What Protection Does for the Farmer and Labourer: A Chapter of Agricultural History

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Cassell, 1893 - 104 pages
 

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Page 15 - Because we are adverse in principle to all new restraints on commerce. We think it certain that public prosperity is best promoted by leaving uncontrolled the free current of national industry ; and we wish, rather, by well-considered steps, to bring back our commercial legislation to the straight and simple line of wisdom than to increase the. deviation by subjecting additional and extensive branches of the public interest to fresh systems of artificial and injurious restriction.
Page 15 - We cannot persuade ourselves that this law will ever contribute to produce plenty, cheapness, or steadiness of price. So long as it operates at all, its effects must be the opposite of these. Monopoly is the parent of scarcity, of dearness, and of uncertainty. To cut off...
Page 3 - OF all things, an indiscreet tampering with the trade of provisions is the most dangerous, and it is always worst in the time when men are most disposed to it : that is, in the time of scarcity.
Page 26 - Suffolk nightly fires of incendiaries began to blaze in every district; thrashing-machines were broken or burnt in open day ; mills were attacked. At Brandon, near Bury, large bodies of labourers assembled to prescribe a maximum price of grain and meat, and to pull down the houses of butchers and bakers. They bore flags, with the motto :
Page 73 - Kingdom which are interested in the importation of clover-seed out of their own borders. Neither have they any of this article in Ireland. But yet we have clover-seed excluded from the farmers, although they are not interested as a body in its protection at all. Again, take the article of beans. There are lands in Essex where they can grow them alternate years with wheat. I find that beans come from that district to Mark Lane ; and I believe also that in some parts of Lincolnshire and Cambridgeshire...
Page 29 - Your Committee may entertain a doubt (a doubt however, which they wish to state with that diffidence which a subject so extensive naturally imposes upon their judgment) whether the only solid foundation of the flourishing state of agriculture is not laid in abstaining, as much as possible, from interference, either by Protection or Prohibition, with the application of capital in any branch of industry...
Page 29 - ... whether the only solid foundation of the flourishing state of agriculture is not laid in abstaining, as much as possible, from interference, either by protection or prohibition, with the application of capital, in any branch of industry? — whether all fears for the decline of agriculture, either from temporary vicissitudes to which all speculations are liable, or from the extension of other pursuits of general industry, are not, in a great degree, imaginary? — whether commerce can expand,...
Page 16 - To compel the consumer to purchase corn dearer at home than it might be imported from abroad, is the immediate practical effect of this law. In this way alone can it operate. Its present protection, its promised extension of agriculture must result (if at all) from the profits which it creates by keeping up the price of corn to an artificial level. These future benefits are the consequences expected, but as we confidently believe erroneously expected, from giving a bounty to the grower of corn, by...
Page 73 - ... who do not sell their beans, for the pretended benefit of a few counties or districts of counties where they do. Mark you, where they can grow beans on the stronger and better soils, it is not in one case out of ten that they grow them for the market. They may grow them for their own use; but where they do not cultivate beans, send them to market, and turn them into money, those farmers can have no interest whatever in keeping up the money price of that which they never sell. Take the article...
Page 16 - A still further inquiry would have been necessary, to persuade us that the present moment is fit for its adoption. In such an inquiry, we must have had the means of satisfying ourselves, what its immediate operation will be, as connected with the various and pressing circumstances of public difficulty and distress, with which the country is...

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