Practical economics in eighteenth-century England: Charles Smith on the grain trade and the corn laws, 1756-72

Historical Research

Volumn 81, Issue 214, 2008, Pages 636-662

  Sheldon, Richard ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF BRISTOL   (United Kingdom)

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EID: 62549094897     PISSN: 09503471     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: None     Document Type: Review

References (128)

1. On the older policy, see E. Heckscher, Mercantilism (2 vols., 1935), ii. 8off
2. N. S. B. Gras, The Evolution of the English Com Market (Cambridge, 1915), ch. 3. R. H. Britnell, The Commercialisation of English Society, 1000-1500 (Manchester, 1996), pp. 173-5 is more critical of the motives and effectiveness of such laws in England
3. See K. G. Persson, Grain Markets in Europe, 1500-1900 (Cambridge, 1999), ch. 1
4. S. L. Kaplan, Bread, Politics and Political Economy in the Reign of Louis XV (2 vols., The Hague, 1976)
5. J. A. Miller, Mastering the Market: the State and the Grain Trade in Northern France, 1700-1860 (Cambridge, 1999), pt. 1
6. H. Clark, 'Grain trade information: economic conflict and political culture under Terray, 1770-4', Jour. Modern Hist., lxxvi (2004), 793-834
7. E. Rothschild, Economic Sentiments: Adam Smith, Condorcet and the Enlightenment (Cambridge, Mass., 2002), ch. 3
8. L. Rodriguez, 'The Spanish riots of 1766', Past & Present, lix (1973), 117-46
9. D. Dakin, Turgot and the Ancien Régime in France (1939), chs. 7-8
10. C. Tilly, 'Food supply and public order in modern Europe', in The Formation of Nation States in Western Europe, ed. C. Tilly (Princeton, N.J., 1975), pp. 381-454
11. A. I. Grab, 'The politics of subsistence: the liberalization of grain commerce in Austrian Lombardy under enlightened despotism', Jour. Modern Hist., lvii (1985), 185-210. On the ferment of economic ideas, C. Gide and C. Rist, A History of Economic Doctrines (1961), pp. 21-5 is still useful, alongside T. Hutchison, Before Adam Smith: the Emergence of Political Economy, 1662-1776 (Oxford, 1988), chs. 16-18
12. S. L. Kaplan, The Famine Plot Persuasion in 18th-Century France (Philadelphia, Pa., 1982)
13. La Guerre du Blé au XVIIIe siècle, ed. G.-R. Ikni and F. Gauthier (Paris, 1988)
14. C. Bouton, The Flour War (Pennsylvania, Pa., 1993)
15. at p. 105
16. The clearest and most recent survey on English exceptionalism is E. A. Wrigley, 'The divergence of England: the growth of the English economy in the 17th and 18th centuries', in his Poverty, Progress and Population (Cambridge, 2004), pp. 44-67
17. For the chronology and geography of rioting in Britain, see A. Charlesworth, An Atlas of Rural Protest in Britain, 1548-1900 (1983), pp. 86-94
18. See J. Stevenson, Popular Disturbances in England 1700-1832 (1992), ch. 5, for the best short account of the subject and its historiography. W.J. Shelton, English Hunger and Industrial Disorders (Toronto, 1973), pt. 1 gives an outline of the food riots of 1766 and the responses of authority. Food riots in 1709, 1729, 1737 and 1740 had also occurred, but not on the same scale as those of the 1750s and after
19. This is to put a complex matter very briefly, but there is no doubt about the direction of prices (see B. A. Holderness, 'Prices, productivity and output', in The Agrarian History of England and Wales, vi: 1750-1850, ed. G. E. Mingay (Cambridge, 1989), pp. 84-189, at pp. 92-103). C. H. Feinstein, 'Pessimism perpetuated: real wages and the standard of living in Britain during and after the industrial revolution', Jour. Econ. Hist., lviii (1998), 625-58 is the most thorough recent study of wages after 1770
20. See also D. H. Fisher, The Great Wave: Price Revolutions and the Rhythm of History (Oxford, 1996), tables 3.05, p. 125 and 3.10, p. 133, for graphic representations of trends of prices and wages over the 18th century. This article also simplifies matters by concentrating on wheat grains and saying little of other 'lesser' grains which were also the subject of legislation
21. Adam Smith, An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, ed. R. H. Campbell and A. S. Skinner (1776; 2 vols., Oxford, 1979), i. 92
22. P. Langford, A Polite and Commercial People: England 1727-83 (Oxford, 1989), p. 449
23. Jean Pierre Grosley, A Tour to London; or New Observations on England and its Inhabitants (2 vols., 1772), i. 57
