The great majority of the first class here enumerated, those owning less than one acre, do not concern us, as they were evidently merely houses and gardens not of an agricultural character, but a large number of the second class and most of the other three must have been agricultural, though unfortunately no distinction is made. It will be seen, therefore, that there were a considerable number of small owners in England in 1872, and their numbers have probably increased since. Many of them, however, are of the new class mentioned above, and there appears to be no doubt that the number of the peasant proprietors and of the yeomen of the old sort has much diminished, especially in proportion to the growth of population.

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CHAPTER XIX

1816-1837

DEPRESSION

The summer of 1816 was wretched; the distress, aggravated by the bad season, caused riots everywhere. At Bideford the mob interfered to prevent the export of a cargo of potatoes; at Bridport they broke into the bakers' shops. Incendiary fires broke out night after night in the eastern counties. At Swanage six people out of seven were paupers, and in one parish in Cambridgeshire every person but one was a pauper or a bankrupt.[585] Corn rose again: by June, 1817, it was 117s., but fell to 77s. in September.

In 1818 occurred a drought of four months, lasting from May till September, and great preparations were made to ward off the expected famine; immense quantities of wheat came from the Baltic, of maize from America, and beans and maize from Italy and Egypt, with hay from New York, as it was selling at £10 a ton. However, rain fell in September, brown fields suddenly became green, turnips sprang up where none had appeared, and even spring corn that had lain in the parched ground began to grow, so the fear of scarcity passed.

In 1822 came a good season, which produced a great crop of wheat; in the lifetime of the existing generation old men declared that such a harvest had been known only once before; imports also came from Ireland to the amount of nearly a million quarters, so that the price at the end of the year was 38s., and the average price for the year was 44s. 7d. Beef went down to 2s. 5d. a stone and mutton to 2s. 2d. The cry of agricultural distress again rose loudly. Farmers were still, though some of the war taxes had been remitted, heavily taxed; for the taxes on malt, soap, salt, candles, leather, all pressed heavily.[586] The chief cause of the distress was the long-felt reaction after the war, but it was aggravated by the return to cash payments in 1819. Gold had fallen to its real value, and the fall in gold had been followed by a fall in the prices of every other article.[587] The produce of many thousand acres in England did not sell that year for as much money as was expended in growing it, without reckoning rent, taxes, and interest on capital.[588] Estates worth £3,000 a year, says the same writer, some years since, were now worth £1,000. Bacon had gone down from 6s. 6d. to 2s. 4d. a stone; Southdown ewes from 50s. to 15s., and lambs from 42s. to 5s.

A Dorset farmer told the Parliamentary committee that since 1815 he knew of fifty farmers, farming 24,000 acres, who had failed entirely.[589]

In the Tyne Mercury of October 30, 1821, it was recorded that Mr. Thos. Cooper of Bow purchased 3 milch cows and 40 sheep for £18 16s. 6d. which sum four years previously would only have bought their skins. Prime beef was sold in Salisbury market at 4d. retail, and good joints of mutton at 3¹/₂d.[590] Everywhere the farmers were complaining bitterly, but 'hanging on like sailors to the masts or hull of a wreck'. In Sussex labourers were being employed to dig holes and fill them in again, proof enough of distress but also of great folly. Many thousands of acres were now a mass of thistles and weeds, once fair grass land ploughed up during the war for wheat, and abandoned at the fall of prices. There were no less than 475 petitions on agricultural distress presented to the House from 1820 to March 31, 1822. In 1822, it was proposed that the Government should purchase wheat grown in England to the value of one million sterling and store it; also that when the average price of wheat was under 60s. the Government should advance money on such corn grown in the United Kingdom as should be deposited in certain warehouses, to an extent not exceeding two-thirds the value of the corn.[591] There were not wanting men, however, who put the other side of the question. In a tract called The Refutation of the Arguments used on the Subject of the Agricultural Petition, written in 1819, it was said that the increase in the farmer's expenditure was the cause of his discontent. 'He now assumes the manners and demands the equipage of a gentleman, keeps a table like his landlord, anticipates seasons in their productions, is as choice in his wines, his horses, and his furniture.' Let him be more thrifty. 'Let him dismiss his steward, a character a few years back only known to the great landowner, and cease from degrading the British farmer into a synonym for prodigality.' Lord Liverpool, in the House of Lords, in a speech which roused great opposition among agriculturists, minimized the distress; distress there was, he admitted, but it was not confined to England, it was world-wide; neither was it produced by excessive taxation, for since 1815 taxation had been reduced 25 per cent., while though rents and prices had fallen they were much higher than before the war. Another writer said at the time, 'Individuals of all classes have of late been as it were inflated above their natural size: let this unnatural growth be reduced; let them resume their proper places and appearances, and the quantum of substantial enjoyment, real comfort and happiness, will not be found lessened.' It was also asserted that the taxes on malt, leather, soap, salt, and candles, were not very pressing.

