1 It was formerly the custom, as we learn from Willughby, to carry the Cormorant hooded till its services were required, by which means it was kept quiet. At the present time its bearer wears a wire-mask to protect his eyes and face from the bird’s beak.

2 See Capt. Salvin ’ s chapters on “Fishing with Cormorants,” appended to his and Mr Freeman’s Falconry (London: 1859).

Apart from this general feudal germ of legislation on corn, the history of the British corn laws, as they have come down to recent times, may be said to have begun with the statute in the reign of Henry VI., 1436, by which exportation was permitted without state licence, when the price of wheat or other corn fell below certain prices. The reason given in the preamble of the statute was that the previous state of the law had compelled farmers to sell their corn at low prices, which was no doubt true, but which also showed the important turn of the tide that had then set in. M t Culloch, in his elaborate article in the Commercial Dictionary, to which reference may be made for the most authentic details on this subject, says that the fluctuation of the prices of corn in that age was so great, and beyond all present conception, that “it is not easy to determine whether the exportation price of 6s. 8d. for wheat” [l2s. lθd. in present money per quarter] “was above or below the medium price.” But while the medium price of the kingdom must be held to be unascertainable in a remote time, when the medium price in any principal market town of England did not agree with that of another for any year or series of years, one may readily perceive that the cultivators of the wheat lands in the south-eastern counties of England, for example, who could frequently have sold their produce in that age to Dutch merchants to better advantage than in their own market towns, or even in London, but were prohibited to export abroad, and yet had no means of distributing their supplies at home so as to realize the highest medium price in England, must have felt aggrieved, and that their barons and knights of the shire would have a common interest in making a strong effort to rectify the injustice in Parliament. This object appears to have been in some measure accomplished by this statute, and twenty-seven years afterwards ( 1463) a decided step was taken towards securing to agriculturists a monopoly of the home market by a statute prohibitory of importation from abroad. Foreign import was to be permitted only at and above the point of prices where the export of domestic produce was prohibited. The landed interest had now adopted the idea of sustaining and equalizing the value of corn, and promoting their own industry and gains, which for four centuries, under various modifications of plan, and great changes of social and political condition, were to maintain a firm place in the legislation and policy of England. But there were many reasons why this idea, when carried into practice, should not have the results anticipated from it.

The import of grain from abroad, even in times of dearth and high prices at home, could not be considerable as long as the policy of neighbouring countries was to prohibit export; nor could the export of native corn, even with the Dutch and other European ports open to such supplies, be effective save in limited maritime districts, as long as the internal corn trade was suppressed, not only by want of roads, but by legal interdict. The regulation of liberty of export and import by rates of price, moreover, had the same practical objection as the various sliding-scales, bounties, and other legislative expedients down to 1846, viz., that they failed, probably more in that age than in later times, to create a permanent market, and aimed only at a casual trade. When foreign supplies were needed, they were often not to be found; and when there was an excess of corn in the country a profitable outlet was both difficult and uncertain. It would appear, indeed, that during the Wars of the Roses the statutes of Henry VI. and Edward IV. had become obsolete; for a law regulating export prices in identical terms of the law of 1436 was re-enacted in the reign of Philip and Mary (1554). In the preceding reign of Edward VI., as well as in the succeeding long reign of Elizabeth, there were unceasing complaints of the decay of tillage, the dearth of corn, and the privations of the labouring classes; and these complaints were met by the same kind of measures—by statutes encouraging tillage, forbidding the enlargement of farms, imposing severer restrictions on storing and buying and selling of grain, and by renewed attempts to regulate export and import according to prices. In 1562 the price at which export might take place was raised to 1 Os. per quarter for wheat, and 6s. 8d. for barley and malt. This only lasted a few years, and in 1570 the export of wheat and barley was permitted from particular districts on payment of a duty of Is. 8d. per quarter, although still liable to prohibition by the Government or local authority, while it was entirely prohibited under the old regulations from other districts. 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 Is. 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 internal state of England, as well as the policy of other countries of Europe, was unfavourable to any regular import of grain, though many parts of the kingdom were often suffering from dearth of corn. It is obvious that this legislation, carried over more than a century and a halt’, failed of its purpose, and that it neither promoted agriculture, nor increased the supply of bread. So great a variance and conflict between the intention of statutes and the actual course of affairs might be deemed inexplicable, but for an explanation which a close economic study of the circumstances of the times affords.