24. Michael Combrune, An Enquiry into the Prices of Wheat, Malt and Occasionally of other Provisions (1768), pp. 95-6. Lower rates of interest and storage costs in the Dutch Republic also encouraged this trend
25. See J. A. Chartres, 'The marketing of agricultural produce', in The Agrarian History of England and Wales, v, pt. ii: Agrarian Change, ed. J. Thirsk (Cambridge, 1985), pp. 406-502, on the period 1640-1750
26. R. Perren, 'Markets and marketing', in Mingay, pp. 190-274, for 1750-1850
27. See also J. A. Chartres, 'Market integration and agricultural output in 17th-, 18th- , and early 19th-century England', Agricultural Hist. Rev., xliii (1995), 117-35. A very interesting regional study is W. Thwaites, 'The corn market and economic change: Oxford in the 18th century', Midland Hist., xvi (1991), 103-25
28. J. Rule, Albion's People: English Society 1714-1815 (Harlow, 1992), pp. 196-8 provides relevant examples
29. Birmingam City Reference Library, ZZ61B, Garbett to Lansdowne, 24 Nov. 1767
30. Joseph Massie, Brief Observations and Calculations on the Present High Prices of Provisions (1765), PP. 1-2
31. See Shelton, pt. ii; G. Rudé, Wilkes and Liberty (Oxford, 1962), ch. 6
32. P. Linebaugh, The London Hanged: Crime and Civil Society in the 18th Century (1991)
33. C. R. Dobson, Masters and Journeymen: a Prehistory of Industrial Relations, 1717-1800 (1980), app., for a list of labour disputes
34. North Briton, xlviii, 14 May 1768, p. 285
35. Benjamin Franklin to John Ross, 14 May 1768 (The Papers of Benjamin Franklin, xv, ed. W. B. Wilcox and others (New Haven, Conn., 1972), pp. 128-30)
36. E. P. Thompson, 'The moral economy of the English crowd in the 18th century', in his Customs in Common (1991), at p. 189
37. Arthur Young, Political Arithmetic (1774), p. 35
38. I. Hont and M. Ignatieff, 'Need and justice in the Wealth of Nations: an introductory essay', in Wealth and Virtue: the Shaping of Political Economy in the Scottish Enlightenment, ed. I. Hont and M. Ignatieff (Cambridge, 1983), pp. 19-20
39. For a philosophical critique of Hont and Ignatieff, finding fault with their historical account of distributive justice and interpretation of Aquinas, see S. Fleischacker, On Adam Smith's Wealth of Nations: a Philosophical Companion (Princeton, N.J., 2004), pp. 218-26
40. See Catalogue of the Goldsmiths' Library of Economic Literature, ed. M. Canney and J. M. Gibbs (4 vols., 1983)
41. The Kress Library of Business and Economics Catalogue (Boston, Mass., 1964)
42. 1770, 10 Geo. III, c. 39, 'Whitbread's Act' to record and monitor regional grain prices; 1772, 12 Geo. III, c. 71, repeal of statutes against forestallers, regrators and engrossers; 1773, 13 Geo. III, c. 43, 'Pownall's Act', operative from 1 Jan. 1774, established a sliding scale to regulate cut off prices for exports and to trigger import, and also allowed warehousing and re-export of imported grain; 1773, 13 Geo. III, c. 62, regulating the assize of bread, brought the introduction of the standard wheaten loaf (75% wholemeal) and emergency provisions for magistrates to prevent sale of any finer bread for a period of three months
43. See, e.g., P. Deane and W. A. Cole, British Economic Growth, 1688-1959 (Cambridge, 1969), pp. 63-5
44. C. Petersen, Bread and the British Economy, c.1770-1870 (Aldershot, 1995), p. 250
45. Most of the biographical details for Smith are taken from the memoir by George Chalmers, prefixed to the 1804 edition of the Three Tracts. A short obituary notice of his death, following a fall from his horse, appeared in the Chelmsford Chronicle, 14 Feb. 1777
46. The House of Commons 1790-1820, ed. R. G. Thome (5 vols., 1986), iv. 190-1
47. Victoria County History of Essex, v. 239
48. Adam Smith, Short Essay on the Corn Trade and the Corn Laws (Edinburgh, 1758). D. R. Raynor has identified Hume as the author of the anonymously published Edinburgh preface from documents in the Huntington Library in California, and published a transcript of the original manuscript version in the Times Literary Supplement, 14 Aug. 1998, p. 22. The original version of Hume's preface sought to marshal the Short Essay into the high enlightenment assault on the church as a bulwark of superstition and ill-informed policy
49. J. Bonar, A Catalogue of the Library of Adam Smith (1894
50. New York, 1966), p. 175
51. Smith, Wealth of Nations, i. 506. Charles Smith's qualified support of the bounty system, however, resulted in his being described by Adam Smith as an exponent of the 'mercantile system' (Smith, Wealth of Nations, i. 506)
