Chapter OF BOUNTIES.

CHAPTER V. OF BOUNTIES.

  Bounties upon exportation are, in Great Britain, frequently petitioned
  for, and sometimes granted, to the produce of particular branches of
  domestic industry. By means of them, our merchants and manufacturers, it
  is pretended, will be enabled to sell their goods as cheap or cheaper than
  their rivals in the foreign market. A greater quantity, it is said, will
  thus be exported, and the balance of trade consequently turned more in
  favour of our own country. We cannot give our workmen a monopoly in the
  foreign, as we have done in the home market. We cannot force foreigners to
  buy their goods, as we have done our own countrymen. The next best
  expedient, it has been thought, therefore, is to pay them for buying. It
  is in this manner that the mercantile system proposes to enrich the whole
  country, and to put money into all our pockets, by means of the balance of
  trade.

  Bounties, it is allowed, ought to be given to those branches of trade only
  which cannot be carried on without them. But every branch of trade in
  which the merchant can sell his goods for a price which replaces to him,
  with the ordinary profits of stock, the whole capital employed in
  preparing and sending them to market, can be carried on without a bounty.
  Every such branch is evidently upon a level with all the other branches of
  trade which are carried on without bounties, and cannot, therefore,
  require one more than they. Those trades only require bounties, in which
  the merchant is obliged to sell his goods for a price which does not
  replace to him his capital, together with the ordinary profit, or in which
  he is obliged to sell them for less than it really cost him to send them
  to market. The bounty is given in order to make up this loss, and to
  encourage him to continue, or, perhaps, to begin a trade, of which the
  expense is supposed to be greater than the returns, of which every
  operation eats up a part of the capital employed in it, and which is of
  such a nature, that if all other trades resembled it, there would soon be
  no capital left in the country.

  The trades, it is to be observed, which are carried on by means of
  bounties, are the only ones which can be carried on between two nations
  for any considerable time together, in such a manner as that one of them
  shall always and regularly lose, or sell its goods for less than it
  really cost to send them to market. But if the bounty did not repay to the
  merchant what he would otherwise lose upon the price of his goods, his own
  interest would soon oblige him to employ his stock in another way, or to
  find out a trade in which the price of the goods would replace to him,
  with the ordinary profit, the capital employed in sending them to market.
  The effect of bounties, like that of all the other expedients of the
  mercantile system, can only be to force the trade of a country into a
  channel much less advantageous than that in which it would naturally run
  of its own accord.

  The ingenious and well-informed author of the Tracts upon the Corn Trade
  has shown very clearly, that since the bounty upon the exportation of corn
  was first established, the price of the corn exported, valued moderately
  enough, has exceeded that of the corn imported, valued very high, by a
  much greater sum than the amount of the whole bounties which have been
  paid during that period. This, he imagines, upon the true principles of
  the mercantile system, is a clear proof that this forced corn trade is
  beneficial to the nation, the value of the exportation exceeding that of
  the importation by a much greater sum than the whole extraordinary expense
  which the public has been at in order to get it exported. He does not
  consider that this extraordinary expense, or the bounty, is the smallest
  part of the expense which the exportation of corn really costs the
  society. The capital which the farmer employed in raising it must likewise
  be taken into the account. Unless the price of the corn, when sold in the
  foreign markets, replaces not only the bounty, but this capital, together
  with the ordinary profits of stock, the society is a loser by the
  difference, or the national stock is so much diminished. But the very
  reason for which it has been thought necessary to grant a bounty, is the
  supposed insufficiency of the price to do this.

  The average price of corn, it has been said, has fallen considerably since
  the establishment of the bounty. That the average price of corn began to
  fall somewhat towards the end of the last century, and has continued to do
  so during the course of the sixty-four first years of the present, I have
  already endeavoured to show. But this event, supposing it to be real, as I
  believe it to be, must have happened in spite of the bounty, and cannot
  possibly have happened in consequence of it. It has happened in France, as
  well as in England, though in France there was not only no bounty, but,
  till 1764, the exportation of corn was subjected to a general prohibition.
  This gradual fall in the average price of grain, it is probable,
  therefore, is ultimately owing neither to the one regulation nor to the
  other, but to that gradual and insensible rise in the real value of
  silver, which, in the first book of this discourse, I have endeavoured to
  show, has taken place in the general market of Europe during the course of
  the present century. It seems to be altogether impossible that the bounty
  could ever contribute to lower the price of grain.