The persistent cries of distress produced a Bill giving still further protection to corn-growers, which was fortunately not carried into effect. There was no doubt, however, about the reality of the crisis through which the landed classes were passing. Many of the landowners were heavily in debt. Mortgages had been multiplied during the war, and while prices were high payment of interest was easy; but when prices fell and the tenant threw up his farm, the landlord could not throw over the mortgage, and the interest hung like a dead weight round his neck.[592]

The price to which wheat fell at the end of 1822 was to be the lowest for some years; it soon recovered, and until 1834 the average annual prices ranged from 53s. to 68s. 6d., while in 1825 beef at Smithfield was 5s. and mutton 5s. 4d. a stone.

In 1823 there was a marked improvement, and the king's speech congratulated the country on 'the gradual abatement of those difficulties under which agriculture has so long suffered.'[593] In 1824 'agriculture was recovering from the depression under which it laboured.'[594] In 1825 it was said, 'there never was a period in the history of this country when all the great interests of the nation were in so thriving a condition.'[595] In that year over-speculation produced a panic and agricultural distress was again evident. In 1826 Cobbett said, 'the present stock of the farms is not in one-half the cases the property of the farmer, it is borrowed stock.'[596] In 1828 all the farmers in Kent were said to be insolvent.[597]

At the meeting of Parliament in 1830 the king lamented the state of affairs, and ascribed it to unfavourable seasons and other causes beyond the reach of legislative remedy. Many had learnt that high protection was no protection for farmers, and it was stated more than once that the large foreign supply of grain, though only then about one-third of the home-grown, depressed our markets. At the same time, it must be admitted that agriculture, like all other industries, was suffering from the crisis of 1825. In 1830, the country was filled with unrest, in which the farm labourer shared. His motives, however, were hardly political. He had a rooted belief that machinery was injuring him, the threshing machine especially; and he avenged himself by burning the ricks of obnoxious farmers. Letters were sent to employers demanding higher wages and the disuse of machines, and notices signed 'Swing' were affixed to gates and buildings. Night after night incendiary fires broke out, and emboldened by impunity the rioters proceeded to pillage by day. In Hampshire they moved in bodies 1,500 strong. A special Commission was appointed, and the disorders put down at last with a firm hand. In 1828 there had been a relaxation in the duties on corn, the object of the Act passed in that year being to secure the farmer a constant price of 8s. a bushel instead of 10s. as in 1815, and by a sliding scale to prevent the disastrous fluctuations in prices. The best proof of its failure is afforded by the appointment of another parliamentary committee in 1833 to inquire into the distressed state of agriculture. At this inquiry many witnesses asserted that the cultivation of inferior soils and heavy clays had diminished from one-fourth to one-fifth.[598] It was also asserted that farmers were paying rent out of capital.[599] Tooke, however, thought there was much exaggeration of the distress, which was proved by the way the farmers weathered the low prices of 1835, when wheat, after a succession of four remarkably good seasons, averaged 39s. 4d. for the year. In these abundant years, too, he asserts that the home supply was equal to the demand,[600] though the committee of 1833 had stated that this had ceased to be the case.[601] Another committee, the last for many years, sat in 1835 to consider the distress; but although prices were low the whole tenor of the evidence established the improvement of farming, the extension of cultivation, and the increase of produce, and it was noticed at this time that towns dependent on agriculture were uniformly prosperous.[602]

On the whole, in spite of exaggeration from interested motives, the distress for the twenty years after the battle of Waterloo was real and deep; twenty years of depression succeeded the same period of false exaltation. The progress, too, during that time was real, and made, as was remarked, because of adversity. From this time agriculture slowly revived.

