Page:The Three Prize Essays on Agriculture and the Corn Law - Morse, Greg, Hope (1842).djvu/45

 to pay them. Sixty-four shillings was now declared to be the remunerating price; and rents were calculated and settled on this basis. Yet in only seven years out of the subsequent thirteen has this average been reached; and of those seven, five have been years of deficient harvests. And at least four years out of the thirteen have been years of severe agricultural distress.

In the spring of the present year, a new law was passed, in the hope of fixing 56s. as the minimum price of wheat. Yet before the harvest had been fully reaped, and before any wheat could be thrashed out, and brought to market,—viz. by September 10,—the average weekly return had fallen to 51s. 6d.; and by Nov. 5, it had dropped to 48s. 7d. Each successive corn-law has in fact been a new and cruel deception to the unhappy farmer; yet to each has he looked with renewed confidence for his salvation:

Our advice to him is to trust no more to such delusive protectors,—to lean no more upon such broken reeds; but, after the experience he has had, to feel convinced that whatever prospects may in future be held out to him from the same quarter will be as faithless as the past have been.

The first evil, then, which the corn-laws have inflicted upon the farmer, has been this:—they have induced him to contract to pay rents which—except in years of scarcity—the price of wheat will not enable him to pay.

III. The purpose of our restrictive corn-laws is to secure high prices in this country by protecting the home grower against the competition of foreign produce. And by dint of looking always at the intention, and never at the operation, of legislative measures, a great number of our farmers have come to believe, that low prices are the effect of foreign competition, and that high prices are the consequence of that competition being shut out. Now, how stands the fact? Why, that it is impossible to point to a single year of low prices, in which there was any perceptible import of foreign produce; or to a single year of great foreign importation, which was not also a year of high prices. The years 1834, 1835, and 1836, were years of low prices, and of great distress and discontent among farmers, the average of wheat being under 45s. a quarter; yet the import of foreign wheat was only 122,175 qrs. The years 1838, 1839, and 1840, were years of high prices, and comparatively of farming