  In years of plenty, it has already been observed, the bounty, by
  occasioning an extraordinary exportation, necessarily keeps up the price
  of corn in the home market above what it would naturally fall to. To do so
  was the avowed purpose of the institution. In years of scarcity, though
  the bounty is frequently suspended, yet the great exportation which it
  occasions in years of plenty, must frequently hinder, more or less, the
  plenty of one year from relieving the scarcity of another. Both in years
  of plenty and in years of scarcity, therefore, the bounty necessarily
  tends to raise the money price of corn somewhat higher than it otherwise
  would be in the home market.

  That in the actual state of tillage the bounty must necessarily have this
  tendency, will not, I apprehend, be disputed by any reasonable person. But
  it has been thought by many people, that it tends to encourage tillage,
  and that in two different ways; first, by opening a more extensive foreign
  market to the corn of the farmer, it tends, they imagine, to increase the
  demand for, and consequently the production of, that commodity; and,
  secondly by securing to him a better price than he could otherwise expect
  in the actual state of tillage, it tends, they suppose, to encourage
  tillage. This double encouragement must they imagine, in a long period of
  years, occasion such an increase in the production of corn, as may lower
  its price in the home market, much more than the bounty can raise it in
  the actual state which tillage may, at the end of that period, happen to
  be in.

  I answer, that whatever extension of the foreign market can be occasioned
  by the bounty must, in every particular year, be altogether at the expense
  of the home market; as every bushel of corn, which is exported by means of
  the bounty, and which would not have been exported without the bounty,
  would have remained in the home market to increase the consumption, and to
  lower the price of that commodity. The corn bounty, it is to be observed,
  as well as every other bounty upon exportation, imposes two different
  taxes upon the people; first, the tax which they are obliged to
  contribute, in order to pay the bounty; and, secondly, the tax which
  arises from the advanced price of the commodity in the home market, and
  which, as the whole body of the people are purchasers of corn, must, in
  this particular commodity, be paid by the whole body of the people. In
  this particular commodity, therefore, this second tax is by much the
  heaviest of the two. Let us suppose that, taking one year with another,
  the bounty of 5s. upon the exportation of the quarter of wheat raises the
  price of that commodity in the home market only 6d. the bushel, or 4s. the
  quarter higher than it otherwise would have been in the actual state of
  the crop. Even upon this very moderate supposition, the great body of the
  people, over and above contributing the tax which pays the bounty of 5s.
  upon every quarter of wheat exported, must pay another of 4s. upon every
  quarter which they themselves consume. But according to the very well
  informed author of the Tracts upon the Corn Trade, the average proportion
  of the corn exported to that consumed at home, is not more than that of
  one to thirty-one. For every 5s. therefore, which they contribute to the
  payment of the first tax, they must contribute £6:4s. to the payment of
  the second. So very heavy a tax upon the first necessary of life-must
  either reduce the subsistence of the labouring poor, or it must occasion
  some augmentation in their pecuniary wages, proportionable to that in the
  pecuniary price of their subsistence. So far as it operates in the one
  way, it must reduce the ability of the labouring poor to educate and bring
  up their children, and must, so far, tend to restrain the population of
  the country. So far as it operates in the other, it must reduce the
  ability of the employers of the poor, to employ so great a number as they
  otherwise might do, and must so far tend to restrain the industry of the
  country. The extraordinary exportation of corn, therefore occasioned by
  the bounty, not only in every particular year diminishes the home, just as
  much as it extends the foreign market and consumption, but, by restraining
  the population and industry of the country, its final tendency is to stint
  and restrain the gradual extension of the home market; and thereby, in the
  long-run, rather to diminish than to augment the whole market and
  consumption of corn.

  This enhancement of the money price of corn, however, it has been thought,
  by rendering that commodity more profitable to the farmer, must
  necessarily encourage its production.

  I answer, that this might be the case, if the effect of the bounty was to
  raise the real price of corn, or to enable the farmer, with an equal
  quantity of it, to maintain a greater number of labourers in the same
  manner, whether liberal, moderate, or scanty, than other labourers are
  commonly maintained in his neighbourhood. But neither the bounty, it is
  evident, nor any other human institution, can have any such effect. It is
  not the real, but the nominal price of corn, which can in any considerable
  degree be affected by the bounty. And though the tax, which that
  institution imposes upon the whole body of the people, may be very
  burdensome to those who pay it, it is of very little advantage to those
  who receive it.