On one point both of the two last committees were agreed, that the condition of the labourer was improved, and they said he was better off than at any former period, for his wages remained the same, while prices of necessaries had fallen. That his wages went further is true, but they were still miserably low, and he was often housed worse than the animals on the farm. 'Wattle and dab' (or mud and straw) formed the walls of his cottage, the floors were often of mud, and all ages and both sexes frequently slept in one room. A block of ten cottages were put up in the parish of Holmer[603] at the commencement of the nineteenth century, which were said to have combined 'comfort, convenience, and economy;' they each contained one room 12 feet by 14 feet and 6 feet high with a bedroom over, and cost £32 10s. each. They were evidently considered quite superior dwellings, far better than the ordinary run of labourer's cottages. Cobbett gives us a picture of some in Leicestershire in 1826; 'hovels made of mud and straw, bits of glass, or of old cast-off windows, without frames or hinges frequently, and merely stuck in the mud wall. Enter them and look at the bits of chairs or stools, the wretched boards tacked together to serve for a table, the floor of pebble, broken brick, or of the bare ground; look at the thing called a bed, and survey the rags on the backs of the wretched inhabitants.'[604] The chief exceptions to this state of affairs were the estates of many of the great landlords. On that of the Earl of Winchelsea in Rutland, the cottages he had built contained a kitchen, parlour, dairy, two bedrooms, and a cow-house, and several had small holdings attached of from 5 to 20 acres.[605] Not long before, wages in Hampshire and Wiltshire were 5s. and 6s. a week.[606]

In 1822 it was stated that 'beef and mutton are things the taste of which was unknown to the mass of labourers. No one has lived more in cottages than I, and I declare solemnly I never remember once to have seen such a thing.'[607] A group of women labourers, whom Cobbett saw by the roadside in Hampshire, presented 'such an assemblage of rags as I never saw before even amongst the hoppers at Farnham.'[608]

The labourer's wages may have gone a little further, but he had lost his by-industries, his bit of land and rights of common, and would have had a very different tale to tell from that of the framers of the reports above quoted.

In spite of the complaints made that the improvements of the coaches and of the roads drew the countryman to the towns, many stirred hardly at all from their native parish, and their lives were now infinitely duller than in the Middle Ages. The great event of the year was the harvest home, which was usually a scene of great merry-making. In Devonshire, when a farmer's wheat was ripe he sent round notice to the neighbourhood, and men and women from all sides came to reap the crop. As early as eleven or twelve, so much ale and cider had been drunk that the shouts and ribald jokes of the company were heard to a considerable distance, attracting more helpers, who came from far and near, but none were allowed to come after 12 o'clock. Between 12 and 1 came dinner, with copious libations of ale and cider, which lasted till 2, when reaping was resumed and went on without interruption except from the squabbles of the company till 5, when what were called 'drinkings', or more food and drink, were taken into the field and consumed. After this the corn reaped was bound into sheaves till evening, when after the sport of throwing their reaping hooks at a sheaf which had been set up as a mark for a prize, all proceeded to supper and more ale and cider till the small hours.[609]

No wages were paid at these harvestings, but the unlimited amount of eating and drinking was very expensive, and about this date the practice of using hired labour had largely superseded this old custom.

The close of this period was marked by two Acts of great benefit to farmers: the Poor Law Amendment Act of 1834 (4 & 5 Wm. IV, c. 76), which reduced the rates,[610] and marked 'the beginning of a period of slow recovery in the labourer's standard of life, moral and material, though at first it brought him not a little adversity'[611]; and the Tithe Commutation Act of 1836 (6 & 7 Wm. IV, c. 71), which substituted for the tithe paid in kind or the fluctuating commuted tithe, a tithe rent charge equivalent to the market value, on a septennial average, of the exact quantities of wheat, barley, and oats, which made up the legal tithes by the estimate in 1836. Thus was removed a perpetual source of dispute and antagonism between tithe-payer and tithe-owner. The system hitherto pursued, moreover, was wasteful. In exceptionally favourable circumstances the clergy did not receive more than two-thirds of the value of the tithe in kind. The delays were a frequent source of loss. In rainy weather, when the farmer desired to get his crops in quickly, he was obliged to shock his crops, give the tithe-owners notice to set out their tithes, and wait for their arrival; in the meantime the crop, perhaps, being badly damaged.[612]

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CHAPTER XX

1837-1875

REVIVAL OF AGRICULTURE.—THE ROYAL AGRICULTURAL SOCIETY.—CORN LAW REPEAL.—A TEMPORARY SET-BACK.—THE HALCYON DAYS

The revival of agriculture roughly coincided with the accession of Queen Victoria.

