Merchants and manufacturers are the people who derive the greatest advantage from this monopoly of the home market.The prohibition of the importation of foreign cattle, and of salt provisions, together with the high duties upon foreign corn, which in times of moderate plenty amount to a prohibition, are not near so advantageous to the graziers and farmers of Great Britain as other regulations of the same kind are to its merchants and manufacturers.Manufactures, those of the finer kind especially, are more easily transported from one country to another than corn or cattle.It is in the fetching and carrying manufactures, accordingly, that foreign trade is chiefly employed.In manufactures, a very small advantage will enable foreigners to undersell our own workmen, even in the home market.
It will require a very great one to enable them to do so in the rude produce of the soil.If the free importation of foreign manufactures were permitted, several of the home manufactures would probably suffer, and some of them, perhaps, go to ruin altogether, and a considerable part of the stock and industry at present employed in them would be forced to find out some other employment.But the freest importation of the rude produce of the soil could have no such effect upon the agriculture of the country.
If the importation of foreign cattle, for example, were made ever so free, so few could be imported that the grazing trade of Great Britain could be little affected by it.Live cattle are, perhaps, the only commodity of which the transportation is more expensive by sea than by land.By land they carry themselves to market.By sea, not only the cattle, but their food and their water too, must be carried at no small expense and inconveniency.
The short sea between Ireland and Great Britain, indeed, renders the importation of Irish cattle more easy.But though the free importation of them, which was lately permitted only for a limited time, were rendered perpetual, it could have no considerable effect upon the interest of the graziers of Great Britain.Those parts of Great Britain which border upon the Irish Sea are all grazing countries.Irish cattle could never be imported for their use, but must be driven through those very extensive countries, at no small expense and inconveniency, before they could arrive at their proper market.Fat cattle could not be driven so far.Lean cattle, therefore, only could be imported, and such importation could interfere, not with the interest of the feeding or fattening countries, to which, by reducing the price of lean cattle, it would rather be advantageous, but with that of the breeding countries only.The small number of Irish cattle imported since their importation was permitted, together with the good price at which lean cattle still continue to sell, seem to demonstrate that even the breeding countries of Great Britain are never likely to be much affected by the free importation of Irish cattle.The common people of Ireland, indeed, are said to have sometimes opposed with violence the exportation of their cattle.But if the exporters had found any great advantage in continuing the trade, they could easily, when the law was on their side, have conquered this mobbish opposition.
Feeding and fattening countries, besides, must always be highly improved, whereas breeding countries are generally uncultivated.The high price of lean cattle, by augmenting the value of uncultivated land, is like a bounty against improvement.
To any country which was highly improved throughout, it would be more advantageous to import its lean cattle than to breed them.
The province of Holland, accordingly, is said to follow this maxim at present.The mountains of Scotland, Wales, and Northumberland, indeed, are countries not capable of much improvement, and seem destined by nature to be the breeding countries of Great Britain.The freest importation of foreign cattle could have no other effect than to hinder those breeding countries from taking advantage of the increasing population and improvement of the rest of the kingdom, from raising their price to an exorbitant height, and from laying a real tax upon all the more improved and cultivated parts of the country.
The freest importation of salt provisions, in the same manner, could have as little effect upon the interest of the graziers of Great Britain as that of live cattle.Salt provisions are not only a very bulky commodity, but when compared with fresh meat, they are a commodity both of worse quality, and as they cost more labour and expense, of higher price.They could never, therefore, come into competition with the fresh meat, though they might with the salt provisions of the country.They might be used for victualling ships for distant voyages and such like uses, but could never make any considerable part of the food of the people.
The small quantity of salt provisions imported from Ireland since their importation was rendered free is an experimental proof that our graziers have nothing to apprehend from it.It does not appear that the price of butcher's meat has ever been sensibly affected by it.
Even the free importation of foreign corn could very little affect the interest of the farmers of Great Britain.Corn is a much more bulky commodity than butcher's meat.A pound of wheat at a penny is as dear as a pound of butcher's meat at fourpence.