Book III: Bread and Meat in France, Chapter I: Claims of the French Landed Proprietors

In pursuance of the method I have been following to discover the incidence of Customs duties imposed to benefit a class of industries on the industries that employ their products, I now proceed to examine (1) the influence of protective duties to agriculture on the food of the French people, and (2) the precise manner in which these duties affect agriculture itself. The French landlords have shut their countrymen in behind a ring fence of high tariffs; having acquired the sole right they have also assumed the sole responsibility of furnishing their food supplies. What allowance, then, do they make? Does it spell sufficiency or penury? First of all, it is necessary to determine what is the normal ration, the type, by comparison with which one can judge whether a nation’s food supply is deficient or excessive.