It was proved that Scotch farmers who had farmed highly had weathered the storm. Instead of repeatedly calling on Parliament to help them they had helped themselves, by spending large sums in draining and manuring the land; they had adopted the subsoil plough, and the drainage system of Smith of Deanston, used machinery to economize labour, and improved the breed of stock. This was an object-lesson for the English farmer, and he began to profit by it. It was high time that he did. In spite of the undoubted progress made, farming was still often terribly backward. Little or no machinery was used, implements were often bad, teams too large, drilling little practised, drainage utterly inefficient; in fact, while one farmer used all the improvements made, a hundred had little to do with them. But better times were at hand.

About 1835 Elkington's system of drainage, which among the more advanced agriculturists, at any rate, had been used for half a century, was superseded by that of James Smith of Deanston, a system of thorough drainage and deep ploughing, which effected a complete revolution in the art of draining, and holds the field to-day. Hitherto the draining of land had been done by a few drains where they were thought necessary, which was often a failure. Smith initiated a complete system of parallel underground drains, near enough to each, other to catch all the superfluous water, running into a main drain which ran along the lowest part of the ground. His system has also been called 'furrow or frequent draining', as the drains were generally laid in the furrows from two to two-and-a-half feet deep at short intervals. Even then the tributary drains were at first filled in with stones 12 inches deep, as they had been for centuries, and sometimes with thorns, or even turves, as tiles were still expensive; and the main was made of stonework. However, the invention of machines for making tiles cheapened them, and the substitution of cylindrical pipes for horse-shoe tiles laid on flat soles still further lowered the cost and increased the efficiency.[613] In 1848, Peel introduced Government Drainage Loans, repayable by twenty-two instalments of 6 ¹/₂ per cent. This was consequently an era of extensive drainage works all over England, which sorely needed it; but even now the work was often badly done. In some cases it was the custom for the tenant to put in as many tiles as his landlord gave him, and they were often merely buried. At Stratfieldsaye, for instance, where the Iron Duke was a generous and capable landlord, the drains were sometimes a foot deep, while others were 6 feet deep and 60 feet apart,[614] although the soil required nothing of the kind.

Vast sums were also spent on farm-buildings, still often old and rickety, with deficient and insanitary accommodation; in Devonshire the farmer was bound by his lease to repair 'old mud and wooden houses', at a cost of 10 per cent. on his rent, and there were many such all over England. Farm-buildings were often at the extreme end of the holding, the cattle were crowded together in draughty sheds, and the farmyard was generally a mass of filth and spoiling manure, spoiling because all the liquid was draining away from it into the pool where the live stock drank; a picture, alas, often true to-day. It was to bring the great mass of landlords and farmers into line with those who had made the most of what progress there had been, that the Royal Society was founded in 1838, in imitation of the Highland Society, but also owing to the realization of the great benefits conferred on farming during the last half-century by the exertions of Agricultural Societies, the Smithfield Club Shows having especially aided the breeding of live stock.

Writing on the subject of the Society, Mr. Handley[615] spoke of the wretched modes of farming still to be seen in the country, especially in the case of arable land, though there had been a marked improvement in the breeding of stock. Prejudice, as ever, was rampant. Bone manure, though in the previous twenty years it had worked wonders, was in many parts unused. It was felt that what the English farmer needed was 'practice with science'. The first President of the Society was Earl Spencer, and it at once set vigorously to work, recommending prizes for essays on twenty-four subjects, some of which are in the first volume of the Society's Journal. Prizes were also offered for the best draining-plough, the best implement for crushing gorse, for a ploughing match to be held at the first country meeting of the Society fixed at Oxford in 1839, for the best cultivated farm in Oxfordshire and the adjacent counties, and for the invention of any new agricultural implement.

In 1840 the Society was granted a charter under the title of the Royal Agricultural Society of England, and its career since then has been one of continued usefulness, and forms a prominent feature in the agricultural history of the times.