  The real effect of the bounty is not so much to raise the real value of
  corn, as to degrade the real value of silver; or to make an equal quantity
  of it exchange for a smaller quantity, not only of corn, but of all other
  home made commodities; for the money price of corn regulates that of all
  other home made commodities.

  It regulates the money price of labour, which must always be such as to
  enable the labourer to purchase a quantity of corn sufficient to maintain
  him and his family, either in the liberal, moderate, or scanty manner, in
  which the advancing, stationary, or declining, circumstances of the
  society, oblige his employers to maintain him.

  It regulates the money price of all the other parts of the rude produce of
  land, which, in every period of improvement, must bear a certain
  proportion to that of corn, though this proportion is different in
  different periods. It regulates, for example, the money price of grass and
  hay, of butcher’s meat, of horses, and the maintenance of horses, of land
  carriage consequently, or of the greater part of the inland commerce of
  the country.

  By regulating the money price of all the other parts of the rude produce
  of land, it regulates that of the materials of almost all manufactures; by
  regulating the money price of labour, it regulates that of manufacturing
  art and industry; and by regulating both, it regulates that of the
  complete manufacture. The money price of labour, and of every thing that
  is the produce, either of land or labour, must necessarily either rise or
  fall in proportion to the money price of corn.

  Though in consequence of the bounty, therefore, the farmer should be
  enabled to sell his corn for 4s. the bushel, instead of 3s:6d. and to pay
  his landlord a money rent proportionable to this rise in the money price
  of his produce; yet if, in consequence of this rise in the price of corn,
  4s. will purchase no more home made goods of any other kind than 3s. 6d.
  would have done before, neither the circumstances of the farmer, nor those
  of the landlord, will be much mended by this change. The farmer will not
  be able to cultivate much better; the landlord will not be able to live
  much better. In the purchase of foreign commodities, this enhancement in
  the price of corn may give them some little advantage. In that of home
  made commodities, it can give them none at all. And almost the whole
  expense of the farmer, and the far greater part even of that of the
  landlord, is in home made commodities.

  That degradation in the value of silver, which is the effect of the
  fertility of the mines, and which operates equally, or very nearly
  equally, through the greater part of the commercial world, is a matter of
  very little consequence to any particular country. The consequent rise of
  all money prices, though it does not make those who receive them really
  richer, does not make them really poorer. A service of plate becomes
  really cheaper, and every thing else remains precisely of the same real
  value as before.

  But that degradation in the value of silver, which, being the effect
  either of the peculiar situation or of the political institutions of a
  particular country, takes place only in that country, is a matter of very
  great consequence, which, far from tending to make anybody really richer,
  tends to make every body really poorer. The rise in the money price of all
  commodities, which is in this case peculiar to that country, tends to
  discourage more or less every sort of industry which is carried on within
  it, and to enable foreign nations, by furnishing almost all sorts of goods
  for a smaller quantity of silver than its own workmen can afford to do, to
  undersell them, not only in the foreign, but even in the home market.

  It is the peculiar situation of Spain and Portugal, as proprietors of the
  mines, to be the distributers of gold and silver to all the other
  countries of Europe. Those metals ought naturally, therefore, to be
  somewhat cheaper in Spain and Portugal than in any other part of Europe.
  The difference, however, should be no more than the amount of the freight
  and insurance; and, on account of the great value and small bulk of those
  metals, their freight is no great matter, and their insurance is the same
  as that of any other goods of equal value. Spain and Portugal, therefore,
  could suffer very little from their peculiar situation, if they did not
  aggravate its disadvantages by their political institutions.