Besides the general reasons of the failure already indicated, there were three special causes in active operation, which, though not seen at the period, have become distinct enough since. (1) A comparatively free export of wool had been permitted in England from time immemorial. It was subject neither to conditions of price nor to duties in the times under consideration, was easier of transport and much less liable to damage than corn, and, under the extending manufactures of France and the Low Countries, was sure of a foreign as well as a domestic market. Here was one description of rural produce on which there was the least embargo, and on which some reliance could be placed that it would in all circumstances bring a fair value; while corn, the prime rural produce, was subject as a commodity of merchandize to every difficulty, internally and externally, which meddling legislation and popular prejudice could impose. The numerous statutes enjoining tillage and discouraging pastoral farms—or in other words requiring that agriculturists should turn from what was profitable to what was unprofitable—had consequently no substantial effect, save in the many individual instances in which the effect may have been injurious. (2) The value of the standard money of the kingdom had been undergoing great depreciation from two opposite quarters at once. The pound sterling of England was reduced in weight of pure metal from £1, l8s. 9d. in 1436, the date of the first of the corn statutes, to 4s. 7¾d. in 1551, as far as can be estimated in present money, and to £1, Os. 6∣d. under the restoration of the coinage in the following year. At the same time the greater abundance of silver, which now began to be experienced in Europe from the discovery of the South American mines, was steadily reducing the intrinsic value of the metal. Hence a general rise of prices remarked by Hume and other historians; and hence also it followed that a price of corn fixed for export or import at one period became always at another period more or less restrictive of export than had been designed. (3) The wages of labour would have followed the advance in the prices of commodities had they been left free, but they were kept down by statute to the three or four pence per day at which they stood, when the pound sterling contained one-fourth more silver, and silver itself was much more valuable,—a refinement of cruelty, for which an excuse is hardly to be found in the prevailing ignorance of principles of political economy, great as that was. The feudal system was breaking up; ã 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 rivetted round the necks of the labourers by these statutes many generations after they had become nominally freemen. The result was chronic privation and discontent among the common people, by which all the conditions of agriculture and trade in corn were further straitened and barbarized; and an age, in some high respects among the most brilliant in the annals of England, was marked by an enormous increase of pauperism, and by the introduction of the merciful but wasteful remedy of the Γoor Laws.

The corn legislation of Elizabeth remained without change during the reign of James, the civil wars, and the Commonwealth. But on the restoration of Charles II. in 1660, the question was resumed, and an Act was passed of a more prohibitory character. Export and import of corn, while nominally permitted, were alike subjected to heavy duties—the need of the Exchequer being the paramount consideration, while the agriculturists were no doubt pleased with the complete command secured to them in the home market. This Act was followed by such high prices of corn, and so little advantage to the revenue, that Parliament in 1663 reduced the duties on import to 9 per cent. ad valorem, while at the same time raising the price at which export ceased to 48s., and reducing the duty on export from 20s. to 5s. 4d. per quarter. In a few years this was found to be too much free-trade for the agricultural liking, andin 1670 prohibitory duties were re-imposed on import when the home price was under 53s. 4d., and a duty of 8s. between that price and 80s., with the usual make-weight in favour of home supply, that export should be prohibited when the price was 53s. 4d. and upwards. But complaints of the decline of agriculture continued to be as rife under this Act as under the others, till on the accession of William and Mary, the landed interest, taking advantage of the Revolution as they had taken advantage of the Restoration to promote their own interests, took the new and surprising step of enacting a bounty on the export of grain, which continued to infect the corn laws of the kingdom, varied, on one occasion at least, with the further complication of bounties on import, until a comparatively recent period. The duties on export being abolished, while the heavy duties on import were maintained, this is probably the most one-sided form which the British corn laws ever assumed, but it was attended with none of the advantages anticipated. The prices of corn fell, instead of rising. There had occurred at the period of the Revolution a depreciation of the money of the realm, analogous in one respect to that which marked the first era of the corn statutes (1436-1551), and forming one of the greatest difficulties which the Government of William had to encounter. The coin of the realm was greatly debased, and as rapidly as the mint sent out money of standard weight and purity, it was melted down, and disappeared from the circulation. The influx of silver from South America to Europe had spent its action on prices before the middle of the century; the precious metals had again hardened in* value; and for forty years before the Revolution the price of corn had been steadily falling in money price. The liberty of exporting wool had also now been cut down before the English manufactures were able to take up the home supply, and agriculturists were consequently forced to extend their tillage. When the current coin of the kingdom became wholly debased by clipping and other knaveries, there ensued both irregularity and inflation of nominal prices, and the producers and consumers of corn found themselves equally ill at ease. 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. Lord 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.” The state of agriculture could not be prosperous under these conditions. But when the Government of William surmounted this difficulty of the coinage, as they did surmount it, under the guidance of Sir Isaac Newton, with remarkable statesmanship, it necessarily followed that prices, so far from rising, declined, because, as one reason, they were now denominated in a solid metallic value. The rise-of prices of corn attending the first years of the export bounty was consequently of very brief duration. The average price of wheat in the Winchester market, which in the ten years 1690-99 was £2, 10s., fell in the ten years 1716-25 to £1, 5s. 4d., and in the ten years 1746-55 to £1, Is. 2¾d. These figures are enough to dispel much illusion as to the effect of promoting particular branches of industry by legislative and fiscal protection. The system of corn law established in the reign of William and Mary was probably the most perfect to be conceived for advancing the agricultural interest of any country. Every stroke of the legislature seemed complete to this end. Yet it wholly failed of its purpose, because no industrial interest whatever can by any artificial means prosper, save in harmonious connection with the progress of other interests. If the price of wheat again rose in 1750-60 and 1760-70 to £1, 19s. 3¾d. and £2, Ils. 3¾d., it was simply because many causes had meanwhile been at work, as invariably happens in such economic developments, the operation of which no statutes could embrace, either to control or to prevent. 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. per quarter, and it stopped both the liberty to export and the bounty on export together when the home price was 44s. per quarter. There was probably an error in stopping export and cutting ofl bounty on export at the same point of price. But apart from this passing blemish, the statute of 1773 was worthy of the genius of Burke, and it would have been well for the country to have imbibed more fully its spirit and principles.

