great capitalist from whom it came was reminded in reply, by Mr. Huskisson, of the luxury of our merchants,

'who had exchanged their snug dwellings in the city, for magnificent mansions in the squares at the west end of the town, and who, instead of dining at one o'clock, along with their clerks, as their forefathers did, were now to be seen sitting down to a table, profuse in its variety of dishes, at six or seven o'clock.'

Mr. Huskisson added, he did not complain that it was so; he honoured the industry, and gloried in the success which occasioned it.' A cry, however, had gone forth, both against the farmers and the landholders; and when government, after having, by its indecision during twelve months, allowed the ruin to take its course, brought forward the first corn-bill with the intention of carrying it, the easily deluded populace were excited against it by some who were as ignorant as themselves, and by others who were systematically engaged in revolutionary projects. Four lives were lost in the riots which ensued, whereby opportunity was afforded for some diatribes of modern patriotism in the House of Commons, and for a coroner's inquest to bring in a verdict of wilful murder against a servant and three soldiers, who, in defending Mr. Robinson's, the present Earl of Ripon's house, fired upon the mob. This preposterous verdict was given, because the persons who unhappily fell were spectators of the riot, not actually engaged in it. But mob-law not being as yet the law of the land, nor strong enough to supersede it, the old principle, that an Englishman's house is his castle, was acknowledged upon the subsequent trial; and the natural and constitutional right of an Englishman, to defend himself and his family against a lawless rabble, was recognised by the judge and the jury.

Buonaparte's escape from Elba, just after the corn-bill was passed, put an end at once to the agitation which that question had raised. The measure was too late to save most of the existing race of farmers from ruin; foreign corn had meantime been introduced in such quantities as to glut the market; under these circumstances an abundant harvest proved no blessing to the farmers, and the evil, which impolicy had occasioned, was imputed to over-production. That fault, if fault it was, was not again committed by the impoverished farmers, nor favoured by the seasons; and the manufacturers were very soon made to experience, what they have not yet learned to understand,-that their welfare depends upon that of the land, that high prices, when not occasioned by dearth, are both the cause and effect of general prosperity, and that when agriculture is depressed, the depression necessarily extends to trade in all its branches.

The difficulties of both classes, but especially the agriculturists, were increased, when, because of the growing distress and conse

quent

quent distrust, the Bank of England drew in its issues in a great degree, and was followed in a still greater, by the country bankers. Disturbances broke forth more widely and of a more formidable character than those which had been raised upon the corn-bill; the agricultural labourers took part in them, as well as those who were beginning to call themselves the operatives; the apostles of anarchy were busy among both; ricks and barns were burnt by the one, machinery broken by the other; riots, with which some of the civil authorities were weak enough to compromise, took place in the rural districts; and in the manufacturing ones combinations were manifested, and conspiracies brought to light, which aimed at nothing less than a servile war. The insurrectionary movements were put down; some of the ringleaders suffered under the just sentence of the law, while the instigators and prime movers of the mischief escaped all punishment. The government made but a feeble use of the powers with which the laws invested it, and which public opinion called upon it to exert for the public safety. Temporary, instead of permanent, enactments were made against seditious meetings; and other measures, by which no good man could have been affected, no inoffensive one hurt, were frittered down in the absurd hope of conciliating opponents who were entitled to no such condescension.

curse.

At this time the landholder was represented by the revolutionary press as a monster who was to be hunted down;' and the fundholder as something worse. Yet, though both classes were thus warned of the fate intended for them, none were more ready than some of the great capitalists to join in the cry against the landed interest; and some of both were deluded by the pseudo-science of political economy, which in this country might be esteemed the great folly of the age, if it were not felt in its consequences to be one of the great evils, and if there were not reason to apprehend that eventually it may prove the greatest The injury which agriculture and trade-for their interests are inseparably connected-sustained, when the banks contracted their issues, ought to have operated as a warning upon the government. But governments, like individuals, seldom derive any other wisdom from experience, than that sad wisdom' which is left by folly, and accompanied by unavailing repentance. A change in the currency was made, notwithstanding this lesson; and the consequences were, as had been foreseen and foretold by the opponents of that measure, wider distress and more extensive ruin. It is impossible to overlook,' say the Agricultural Committee of 1833, and it would be criminal to disguise the fact, that the depreciation and restoration of the value of money, consequent on the Bank restriction of 1797, have unsettled the habits, disturbed

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the

the fixed engagements, and injured, ultimately, the interests of large classes of the community.' The Committee acknowledge that the effect produced has already been an extensive change of proprietors throughout the kingdom.

In the counties,' they say, 'where yeomen heretofore abounded, occupying their own estates, which estates in many cases had been transmitted from father to son,'—(it might have been added, from a time beyond the memory of man,)—a great change of property has recently taken place. The high prices of the war led to speculation in the purchase, improvement, and inclosure of land; money was borrowed on the paternal estates for speculations of this nature, which at the time were not considered improvident. Prices have fallen; the debt still remains; or the estate has changed owners, and the interval between the fall of prices, and the adjustment of charge and of expenditure to the altered value of money, has been most pernicious to this body of men. In rural districts, from the absence of competition, the small tradesmen have been enabled to keep up their prices, although, perhaps, bad debts and diminished custom have not added to their profits; but the means of the yeoman have diminished more rapidly than the fixed demands on his means; and on him have fallen all the evils of an income progressively decreasing, without a corresponding reduction of charge.'

This melancholy statement is fully supported by the evidence: -and here it is proper to observe, in the words of the Committee, that the witnesses examined were,

'with very few exceptions, immediately connected with the cultivation of the soil; most of them either rent-payers, or surveyors of land; some of them landowners; few of them not practically experienced in the detail of the matters to which they have deposed; and it is impossible not to remark a rare concurrence both of statement and of opinion, on the part of witnesses brought together from the most distant quarters. It is due to them to state that they have generally given the fullest information in the most open manner; and the frankness of the exposition of their views is no less remarkable than the ability with which they have made and supported their statements.'

Let it be remembered, as most worthy of notice, that there is no conflicting evidence upon this question; there can be none; the facts have all one bearing, and there is nothing but political economy opposed to them.

The evidence shows that agriculture, which the wise legislators of antiquity sought always to invest with respect and honour, and availed themselves of the aid of religion to sanctify, has sunk as a calling in public estimation. No men of education and of gentle birth, nor of capital, either hereditary or acquired, engage in it now, as they did in the last generation. When land is to be let, there are plenty of applicants with insufficient means,

but

but substantial tenants are rarely to be found. The wealthy part of that class from whom tenants used to be got have all but disappeared. A man used to leave each of his sons 3000l. or 4000l.; they have not now so much to divide among them all as they began life with.' Farmers in Lancashire, and of frugal habits, which they still retain, and who, in former times, had always a stock purse of 2001. or 300l. laid by, have broken the nest egg.' The number of small proprietors in Cumberland and Westmorland, where they are most numerous, has considerably diminished. The lands which those persons hold have been for many generations transmitted from father to son, and the reluctance of such persons to part with the inheritance of their fathers is such, that they are often induced to cling to it longer,' says Mr. Blamire, than it is prudent to do so; and are paying interest for money borrowed upon it, which is pressing more severely upon them than any rent could do.' A greater change has taken place since the war in the proprietors of these small farms, than in any antecedent period of much longer duration;' and the estates are frequently absorbed into larger properties, but occasionally bought by men who have realized money in trade, and who are withdrawing their capital, and investing it in the purchase of landed property."

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Another witness, from the middle of England, speaks of farmers now in a state of insolvency, than whom there was not a more industrious set of men living,' who were desirous of improving their farms, and doing everything they could; who had succeeded their fathers or grandfathers upon the same land, some of them for two hundred years or more, and who began life with sufficient capital, but their property had been swept away by the fall of prices-the currency bill has confiscated it.' In the Weald of Surrey and Sussex, you cannot get tenants at all; the farms are not in condition, and nobody will take them to get them in ;' many thousands of acres that were always in cultivation are now becoming waste; lands that, forty years ago, went for fourteen shillings an acre, would not let now for more than five; the poor-rate was a mere nothing then; it averages ten shillings an acre now; rent and poor-rate, taken together, were much about the same forty years ago that they are now, but rent has taken the place of poor-rate, and poor-rate the place of rent. Within a certain district in Yorkshire, he says,

'there are half-a-dozen or more gentlemen that used to be country squires, with their 800l. or 1000l. a-year; where if a farmer went he always got a little ale to drink; but if he goes now, there is an old woman keeping the house, and the paper falling off the walls. 'One half of the farmers of the kingdom are insolvent if they were obliged

obliged to meet their engagements; prudent men, as the present country bankers are, dare not accommodate them as they were wont to do.'

What are the consequences of all this to the soil itself, and to the persons employed upon it? The land is ill-cultivated and therefore deteriorated. Tenants would gladly keep more men at work if they had the means of paying them, but, impoverished as they are, 'they cannot bestow upon it half the labour they used to do.' 'I wish particularly,' says one witness, to impress upon this honourable committee, that the corn produce of the very best, as well as the very worst of arable land is entirely dependent on management; and that, therefore, by whatever cause the good management of the land is curtailed, the destruction and loss to the country, not only of the produce, but of the soil itself, is proportionately effected.' . . . With better prices (he continues) the farmers could employ not only the labourers who are now thrown wholly, or in part, upon the poor-rates, but the superfluous people of the towns.'-Greatly as rents have been reduced, the tenant, when his resources are exhausted, scourges the land that he may be enabled to pay his landlord; the respite that he thus obtains from ruin is but short; two or three years of over-cropping generally settle the concern; and men are unwilling to enter upon lands that have thus been forced, for, if they had them during as many years rent free, they could not realize a profit.' But this is not all the evil : 'It must be obvious to every landowner in England,' says another witness, that the farmers generally are not as practically informed themselves as they used to be; the reason I attribute to this, that from the superabundance of labourers in many parishes, the farmers' sons do not apply themselves to those industrious and practical habits which they used to be reared in, and from the want of that, the performance of the work of agriculture is retrograding very much, and the labourers, generally speaking, are not near so good workmen as they used to be, owing to this want of practical information in the occupier himself.' Now, farming has hitherto been, more than any other, an hereditary employment.' The moment a farmer gets into distress he endeavours to reduce his expenses, and he throws every labourer he can spare out of employment.' Before the fall of prices, it was customary to hire agricultural labourers for the whole year; they are now mostly unemployed from November to March, though, if the farmer had money, it would be his interest to employ them. The poor land, being that which costs most in cultivating, is the first that is thrown out of cultivation, but it is this land which affords most employment. Cheap bread' is not the cry of the agricultural labourers; both their words and their countenances show that they are as anxious to hear of a rise of prices as the farmer

himself.'