  Spain by taxing, and Portugal by prohibiting, the exportation of gold and
  silver, load that exportation with the expense of smuggling, and raise the
  value of those metals in other countries so much more above what it is in
  their own, by the whole amount of this expense. When you dam up a stream
  of water, as soon as the dam is full, as much water must run over the
  dam-head as if there was no dam at all. The prohibition of exportation
  cannot detain a greater quantity of gold and silver in Spain and Portugal,
  than what they can afford to employ, than what the annual produce of their
  land and labour will allow them to employ, in coin, plate, gilding, and
  other ornaments of gold and silver. When they have got this quantity, the
  dam is full, and the whole stream which flows in afterwards must run over.
  The annual exportation of gold and silver from Spain and Portugal,
  accordingly, is, by all accounts, notwithstanding these restraints, very
  near equal to the whole annual importation. As the water, however, must
  always be deeper behind the dam-head than before it, so the quantity of
  gold and silver which these restraints detain in Spain and Portugal, must,
  in proportion to the annual produce of their land and labour, be greater
  than what is to be found in other countries. The higher and stronger the
  dam-head, the greater must be the difference in the depth of water behind
  and before it. The higher the tax, the higher the penalties with which the
  prohibition is guarded, the more vigilant and severe the police which
  looks after the execution of the law, the greater must be the difference
  in the proportion of gold and silver to the annual produce of the land and
  labour of Spain and Portugal, and to that of other countries. It is said,
  accordingly, to be very considerable, and that you frequently find there a
  profusion of plate in houses, where there is nothing else which would in
  other countries be thought suitable or correspondent to this sort of
  magnificence. The cheapness of gold and silver, or, what is the same
  thing, the dearness of all commodities, which is the necessary effect of
  this redundancy of the precious metals, discourages both the agriculture
  and manufactures of Spain and Portugal, and enables foreign nations to
  supply them with many sorts of rude, and with almost all sorts of
  manufactured produce, for a smaller quantity of gold and silver than what
  they themselves can either raise or make them for at home. The tax and
  prohibition operate in two different ways. They not only lower very much
  the value of the precious metals in Spain and Portugal, but by detaining
  there a certain quantity of those metals which would otherwise flow over
  other countries, they keep up their value in those other countries
  somewhat above what it otherwise would be, and thereby give those
  countries a double advantage in their commerce with Spain and Portugal.
  Open the flood-gates, and there will presently be less water above, and
  more below the dam-head, and it will soon come to a level in both places.
  Remove the tax and the prohibition, and as the quantity of gold and silver
  will diminish considerably in Spain and Portugal, so it will increase
  somewhat in other countries; and the value of those metals, their
  proportion to the annual produce of land and labour, will soon come to a
  level, or very near to a level, in all. The loss which Spain and Portugal
  could sustain by this exportation of their gold and silver, would be
  altogether nominal and imaginary. The nominal value of their goods, and of
  the annual produce of their land and labour, would fall, and would be
  expressed or represented by a smaller quantity of silver than before; but
  their real value would be the same as before, and would be sufficient to
  maintain, command, and employ the same quantity of labour. As the nominal
  value of their goods would fall, the real value of what remained of their
  gold and silver would rise, and a smaller quantity of those metals would
  answer all the same purposes of commerce and circulation which had
  employed a greater quantity before. The gold and silver which would go
  abroad would not go abroad for nothing, but would bring back an equal
  value of goods of some kind or other. Those goods, too, would not be all
  matters of mere luxury and expense, to be consumed by idle people, who
  produce nothing in return for their consumption. As the real wealth and
  revenue of idle people would not be augmented by this extraordinary
  exportation of gold and silver, so neither would their consumption be much
  augmented by it. Those goods would probably, the greater part of them, and
  certainly some part of them, consist in materials, tools, and provisions,
  for the employment and maintenance of industrious people, who would
  reproduce, with a profit, the full value of their consumption. A part of
  the dead stock of the society would thus be turned into active stock, and
  would put into motion a greater quantity of industry than had been
  employed before. The annual produce of their land and labour would
  immediately be augmented a little, and in a few years would probably be
  augmented a great deal; their industry being thus relieved from one of the
  most oppressive burdens which it at present labours under.