52. Sir James Steuart, An Inquiry into the Principles of Political Economy, ed. A. S. Skinner (1767; 2 vols., Edinburgh, 1966), i. 113
53. As much of the literature referred to by Smith - often very short contributions of a few pages - has not been preserved independently of his notices, it is evident that the original debates were even more voluminous than the bibliographical sources indicate. Other contemporary material suggests a similar pattern of pamphlet wastage; for instance, Joseph Massie's catalogue of writings on economics (kept in British Library, Lansdowne MS. 1049) lists a number of works - e.g., 'E. Horn, Relation or Collection of Dearths and Famines (1748)' - which this author has been unable to locate through such aids as the Eighteenth Century Short Tide Catalogue
54. For another edition, see that published on the orders of the court of aldermen in London, 1795
55. See also the edition published with new material, including an introduction by Claude Scott (an important London corn factor) and notes by James Catherwood, the official inspector of corn returns, published by John Stockdale in 1804
56. For an overview, see J. Caple, '1756-7', in An Atlas of Rural Protest in Britain, 1548-1900, ed. A. Charlesworth (1983), pp. 86-8
57. Arthur Young noted 'at least forty publications' on the 'proportion between the rates of labour, and the prices of provisions', 'a subject that has been treated by some of the ablest writers on domestic oeconomy in England, France and Holland' (A. Young, The Farmer's Tour through the East of England (1771), iv. 318)
58. [Nathaniel Forster], An Enquiry into the Causes of the Present High Price of Provisions (1767), p. vii. Forster's work is also worthy of more detailed study, as was acknowledged by such divergent 19th-century commentators as Karl Marx and J. R. McCulloch
59. The Revd. Richard Onely, An Account of the Care Taken in Most Civilised Nations for the Relief of the Poor (1758), p. 1 (original emphasis)
60. Anon., The Cries of the Public in a Letter to His Grace the Duke of Newcastle (1758), p. 21
61. See Anon., Artificial Dearth (1756). On 'grinding the faces of the poor', see E. Chandler, A Charge Delivered to the Grand Jury (1756), p. vi. The metaphoric imagery is, of course, derived from the language of the Bible (see, e.g., Isaiah III: 15) and emerged from the pulpit
62. There are a good many resonances in the language of clerical exhortation with that of an earlier period of scarcity and disorder, meticulously described in S. Hindle, 'Dearth, fasting and alms: the campaign for general hospitality in late Elizabethan England', Past & Present, clxxii (2001), 44-86
63. Thomas Pownall, The Measure of Regulating the Assize and Due Making of Bread (1795), p. 11. Quotation from W. Illingworth, An Inquiry into the Laws, Ancient and Modern, Respecting Forestalling, Regrating, and Ingrossing (1800), p. 13. Illingworth was a lawyer, antiquary and archivist whose study contains many transcriptions from original documents and statutes and is one of the best accounts of the status of the marketing laws for the century as a whole. A useful modern account, testing some of these claims, is to be found in W. Herbruck, 'Forestalling, regrating and engrossing', Michigan Law Rev., xxvii (1929), 365-85
64. Anon., Important Considerations upon the Act of the Thirty-First of George II (1768), p. 46
65. Thomas Warren, A Sermon Preach'd at St. Edmund's Bury (Ipswich, 1740), p. 23
66. Orders Appointed by His Majestic (King Charles I) to be Straitly Observed, for the Preventing and Remedying of the Dearth of Graine and Victuall (1758), p. 8. On the Books of Orders, see P. Slack, 'Books of Orders: the making of English social policy, 1575-1631', Trans. Royal Hist. Soc, 5th ser., xxx (1980), 1-22
67. Anon., Principles of Trade (1774), p. 47
68. The remark is said to date from c.1664, but it only gained prominence after the anecdote was repeated in the Journal Oeconomique, Apr. 1751
69. The origins of the tale have not been fully authenticated (see R. Walther, 'Economic liberalism', Economy and Society, ii (1984), 178-207)
70. 'A letter concerning the Marquis Beloni's dissertation on commerce', Annual Register (1762), pp. 177-80
71. 'Thoughts on commercial subjects', Annual Register (1779), pp. 157
