary for subsistence; if grain was high, therefore, the price of labour, which might be before at 50 per cent on the manufactured article, might rise to 60, and being sold to the consumer at the same rate, the 10 per cent (difference) would necessarily be a deduction from the profits of stock. If food was high here, and cheap abroad, stock would thus have a tendency to leave the country, and to settle where higher profits could be realized. The right hon. president of the board of trade appeared inconsistent when he denied a committee to inquire into the more important question, and yet agreed to one for discussing such trifling matters as striking the average. This was not what the petitioners wanted; they declared that they could grow as much as the home market required, and they demanded a monopoly of it. He would admit their statement to its full extent. He would even admit that our land was susceptible of a great increase of population, and that we could grow what would be sufficient to support that increase. But then, see what the inference of the petitioners was—they required that importation, therefore, should not be allowed. The answer to the whole of their system was plain. “You can grow those articles, it is true, but then we can get them cheaper from other countries.” They could grow them, but was it expedient that they should under those circumstances? All general principles were against it. They might as well urge that as in France, they could grow beet-root for the purpose of producing sugar, as grow grain sufficient for home consumption merely because it could be done. The right hon. gentleman opposite had ridiculed that absurd scheme of Buonaparte in the most pointed language, but all his ridicule applied equally to the growing of corn in this country when we could get it cheaper elsewhere. Another of their arguments was, that as ship-owners and merchants were protected by the navigation laws, and other enactments, so they ought to be protected by prohibitions in return. But he denied that these protections were of any use to the country. The navigation laws were of no use. Nay, he would allow them to take any trade they pleased, and surround it with protections; the measure might be beneficial to the particular trade, but it must be injurious to the rest of the country. There was no principle more clear than this. The argument of the agriculturist was, that the legislature having enabled the ship-owner and cotton manufacturer to injure the community, they should give him a privilege to do the same. Again they talked of the tax on malt, as if the tax on malt was not a general burthen, which fell upon every class of the community. Another of their statements was, that they paid 30 per cent on the whole produce of the country. He contended that the land-owner did not pay 30 per cent on the whole produce of the country. The produce of the country was calculated at the value of two hundred millions a year; 30 per cent would be 60,000,000l., and besides that there were the assessed taxes, the customs, and various other sources of revenue, which showed that the calculation of 30 per cent was wrong. They spoke also of the encouragement given to foreign labour, but, he would ask, what article could they import which was not the produce of foreign labour? for which, it was to be observed, that English labour was given in exchange. The error committed in 1816 was that of making the corn law a permanent law. It ought to have been a temporary measure, and to have ceased its operation as soon as the existing leases had expired, and the farmer was enabled to make new terms with his landlord. There were many measures that might be adopted with propriety, even in opposition to general principles, for a time, and under the exigencies of the moment, but parliament should always provide for a return to the good system. They should go back to that system as soon and as well as they could, but at all events they should go back. Nothing was more likely to occasion a convulsion than to persevere in a wrong measure merely because it had once for a temporary purpose been adopted. Adverting to the subject of countervailing duties, of which he had formerly spoken, he contended that it was not necessary to constitute a countervailing duty, that it should make up the difference between the price at which a foreigner could sell grain and that at which we could raise it. A countervailing duty, in his opinion, was one which balanced the particular tax laid upon any particular class of the community. Countervailing duties of a different description would entirely destroy all commercial intercourse. He agreed that the interests of the agriculturists, and of the other classes of the community, might be identified, provided we were restrained from intercourse with other nations; but this might not be the case in reference to foreign commerce. It might be the interest of the farmer to confine the manufacturer to the supply which he could afford him at a high price, while the manufacturer might procure the article cheaper from abroad. The price of grain might be raised by two causes—either by a change in the currency, which would affect grain like other articles; or by legislative restrictions, which might alter its relation to other articles. A rise in the price of corn from the latter cause tended to injure all who were not interested in the cultivation of the land, by lowering the profits of stock. It had been said, that the national debt, and the pressure of taxation, were the sources out of which the difficulty had arisen. It was no such thing. If all the taxes and the debt had been got rid of together, the same question would still arise —for while the population of foreign countries was not able to consume the produce of the land, and the population of this country was more than sufficient, there would be a disposition to import.