  The bounty upon the exportation of corn necessarily operates exactly in
  the same way as this absurd policy of Spain and Portugal. Whatever be the
  actual state of tillage, it renders our corn somewhat dearer in the home
  market than it otherwise would be in that state, and somewhat cheaper in
  the foreign; and as the average money price of corn regulates, more or
  less, that of all other commodities, it lowers the value of silver
  considerably in the one, and tends to raise it a little in the other. It
  enables foreigners, the Dutch in particular, not only to eat our corn
  cheaper than they otherwise could do, but sometimes to eat it cheaper than
  even our own people can do upon the same occasions; as we are assured by
  an excellent authority, that of Sir Matthew Decker. It hinders our own
  workmen from furnishing their goods for so small a quantity of silver as
  they otherwise might do, and enables the Dutch to furnish theirs for a
  smaller. It tends to render our manufactures somewhat dearer in every
  market, and theirs somewhat cheaper, than they otherwise would be, and
  consequently to give their industry a double advantage over our own.

  The bounty, as it raises in the home market, not so much the real, as the
  nominal price of our corn; as it augments, not the quantity of labour
  which a certain quantity of corn can maintain and employ, but only the
  quantity of silver which it will exchange for; it discourages our
  manufactures, without rendering any considerable service, either to our
  farmers or country gentlemen. It puts, indeed, a little more money into
  the pockets of both, and it will perhaps be somewhat difficult to persuade
  the greater part of them that this is not rendering them a very
  considerable service. But if this money sinks in its value, in the
  quantity of labour, provisions, and home-made commodities of all different
  kinds which it is capable of purchasing, as much as it rises in its
  quantity, the service will be little more than nominal and imaginary.

  There is, perhaps, but one set of men in the whole commonwealth to whom
  the bounty either was or could be essentially serviceable. These were the
  corn merchants, the exporters and importers of corn. In years of plenty,
  the bounty necessarily occasioned a greater exportation than would
  otherwise have taken place; and by hindering the plenty of the one year
  from relieving the scarcity of another, it occasioned in years of scarcity
  a greater importation than would otherwise have been necessary. It
  increased the business of the corn merchant in both; and in the years of
  scarcity, it not only enabled him to import a greater quantity, but to
  sell it for a better price, and consequently with a greater profit, than
  he could otherwise have made, if the plenty of one year had not been more
  or less hindered from relieving the scarcity of another. It is in this set
  of men, accordingly, that I have observed the greatest zeal for the
  continuance or renewal of the bounty.

  Our country gentlemen, when they imposed the high duties upon the
  exportation of foreign corn, which in times of moderate plenty amount to a
  prohibition, and when they established the bounty, seem to have imitated
  the conduct of our manufacturers. By the one institution, they secured to
  themselves the monopoly of the home market, and by the other they
  endeavoured to prevent that market from ever being overstocked with their
  commodity. By both they endeavoured to raise its real value, in the same
  manner as our manufacturers had, by the like institutions, raised the real
  value of many different sorts of manufactured goods. They did not,
  perhaps, attend to the great and essential difference which nature has
  established between corn and almost every other sort of goods. When,
  either by the monopoly of the home market, or by a bounty upon
  exportation, you enable our woollen or linen manufacturers to sell their
  goods for somewhat a better price than they otherwise could get for them,
  you raise, not only the nominal, but the real price of those goods; you
  render them equivalent to a greater quantity of labour and subsistence;
  you increase not only the nominal, but the real profit, the real wealth
  and revenue of those manufacturers; and you enable them, either to live
  better themselves, or to employ a greater quantity of labour in those
  particular manufactures. You really encourage those manufactures, and
  direct towards them a greater quantity of the industry of the country than
  what would properly go to them of its own accord. But when, by the like
  institutions, you raise the nominal or money price of corn, you do not
  raise its real value; you do not increase the real wealth, the real
  revenue, either of our farmers or country gentlemen; you do not encourage
  the growth of corn, because you do not enable them to maintain and employ
  more labourers in raising it. The nature of things has stamped upon corn a
  real value, which cannot be altered by merely altering its money price. No
  bounty upon exportation, no monopoly of the home market, can raise that
  value. The freest competition cannot lower it, Through the world in
  general, that value is equal to the quantity of labour which it can
  maintain, and in every particular place it is equal to the quantity of
  labour which it can maintain in the way, whether liberal, moderate, or
  scanty, in which labour is commonly maintained in that place. Woollen or
  linen cloth are not the regulating commodities by which the real value of
  all other commodities must be finally measured and determined; corn is.
  The real value of every other commodity is finally measured and determined
  by the proportion which its average money price bears to the average money
  price of corn. The real value of corn does not vary with those variations
  in its average money price, which sometimes occur from one century to
  another; it is the real value of silver which varies with them.

