Fowle's New Hampshire Gazette And General Advertiser

Paris, Aug. 10. Corn this year will be cheaper perhaps than has been in France these three hundred years past; so abundant is the present crop, that, notwithstanding the great wages that are offered, it is not possible to procure hands enough to make up the harvest. His Majesty was applied to for leave to let the regiment of pioneers, quartered in the environs of Paris, work for the farmers about Versailles, &c. and was graciously pleased to give his consent. The exportation of corn is permitted, as long as the sack costs only eighteen livres. The rich proprietors of land say, that it is a great misfortune when corn is so very cheap, and their argument seems to have some weight in politics. It would be cruel to impede the exportation of what a nation possesses in abundance; such a desire could not originate with a civilized people; but when one reflects that the permission to export a valuable commodity gives an opportunity to the ill-disposed rich man to engross that article, and wait for a time of dearth, in order to prey on the vitals of the poor, by selling it to them at an exorbitant rate; too great a plenty is not always attended with a blessing! The greatest enemy to man is man!