Yet agriculture had not been standing still. Arthur Young, whose eccentric energy benefited every one but himself, and fell little short of genius, betted his nineteen volumes of Annals of Agriculture against Sir John Sinclair’s twenty-one volumes of the Statistical Account of Scotland, that the Government of Pitt would not establish a Board of Agriculture. But Farmer George did establish one, in 1793;[[479]] Young paid his bet and became Secretary; Sinclair gained his nineteen volumes and became President of the new Board; and together they did much to make farmers and landlords aware of the rotations of crops, disuse of fallows, new manures, road-makings, that the Secretary had been preaching in vain for thirty years.[[480]]
When the great scarcities of 1799–1800 took place, the Board was equal to the occasion. It urged the Government to get supplies of rice from India; it preached earnestly the cultivation of waste lands and the temporary conversion of grass lands into cornfields. The last was done widely enough when the prices of corn were high. The second, except when it meant enclosure of commons, was hardly done at all; and there was a strange impression that the efforts of the Board were at bottom a political movement against ecclesiastical titles and the Established Church. The importation of rice would have been of immense immediate service; but by the time the order had reached India and the rice ships had come back to England,[[481]] the famine was over, the people preferred wheat, and £350,000 of bounty were thrown away.[[482]] Nothing shows the insularity of English commercial policy better than the remedies generally proposed in those days for curing the evils of a bad harvest. The House of Commons passed self-denying ordinances[[483]] and brown-bread bills, and offered a bounty on potatoes.[[484]]
There was some talk inside the House of enforcing a minimum rate of wages, and outside of enforcing a maximum price of bread. The people were told to eat red herrings instead of bread; philanthropic soup shops were opened; distilleries and starch manufactories were threatened with prohibition. Relief from the poor rates was, however, the favourite way of cutting the knot. Better that our people should depend on each other than on the foreigner. This fear of dependence was the more pardonable then, as there were times, in the war with Napoleon, when England was more completely alone against the world than she is ever likely to be again. It was a much more culpable folly to pretend[[485]] that the scarcity was due to “forestalling and regrating,”[[486]] and that England could have provided for herself well enough, even in 1799 and 1800, but for the corn-dealers and the large farms and the enclosures and the new-fashioned husbandry. The new learning, however, went on its way.[[487]] The benefits of it may have gone to farmer[[488]] or to landlord,—the question was much debated,—but they did not go to the labourers. The same is true of the improvements in cattle-breeding introduced by Bakewell of Leicester and Chaplin of Lincoln, and encouraged by the Smithfield Club (1798), which has long outlived the Board of Agriculture. The life of the country labourers was little changed. They and their wages could not remain entirely unaffected by the growth of manufacturing towns. But custom still had the chief power over wages, and had no little influence on rents. From the reports sent from the Scotch, English, and Welsh counties to the Board of Agriculture in 1794, it does not appear that wages were at all, or rent very closely, in correspondence with the amount of the produce.[[489]] Rents were far from being rack rents, and wages were far from varying with the necessary expenses of the labourer. In truth each country district in the days before railways and steamboats was nearly in the same isolation with regard to the rest as all England was with regard to foreign nations. The price of farm produce was indeed tending to be equal over England, as now over the world. Wages were displaying no such tendency. Of all goods a man is the most difficult to move,[[490]] for you must first persuade him; and human inertia by making men stationary will keep wages low. So it was in 1794. The exertions of landlord and tenant were directed therefore rather to keep up corn than to keep down wages. They were beginning to fear for their monopoly of the corn market. The English Government had done its best to keep their market for them. A law of Charles II. passed in 1670 virtually prohibited importation of foreign wheat till the price of home wheat was over 53s. 4d. a quarter, and made it free only when the home price was 80s. The Revolution of 1688 brought a new phase of commercial policy. The new rulers, to conciliate the agricultural classes and atone for the burdens which had been transferred to them from the industrial classes, granted a bounty of 5s. a quarter on the exportation of wheat so long as the home price was not over 48s. In this way, after exportation in the days of the Romans, and alternate exportation and importation according to the seasons in after times, there was, after the Revolution, exportation encouraged by a bounty, while importation was still hindered by duties. The intention was at once to attract capitalists to agriculture and to reward those already engaged in it. By this means not only would the farmers be attached to the new dynasty, but England would provide all her own food.[[491]]
