The danger of wanting food, though very formidable, does not act so instantaneously as to serve as an excuse for want of reflection, like an alarm of fire, where the anxiety to escape sometimes prevents the possibility of doing so; yet the fact is, that all the measures that have generally been taken, in times of scarcity, have tended rather to increase than to diminish the evil.

In monopoly, a sort of combination is supposed to exist between the sellers of an article, when the article does not happen to be all in the hands of one person, or one body of persons.  But combinations are of various sorts; there are express combinations entered into by people having the same interest for a particular purpose.  Those are done by a sort of an agreement, when the interest of the individual and of the body are the same.  Such combinations are generally effectual, {129} but unlawful.  There are combinations not less effectual, that arise merely from circulating intelligence of prices, and certain circumstances on which prices are known to depend, amongst all those concerned, who immediately know how to act in unison.—­This is not unlawful.

An elegant historian has said that there was a time when the sovereign pontiff, like the leader of a band of musicians, could regulate all the clergy in Europe, so that the same tones should proceed from all the pulpits on the same day.  The list of prices, at a great corn-market, has the same effect on the minds of all the sellers within a certain distance.  Intelligence now flies so swift that there is no interval of uncertainty; the whole of the dealers know how to act, according to circumstances, and they are all led to act nearly as if they were in one single body.  Like gamesters, who have won a great deal, rather than hasten to sell, even when they fear that prices may fall, they keep back their stock, and risk to lose something of what they have gained, by continuing to speculate on the agreeable and winning chance by which they have already profited.

—–­ {129} There are sometimes combinations which it is the interest of a whole body to preserve, but of each individual to break, if he can with impunity; such generally soon fall to the ground. -=-

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The dealers in an article of ready sale, or for which there is a certain demand, have never any difficulty, in a wealthy country, of procuring money to make purchases, or to enable them to keep their stock; and the gains are so immense that there is no speculation equally attractive.

As the rent of land, in England, is reckoned at twenty-five millions a year; and it is reckoned that, in a common year, the rent is worth one-third of the produce; it follows that, of all sorts of produce of land, the value is seventy-five millions.  But, in the year 1799, when the prices were more than doubled, the value was one hundred and fifty millions, of which the landlord received (as usual) twenty-five to his