In 1839[616] the first country meeting of the Society was held at Oxford, and its 247 entries of live stock and 54 of implements were described as constituting a show of unprecedented magnitude. According to Bell's Weekly Messenger for July 22, 1839, the show for some time had been the all-absorbing topic of conversation not only among agriculturists, but among the community at large, and the first day 20,000 people attended the show, many having come great distances by road. Everybody and every exhibit had to get to Oxford by road; some Shorthorn cattle, belonging to the famous Thomas Bates of Kirkleavington, took nearly three weeks on the road, coming from London to Aylesbury by canal. But such a journey was not unusual then, for cattle were often two or three weeks on the road to great fairs, and stood the journey best on hay; it was surprising how fresh and sound they finished.[617] The show ground covered 7 acres, and among the implements tested was a subsoil plough, Biddell's Scarifier, and a drill for depositing manure after turnips. There were only six classes for cattle—Shorthorns, Herefords, Devons, Cattle of any other breed, Dairy Cattle, and Oxen; one class for horses, and three for sheep—Leicesters, Southdown or other Short Wool, and Long Woolled; with one for pigs.[618] The Shorthorns, with the exception of the Kirkleavingtons, were bred in the neighbourhood, and many good judges said long afterwards that a finer lot had not been seen since. The Duchesses especially impressed all who saw them. The rest of the live stock was in no way remarkable.

From this small beginning, then thought so much of, the show grew fast, and the Warwick meeting[619] of 1892, after several years of agricultural depression, illustrates the excellent work of the Society and the enormous progress made by English agriculture. The show ground covered 90 acres; horses were now divided into Thoroughbred Stallions, Hunters, Coach Horses, Hackneys, Ponies, Harness Horses and Ponies, Shires, Clydesdales, Suffolks, and Agricultural Horses. Cattle were classified as Shorthorns, Herefords, Devons, Sussex, Longhorns (described as few in number and of no particular quality, 'a breed which has now been many years on the wane', but has recently been revived),[620] Welsh, Red Polled, Jerseys, Guernseys, Kerry and Dexter-Kerry.

The increased variety of sheep was also striking; Leicesters, Cotswolds, Lincolns, Oxford Downs, Shropshires, Southdowns, Hampshire Downs, Suffolks, Border Leicesters, Clun Forest, and Welsh Mountain.

Pigs were divided into Large, Middle, and Small white Berkshires, any other black breed, and Tamworths.

Altogether the total number of stock exhibited was 1,858, and the number of implements was 5,430.

In 1840 appeared Liebig's Chemistry in its Application to Agriculture and Physiology, tracing the relations between the nutrition of plants and the composition of the soil, a book which was received with enthusiasm, and completely changed the attitude which agriculturists generally had maintained towards chemistry; one of contempt, founded on ignorance.

But, as Mr. Prothero has said,[621] 'if the new agriculture was born in the laboratory of Glissen, it grew into strength at the experimental station of Rothamsted.' There, for more than half a century, Lawes and Gilbert conducted experiments, of vast benefit to agriculture, in the objects, method, and effect of manuring; the scientific bases for the rotation of crops, and the results of various foods on animals in the production of meat, milk, and manure.

The use of artificial manures now spread rapidly; bones, used long before uncrushed, are said to have been first crushed in 1772, and their value was realized by Coke of Holkham, but for long they were crushed by hammer or horse mill, and their use was consequently limited. Then iron rollers worked by steam ground them cheaply and effectively, and their use soon spread, though it was not till about 1840 that it can be said to have become general. Its effects were often described as wonderful. In Cheshire, cheese-making had exhausted the soil, and it was said that by boning and draining an additional cow could be kept for every 4 acres, and tenants readily paid 7 per cent. to their landlords for expenditure in bone manure. Its use had indeed raised many struggling farmers to comparative independence.[622] A very large quantity of the bones used came from South America.[623] Porter also noticed that 'since 1840 an extensive trade has been carried on in an article called Guano', the guana of Davy, 'from the islands of the Pacific and off the coast of Africa'. Nitrate of soda was just coming in, but was not much used till some years later. In 1840 Liebig suggested the treatment of bones with sulphuric acid, and in 1843 Lawes patented the process and set up his works at Deptford.[624]

Italian rye grass, not to be confounded with the old English ray grass, had been introduced by Thomson of Banchory, in 1834, from Munich;[625] and though the swede was known at the end of the eighteenth century, in many parts it had only just become common. In Notts it was in 1844 described as having recently become 'the sheet-anchor of the farmer'.[626] In Cheshire a writer at the same date said, 'in the year 1814 there were not 5 acres of Swedish turnips grown in the parish where I reside; now there are from 60 to 80, and in many parts of the county the increase has been in a much greater ratio.'[627]

About this time a remedy was found in the south for leaving the land idle during the nine months between harvesting the corn crop in August, and sowing the turnip crop in the following June, by sowing rye, which was eaten green by the sheep in May, a good preparation for the succeeding winter crop. Turnip cutters were at last being used, and corn and cake crushers soon followed.

