[582] Marshall, Review of Agriculture, Reports Western Department, p. 18.
[583] Parliamentary Reports, Commissioners (1897), xv. 32.
[584] Parliamentary Accounts and Papers, lxxx. 21. The number of those owning over 500 acres does not concern the small owner or the yeoman class, but they were: from 500 acres to 1,000, 4,799; from 1,000 to 2,000, 2,719; from 2,000 to 5,000, 1,815; from 5,000 to 10,000, 581; from 10,000 to 20,000, 223; from 20,000 to 50,000, 66; from 50,000 to 100,000, 3; over 100,000, 1. For the numbers of the 'holdings' of various sizes in 1875 and 1907 see below, p. 334. The term 'holdings', however, includes freeholds and leaseholds.
CHAPTER XIX
1816-1837
DEPRESSION
The summer of 1816 was wretched; the distress, aggravated by the bad season, caused riots everywhere. At Bideford the mob interfered to prevent the export of a cargo of potatoes; at Bridport they broke into the bakers' shops. Incendiary fires broke out night after night in the eastern counties. At Swanage six people out of seven were paupers, and in one parish in Cambridgeshire every person but one was a pauper or a bankrupt.[585] Corn rose again: by June, 1817, it was 117s., but fell to 77s. in September.
In 1818 occurred a drought of four months, lasting from May till September, and great preparations were made to ward off the expected famine; immense quantities of wheat came from the Baltic, of maize from America, and beans and maize from Italy and Egypt, with hay from New York, as it was selling at £10 a ton. However, rain fell in September, brown fields suddenly became green, turnips sprang up where none had appeared, and even spring corn that had lain in the parched ground began to grow, so the fear of scarcity passed.
In 1822 came a good season, which produced a great crop of wheat; in the lifetime of the existing generation old men declared that such a harvest had been known only once before; imports also came from Ireland to the amount of nearly a million quarters, so that the price at the end of the year was 38s., and the average price for the year was 44s. 7d. Beef went down to 2s. 5d. a stone and mutton to 2s. 2d. The cry of agricultural distress again rose loudly. Farmers were still, though some of the war taxes had been remitted, heavily taxed; for the taxes on malt, soap, salt, candles, leather, all pressed heavily.[586] The chief cause of the distress was the long-felt reaction after the war, but it was aggravated by the return to cash payments in 1819. Gold had fallen to its real value, and the fall in gold had been followed by a fall in the prices of every other article.[587] The produce of many thousand acres in England did not sell that year for as much money as was expended in growing it, without reckoning rent, taxes, and interest on capital.[588] Estates worth £3,000 a year, says the same writer, some years since, were now worth £1,000. Bacon had gone down from 6s. 6d. to 2s. 4d. a stone; Southdown ewes from 50s. to 15s., and lambs from 42s. to 5s.