On the Price of Corn, and Management of the Poor. TO MESSIEURS THE PUBLIC. I AM one of that class of people, that feeds you all, and at present is abused by you all ;-in short, I am a farmer. By your newspapers we are told, that God had sent a very short harvest to some other countries of Europe. I thought this might be in favor of Old England; and that now we should get a good price for our grain, which would bring millions among us, and make us flow in money: that to be sure is scarce enough. But the wisdom of government forbade the exportation". Well, says I, then we must be content with the market price at home. No; say my lords the mob, you sha'nt have that. Bring your corn to market if you dare;—we'll sell it for you, for less money, or take it for nothing. Being thus attacked by both ends of the constitution, the head and tail of government, what am I to do? Must I keep my corn in the barn, to feed and increase the breed of rats?-be it so; they cannot be less thankfull than those I have been used to feed. Are we farmers the only people to be grudged the profits of our honest labor?-And why? One of the late scriblers against us gives a bill of fare of the provisions at my daughter's wedding, and proclaims to all the world, that we had the insolence to eat beef and pudding!-Has he not of letters in Europe, and perhaps there is none, in this age, to whom mankind in general are more indebted. "That this piece may not be lost to our own country, I beg you will give it a place in your Repository: it was written in favor of the farmers, when they suffered so much abuse in our public papers, and were also plundered by the mob in many places." The principles on which this piece is grounded are given more at large in the preceding articles. 2 It is not necessary to repeat in what degree Dr. Franklin respected the ministers, to whom he alludes.-The embargo upon corn was but a single measure, which, it is enough to say, an host of politicians thought well advised, but ill defended. read the precept in the good book, thou shalt not muzzle the mouth of the ox that treadeth out the corn; or does he think us less worthy of good living than our oxen? O, but the manufacturers! the manufacturers! they are to be favored, and they must have bread at a cheap rate! Hark ye, Mr. Oaf :-The farmers live splendidly, you say. And pray, would you have them hoard the money they get? Their fine clothes and furniture, do they make them themselves, or for one another, and so keep the money among them? Or, do they employ these your darling manufacturers, and so scatter it again all over the nation? The wool would produce me a better price, if it were suffered to go to foreign markets; but that, Messieurs the Public, your laws will not permit. It must be kept all at home, that our dear manufacturers may have it the cheaper. And then, having yourselves thus lessened our encouragement for raising sheep, you curse us for the scarcity of mutton! I have heard my grandfather say, that the farmers submitted to the prohibition on the exportation of wool, being made to expect and believe, that when the manufacturer bought his wool cheaper, they should also have their cloth cheaper. But the deuce a bit. It has been growing dearer and dearer from that day to this. How so? Why, truly, the cloth is exported: and that keeps up the price. Now if it be a good principle, that the exportation of a commodity is to be restrained, that so our people at home may have it the cheaper; stick to that principle, and go thorough stitch with it. Prohibit the exportation of your cloth, your leather, and shoes, your iron-ware, and your manufactures of all sorts, to make them all cheaper at home. And cheap enough they will be, I will warrant you till people leave off making them. Some folks seem to think they ought never to be easy till England becomes another Lubberland, where it is fancied the streets are paved with penny-rolls, the houses tiled with pancakes, and chickens, ready roasted, cry, come eat me. I say, when you are sure you have got a good principle, stick to it, and carry it through. I hear it is said, that though it was necessary and right for the ministry to advise a prohibition of the exportation of corn, yet it was contrary to law; and also, that though it was contrary to law for the mob to obstruct waggons, yet it was necessary and right. Just the same thing to a tittle. Now they tell me, an act of indemnity ought to pass in favor of the ministry, to secure them from the consequences of having acted illegally. If so, pass another in favor of the mob. Others say, some of the mob ought to be hanged, by way of example......If so,but I say no more than I have said before, when you are sure that you have a good principle, go through with it. You say, poor laborers cannot afford to buy bread at a high price, unless they had higher wages. Possibly.