CHAP. wards, publicly declared that 2,000l. a year was in his opinion absolute poverty. The ordinary country gentleman had probably a smaller income than that which Sheridan's extravagant disposition regarded as poverty. But, as a class, they were better off than they had ever been before. The war had laden England with heavy taxation, and the country gentlemen paid a share of the taxes; but there can be no doubt that the war, while it lasted, had increased their importance and swelled their rent-rolls. Parliament was a Parliament of landlords, and the welfare of the landed interest had for generations been the paramount interest of the legislature. If the price of corn fell, it was argued, land would be thrown out of cultivation, men would be thrown out of work, rents would fall, rates would rise, and speedy ruin would overtake the country. The main object of all legislation Corn Laws. then seemed to be to keep up the price of corn by artificial means. The landed interest has had the credit of selfishly initiating this policy for its own purposes. But those, who have closely investigated the subject, are aware that this charge is unjust. The protection of corn was not originally demanded by the landowners: it was a concession willingly made by the landowners to the reasoning of the political arithmeticians of the day. At the close of the seventeenth century the economists were universally of opinion that the land should be protected; and Davenant and Mun are as much responsible for the system of protection as Adam Smith is entitled to the credit of having originated free trade. It was the interest of the consumer that corn should be cheap; the landlord thought that it was his interest that it should not be too cheap. To absolutely prohibit the import of corn was equivalent to condemning the consumer, in bad seasons, to famine prices: to absolutely prohibit its export was equivalent to compelling the farmer, ' Colchester, vol. i. p. 36; Wilberforce, vol. iii. p. 26. VOL. I. M CHAP. II. in good years, to submit to a price which he thought inadequate for his produce. The dilemma had led to many remedies in former times. For nearly four centuries after the Conquest the export of corn was entirely prohibited. In the reign of Henry VI. the injustice which this law inflicted on the farmer was partially remedied. Corn was allowed to be exported when its average price was less than 6s. 8d. a quarter. Thirty years afterwards a further boon was afforded to the landed interest: the import of corn was prohibited till the price rose to 6s. 8d. a quarter. The alteration in the value of money necessitated changes in these figures. But the system still continued in force. In 1670, wheat was allowed to be exported when the price was below 53s. 4d. When its price rose above 53s. 4d., it was allowed to be imported on paying a duty of 88. A further step, in the same direction, was taken after the Revolution of 1688. Wheat was still allowed to be sent abroad: and, when its price fell below 48s. a quarter, a bounty of 5s. was paid on its exportation. The system, which had been thus adopted, and which continued in force for eighty years, was avowedly designed for the protection of the landed interest; and the advantage, which agriculturists derived from it, was very great. The farmer was protected from all foreign competition till the price of grain rose to an unusual point; and he then competed on most favourable terms with the foreigner. If, on the contrary, the price of grain fell, he could always raise it artificially by sending it abroad. The Government paid him 5s. a quarter on its exportation; or added more than 10 per cent. to the value of the commodity. It is stated by McCulloch that, during the ten years ending in 1751, no less than 1,515,000l. were paid in bounties on the exportation of corn. In other words, Government voted a direct subsidy of this amount to the landed interest. But the subsidy, which the Government II. thus voted, must have formed only a portion of the charge CHAP. which the policy imposed on the taxpayer. Government could not have annually paid a bounty on the export of some 600,000 quarters of corn, without concurrently raising the price of all corn. The taxpayer was taxed, the consumer was indirectly charged, for the sake of fostering and promoting the landed interest. Lord North had the credit of adopting a wiser policy in 1773. The population had rapidly increased; new industrial centres were acquiring importance; and the corn of the kingdom was not more than sufficient to feed the inhabitants of the country. Under these circumstances the legislature decided that the bounty, paid on the export of corn, should cease at 44s.; and that no corn should be exported when the price rose above that sum. When the price rose above 488. foreign