  Bounties upon the exportation of any homemade commodity are liable, first,
  to that general objection which may be made to all the different
  expedients of the mercantile system; the objection of forcing some part of
  the industry of the country into a channel less advantageous than that in
  which it would run of its own accord; and, secondly, to the particular
  objection of forcing it not only into a channel that is less advantageous,
  but into one that is actually disadvantageous; the trade which cannot be
  carried on but by means of a bounty being necessarily a losing trade. The
  bounty upon the exportation of corn is liable to this further objection,
  that it can in no respect promote the raising of that particular commodity
  of which it was meant to encourage the production. When our country
  gentlemen, therefore, demanded the establishment of the bounty, though
  they acted in imitation of our merchants and manufacturers, they did not
  act with that complete comprehension of their own interest, which commonly
  directs the conduct of those two other orders of people. They loaded the
  public revenue with a very considerable expense: they imposed a very heavy
  tax upon the whole body of the people; but they did not, in any sensible
  degree, increase the real value of their own commodity; and by lowering
  somewhat the real value of silver, they discouraged, in some degree, the
  general industry of the country, and, instead of advancing, retarded more
  or less the improvement of their own lands, which necessarily depend upon
  the general industry of the country.

  To encourage the production of any commodity, a bounty upon production,
  one should imagine, would have a more direct operation than one upon
  exportation. It would, besides, impose only one tax upon the people, that
  which they must contribute in order to pay the bounty. Instead of raising,
  it would tend to lower the price of the commodity in the home market; and
  thereby, instead of imposing a second tax upon the people, it might, at
  least in part, repay them for what they had contributed to the first.
  Bounties upon production, however, have been very rarely granted. The
  prejudices established by the commercial system have taught us to believe,
  that national wealth arises more immediately from exportation than from
  production. It has been more favoured, accordingly, as the more immediate
  means of bringing money into the country. Bounties upon production, it has
  been said too, have been found by experience more liable to frauds than
  those upon exportation. How far this is true, I know not. That bounties
  upon exportation have been abused, to many fraudulent purposes, is very
  well known. But it is not the interest of merchants and manufacturers, the
  great inventors of all these expedients, that the home market should be
  overstocked with their goods; an event which a bounty upon production
  might sometimes occasion. A bounty upon exportation, by enabling them to
  send abroad their surplus part, and to keep up the price of what remains
  in the home market, effectually prevents this. Of all the expedients of
  the mercantile system, accordingly, it is the one of which they are the
  fondest. I have known the different undertakers of some particular works
  agree privately among themselves to give a bounty out of their own pockets
  upon the exportation of a certain proportion of the goods which they dealt
  in. This expedient succeeded so well, that it more than doubled the price
  of their goods in the home market, notwithstanding a very considerable
  increase in the produce. The operation of the bounty upon corn must have
  been wonderfully different, if it has lowered the money price of that
  commodity.

  Something like a bounty upon production, however, has been granted upon
  some particular occasions. The tonnage bounties given to the white herring
  and whale fisheries may, perhaps, be considered as somewhat of this
  nature. They tend directly, it may be supposed, to render the goods
  cheaper in the home market than they otherwise would be. In other
  respects, their effects, it must be acknowledged, are the same as those of
  bounties upon exportation. By means of them, a part of the capital of the
  country is employed in bringing goods to market, of which the price does
  not repay the cost, together with the ordinary profits of stock.

  But though the tonnage bounties to those fisheries do not contribute to
  the opulence of the nation, it may, perhaps, be thought that they
  contribute to its defence, by augmenting the number of its sailors and
  shipping. This, it may be alleged, may sometimes be done by means of such
  bounties, at a much smaller expense than by keeping up a great standing
  navy, if I may use such an expression, in the same way as a standing army.

  Notwithstanding these favourable allegations, however, the following
  considerations dispose me to believe, that in granting at least one of
  these bounties, the legislature has been very grossly imposed upon:

  First, The herring-buss bounty seems too large.