But the very increase of tillage kept down prices and gave the landowners little benefit. Whenever a scarcity occurred the laws were suspended, and the bounty and duties were taken off together.[[492]] Exportation, however, was the rule till a little after the middle of the century, say at the beginning of George III.’s reign, when the tide had fairly turned. Especially after the Peace of Paris (Nov. 1762), commerce was extended and population with it. Canals were made, roads improved, and home trade prospered.[[493]] We could no longer raise enough corn for our own wants.[[494]] In 1766, the year of our author’s birth, there were scarcities, Corn Riots, and suspensions of the Corn Laws;[[495]] but the bounty was kept up in name to the end of the century. In 1795 and 1796 the price of wheat rose to 80s. a quarter, in 1797 and 1798 it sank to 54s.; but, at the end of harvest, 1799, it rose to 92s., in 1800 to 128s., and before the harvest of 1801 to 177s. The quartern loaf (under 6d. in 1885) was once within ½d. of 2s.! Then came a cycle of comparative plenty. Wheat between 1802 and 1807 was at 75s. on an average, and a new Corn Law in 1804 prohibited importation till the home price should rise to 63s. Between 1808 and 1813 it was 108s. on an average; and it was as high as 140s. 9d. in the severe winter (1812–13) of Napoleon’s retreat from Moscow. But in the spring of 1815 wheat was at 60s. If it should rise to 63s. the ports would be opened, and there was not even the Protection of war. The farmers and landowners were terror-stricken, the political economists divided, and the bill for raising the importation price to 80s. was hurried through the House. The bounty, relaxed in 1773, had been finally repealed, in 1814.[[496]] As the sliding scale of duties was not introduced till 1827, we are to regard Malthus and Ricardo as writing on rent (in 1815 and 1820) under the severe Corn Law of 1815, as well as when the wisdom of passing that measure was still under debate. All their discussions on rent bear consciously or unconsciously upon the Corn Laws of their own time.
Malthus is rightly considered the first clear expounder in England of the economical doctrine of rent. Dr. James Anderson, a contemporary of Adam Smith, was no doubt before his age in his view of the subject;[[497]] but, perhaps because he was better known as an agriculturist than as an economist, he does not seem to have made converts. The “simultaneous rediscovery” of the true doctrine by West and Malthus in 1815 may be compared with the simultaneous discovery of the Darwinian theory by Wallace and Darwin in 1859. The times were ripe for it. Malthus gives no certain sound on the subject in the early editions of the Essay on Population. In the second he even says that “one of the principal ingredients in the price of British corn is the high rent of land” (p. 460; cf. p. 444). However, needing to lecture on Rent to his pupils at Haileybury in 1805, he saw the unsoundness of this position, and in 1806, in the third edition of the essay, the passage is dropped, and we are told, “universally it is price that determines rent, not rent that determines price” (vol. ii. p. 266). The passage is repeated in the fourth edition (1807).[[498]] But when the time came for a fifth edition, in 1817, the whole of the chapters on Corn Laws and bounties, which are the only chapters of the essay that deal much with rent, were recast, to express the clearer views which the author had already expounded elsewhere. In the spring of 1814, in the excitement of debates on the abolition of the bounty and on new laws to keep out foreign grain, Malthus was led for the fourth or fifth time in his life to take the field as a pamphleteer.[[499]] This time, however, he came forward, he said, not to take a side but to act as arbitrator. His “Observations on the effects of the Corn Laws, and of a rise or fall in the price of corn on the agriculture and general wealth of the country” (1814),[[500]] professed to balance the arguments for and against the Corn Laws, and did it, he said, so judiciously, that his own friends were in doubt to which opinion he leaned.