corn was allowed to be imported on paying a nominal duty of 6d. per quarter. The system, which was thus instituted, lasted for eighteen years, and was the nearest approach to free trade in corn which was made before 1846. The landowners, however, never tolerated the new law. A clamour was gradually raised against it; and to this clamour Pitt, in 1791, found it necessary to give way. By the Act, which was then passed, a bounty was paid on the exportation of corn when its price was below 448.; its exportation without a bounty was allowed up to 468.; a prohibitory duty of 24s. 3d. was levied on the import of corn when its price was below 50s.; a duty of 2s. 6d. was charged when the price was above 50s. and below 54s. ; and the nominal duty of 6d. ranged when the price was 548. and upwards. The system of 1791 lasted for only thirteen years. Six years after it was introduced the Bank suspended its payments in cash. The price of gold slowly rose; and the rise in the price of gold affected, in at least an equal degree, the price of every other commodity. Wheat rose II. CHAP. in 1801 to the unprecedented price of 5l. 19s. 6d; and, except in 1803, its average price did not fall below 628. a quarter for twenty years. It was evident that, if the system of 1791 were to be maintained, it was absolutely essential to alter the figures in the Act. The prohibitory duty, therefore, of 24s. 3d. on imports was extended to all corn imported when the price was below 638.; the intermediate duty of 2s. 6d. was charged when the price ranged between 638. and 668.; while the nominal duty of 6d. a quarter, levied in 1773 on corn when the price was above 44s., and in 1791 when the price was above 54s., was only charged when the price rose above 66s. But the landed interest were not satisfied with these concessions. The victories of 1813 promised a return of peace; the prospects of peace lowered the value of gold; and the fall in the price of gold affected the value of other commodities. Corn fell rapidly, and the landowners were alarmed for their rents. They persuaded Lord Liverpool to prohibit the importation of all foreign corn when the price was below 80s. a quarter, and all colonial corn when the price was below 678.1 Enclosure 'For what were all these country patriots born? To hunt, and vote, and raise the price of corn.' 2 The high prices, which had thus prevailed, and which had been encouraged by the legislature, had given an extraordinary stimulus to agriculture. Up to 1760 only 244 enclosure bills had ever been passed. Six hundred and fifty additional bills were passed in the fourteen suc 1 The whole subject of the corn laws is treated in a masterly manner by McCulloch, from which the account in the text is in the main abridged. For the sake of brevity the price of wheat has alone been referred to in the text, and, whenever the word corn is used, it is intended to mean wheat. Other kinds of corn were dealt with on the same principles, but the prices of course varied. The averages, quoted in the text, are from McCulloch's Commercial Dict. Porter gives them slightly differently; Progress of the Nation, p. 88. Byron, The Age of Bronze. 2 ceeding years. Eight hundred and ninety-four enclosure bills were therefore sanctioned before the passing of the Act of 1773. Seven hundred and five bills were passed from 1773 to 1792, or during the nineteen years when Lord North's Act continued in force. But the Act of 1791 immediately altered this state of things. A fresh stimulus was given to agricultural improvements, and in the nineteen years from 1792 to 1811, 1,481 bills were passed. The artificial encouragement which protective legislation had afforded to the landowner had more than doubled the rate at which land had been previously enclosed. Rapid, however, as the process of enclosure had been, land continued to be reclaimed with the same extraordinary rapidity. During the last ten years,' said Lord Brougham in 1816, enclosure bills to the amount of twelve hundred have been passed, and the number of acres thereby brought into cultivation has been estimated at two millions.1 CHAP. tural II. Vast as had been the area, which had been brought Agricul into cultivation since the accession of George III., it is pro-improvebable that the improved system of agriculture had done ments. more even than the reclamation of land to promote the production of the kingdom. At the beginning of the eighteenth century, the agriculture of our country was still of the rudest kind. With the exception of certain parts of England, the land was still for the most part unenclosed; the live stock of each township grazing together, and the arable land being occupied in common field or runrig.' Successive crops of corn were grown until the land was utterly exhausted; and its cultivators were com |