Science Quote by Joseph Hume

Hume’s line is a blunt little diagram of how an empire thinks about “free trade” when it already has the upper hand. The surface claim sounds technical: open up a regular trade in corn and you’ll get efficiency. The real intent is crisper and more revealing. He’s not chasing cheaper bread for Britons; he’s chasing a world market that converges upward toward British prices. “Advantage” here isn’t consumer relief. It’s leverage.

The subtext is that free trade is being sold as a moral and economic universal while operating as a geopolitical instrument. Hume frames the choice as two standards: Britain’s and “the Continent’s.” One is implicitly the benchmark, the other the discount aisle. The phrasing “raising the rest of the world to our standard and price” smuggles in a civilizational hierarchy: British norms are something others can be elevated to, and the elevation conveniently arrives as higher prices abroad rather than lower ones at home.

Context matters. In early-19th-century Britain, “corn” meant grain, and grain meant power: wages, urban stability, and the political tug-of-war between landed interests and industrial capital. The Corn Laws were the battleground where protectionism and liberalization both claimed to represent the national good. Hume, a radical reformer aligned with the free-trade camp, is also telling on his coalition’s priorities: not merely feeding the poor, but securing British competitiveness and influence by shaping international price levels.

What makes the quote work is its inadvertent honesty. It shows that even the rhetoric of openness can be less about lowering barriers than about exporting a domestic advantage until it becomes the global baseline.