  From the commencement of the winter fishing 1771, to the end of the winter
  fishing 1781, the tonnage bounty upon the herring-buss fishery has been at
  thirty shillings the ton. During these eleven years, the whole number of
  barrels caught by the herring-buss fishery of Scotland amounted to
  378,347. The herrings caught and cured at sea are called sea-sticks. In
  order to render them what are called merchantable herrings, it is
  necessary to repack them with an additional quantity of salt; and in this
  case, it is reckoned, that three barrels of sea-sticks are usually
  repacked into two barrels of merchantable herrings. The number of barrels
  of merchantable herrings, therefore, caught during these eleven years,
  will amount only, according to this account, to 252,231¼. During these
  eleven years, the tonnage bounties paid amounted to £155,463:11s. or
  8s:2¼d. upon every barrel of sea-sticks, and to 12s:3¾d. upon every barrel
  of merchantable herrings.

  The salt with which these herrings are cured is sometimes Scotch, and
  sometimes foreign salt; both which are delivered, free of all excise duty,
  to the fish-curers. The excise duty upon Scotch salt is at present 1s:6d.,
  that upon foreign salt 10s. the bushel. A barrel of herrings is supposed
  to require about one bushel and one-fourth of a bushel foreign salt. Two
  bushels are the supposed average of Scotch salt. If the herrings are
  entered for exportation, no part of this duty is paid up; if entered for
  home consumption, whether the herrings were cured with foreign or with
  Scotch salt, only one shilling the barrel is paid up. It was the old
  Scotch duty upon a bushel of salt, the quantity which, at a low
  estimation, had been supposed necessary for curing a barrel of herrings.
  In Scotland, foreign salt is very little used for any other purpose but
  the curing of fish. But from the 5th April 1771 to the 5th April 1782, the
  quantity of foreign salt imported amounted to 936,974 bushels, at
  eighty-four pounds the bushel; the quantity of Scotch salt delivered from
  the works to the fish-curers, to no more than 168,226, at fifty-six pounds
  the bushel only. It would appear, therefore, that it is principally
  foreign salt that is used in the fisheries. Upon every barrel of herrings
  exported, there is, besides, a bounty of 2s:8d. and more than two-thirds
  of the buss-caught herrings are exported. Put all these things together,
  and you will find that, during these eleven years, every barrel of
  buss-caught herrings, cured with Scotch salt, when exported, has cost
  government 17s:11¾d.; and, when entered for home consumption, 14s:3¾d.;
  and that every barrel cured with foreign salt, when exported, has cost
  government £1:7:5¾d.; and, when entered for home consumption, £1:3:9¾d.
  The price of a barrel of good merchantable herrings runs from seventeen
  and eighteen to four and five-and-twenty shillings; about a guinea at an
  average. {See the accounts at the end of this Book.}

  Secondly, The bounty to the white-herring fishery is a tonnage bounty, and
  is proportioned to the burden of the ship, not to her diligence or success
  in the fishery; and it has, I am afraid, been too common for the vessels
  to fit out for the sole purpose of catching, not the fish but the bounty.
  In the year 1759, when the bounty was at fifty shillings the ton, the
  whole buss fishery of Scotland brought in only four barrels of sea-sticks.
  In that year, each barrel of sea-sticks cost government, in bounties
  alone, £113:15s.; each barrel of merchantable herrings £159:7:6.

  Thirdly, The mode of fishing, for which this tonnage bounty in the white
  herring fishery has been given (by busses or decked vessels from twenty to
  eighty tons burden ), seems not so well adapted to the situation of
  Scotland, as to that of Holland, from the practice of which country it
  appears to have been borrowed. Holland lies at a great distance from the
  seas to which herrings are known principally to resort, and can,
  therefore, carry on that fishery only in decked vessels, which can carry
  water and provisions sufficient for a voyage to a distant sea; but the
  Hebrides, or Western Islands, the islands of Shetland, and the northern
  and north-western coasts of Scotland, the countries in whose neighbourhood
  the herring fishery is principally carried on, are everywhere intersected
  by arms of the sea, which run up a considerable way into the land, and
  which, in the language of the country, are called sea-lochs. It is to
  these sea-lochs that the herrings principally resort during the seasons in
  which they visit these seas; for the visits of this, and, I am assured, of
  many other sorts of fish, are not quite regular and constant. A
  boat-fishery, therefore, seems to be the mode of fishing best adapted to
  the peculiar situation of Scotland, the fishers carrying the herrings on
  shore as fast as they are taken, to be either cured or consumed fresh. But
  the great encouragement which a bounty of 30s. the ton gives to the
  buss-fishery, is necessarily a discouragement to the boat-fishery, which,
  having no such bounty, cannot bring its cured fish to market upon the same
  terms as the buss-fishery. The boat-fishery; accordingly, which, before
  the establishment of the buss-bounty, was very considerable, and is said
  to have employed a number of seamen, not inferior to what the buss-fishery
  employs at present, is now gone almost entirely to decay. Of the former
  extent, however, of this now ruined and abandoned fishery, I must
  acknowledge that I cannot pretend to speak with much precision. As no
  bounty was-paid upon the outfit of the boat-fishery, no account was taken
  of it by the officers of the customs or salt duties.