Fewquestions have been more discussed or more differently interpreted than the elaborate system of com laws dating from the reign of William and Mary. Even so careful an observer as Malthus was of opinion that the bounty on export had enlarged the area of subsistence. But a bounty on export is obviously liable to the same objection as a heavy duty on foreign import. It fails to create a natural, and therefore permanent, market for the favoured produce. The foreigner is induced at the expense of the exporting state to take the commodity at less cost than it can be produced. A bounty on export consequently never adjusts itself to the real conditions either at home or abroad. That the bounty on export of corn had large operation is sufficiently attested by the fact that, in the years from 1740 to 1751, bounties were paid out of the Exchequer to the amount of £1,515,000, and in 1749 alone they amounted to £324,000. But the trade thus forced was of no permanence, and the British exports of corn, which reached a maximum of 1,667,778 quarters in 1749-50, had fallen to 600,000 quarters in 1760, and continued to decrease.

Burke’s Act lasted long enough to introduce a regular import of foreign grain, varying with the abundance or scarcity of the home harvest, yet establishing in the end a systematic preponderance of imports over exports. The period, moreover, was marked by great agricultural improvements, by extensive reclamation of waste lands, and by an increased home produce of wheat, in the twenty years from 1773 to 1793, of nearly 2,000,000 quarters. Nor had the course of prices been unsatisfactory. The average price of British wheat in the twenty years was £2, 6s. 3d., and in only three years of the twenty was the price a fraction under £2. But the ideas in favour of greater freedom of trade, of which the Act of 1773 was an indication, and of which...

Quantities and Sources of Foreign Supply of Corn in 1841-45 and 1871-75.—The following are the average annual quantities of corn and flour imported into the United Kingdom in the five years preceding 1846, by the various countries which were then importers:— [table]

The most cursory observation of these figures will disclose results surprising to the present generation. It is to be remarked, for example, that down to 1846 Prussia and other countries of Germany supplied more than one-half the whole import of wheat into the United Kingdom, that the little country of Denmark had greatly more traffic in export of grain to British ports than the -whole Russian empire, and that the transatlantic trade in wheat and flour or other corn with the United Kingdom, apart from Canada, had barely begun to exist. Nor can it fail to be noticed how wide-spread the commerce in corn had become even in these circumstances, and that it was usual to send cargoes of wheat and flour to England from places so distant as Chili and La Plata, and Australia and the East Indies.