—Some gentlemen seemed to think that taxation made a difference in the state of the question, as to our intercourse with foreign nations. It would no doubt be the case, if we taxed one article more than another, that we should cease to supply foreign countries with that commodity; but, if all articles were taxed alike, commerce in general would not be affected. If, for instance, this country produced corn and cloth, and that the production of each commodity was equally taxed, the amount of taxation would not make any difference in the relative advantage which one species of production had over the other, nor consequently in the choice of the commodity which we might supply to other nations, or be supplied with by them. It would be said, however, that taxation would make all things dearer; he admitted that—but though we might thus for a time cease to sell to other countries, we should not cease to buy of them, till the reduction of the quantity of money we possessed reduced prices also, and brought us to a level with them. It was one of the evils of the national debt, that it stood in the way of a reduction of the taxes in the same ratio as the currency was reduced. If, for instance, a tax was imposed of two shillings per yard on cloth worth twenty-two shillings, the country calculated on paying one-eleventh of the value; but when, in the progress of the alteration of the distribution of money, the cloth was reduced to 20s. a yard, the tax continuing the same, the country paid 1-10th of the value. There was another argument, which was the most important, because the most plausible argument in favour of the Corn law, viz. the plea that by importing corn, we became dependent on foreign countries. On the ground of economy not a word was to be said by any one who had paid attention to the subject, but in the argument that it was desirable that in war this country should not be dependent on another for subsistence, there was a certain degree of plausibility. In answer to this, it was to be said that if we imported corn in time of peace from any one country to a considerable extent, that country must be in the habit of growing corn specially for our consumption. In the event of a war with us, such a country would suffer extreme distress. We knew the effect of an excess, however small, of the supply of corn over the demand in the reduction of the price of this commodity, the consumption of which could not rapidly be increased, and the overplus of which consequently possessed no exchangeable value. All the agricultural distress we complained of would be not one-tenth of what such a country would suffer. But this went on the supposition that all our supply was to be derived from one country, whereas the fact was, that the supply would be derived from a great variety of countries; and was it probable that we should at once be at war with all of them? He therefore thought that this argument was hardly better founded than the other. This would be the happiest country in the world, and its progress in prosperity would be beyond the power of imagination to conceive, if we got rid of two great evils—the national debt and the corn laws. When he spoke of getting rid of the national debt, he did not mean by wiping it away with a sponge, but by honestly discharging it. His ideas on the subject were known and he had heard no argument to show that the measure he would recommend was not the best policy. If this evil were removed, the course of trade and the prices of articles would become natural and right; and if corn were exported or imported, as in other countries, without restraint, this country, possessing the greatest skill, the greatest industry, the best machinery, and every other advantage in the highest degree, its prosperity and happiness would be incomparably, and almost inconceivably, great. Other topics he would allude to but for the lateness of the hour. Gentlemen had favoured him more than he had expected. He should oppose the motion because he was persuaded that a committee would be productive of mischief, and not good.
Mr. Brougham, in the course of a speech in support of the motion, said: ‘His hon. friend, the member for Portarlington, had argued as if he had dropped from another planet; as if this were a land of the most perfect liberty of trade—as if there were no taxes—no drawback—no bounties—no searchers—on any other branch of trade but agriculture; as if, in this Utopian world, of his hon. friend’s creation the first measure of restriction ever thought on was that on the importation of corn; as if all classes of the community were alike—as if all trades were on an equal footing; and that, in this new state, we were called upon to decide the abstract question, whether or not there should be a protecting price for corn? But we were not in this condition—we were in a state of society in which we had manufactures of almost every description, protected in every way, even to criminal enactments, to prevent the raw material from going out of the country, in order thereby to assist the native manufacturer.’
The motion was carried by 150 votes to 101, the Government being left in a minority, and the House adjourned. The following day however a motion of the President of the Board of Trade restricting the terms of reference of the committee was carried by 251 votes to 108.
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