-But how shall we farmers be able to afford our laborers higher wages, if you will not allow us to get, when we might have it, a higher price for our corn? By all that I can learn, we should at least have had a guinea a quarter more, if the exportation had been allowed. And this money England would have got from foreigners. But, it seems, we farmers must take so much less, that the poor may have it so much cheaper. This operates then as a tax for the maintenance of the poor. A very good thing, you will say. But I ask, why a partial tax? why laid on us farmers only? If it be a good thing, pray, messieurs the Public, take your share of it, by indemnifying us a little out of your public treasury. In doing a good thing, there is both honor and pleasure—you are welcome to your share of both. For my own part, I am not so well satisfied of the goodness of this thing. I am for doing good to the poor, but I think the best way I differ in opinion about the means. of doing good to the poor, is, not making them easy in poverty, but leading or driving them out of it. In my youth I travelled much, and I observed in different countries, that the more public provisions were made for the poor, the less they provided for themselves, and of course became poorer. VOL. IV. E e And on the contrary, the less was done for them, the more they did for themselves, and became richer. There is no country in the world where so many provisions are established for them; so many hospitals to receive them when they are sick or lame, founded and maintained by voluntary charities; so many alms houses for the aged of both sexes, together with a solemn general law made by the rich to subject their estates to a heavy tax for the support of the poor. Under all these obligations, are our poor modest, humble, and thankful? And do they use their best endeavors to maintain themselves, and lighten our shoulders of this bur then? On the contrary, I affirm, that there is no country in the world in which the poor are more idle, dissolute, drunken, and insolent. The day you passed that act, you took away from before their eyes the greatest of all inducements to industry, frugality, and sobriety, by giving them a dependence on somewhat else than a careful accumulation during youth and health, for support in age or sickness. In short, you offered a premium for the encouragement of idleness, and you should not now wonder, that it has had its effect in the increase of poverty. Repeal that law, and you will soon see a change in their manners, Saint Monday, and Saint Tuesday, will soon cease to be holidays. Six days shalt thou labor, though one of the old commandments long treated as out of date, will again be looked upon as a respectable precept; industry will increase, and with it plenty among the lower people; their circumstances will mend, and more will be done for their happiness by inuring them to provide for themselves, than could be done by dividing all your estates among them. Excuse me, messieurs the Public, if upon this interesting subject, I put you to the trouble of reading a little of my nonsense; I am sure I have lately read a great deal of yours, and therefore from you (at least from those of you who are writers) I deserve a little indulgence. I am yours, &c. ARATOR3. 3 The late Mr. Owen Rufi head, being some time employed in preparing a digest of the British peor laws, communicated a copy of it to Dr. Franklin for SIR, ON SMUGGLING, AND ITS VARIOUS SPECIES.4 THERE are many people that would be thought, and even think themselves, honest men, who fail nevertheless in particular points of honesty; deviating from that character sometimes by the prevalence of mode or custom, and sometimes through mere inattention; so that their honesty is partial only, and not general or universal. Thus one, who would scorn to over-reach you in a bargain, shall make no scruple of tricking you a little now and then at cards; another, that plays with the utmost fairness, shall with great freedom cheat you in the sale of a horse. But there is no kind of dishonesty, into which otherwise good people more easily and frequently fall, than that of defrauding government of its revenues by smuggling when they have an opportunity, or encouraging smugglers by buying their goods. I fell into these reflections the other day, on hearing two gentlemen of reputation discoursing about a small estate, which one of them was inclined to sell, and the other to buy; when the seller, in recommending the place, remarked, that its situation was very advantageous on this account, that, being on the sea-coast in a smuggling country, one had frequent opportunities of buying many of the expensive articles used in a family (such as tea, coffee, chocolate, brandy, wines, cambrics, Brussels laces, French silks, and all kinds of India goods), 20, 30, and in some articles 50 per cent. cheaper, than they could be had in the more interior parts, of traders that paid duty. The other honest gentleman allowed this to be an advantage, but insisted, his advice. Dr. Franklin recommended, that provision should be made therein cess. 4 This letter was published in the London Chronicle, for November 24, 1767) and addressed to the printer of that newspaperà 1 |