APPENDIX. CONSIDERATIONS ON CORN, By SAMUEL JOHNSON, LL.D. BY what causes the necessaries of life have risen to a price at which a great part of the people are unable to procure them, how the present scarcity may be remedied, and calamities of the same kind may for the future be prevented, is an enquiry of the first importance; an enquiry before which all the considerations which commonly busy the Legislature vanish from the view. The interruption of trade, though it may distress part of the community, leaves the rest power to communicate relief; the decay of one manufacture may be compensated by the advancement of another; a defeat may be repaired by victory; a rupture with one nation may be balanced by an alliance with another. These are partial and slight misfortunes, which leave us still in the possession of our chief comforts. They may lop some of our superfluous pleasures, and repress some of our exorbitant hopes; but we may still retain the essential part of civil and of private happiness, -the security of law, and the tranquillity of content. They are small obstructions of the stream, which raise a foam and noise where they happen to be found, but at a little distance are neither seen nor felt, and suffer the main current to pass forward in its natural course. But SCARCITY is an evil that extends at once to the whole community: that neither leaves quiet to the poor, nor safety to the rich; that in its approaches distresses all the subordinate ranks of mankind, and |