The balance between consumption and production makes price.  The market settles, and alone can settle, that price.  Market is the meeting and conference of the consumer and producer, when they mutually discover each other’s wants.  Nobody, I believe, has observed with any reflection what market is, without being astonished at the truth, the correctness, the celerity, the general equity, with which the balance of wants is settled.  They who wish the destruction of that balance, and would fain by arbitrary regulation decree that defective production should not be compensated by increased price, directly lay their axe to the root of production itself.  They may, even in one year of such false policy, do mischiefs incalculable; because the trade of a farmer is, as I have before explained, one of the most precarious in its advantages, the most liable to losses, and the least profitable of any that is carried on.  It requires ten times more of labor, of vigilance, of attention, of skill, and, let me add, of good fortune also, to carry on the business of a farmer with success, than what belongs to any other trade.

Seeing things in this light, I am far from presuming to censure the late circular instruction of Council to lord-lieutenants, but I confess I do not clearly discern its object.  I am greatly afraid that the inquiry will raise some alarm, as a measure leading to the French system of putting corn into requisition.  For that was preceded by an inquisition somewhat similar in its principle, though, according to their mode, their principles are full of that violence which here is not much to be feared.  It goes on a principle directly opposite to mine:  it presumes that the market is no fair test of plenty or scarcity.  It raises a suspicion, which may affect the tranquillity of the public mind, “that the farmer keeps back, and takes unfair advantages by delay”; on the part of the dealer, it gives rise obviously to a thousand nefarious speculations.

In case the return should on the whole prove favorable, is it meant to ground a measure for encouraging exportation and checking the import of corn?  If it is not, what end can it answer?  And I believe it is not.

This opinion may be fortified by a report gone abroad, that intentions are entertained of erecting public granaries, and that this inquiry is to give government an advantage in its purchases.

I hear that such a measure has been proposed, and is under deliberation:  that is, for government to set up a granary in every market-town, at the expense of the state, in order to extinguish the dealer, and to subject the farmer to the consumer, by securing corn to the latter at a certain and steady price.

If such a scheme is adopted, I should not like to answer for the safety of the granary, of the agents, or of the town itself in which the granary was erected:  the first storm of popular frenzy would fall upon that granary.