The statistics of the corn trade have become much more voluminous since 1846, and it is necessary to give some distinction to wheat and wheat flour, and the sources of their supply. It has also followed from the great trade in foreign grain that the measure should be weight, and not quantity in local bushels or quarters. The Board of Trade for many years has thus given its returns of wheat and other raw grain, as well as meal and flour, in cwts. The cwt. would be equal to two bushels of 56 lb; but the weight of a bushel being usually 61 lb, the quarter (or eight bushels) is 448 lb. The following are the average annual quantities of corn and flour imported into the United Kingdom in the five years 1871-75 :— [table] [table]

The import of foreign wheat and flour into the United Kingdom has increased more than sevenfold, and of all foreign grain nearly ten-fold, in the thirty years of free trade. The United States, from a small and unsteady commerce in grain, have risen to the first place, not only in wheat and flour, but in Indian corn, of which they contribute two-thirds of the supply. Russia stands second on the list, the great bulk of her export of wheat being now received from the southern ports of the empire. Canada, while scarcely sustaining its former supply of flour, has increased its average annual export of wheat to the United Kingdom from 110,000 cwts. to 3,230,000 cwts. The trade in com has not only been extended over vast territories in various quarters of the world which thirty years ago were comparatively uncultivated or absolute deserts, but no former exporting country appears to have lost ground. All have shared more or less in the general progress, though a decline in wheat is perceptible from Denmark and other countries on the northern verge of the wheat region, which now require more for home consumption. The increased import of barley, which is not so great as that of wheat, but still remarkable, comes chiefly from Northern Europe and France. It will be observed, from the figures denoting the ratio in which foreign supplies were taken up in the home consumption and the overplus sent to other markets in the two quinquennial periods above compared, that the re-export of foreign grain and flour from the United Kingdom has not increased with the magnitude of the supplies, but on the contrary has much diminished. This result can only be attributed to the organization of the trade, and the intelligence with which this vast movement of grain is directed. ì

Effect of Foreign Competition on British Agriculture and Corn-Production.— The acreage of the various crops, and the numbers of live stock in the United Kingdom, are now given with all desirable accuracy in the annual agricultural returns, for which the country is indebted to a motion in the House of Commons in 1862 by Mr Caird.

Previous to the adoption of free trade in corn, this information was a subject, not of official inquiry from farm to farm, but of general estimate, which could not but err considerably. There is thus a difficulty in tracing the exact effect of a free and increasing import of foreign grain on the domestic tillage; but the difficulty is not so great as might be supposed, nor is it of much importance in view of the authentic data available during the greater part of the period in question. Μ ‘Culloch, in his article on the Corn Trade, in the eighth edition of this work, estimated the acreage under wheat in England in 1852-53 at 3,000,000 acres, in Scotland 350,000, and in Ireland 400,000 acres—or 3,750,000 acres for the three kingdoms. The agricultural returns for 1867 gave 3,640,000 as the total wheat acreage of the United Kingdom. M f Culloch ’ s estimate of the extent under barley in England, viz., 1,000,000.acres, was probably wider of the mark than his estimate of the area of wheat crops. The agricultural returns for 1867 at least gave 2,000,000 acres of barley in England; it must be remembered, however, that in the intervening years British barley had been in increasing demand for malting, and had been commanding higher prices relatively to the prices of wheat. There is a medium authority, between M i Culloch ’ s estimate and the undisputed agricultural returns, in the estimates of Mr Caird, who had peculiar advantages of ascertaining the acreage under every condition of crop in England as early as 1850. The result of his estimate of the agricultural arrangement in England and the ascertained facts in the returns of 1867 was that, in the interval, there had been a diminution in wheat of 280,000 acres, in oats 450,000, in beans and pease 320,000, and in bare fallow 247,000— in all, under these heads, a diminution of 1,297,000 acres; but, on the other hand, an increase of barley 500,000 acres, of root crops 300,000, and of clover 20,000—in all an increase of 820,000 acres, leaving a net diminution under tillage of 477,000 acres, which may be supposed to have gone into permanent pasture. In Scotland and Ireland the effects on the area of tillage were more marked than in England. The production of wheat fell off in these countries about one-half. The loss in production of wheat in Scotland appears to have been recovered by a nearly equal increase in barley and oats; but in Ireland, besides the decrease in wheat, there was a decline of about one-sixth both in barley and oats. The returns conducted by the registrar-general of Ireland since 1848 show that the estimated yield of corn of all kinds fell from 11,500,000 quarters in 1857 to 8,800,000 quarters in 1866, and of potatoes from 3,500,000 to 3,000,000 tons in these ten years. But in the same period there was a great increase of live stock—120,000 head of cattle, 1,000,000 of sheep, and 278,000 swine. The growth of flax and of various green crops had also been extended; and the number of population depending upon agriculture had been diminished by a constant emigration to England and Scotland and abroad. There can be no doubt that the greatest change under free trade in corn fell upon the agriculture of Ireland; bat there is no reason to believe that the total value of the produce of the soil in Ireland lost ground, while it is certain that in the later development it has greatly increased. The annual produce of land is shown in one of Mr Caird’s tables to be £52, 17s. in Ireland, £60, 12s. in England, and £66, 15s. in Scotland, per head of all persons owning, farming, or assisting in the cultivation of farms.

