Those who argue that England may safely depend upon a supply of foreign
corn, if it grow none or an insufficient quantity of its own, forget that
they are subjugating the necessaries of life itself to the mere luxuries or
comforts of society. Is it not certain that the price of corn abroad will
be raised upon us as soon as it is once known that we _must_ buy?--and when
that fact is known, in what sort of a situation shall we be? Besides this,
the argument supposes that agriculture is not a positive good to the
nation, taken in and by itself, as a mode of existence for the people,
which supposition is false and pernicious; and if we are to become a great
horde of manufacturers, shall we not, even more than at present, excite the
ill will of all the manufacturers of other nations? It has been already
shown, in evidence which is before all the world, that some of our
manufacturers have acted upon the accursed principle of deliberately
injuring foreign manufactures, if they can, even to the ultimate disgrace
of the country and loss to themselves.
_May_ 19. 1834.