Excerpt from Richard Cobden and the Free Traders Stuarts; and no doubt long before that time the periodical recurrence of popular distress had led to changes in the regulations by which food was introduced from foreign countries. In the seventeenth century, however, not to go any further back, these regulations had become frequent, if not systematic, and Parliament constantly undertook to modify them as occasion required. But the principles on which the modifications were based appear to have been uncertain and capricious. The ports were closed to foreign grain (as in 1680) when wheat was enormously dear, and Opened (as in 1690) when the home production had largely increased. With the ports Open, bounties were paid to exporters of corn. Between 1715 and 1765, only five harvests are recorded as having been notably bad ones; more than four millions sterling were paid in export bounties 5 and simultaneously the excess of imports over exports were very considerable. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.