The seasons from 1838 to 1841 were bad, and must be characterized as a period of dearth, wheat keeping at a good price.[628] That of 1844-5 was remarkable for the first general appearance of the potato disease, not only in these islands but on the continent of Europe.[629] In August, 1846, the worst apprehensions of the failure of the crop were more than realized, and the terrible results in Ireland are well known. In the early part of 1847 there was a fear of scarcity in corn, and the price of wheat rose to 102s. 5d. in spite of an importation of 4,500,000 quarters, but this was largely owing to the absence of any reliable agricultural statistics, which were not furnished till 1866, and the price soon fell.[630]

We have now reached the period of free trade, when the Corn Laws, which had protected agriculture more or less effectually for so long, were definitely abandoned. That they had failed to prevent great fluctuations in the price of corn is abundantly evident, it is also equally evident that they kept up the average price; in the ten years from 1837 to 1846, the average price of wheat was 58s. 7d. a quarter, in the seven years from 1848 to 1853, the average price was 48s. 2d.[631]

The average imports of wheat and flour for the same period were 2,161,813 and 4,401,000 quarters respectively. But to obtain the real effect of free trade on prices, the prices for the period between 1815 and 1846 must be compared with those between 1846 and the present day, when the fall is enormous.

The Act of 1815, which Tooke said had failed to secure any one of the objects aimed at by its promoters, had received two important alterations. In 1828 (9 Geo. IV, c. 60) a duty of 36s. 8d. was imposed when the price was 50s., decreasing to 1s. when it was 73s.

In 1843 (5 Vict. c. 14) a duty of 20s. was imposed when the price was 50s., and the duty became 7s. when the price reached 65s.

A contemporary writer denies that these duties benefited the farmer at all: 'if the present shifting scale of duty was intended to protect the farmer, keep the prices of corn steady, insure a supply to the consumer at a moderate price, and benefit the revenue, it has signally failed. During the continuation of the Corn Laws the farmers have suffered the greatest privations. The variations in price have been extreme, and when a supply of foreign corn has been required it has only reached the consumer at a high price, and benefited the revenue little.'[632] Rents of farms were often calculated not on the market price of wheat, but on the price thought to be fixed by the duties, which was occasionally much higher.[633]

It was also said that but for the restrictions that had been imposed in the supposed interests of agriculture, the skill and enterprise of farmers would have been better directed than it had been. By means of these restrictions and the consequent enhancement of the cost of living, the cultivation of the land had been injuriously restricted, for the energies of farmers had been limited to producing certain descriptions of food, and they had neglected others which would have been far[634] more profitable. The landlord had profited by higher rents, but, according to Caird, a most competent observer, had generally speaking been induced by a reliance on protection to neglect his duty to his estates, so that buildings were poor, and drainage neglected. The labourer was little if any better off than eighty years before. It was a mystery even to farmers how they lived in many parts of the country; 'our common drink,' said one, 'is burnt crust tea, we never know what it is to get enough to eat.'[635] Against these disadvantages can only be put the fact that protection had kept up the price of corn, a calamity for the mass of the people.

The amount of wheat imported into England before the era of Corn Law repeal was inconsiderable. Mr. Porter has shown[636] how very small a proportion of wheat used in this country was imported from 1801-44. From 1801 to 1810 the average annual import of wheat into the kingdom was 600,946 quarters, or a little over a peck annually per head, the average annual consumption per head being about eight bushels. Between 1811 and 1820 the average importation was 458,578 quarters, or for the increased population a gallon-and-a-half per head, and the same share for each person was imported in the next decade 1821-30. From 1831-40 the average imports arose to 607,638 quarters, or two-and-a-quarter gallons per head, and in 1841-4 an average import of 1,901,495 quarters raised the average supply to four-and-a-half gallons per person, still a very small proportion of the amount consumed.

