by the consumers of the imported corn; but, if the tax be increased to more than 20s., the cloth manufacturer will withdraw his capital from the production of cloth, and apply it to the production of corn, when the tax can no longer be paid, because it is no longer imported, that is to say, no longer produced.

Suppose the foreign wheat cannot yield the general rate of profits to its producers, if sold under 40s., and that those producers can manufacture cloth, or procure it elsewhere, at about the former import price, they will either relinquish the production of corn, and employ that liberated capital in the production of cloth, or they will import it from a country whose difficulty of production is such that the corn can balance the cloth, but will leave no surplus; the import tax, or the home-production tax, paid from surplus production, will then be annihilated, and any further tax on those productions would be paid by profits and wages.

The same reasoning so clearly applies to the case of an export tax on home commodities, that we do not think it necessary to enlarge on that case, further than to observe, that the home producer of the exported commodity must pay the export tax. The home producer of the commodity in which foreign competition is excluded by an import tax, is not benefited, is not encouraged by that exclusion;-he is forced to

produce it at home, but not encouraged thereto; he is injured, in common with all the capitalists and labourers of the country, by the comparative scanty produce of capital. The term encouragement is, therefore, inapplicable to the case of taxation imposed on foreign commodities of such amount as to render their home manufacture more productive to the capitalist than their importation from abroad. Force is the appropriate term, and it is equally force, whether applied in the direct mode of imposing an import tax, or the indirect mode of a bounty paid from out of the produce of other taxes.

It is apparent, that all taxes are paid out of the produce of the capital and immediate labour of that country in which they are imposed; such taxes are either a transfer to the government, of so much of the produce of the country, from the producers thereof; and may be the whole of the foreign trade surplus production; if more than the whole, they will annihilate foreign trade and import taxes at the same time; or, they are so much of the home productions as the producers can spare, or be compelled to pay. If, in the latter case, which is that of a tax on profits and wages, the government take away so much of such produce, that more is left than is required for mere reproduction, the country may advance in population and wealth. If all be

yond what is so required be taken by the government, the country must be reduced to a stationary state. If more be so taken, the country must retrograde, and the people become, in consequence of such retrogression, impoverished, and subjected to accumulating vice and misery.

CHAPTER X.

"OF SYSTEMS OF AGRICULTURE AND COMMERCE, COMBINED."

THIS chapter, like the preceding, apparently treats of "6 agriculture and commerce combined;" systems, being only incidentally noticed. Mr. Ricardo's "Principles of Political Economy" must be consulted by those who wish to have the true theory of these matters satisfactorily demonstrated. This chapter of Mr. M.'s Essay chiefly consists of chit-chat speculation, and contains nothing whatever tending to prove its main principles, propositions, or assertions; but, nevertheless, contains, as usual, some things tending to disprove those principles, propositions, and assertions; among which, the following paragraph is rather uncommonly discordant with Mr. Malthus's general assertions on those subjects, and particularly so, to be penned by a church-and-state man, in 1817, under the pure, honest, upright, celestial, all-perfect government by rotten boroughs and heaven-born ministers.

"The prosperity of manufactures and commerce, in any state, implies, at once, that it has freed itself from the worst part of the feudal system. It shews, that the great body of the people are not in a state of servitude,-that they have both the will and the power to save, —that, when capital accumulates, it can find the means of secure employment,-and, consequently, that the government is such, as to afford the necessary protection to property. Under these circumstances, it is scarcely possible that it should ever experience that premature stagnation in the demand of labour, and the produce of the soil, which, at times, has marked the history of the most of the nations of Europe." Consequently, it being " scarcely possible," or morally impossible, that, under the circumstances premised, a premature stagnation in the demand for labour, and the produce of the soil," can even once, much less frequently, happen; so, the frequent occurrence of such stagnations must shew, that the great body of the people are in a state of servitude; that they have (not) freed themselves from the worst parts of the feudal system, (infamous cornbills, and taxation of labour, to pay the debts of property, for instance ;) that they (cannot) have (either) the (unfettered) will or power to savethat when capital accumulates, it can (not) find

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