In the next few years there was a change. He writes on 24 January 1850, “On the old system wheat was generally tilled on fallow land and summer worked and manured, so that they had two years rent and an immense deal of labour for one crop. Now the plan is to till turnips in June or July, fold them down with cattle, the soil of which leaves ample for a good crop of wheat: then the wheat goes in for about 5s. per acre for labour, and without further manuring.” Again on 24 December 1848, “Wheat tilling now is so different from what it used to be, from so many turnips being tilled. They now till wheat up to March, having the different sorts of seed to suit—not like it was some thirty years ago when all must go into the ground at a particular time, merely two or three sorts. Now there is no end of the sorts, so that neither millers nor farmers can tell one from other in grain, and not half of them in stalk.”
On 29 October 1843 he writes, “They must leave off meddling by Acts of Parliament with agricultural produce.... I fear great distress will show itself hereabout amongst the farmers this winter: corn a low figure, and in all probability will be lower, for I see the Canada Corn Bill came into operation the 10th of this month, and many arrivals, and a vast quantity expected: the Americans of course will take advantage of it and smuggle over to Canada. Will the League carry their point next Session? Hope they will, that things may be settled and let people know what they have to trust to: now everything is uncertain.”
In the summer of 1845 the Potato Disease reached England from abroad. He writes, 31 August, “All those beautiful green fields of potatoes around me, that were so pleasing to the sight in my little walks, have lost all their green and turned a regular brown. It makes things so dreary, and brings to mind the misery it will create, particularly with the little renting farmers.” He writes on 18 August 1852, “A renting farmer generally requires three or four years to recover a bad harvest or a blight, from want of capital; and the small owners are not much better off.”
He writes on 23 May 1847, “Everything is very dear, and all owing to the failure of the potato: no potatoes is the cause of the advance and scarcity of corn: no potatoes no pork, consequently an advance in beef and mutton.” His reasoning is obscured by brevity, but really comes to this—if people cannot get potatoes, they will want more bread, and will want more beef and mutton, if they cannot get any pork; and there cannot be much pork unless there are potatoes, as potatoes are the staple food of fatted pigs.
A friend at Moreton writes to him, 11 January 1846, “The poor will suffer much from the high price of corn and no potatoes. The farmers never had such times. Cattle and sheep are at enormous prices—a farmer told me his stock was worth £1300 more than last year.” He writes again, 30 September 1849, “Farmers are down in the mouth: cattle selling very low, and there is a complete panic. All the little farmers will be ruined.”
The same friend writes him, 5 July 1846, “I had a man here yesterday who has just £300 a year in land, and he thinks that corn will during the next fourteen years be very little (if at all) lower than during the last fourteen. [That was so.] The increase of population and the demand for labour thro’ the extension of trade and making of railroads will, he thinks, tend to keep up the price. He says we are only now beginning to expand.”
My grandfather touched on many subjects in his letters, and often wrote things that read rather strangely now. Thus, on 23 February 1845, “Taking off the duty on glass will be a great thing for all, for we shall soon have the greater portion of our earthenware changed for glass, tea-sets, etc. etc.” On 20 June 1842, “Government ought to recall the sovereigns, and let the loss be born by the State generally not individually,” and on 25 December 1843, “What a fuss about the light sovereign: no silver to be got, everyone wanting, and none will say they have any.”
He writes on 15 January 1858, “I have thought for a long time past that building houses has been carried on to too great an extent in many places. There is great depreciation of house property in Exeter. That fine brick-built house on the site of the old Bridwell in St. Thomas was sold a short time since for £450, gardens and all, and the house alone cost £2000. The auctioneer said, if I was inclined to purchase, he would obtain for me fourscore houses in Mount Radford for what the land cost, to say nothing of the erection.” After a visit from a friend from Guernsey, he writes on 26 March 1854, “There are now over seven hundred houses vacant in Guernsey, some from emigration and some from half-pay officers leaving, as since Free Trade they can live in England as cheap as there, excepting spirits and wine.”
On 17 November 1850 he writes, “We hear very little of Protection now: the No Popery cry has superseded it.” On 7 December 1850 a friend in London writes, “Had not honest John Bull been frightened out of his wits by the Cholera last year, as he has by the Pope this, he would never have submitted to these domiciliary visits to his Castle. I consider the powers of the Commissioners of Sewers most despotic and inquisitorial.”
There was need enough of sanitation. He writes on 23 September 1849, “Newton market is greatly affected by the cholera at Torquay: people leaving as fast as they can: many deaths last week. Mr *****’s daughter was taken and dead in twelve hours.” On 27 September 1849, “I was at Moreton on Tuesday: small-pox, scarlatina and typhus now raging there.” On 22 February 1852, “I hear children are dying by scores at Plymouth in small-pox and measles.”