If such a scheme is adopted, I should not like to answer for the safety of the granary, of the agents, or of the town itself in which the granary was erected: the first storm of popular frenzy would fall upon that granary.
Edmund Burke
The Public Record
Edmund Burke was an Anglo-Irish writer, philosopher, and politician who is widely credited as the founder of the cultural and political philosophy of conservatism. Regarded as one of the most influential conservative thinkers and political writers of the 18th century, Burke spent the majority of his career in Great Britain and was elected as a member of Parliament (MP) from 1766 to 1794 in the House of Commons of Great Britain with the Whig Party. His writings played a significant role in influencing public views and opinions in both Great Britain and France following the French Revolution in 1789, and he remains a major figure in modern conservative circles.
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I hear that such a measure has been proposed, and is under deliberation: that is, for government to set up a granary in every market-town, at the expense of the state, in order to extinguish the dealer, and to subject the farmer to the…
It requires ten times more of labor, of vigilance, of attention, of skill, and, let me add, of good fortune also, to carry on the business of a farmer with success, than what belongs to any other trade.
They may, even in one year of such false policy, do mischiefs incalculable; because the trade of a farmer is, as I have before explained, one of the most precarious in its advantages, the most liable to losses, and the least profitable of…
They who wish the destruction of that balance, and would fain by arbitrary regulation decree that defective production should not be compensated by increased price, directly lay their axe to the root of production itself.
Nobody, I believe, has observed with any reflection what market is, without being astonished at the truth, the correctness, the celerity, the general equity, with which the balance of wants is settled.
Market is the meeting and conference of the consumer and producer, when they mutually discover each other's wants.
The market settles, and alone can settle, that price.
These principles are plain and simple; and it is not our ignorance, so much as the levity, the envy, and the malignity of our nature, that hinders us from perceiving and yielding to them: but we are not to suffer our vices to usurp the…
Without question, the monopoly of authority is, in every instance and in every degree, an evil; but the monopoly of capital is the contrary.
What is true of the farmer is equally true of the middle-man,--whether the middle-man acts as factor, jobber, salesman, or speculator, in the markets of grain.
It is very rare that the most prosperous farmer, counting the value of his quick and dead stock, the interest of the money he turns, together with his own wages as a bailiff or overseer, ever does make twelve or fifteen per centum by the…
It is a perilous thing to try experiments on the farmer.
The consumer, if he were suffered, would in the end always be the dupe of his own tyranny and injustice.
No slave was ever so beneficial to the master as a freeman that deals with him on an equal footing by convention, formed on the rules and principles of contending interests and compromised advantages.
On any other terms he is the slave of the consumer: and that he should be so is of no benefit to the consumer.
In that case, my opinion is this: Whenever it happens that a man can claim nothing according to the rules of commerce and the principles of justice, he passes out of that department, and comes within the jurisdiction of mercy.
Is the poor laborer to be abandoned to the flinty heart and griping hand of base self-interest, supported by the sword of law, especially when there is reason to suppose that the very avarice of farmers themselves has concurred with the…
But what if the rate of hire to the laborer comes far short of his necessary subsistence, and the calamity of the time is so great as to threaten actual famine?
The first class of labor wants nothing to equalize it; it equalizes itself.
Unquestionably, there is a good deal of difference between the value of one man's labor and that of another, from strength, dexterity, and honest application.
Increase the rate of wages to the laborer, say the regulators,--as if labor was but one thing, and of one value.
Nothing is such an enemy to accuracy of judgment as a coarse discrimination, a want of such classification and distribution as the subject admits of.
But if the price of the corn should not compensate the price of labor, what is far more to be feared, the most serious evil, the very destruction of agriculture itself, is to be apprehended.
Then the wheel turns round, and the evil complained of falls with aggravated weight on the complainant.
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