When they want corn, they must buy of us, and buy at a higher price:  in this case, if we have corn more than enough for ourselves, we are again benefited by supplying them.

But they may want when we have no superfluity.  When our markets rise, the bounty ceases; and, therefore, produces no evil.  They cannot buy our corn but at a higher rate than it is sold at home.  If their necessities, as now has happened, force them to give a higher price, that event is no longer to be charged upon the bounty.  We may then stop our corn in our ports, and pour it back upon our own markets.

It is, in all cases, to be considered, what events are physical and certain, and what are political and arbitrary.

The first effect of the bounty is the increase of agriculture, and, by consequence, the promotion of plenty.  This is an effect physically good, and morally certain.  While men are desirous to be rich, where there is profit there will be diligence.  If much corn can be sold, much will be raised.

The second effect of the bounty is the diminution by exportation of that product which it occasioned.  But this effect is political and arbitrary; we have it wholly in our own hands; we can prescribe its limits, and regulate its quantity.  Whenever we feel want, or fear it, we retain our corn, and feed ourselves upon that which was sown and raised to feed other nations.

It is, perhaps, impossible for human wisdom to go further, than to contrive a law of which the good is certain and uniform, and the evil, though possible in itself, yet always subject to certain and effectual restraints.

This is the true state of the bounty upon corn:  it certainly and necessarily increases our crops, and can never lessen them but by our own permission.

That, notwithstanding the bounty, there have been, from time to time, years of scarcity, cannot be denied.  But who can regulate the seasons?  In the dearest years we owe to the bounty that they have not been dearer.  We must always suppose part of our ground sown for our own consumption, and part in hope of a foreign sale.  The time sometimes comes, when the product of all this land is scarcely sufficient:  but if the whole be too little, how great would have been the deficiency, if we had sown only that part which was designed for ourselves!

“But, perhaps, if exportation were less encouraged, the superfluous stores of plentiful years might be laid up by the farmer against years of scarcity.”

This may be justly answered by affirming, that, if exportation were discouraged, we should have no years of plenty.  Cheapness is produced by the possibility of dearness.  Our farmers, at present, plough and sow with the hope that some country will always be in want, and that they shall grow rich by supplying.  Indefinite hopes are always carried by the frailty of human nature beyond reason.  While, therefore, exportation is encouraged, as much corn will be raised as the farmer can hope to sell, and, therefore, generally more than can be sold at the price of which he dreamed, when he ploughed and sowed.