Here the interposition of a statesman is absolutely necessary; since great loss may often be incurred by bringing down the price of grain in a year of scarcity. Premiums, therefore, must be given upon importation, until a plan can be executed for the extending of agriculture; of which in another place. This must be gone about with the greatest circumspection; for if grain be thereby made to fall too low, you ruin the landed interest, and although (as we have said above) all things soon become balanced in a trading nation, yet sudden and violent revolutions, such as this must be, are always to be apprehended. They are ever dangerous; and the spirit of every class of inhabitants must be kept up. By a discredit call upon any branch of industry, the hands employed in it may be made to abandon it, to the great detriment of the whole. This will infallibly happen, when violent transitions do not proceed from natural causes, as in the example here before us, when the price of grain is supposed to be brought down, from the increase of its quantity by importation, and not by plenty. Because, upon the falling of the market by importation, the poor farmer has nothing to make up for the low price he gets for his grain; whereas, when it proceeds from plenty, he has an additional quantity. In years, therefore, of general scarcity, a statesman should not, by premiums given, reduce the price of grain, but in a reciprocal proportion to the quantity wanted: that is to say, the more grain is wanted, the less the price should be diminished. It may appear a very extensive project for any government to undertake to keep down the prices of grain, in years of general scarcity. I allow it to be politically impossible to keep prices low; because if all Europe be taken together, the produce of the whole is consumed one year with another, by the inhabitants; and in a year when there is a general scarcity, it would be very hard, if not impossible, (without having previously established a plan for this purpose) to make any nation live in plenty while others are starving. All therefore that is proposed, is to keep the prices of grain in as just a proportion as possible to the plenty of the year.