The diminution of tillage in the United Kingdom under unlimited competition with foreign corn is so small as, when closely examined, to become almost imperceptible. For it must be borne in mind that the extension of large towns in these thirty years has occupied in building area alone what would form a considerable county, and has been spreading market gardens over always increasing spaces of what was formerly agricultural land. What has happened is that the poorer class of lands, from which crops of wheat and other corn were systematically taken, have been turned partially into pasture, and in still larger proportion into a more various and profitable culture both of white and green crops, barley in some instances having the preference over wheat, and bare fallow in others being economized in favour of the general productive interests of the farms. Nor have the British farmers hesitated to extend greatly their wheat area from time to time, when the state of supply and the rate of prices gave a necessary stimulus. After deficient harvests and higher prices, the acreage under wheat was increased from 3,640,000 in 1867 to 3,951,000 in 1868, th’e harvest of which latter year was so bountiful that, what with the increased acreage, the larger average crop, and the greater weight per bushel of the finer grain, the total produce of wheat was 16,436,000 quarters of 488 lb as compared with 9,380,000 quarters in 1867. The increase of one harvest, indeed, was equal to one-third of the total annual consumption of home and foreign wheat. The average price, which in May of that year, when it reached its maximum, was 73s. 8d., had fallen in December to 50s. Id. The acres under wheat in Great Britain have fallen from 3,630,300 in 1874 to 2,994,958 in 1876, but the acres under barley have increased in the same period from 2,287,987 to 2,533,106, and under oats from 2,596,384 to 2,789,583.

If the price of corn under free trade be considered, it will be seen, indeed, how little reason there could be for any material displacement of the domestic production; for though there has been a small decline of the price of wheat, it has been more than met by the increase of the price of barley and oats, to the surprise of those alarmists who forget that corn can nowhere be produced without much cost, that nowhere is the average produce per acre so great as in England and Scotland, and that to its cost of production in the most fertile or distant regions there have to be added freight and other charges, besides the ordinary rate of mercantile profit. This is clearly shown by a comparison of the septennial average prices of grains, returned in the Gazette by the tithe commissioners. In the seven years ending Christmas 1846, the prices per imperial bushel were— [table]

The average Gazette prices per imperial bushel in the seven years ending 1875 were— [table]

When the various elements of agricultural improvement are taken into account—amelioration of the soil by drainage and manure, better methods, improved implements, and not least (since this has involved but little capital outlay) the greater economy, speed, and safety with which harvests are gathered, as well as sent to market—the production of wheat in England must be held to be as profitable now as it ever was, though the greater consumption and the rise in the price of barley have made that grain a more remunerative crop than wheat on soils suited to the production of fine quality.

This would not in itself account, however, for what all are cognizant of, viz., a great increase of agricultural prosperity since 1846; and the truth is that the free trade policy, and the general movement with which it was associated, opened an extraordinary demand for other farm produce than corn, of which our agriculturists were not slow to avail themselves. The estimate of live stock in the United Kingdom, antecedent to 1846, did not approach the accuracy to which M ’ Culloch, by his careful analysis, had reduced the estimate of acreage under corn and its produce. Conjectural enumerations of the various kinds of live stock were current which, on the first agricultural census, were found to have been almost double what could possibly have existed. The agricultural returns will reduce all uncertainty of this kind to a minimum in future. But there has been no uncertainty as to the increasing value of live stock and its produce on farms, or as to the remarkable degree in which this appreciation has tended to modify and enrich the agricultural system of the kingdom, during the whole period of free trade. The price of meat, of dairy produce, and of wool, as well as other minor articles in the same category, has increased at least 50 per cent.; nor has there been any sign of abatement in this rise of value, notwithstanding increasing imports of foreign live animals, and of preserved and more or less manufactured produce of foreign live stock. Mr Caird in 1868 estimated the annual value of home produce of corn consumed at £84,700,000; of the foreign supply of corn consumed at £25,000,000; of home beef and mutton, £47,200,000; of foreign supply, £6,500,000; of home butter and cheese, £30,100,000; of foreign supply, £8,400,000. And this does not include wool (£8,000,000), green crop not used on farms, and various other considerable articles of domestic farm produce, which have, and always must have, a great superiority in English markets.