72. John Arbuthnot, An Inquiry into the Connection Between the Present Price of Provisions, and the Size of Farms (1773), p. 88. Arbuthnot was well versed in political economy, and viewed the French economistes as 'a set of worthy virtuous men' (p. 111)
73. See also A. Young, Autobiography (1898), pp. 66-7, on Arbuthnot
74. Arbuthnot, pp. 96-7
75. Arbuthnot, pp. 89-9 0; cf references to 'perfect freedom' (p. 97) and 'perfect liberty' (p. 98)
76. Arbuthnot, p. 111
77. Jeremy Bentham, cited in C. Lasch, The True and Only Heaven (New York, 1991), p. 92
78. On Steuart's plan for a managed market in grain, see his Dissertation on the Policy of Grain: With a View to a Plan for Preventing the Scarcity of Exorbitant Prices in the Common Markets of England, written in 1759 but published in 1783
79. See also the discussion by W. Eltis, 'Sir James Steuart's corporate state', in Ideas in Economics, ed. R. D. C. Black (1986)
80. See, e.g., [Miss Clara Pitt], A Scheme for erecting Public Magazines to Supply England with Corn (1758)
81. Sir William Mildmay, The Laws and Policy of England Relating to Trade (1765)
82. Sir William Mildmay, The Police of France (1763), p. 99
83. See also A Letter from a Burgess of Edinburgh, to the Right Honourable Lord Provost, Concerning the High Prices of Bread and Corn, Wherein the Modern Traffic in Corn is Considered, and the Wise Regulations by the Laws of France in Times of Dearth are Recited (Edinburgh, 1758)
84. Smith, Three Tracts, pp. 5, 6
85. Smith, Three Tracts, p. 12. On this issue Smith was backed by Nathaniel Forster: 'private stock is in effect a public granary' ([Forster], p. 91; and see also pp. 102-6 on the same issue)
86. Smith, Three Tracts, pp. 26-7. Compare Adam Smith on the inland dealer: 'Without intending the interest of the people, he is necessarily led, by a regard to his own interest, to treat them, even in years of scarcity, pretty much in the same manner as the prudent master of a vessel is sometimes obliged to treat his crew. When he foresees that provisions are likely to run short, he puts them upon short allowance' (Smith, Wealth of Nations, i. 525)
87. The best guide is still D. G. Barnes, A History of the English Corn Laws 1660-1846 (1930), esp. ch. 2 on the Restoration corn laws
88. Jean François Melon, A Political Essay upon Commerce (Dublin, 1739), p. 15
89. D. Ormrod, English Grain Exports and the Structure of Agrarian Capitalism, 1700-60 (Hull, 1985) is the best account of the export trade
90. Gentleman's Magazine, xxii (1752), 223
91. Barnes, p. 24
92. 26 Geo. II, c. 15
93. [Charles Townshend], National Thoughts, Recommended to the Serious Attention of the Public (1751), p. 36
94. Anon., The State of the Corn Trade Considered (1753)
95. Sir L. Namier, Crossroads of Power (New York, 1962), p. 174. Oddly, given this (certainly correct) assertion, neither Namier's major books on mid 18th-century politics nor his collections of essays examine the question in any detail. His followers, too, were reticent in analysing these questions. Likewise they failed to consider the impact of economic ideas. The biography of Charles Townshend (1964), by Namier and John Brooke, who served as president of the board of trade and was appointed chancellor of the exchequer in 1766, makes no mention of his interest in political economy despite clear evidence of his fascination with the subject and his connections to the likes of Josiah Tucker, Adam Smith and Charles Smith. On the lobbying in favour of the bounty, see Barnes, pp. 25-6
96. Smith, Three Tracts, p. 73. This passage had been first written in Jan. 1759 during suspension of payments; subsequendy the bounty would be suspended more frequently and for longer periods
97. Ormrod, p. 49
98. A recent authoritative overview of agriculture in the period makes no mention at all of the pre-1815 corn laws or the bounty (R. C. Allen, 'Agriculture during the industrial revolution, 1700-1815', in The Cambridge Economic History of Modern Britain, i: Industrialisation, 1700-1860, ed. R. Floud and P. Johnson (Cambridge, 2004), pp. 96-116
99. Smith, Wealth of Nations, i. 540
100. Robert Dossie, Memoirs of Agriculture and Other Oeconomical Arts (1768) p. 232
101. The most thorough recent account is Petersen, ch. 7, which demurs at the past reliance on anecdotal evidence, such as the oft-repeated complaint that the poor refused all but the finest bread, and pushes down the estimates of Charles Smith and others but confirms the shift in general. For the figures cited, see the table on p. 201. Given that these figures include Scodand, where other grains were more widely consumed, the figures for England and Wales could be revised upwards
