"Why cannot the British farmer, with his greater skill, capital, and economy of production, raise vastly greater crops, and undersell with advantage, at least in the British market, the foreign grain, which has heavy charges of freight, warehouse rent, and labourage against it? The reason is this: The foreign grain brought to England from the Continent or Europe consists either of rents, quit-rents, or feu-duties, paid in kind by the actual farmer; or it is the surplus produce of the small estate of the peasant proprietor. In either case the subsistence of the family producing it is taken off, and also whatever is required to pay tithe, rates, and even taxes, which, as well as rent, are not paid in money, but in _naturalia_--in grain, and generally in certain proportions of the crops raised. The free surplus for exportation may be sold at any price in the English market, however low; because, if it bring in nothing at all, the loss neither deranges the circumstances nor the ordinary subsistence and way of living of the farmers producing it. All their rents or payments are settled in grain; all their subsistence, clothing, and necessary expenditure are provided for; and the surplus is merely a quantity which must be sold, because it is perishable; and which, if it sells well, may enable them to lay out a little more on the gratifications and tastes of a higher state of civilisation; but if it sells badly, or for nothing at all, does not affect their means of reproduction, or even their ordinary habits, enjoyments, way of living, or stock. They have not paid a price for their corn in rent, wages, manures, and other outlay of money, as the British farmer does before he brings his corn to market, _and have, therefore, no minimum below which they cannot afford to sell it without ruin_."[35] Mr Laing's intimate acquaintance with the habits and condition of those countries, which now seem destined to stand in the same relation to Great Britain as Numidia did to decaying Rome, has enabled him also to point out how vain is the expectation that they will permanently extend the use of our manufactures in proportion to our consumption of their corn. No one has more forcibly shown the insanity of sacrificing, for so vague a prospect, the prosperity of those classes who chiefly maintain the home market.