In 1836 a small association had been formed in London for advocating the repeal of the Corn Laws, and in 1838 a similar association was formed in Manchester.[637] At one of its earliest meetings appeared Richard Cobden, under whose guidance the association became the Anti-Corn Law League, and at whose invitation John Bright joined the League. Under these two men the Anti-Corn Law League commenced its great agitation, its object being 'to convince the manufacturer that the Corn Laws were interfering with the growth of trade, to persuade the people that they were raising the price of food, to teach the agriculturist that they had not even the solitary merit of securing a fixed price for corn'. The country was deluged with pamphlets, backed up by constant public meetings; and these efforts, aided by unfavourable seasons, convinced many of the errors of protection. In 1840 the League spent £5,700 in distributing 160,000 circulars and 150,000 pamphlets, and in delivering 400 lectures to 800,000 people. Bakers were persuaded to bake taxed and untaxed shilling loaves, and, on the purchaser choosing the larger, to demand the tax from the landlord; in 1843 the League collected £50,000, next year £100,000, and in 1845 £250,000 in support of their agitation.

Yet for some years they had little success in Parliament; even in 1842 Peel only amended the laws; and it was not until 1846 that, convinced by the League's arguments, as he himself confessed, and stimulated by the famine in Ireland, he introduced the famous Act, 9 & 10 Vict. c. 22.

By this the maximum duty on imported wheat was at once to be reduced to 10s. a quarter when the price was under 48s., to 5s. on barley when the price was under 26s., and to 4s. on oats when the price was under 18s., with lower duties as prices rose above these figures, but the most important part of the Act was that on February 1, 1849, these duties were to cease, and only a nominal duty of 1s. a quarter on foreign corn be retained, which was abolished in 1860.

By 9 and 10 Vict. c. 23 the duties on live stock were also abolished entirely. Down to 1842 the importation of horned cattle, sheep, hogs, and other animals used as food was strictly prohibited,[638] but in that year the prohibition was withdrawn and they were allowed to enter the country on a payment of 20s. a head on oxen and bulls, 15s. on cows, 3s. on sheep, 5s. on hogs; which duties continued till 1846.

It is interesting to find that so shrewd an observer as McCulloch did not expect any great increase in the imports of live animals from the reduction of the duties, but he anticipated a great increase in salted meat from abroad; cold storage being then undreamt of.

The full effect of this momentous change was not to be felt for a generation, but the immediate effect was an agricultural panic apparently justified by falling prices. In 1850 wheat averaged 40s. 3d. and in 1851 38s. 6d. On the other hand, stock farmers were doing well. But on the corn lands the prices of the protection era had to come down; many farms were thrown up, some arable turned into pasture; distress was widespread. Owing to the depressed state of agriculture in 1850, the Times sent James Caird on a tour through England, and one of the most important conclusions arrived at in his account of his tour is, that owing to protection, the majority of landowners had neglected their land; but another cause of neglect was that the great body of English landlords knew nothing of the management of their estates, and committed it to agents who knew little more and merely received the rents. The important business of being a landowner is the only one for which no special training is provided. Many of the landlords, however, then, as now, were unable to improve their estates if they desired to do so, as they were hopelessly encumbered, and the expense of sale was almost prohibitive. The contrast between good and bad farmers was more marked in 1850 than to-day, the efforts of the Royal Agricultural Society to raise the general standard of farming had not yet borne much fruit. In many counties, side by side, were farmers who used every modern improvement, and those who still employed the methods of the eighteenth century: on one farm wheat producing 40 bushels an acre, threshed by steam at a cost of 3s. 6d., on the next 20 bushels to the acre threshed by the flail at a cost of 9s.[639]

Drainage in the counties where it was needed had made considerable progress, the removal of useless hedgerows often crowded with timber, that kept the sun from the crops and whose roots absorbed much of the nourishment of the soil, was slowly extending, but farm-buildings almost everywhere were defective. 'The inconvenient ill-arranged hovels, the rickety wood and thatch barns and sheds devoid of every known improvement for economizing labour, food, and manure, which are to be met with in every county in England, are a reproach to the landlords in the eyes of all good farmers.'[640] The farm-buildings of Belgium, Holland, France, and the Rhenish Provinces were much superior. In parts of England indeed no progress seems to have been made for generations at this date. Thousands of acres of peat moss in Lancashire were unreclaimed, and many parts of the Fylde district were difficult even to traverse. Even in Warwickshire, in the heart of England, between Knowle and Tamworth, instead of signs of industry and improvement were narrow winding lanes leading to nothing, traversed by lean pigs and rough cattle, broad copse-like hedges, small and irregular fields of couch, amidst which straggled the stalks of some smothered cereal; these with gipsy encampments and the occasional sound of the poacher's gun from woods and thickets around were the characteristics of the district.[641]

Leases were the exception throughout England, though more prevalent in the west.[642] The greater proportion of farms were held on yearly agreements terminable by six months' notice on either side, a system preferred by the landlord as enabling him to retain a greater hold over his land, and acquiesced in by the tenant because of easy rents. In spite of this insecurity of tenure and the absence of Agricultural Holdings Acts, the tenants invested their capital largely with no other security than the landlord's character, 'for in no country of the world does the character of any class of men stand so high for fair and generous dealing as that of the great body of the English landlords.'

