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...