[[501]] To later readers the bias is not doubtful. It appears even in such a passage as the following, which, incidentally, shows us his view of rent, nearly matured:—“It is a great mistake to suppose that the effects of a fall in the price of corn on cultivation may be fully compensated by a diminution of rents. Rich land, which yields a large nett rent, may be kept up in its actual state, notwithstanding a fall in the price of its produce, as a diminution of rent may be made entirely to compensate this fall, and all the additional expenses that belong to a rich and highly-taxed country. But in poor land the fund of rent will often be found quite insufficient for this purpose. There is a good deal of land in this country of such a quality, that the expenses of its cultivation, together with the outgoings of poor’s rates, tithes, and taxes, will not allow the farmer to pay more than a fifth or sixth of the value of the whole produce in the shape of rent. If we were to suppose the prices of grain to fall from 75s. to 50s. the quarter, the whole of such a rent would be absorbed, even if the price of the whole produce of the farm did not fall in proportion to the price of grain, and making some allowance for a fall in the price of labour. The regular cultivation of such land for grain would of course be given up, and any sort of pasture, however scanty, would be more beneficial both to the landlord and farmer.”[[502]] The drift of the pamphlet may be shortly stated. The writer refused to go with Adam Smith in identifying corn with food, and attributing to it in that capacity an unchangeable value, which made any rise of price futile for the encouragement of tillage. He thought that it was perfectly possible to encourage tillage by Corn Laws; but was it good policy? Before he could answer this question, he felt bound to consider several others.[[503]] Under free trade would Great Britain grow her own corn?—if not, ought Government to interfere to secure this?—if so, would laws to hinder importation be the best kind of interference? The answer to the first is, that other countries have soils more fertile than Britain; Poland can ship corn at Dantzig for England at 32s. a quarter;[[504]] and, if there were free trade over Europe, the rich lands which are not English would send their plenty to relieve the wants of their neighbours. If Corn Laws have not made us grow our own corn, free trade would not. In answer to the second question, no doubt it is sound economy to buy in the cheapest market and sell in the dearest; and, if we had regard to nothing but the greatest “wealth, population, and power,” the rule would be invariable; foreign imports of food are in every case a good thing for the country, and, if there is evil in the matter, it is not in them but in the bad season which makes them necessary; moreover, a free trade in corn secures a steadier as well as cheaper supply of grain.[[505]] But, on the other hand, dependence on other nations for the first necessary of life is a source of political insecurity to the nation so depending; and, though the dependence is mutual, identity of commercial interests seldom prevents nations from going to war with each other; “we have latterly seen the most striking instances, in all quarters, of Governments acting from passion rather than interest.”[[506]] And it might be argued that, if we give up agriculture for manufacture, we change the character of our people; manufacturing industry conduces to mental activity, to an expansion of comforts, to the growth of the middle classes, and to the growth with them of political moderation; but it is more subject than agriculture to the fluctuations of fashion, which lead to chronic destitution and discontent, and the conditions of artizan life are “even in their best state unfavourable to health and virtue.”[[507]] Virtue and happiness after all are the end; wealth, population, and power are but the means. Malthus himself believes in something like a golden mean, a balance of the two industries, which legislation might possibly preserve.[[508]] There is another and less plausible argument on the same side. Assuming that wages vary with the price of corn, high money wages, and therefore high prices of corn, are an advantage to working men, who would have more money to buy the goods of the foreign countries where prices of corn were low and goods were cheap. This argument, though our author is inclined to yield to it, is inconsistent with his own views of wages and the facts he cites in support of them.