The custom of tenant-right was unknown except in certain counties, Surrey, Sussex, the Weald of Kent, Lincoln, North Notts, and in part of the West Riding of Yorkshire.[643] Where it existed, the agriculture was on the whole inferior to that of the districts where it did not, and it had frequently led to fraud in a greater or less degree. Many farmers were in the practice of 'working up to a quitting', or making a profit by the difference which their ingenuity and that of their valuer enabled them to demand at leaving as compared with what they paid on entry. The best farmers as well as the landlords were said to be disgusted with the system. The dislike for leases in the days immediately before the repeal of the Corn Laws was partly due to the uncertainty how long protection would last; but chiefly then, as afterwards, to the fact that if a man improved his farm under a lease he had nearly always to pay an increased rent on renewal, but if he held from year to year his improvement, if any, was so gradual and imperceptible that it was hardly noticed and the rent was not raised. It may also be attributable to the modern disinclination to be bound down to a particular spot for a long period. At all events, the general dislike of farmers for leases is a curious commentary on the assertions of those writers who said that leases were his chief necessity.

The disparity of the labourer's wages in 1850 was most remarkable, ranging from 15s. a week in parts of Lancashire to 6s. in South Wilts, the average of the northern counties being 11s. 6d., and of the southern 8s. 5d. a difference due wholly to the influence of manufactures, which is still further proved by the fact that in Lancashire in 1770 wages were below the average for England. In fact since Young's time wages in the north had increased 66 per cent., in the south only 14 per cent. In Berkshire and Wiltshire there had been no increase in that period, and in Suffolk an actual decrease. It is not surprising to learn that in some southern counties wages were not sufficient for healthy sustenance, and the consequence was, that there, the average amount of poor relief per head of population was 8s. 8¹/₂d., but in the north 4s. 7³/₄d., and the percentage of paupers was twice as great in the former as in the latter. This was mainly due to two causes: (1) the ratepayers of parishes in the south were accustomed to divide among themselves the surplus labour, not according to their requirements but in proportion to the size of their farms, so that a farmer who was a good economist of labour was reduced by this system to the same level as his unskilful neighbours, and the labourer himself had no motive to do his best, as every one, good and bad, was employed at the same rate. (2) To the system of close and open parishes, by which large proprietors could drive the labourer from the parish where he worked to live in some distant village in case he should become chargeable to the rates, so that it was a common thing to see labourers walking three or four miles each day to their work and back, and in one county farmers provided donkeys for them. Between 1840 and 1850 the labourer had, however, already benefited by free trade, for the price of many articles he consumed fell 30%; on the other hand the rent of his cottage in eighty years had increased 100%, and meat 70%, which however did not, unfortunately, affect him much. The great development of railway construction also helped him by absorbing much surplus labour, and the work of his wife and children was more freely exploited at this date to swell the family budget.[644]

The great difference between the wages of the north and the south is a clear proof that the wages of the agricultural labourer are not dependent on the prices of agricultural produce, for those were the same in both regions. It was unmistakably due to the greater demand for labour in the north.

The housing of the labourer was, especially in the south, often a black blot on English civilization. From many instances collected by an inquirer in 1844 the following may be taken. At Stourpaine in Dorset, one bedroom in a cottage contained three beds occupied by eleven people of all ages and both sexes, with no curtain or partition whatever. At Milton Abbas, on the average of the last census there were thirty-six persons in each house, and so crowded were they that cottagers with a desire for decency would combine and place all the males in one cottage, and all the females in another. But this was rare, and licentiousness and immorality of the worst kind were frequent.[645]

As for the farmer, the stock raiser was doing better than the corn grower. The following table shows the rent of cultivated land per acre, the produce of wheat per acre in bushels, the price of provisions, wages of labour, and rent of cottages in England at the date of Young's tours, about 1770, and of Caird's in 1850[647]: