Page:The Three Prize Essays on Agriculture and the Corn Law - Morse, Greg, Hope (1842).djvu/11

 practical agriculturist from the right remedy which was at hand—the reduction of his rent. These artificial famine laws compel British farmers to occupy a singular position,—they are ruined, not by bad crops, but by the very richness of the blessings of a bountiful Providence. Such a startling fact at once begets suspicion in the mind that the position must be a false one. This may be converted into certainty by a perusal of the evidence given before the Agricultural Committee of 1836. There you will find that though for years no foreign grain had been in the market, yet that farmers paying money rents were distressed, while those whose rents were regulated by the price of grain had no cause of complaint. Corn bills, by raising prices in ordinary years, raise rents; but in years of superabundance, or after a large importation of the accumulated stocks of the continent, with even a moderate crop, these rates cannot be maintained; then high rents cannot be paid; and thus a money rent, which is only fair to a landlord in ordinary seasons, is so very hazardous to a tenant with a moderate capital.

As a tenant farmer, in an exclusively arable district of Scotland, paying a rent depending upon the price of grain, and averaging for several years past upwards of £1500 a year, for a farm possessing no peculiar advantages from vicinity to a market town, or anything of the kind; and upon a lease, originally of twenty-one years, of which there are a considerable number yet to run, and during which period repayment is confidently expected of large sums already expended in thorough draining with tiles more than five hundred acres, and otherwise improving and enriching the farm; thus situated, I should rejoice were the corn laws to be abolished whenever parliament meets, as I am satisfied that, with a rent properly adjusted, the skill and capital of the British farmer require no privilege that is unjust to the other classes of society; and I am by no means singular in holding these views. Many, whose hearts are with us, are silent from prudential motives; yet we know the sentiments of the Roxburghshire tenants, as testified by the gentleman (himself a farmer) who seconded the nomination of the Hon. J. Elliot in the last contest for that county; and also from what took place in the Haddington district of burghs, where almost all the farmers in the neighbourhood of North Berwick, who had votes, polled for the Free Trade candidate; and six or seven of these farmers each pay from £1000 to £1500 a year of rent. But it is unnecessary to extend examples; all farmers must know that what is so injurious to the other members of the community cannot possibly be ultimately beneficial to them; that, in fact, the success of agriculture depends wholly upon the prosperity of our