[29] Those who fancy a possible evasion of the case supposed above, by saying, that if a failure, extensive as to England, should coincide with a failure extensive as to Poland, remedies might be found in importing from many other countries combined, forget one objection, which is decisive--these supplementary countries must be many, and they must be distant. For no country could singly supply a defect of great extent, unless it were a defect annually and regularly anticipated. A surplus never designed as a fixed surplus for England, but called for only now and then, could never be more than small. Therefore the surplus, which could not be yielded by one country, must be yielded by many. In that proportion increase the probabilities that a number will have no surplus. And, secondly, from the widening distances, in that proportion increases the extent of shipping required. But now, even from Mr Porter, a most prejudiced writer on this question, and not capable of impartiality in speaking upon any measure which he supposes hostile to the principle of free trade, the reader may learn how certainly any great _hiatus_ in our domestic growth of corn is placed beyond all hope of relief. For how is this grain, this relief, to be brought? In ships, you reply. Ay, but in what ships? Do you imagine that an extra navy can lie rotting in docks, and an extra fifty thousand of sailors can be held in reserve, and borne upon the books of some colossal establishment, waiting for the casual seventh, ninth, or twelfth year in which they may be wanted--kept and paid against an "_in case_," like the extra supper, so called by Louis XIV., which waited all night on the chance that it might be wanted? _That_, you say, is impossible. It is so; and yet without such a reserve, all the navies of Europe would not suffice to make up such a failure of our home crops as is likely enough to follow redundant years under the system of unlimited competition.--See PORTER.