  Fourthly, In many parts of Scotland, during certain seasons of the year,
  herrings make no inconsiderable part of the food of the common people. A
  bounty which tended to lower their price in the home market, might
  contribute a good deal to the relief of a great number of our
  fellow-subjects, whose circumstances are by no means affluent. But the
  herring-bus bounty contributes to no such good purpose. It has ruined the
  boat fishery, which is by far the best adapted for the supply of the home
  market; and the additional bounty of 2s:8d. the barrel upon exportation,
  carries the greater part, more than two-thirds, of the produce of the
  buss-fishery abroad. Between thirty and forty years ago, before the
  establishment of the buss-bounty, 16s. the barrel, I have been assured,
  was the common price of white herrings. Between ten and fifteen years ago,
  before the boat-fishery was entirely ruined, the price was said to have
  run from seventeen to twenty shillings the barrel. For these last five
  years, it has, at an average, been at twenty-five shillings the barrel.
  This high price, however, may have been owing to the real scarcity of the
  herrings upon the coast of Scotland. I must observe, too, that the cask or
  barrel, which is usually sold with the herrings, and of which the price is
  included in all the foregoing prices, has, since the commencement of the
  American war, risen to about double its former price, or from about 3s. to
  about 6s. I must likewise observe, that the accounts I have received of
  the prices of former times, have been by no means quite uniform and
  consistent, and an old man of great accuracy and experience has assured
  me, that, more than fifty years ago, a guinea was the usual price of a
  barrel of good merchantable herrings; and this, I imagine, may still be
  looked upon as the average price. All accounts, however, I think, agree
  that the price has not been lowered in the home market in consequence of
  the buss-bounty.

  When the undertakers of fisheries, after such liberal bounties have been
  bestowed upon them, continue to sell their commodity at the same, or even
  at a higher price than they were accustomed to do before, it might be
  expected that their profits should be very great; and it is not improbable
  that those of some individuals may have been so. In general, however, I
  have every reason to believe they have been quite otherwise. The usual
  effect of such bounties is, to encourage rash undertakers to adventure in
  a business which they do not understand; and what they lose by their own
  negligence and ignorance, more than compensates all that they can gain by
  the utmost liberality of government. In 1750, by the same act which first
  gave the bounty of 30s. the ton for the encouragement of the white herring
  fishery (the 23d Geo. II. chap. 24), a joint stock company was erected,
  with a capital of £500,000, to which the subscribers (over and above all
  other encouragements, the tonnage bounty just now mentioned, the
  exportation bounty of 2s:8d. the barrel, the delivery of both British and
  foreign salt duty free) were, during the space of fourteen years, for
  every hundred pounds which they subscribed and paid into the stock of the
  society, entitled to three pounds a-year, to be paid by the
  receiver-general of the customs in equal half-yearly payments. Besides
  this great company, the residence of whose governor and directors was to
  be in London, it was declared lawful to erect different fishing chambers
  in all the different out-ports of the kingdom, provided a sum not less
  than £10,000 was subscribed into the capital of each, to be managed at its
  own risk, and for its own profit and loss. The same annuity, and the same
  encouragements of all kinds, were given to the trade of those inferior
  chambers as to that of the great company. The subscription of the great
  company was soon filled up, and several different fishing chambers were
  erected in the different out-ports of the kingdom. In spite of all these
  encouragements, almost all those different companies, both great and
  small, lost either the whole or the greater part of their capitals; scarce
  a vestige now remains of any of them, and the white-herring fishery is now
  entirely, or almost entirely, carried on by private adventurers.

  If any particular manufacture was necessary, indeed, for the defence of
  the societ

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