Relation of Home and Foreign Supply.— Since the home 'produce of corn stands in the general proportion to foreign supply of 84 to 25, the yield of the domestic harvests continues mainly to regulate price, and in consequence also the amount of import for home consumption. One or two successive inferior harvests in the United Kingdom are accompanied with a rise of price, amounting in extreme cases to 20s. or 25s. per quarter of wheat. These higher prices bring out more extensively the surplus produce of other countries than lower prices would do; but with fairly abundant domestic harvests, and the resulting lower range of prices, the import from abroad does not abruptly cease, but continues fully equal to the supply of the domestic consumption, on an equilibrium of value, which appears to have satisfied on the whole both domestic a l nd foreign producers. According to all the authorities on the subject, the consumption of bread in the United Kingdom does not vary much from one year to another, and certainly does not vary in the ratio of the price of bread. The difference, however, between a 6d. and 9d. quartern loaf is so considerable that it must have some effect in the household economy. In 1868, when the price of bread was at the highest, the average annual consumption of 20,800,000 quarters of wheat in the previous six years fell to 19,780,000 quarters, which is about equal to a fall of 1 per cent, of consumption for 10 per cent, rise in price. It is difficult to give any mercantile problems of such magnitude a definite solution, but the necessary consumption of corn in the United Kingdom, under all variations of price, rests on a solid basis; and given the number of acres under crop, and the average produce per acre in weight, it would not be impossible to determine the amount of foreign corn for which there would be an effective demand in the United Kingdom in any year within calculable ranges of value. The trade has been solving these questions in its own practical way. Many vessels laden with corn, from transatlantic and other distant countries to England, are stopped at Cork or Falmouth for orders from the consignees in England as to what port in Western Europe they shall discharge at. It is necessary to read the markets to the latest points of time; and imports are made into the United Kingdom for re-export as well as home consumption. The great markets for import of corn in Western Europe exhibit little variation owing to the convenience with which supplies may be sent from one port to another; but even in this limited though densely peopled sphere, there are elements of disturbance in supply and demand which have to be taken into account. France, for example, has probably the largest wheat area, in proportion to population, of any European country; and yet the average produce of wheat per acre in France is so low—15⅛ bushels—that a bad harvest makes France a large importer, and an abundant harvest a large exporter, of wheat and flour. An increase of 1 bushel per acre in France is equal to 2,000,000 quarters. Were the average produce of wheat, by any better system of culture, to be increased in France from 15 to 18 bushels—a not immoderate attainment—she would be able alone to supply all the requirements, so far as they have been developed, of the United Kingdom. This surprising effect of the difference of a bushel or two per acre in the average yield of any harvest applies equally to all the large exporting countries, such as Russia or the United States. The latter country was even an importer of wheat from England so late as 1859, but the great extension of agriculture in the Western States and in California, and the extending practice in the Southern States of raising corn as well as cotton, may be believed to have placed a similar abnormal occurrence at a great distance.

The question naturally arises how, from such widespread sources and under such immense effects of good or bad harvests in increasing or diminishing supply, the trade is so adjusted as to produce any equable degree of value and steady production of grain? Of this apparent difficulty there are two explanations—first, the regions favourable to the culture of wheat in both hemispheres are so extensive that it seldom or rather never occurs that there is a general abundance or general failure of harvests. Nature distributes this inequality so variously that the more the commerce in corn is extended, the less is abundance or scarcity of harvest felt in any one part of the world. And secondly, the large corn-exporting countries, though they may have no market so extensive as the United Kingdom for their surplus produce, have many other markets, not only in Western Europe, but within their own more immediate spheres—the ports of the Black Sea, for example, having the countries of the Mediterranean to supply, and the United States not only the inequalities of production within its own vast area, but parts of Canada, the West Indies, Mexico, and South America.

Cost of Transport.— Harbour dues, freight, and insurance form an important element in the transport of grain. Their amount affects directly the price accruing to the producers, while at the same time they require careful calculation on the part of the merchants or shippers. Where large crops have to be moved many vessels have...

The first three treatises were published during his life (Padua, 1558), and all four have since been frequently reprinted in the original and other languages. Au English translation of the Sure Method has gone through more than thirty editions.