Page:The Three Prize Essays on Agriculture and the Corn Law - Morse, Greg, Hope (1842).djvu/26

 The average price of wheat during the time this act remained in force from 1823 to 1828 inclusive, was 59s. a quarter.

In 1828 a new law was passed on a still more liberal basis than either of the two previous laws, and has been in force from that time to the present year. The years 1834, 1835, and 1836, were again periods of agricultural distress; and from the evidence taken before a committee of the House of Commons in 1836, it appears, that with the exception of the Scotch farmers who farmed upon corn rents, farmers generally were making no profits, and in many instances living upon their capital. On one point they generally agreed, that the agricultural labourer was never in more comfortable circumstances than he was at that time.

Since 1815 the farmer appears to have survived under prices, constantly falling from 69s. during the first period to 59s. in the second, and under the third from 1828 to 1839 of 57s. 7d.

Such is the history of the farming interest since the war, and it appears to corroborate what I before observed, that a period of falling prices must inevitably be a period of loss to the farmer.

While the hope has been held out to the farmer that the price of agricultural produce would be sustained, rent has fallen but little, and in many instances it has increased. Had the fall in agricultural produce been sudden, (like the fall of manufactured goods,) as undoutedly it would at the close of the war, had no protection been extended, there can be no doubt but that there would have been a great and sudden fall of rent. The loss would then have fallen on the landlord, which now has fallen almost entirely on the tenant. Farmers on a low rental, and with leases, would then have reaped all the advantage and profits to be derived from improved modes of cultivation, which under the fancied security of the corn law, has now gone into the landlord's pocket in the shape of rent. There would then have been the probability to the farmer, instead of farming against a constantly falling price of corn, of having a constantly rising price. But it may be said that had all protection been withdrawn at the close of the war, the race of farmers existing at the time would have been swept from the land by so sudden a change. That it would have been a period of loss to the farmer I will not deny, but one which was unavoidable, and has since taken place to a greater extent. The high prices of the war had not been brought about by legislative interference, but by natural causes, over which parliament had no controul. It had been a period of great prosperity to landlords, and during which farmers had made large