102. Brit. Libr., Additional MS. 32977 fo. 135, C. Smith to Charles Townshend, 23 Sept. 1766
103. Brit. Libr., Add. MS. 38207 fo. 199, C. Smith to Liverpool, 26 Nov. 1772
104. Anon., Observations and Examples to assist Magistrates in setting the Assize of Bread (1766). This had been published earlier in the London Chronicle, 17-19 July 1759. See the attribution to Smith ('one of the greatest mealmen in his time') in Thomas Pownall, Considerations on the Scarcity and High Prices of Bread-Corn (Cambridge, 1795), p. 44 (Pownall knew Smith in the 1770s). It was issued by Smith's printer, Brotherton of Cornhill, and certainly reflects his views
105. 'I am happy not only to found my reasoning upon the authority of [Smith's] opinion, but to quote him, that, at the same time that I make my acknowledgements of the obligation I have to his assistance, I may declare how much the publick in general, and the poor labourer in particular, owe to him; for, if there be any merit towards them in the late Bread Act, it derives from him in the first instance' (Thomas Pownall, The Measure of Regulating the Assize (1773; repr. 1795), p. 41)
106. Smith, Three Tracts, pp. 28-30, at pp. 28-9
107. Chandler
108. Landon Chronicle, 18-20 Oct. 1764
109. Repr, in the Gentleman's Magazine, Sept. 1766, pp. 410-n
110. Anon., Reflections on the High Prices of Provisions (1766), pp. 37, 27
111. Brit. Libr., Add. MS. 35607 fo. 341, John Pitt to Hardwicke, 21 Dec. 1766
112. Stephen Browne, The Laws Against Ingrossing, Forestalling, Regrating and Monopolising (1765), P. 2
113. William Blackstone, Commentaries on the Laws of England 1765-9, iv (1769), p. 159
114. Charles Davenant, An Essay upon the Probable Methods of Making a People Gainers in the Balance of Trade (1699), in The Political and Commercial Works of that Celebrated Writer Charles D'Avenant, ed. Sir C. Whitworth (5 vols., 1771), ii. 227
115. [Forster], p. 69
116. II Geo. II, c. 22, 'An Act for punishing such persons as shall do injuries and violences to the persons or properties of His Majesty's Subjects, with intent to hinder the Exportation of Corn'
117. Smith, Wealth of Nations, i. 533-4
118. Franςois Quesnay, The Oeconomical Table (1766), p. 158
119. F. Braudel and F. Spooner, 'Prices in Europe from 1450 to 1750', in The Cambridge Economic History of Europe, iv, ed. E. E. Rich and C. Wilson (1967), pp. 374-486, at p. 470; and Persson, ch. 5
120. C. W.J. Granger and C. M. Elliot, 'A fresh look at wheat prices and markets in the 18th century', Econ. Hist. Rev., 2nd ser., xx (1967), 257-65 was a first attempt to apply econometric theory to British data. Subsequently, see Chartres, 'Market integration and agricultural output', for a markedly less certain picture
121. See, e.g., the extracts from Smith's Tracts published as Account of the Experiments Tried by the Board of Agriculture in the Composition of Various Sorts of Bread (1795)
122. See 'Digression concerning the corn trade and the corn laws', in Smith, Wealth of Nations, i. 524-43 (in which Charles Smith is the only English authority cited)
123. J. S. Mill, Principles of Political Economy, ed. W.J. Ashley (1848; 1921 edn.), pp. 704-9, for the orthodox classical defence of speculation in the grain trade
124. Anon., Sentiments of a Corn-factor (1758), pp. 30, 31
125. Anon., 'Observations', in Smith, Three Tracts, pp. 58-65
126. Remarks on the Deficiency of Grain (1800), p. 129
127. For Smith as contributor alongside Arthur Young and others to 'the literature of apology constructed by contemporary landowners', see Ormrod p. 18. Against this view, see the testimony of E. P. Thompson, not often noted for his sympathies with landowners: '[The Three Tracts] deserve more sustained examination for the lucid and cogent arguments which (out of the wrack of insecure paternalist muddle) take us vigorously forward to The Wealth of Nations' (E. P. Thompson, review of W. J. Shelton, English Hunger and Industrial Disorders (1973), in Econ. Hist. Rev., xxvii (1974), 480-4, at p. 482)
128. Smith, Three Tracts, p. 235. The author is grateful to the Fund of Scientific Research - Flanders (Belgium) for supporting his Ph.D. research. Dr. Rodney Dean's suggestions regarding matters of English language have been gready appreciated