The Pleasant Aspects of the Current Scarcity (1816) - Page 22

The farmer has felt the pressure of war most painfully and has borne all its burdens most heavily. At the same time, he was forced to sell his produce at any price to afford the high war taxes and to always have money on hand to provide for his quartered soldiers. Hence the low grain prices, even during the war years, but hence also the impoverishment and ruin of so many thousands of individual farming families and entire communities and villages. If we were happy to pay our domestic manufacturers high prices for their products during the war due to a lack of competition with English factories, and if we even wish, even now, that the purchase of cheaper