[[509]] More cogent is the plea that it would be unfair suddenly to withdraw a long-established protection, though (it might be replied) we are no more bound to be gradual in abolishing protection than in concluding peace during war. But the real question is, whether once protected is to mean always protected, and protected in an always increasing degree, for it was this increased protection that was proposed in 1814 and 1815. It may be true that if we protect manufacture we ought to protect agriculture; but, instead of protecting both, why not set both free? Statesmen had no courage, however, to be free-traders, in days when the separate articles protected were as many as the millions in the National Debt, and each article represented a vested interest. Malthus does not seem to expect Parliament to give free trade a moment’s consideration. But the friends of the new Corn Laws, besides using the commonplaces of protectionism, argued from the change in the value of the English currency. When paper were paper prices,[[510]] the importation price of the law of 1804 could be soon reached, and foreign corn came in much faster than the real or the bullion prices of it would have allowed. There was also the long array of standing arguments for Corn Laws that lay stress on the heavy taxation of the country, and are meant to show that the agricultural classes bear most of it, and are thus handicapped against the foreigner. From Malthus himself the old leaven of protectionism was never wholly purged away. Like Pitt, though in a less degree, he suffered his politics to corrupt his political economy, and drag him back from the “simple system of natural liberty” into “the mazes of the old system.”[[511]] English people since the Repeal of the Corn Laws will hardly care to thrash the old straw out again. Perronet Thompson’s Catechism of the Corn Laws is the best storehouse of the old arguments and their refutations, set forth with a liveliness to which no other English economical writing has the slightest claim.[[512]]
The real opinion of Malthus came out in the second Corn Law pamphlet on the Grounds of an Opinion on the Policy of restricting the Importation of Foreign Corn (1815). Between the two came the tract on Rent, which is rather an economical book than a political pamphlet, and will be noticed immediately. He now declares himself in favour of a temporary duty on imported corn to countervail the artificially low value of the currency,—“to get rid of that part of our prices which belongs to great wealth, combined with a system of restrictions.”[[513]]
He warns the Government that they should not take such a step to benefit a particular trade, but only to benefit the public. The motives are those constantly professed by defenders of the Navigation Act—not private interests but public policy. Since he wrote his Observations circumstances had changed. The sudden peace had brought the then unprecedented combination of a bad harvest and low prices; the value of the currency had fallen fast; and last, and not least, France, the best corn country in Europe, had begun to prohibit the exportation of grain[[514]] in dear years. We must therefore, he says, keep up the high farming which the war taught us, by keeping up the high prices of the war. Eighty shillings might not be too high a price, for the limit of prohibited importation.
It seems extraordinary that, after so clearly recognizing that “wealth does not consist in the dearness or cheapness of the usual measures of value, but in the quantity of produce,” and that exports are not so good a criterion of wealth as the “quantity of produce consumed at home,”[[515]] Malthus should recommend the increase of abundance by means of artificial dearness. It is a poor consolation to us that he was no worse than Brougham, who voted for the Corn Law in 1815, and for the support of the Navigation Act in 1849,—and little worse than Ricardo, who would allow a temporary restriction for the sake of leaseholders.[[516]] A better is that he was advocating a policy that was against his private interests as a holder of a fixed salary and owner of three per cents.[[517]] But at the best the atmosphere of these two tracts is a little depressing.
The tract on Rent is more bracing. It was the first-fruits of the larger work on Political Economy (1820); and its substance had been delivered in the professor’s lectures at Haileybury. It expounds the Nature and Progress of Rent with clearness and intelligibility, if without the liveliness of 1798. Malthus gives us to understand that, to explain this or any other economical notion, we must keep as closely as possible to the usage of ordinary language, the language of clear-thinking ordinary men.[[518]]
To them, rent does not mean, as by derivation, simply produce or profit; nor, as to a Frenchman now and to Bailie Nicol Jarvie in his days, interest on a debt. It means a certain price paid to a landlord for the use of his land. But such a definition is too wide. It might include the proceeds of a monopoly, or an interest on capital, or a Government tax, or a legal rate, or a toll, or a payment for service rendered. We must define the term a little more clearly.