A Short History of English Agriculture

by W. H. R. Curtler

In 1843 (5 Vict. c. 14) a duty of 20s. was imposed when the price was 50s., and the duty became 7s. when the price reached 65s.

A contemporary writer denies that these duties benefited the farmer at all: 'if the present shifting scale of duty was intended to protect the farmer, keep the prices of corn steady, insure a supply to the consumer at a moderate price, and benefit the revenue, it has signally failed. During the continuation of the Corn Laws the farmers have suffered the greatest privations. The variations in price have been extreme, and when a supply of foreign corn has been required it has only reached the consumer at a high price, and benefited the revenue little.'[632] Rents of farms were often calculated not on the market price of wheat, but on the price thought to be fixed by the duties, which was occasionally much higher.[633]

It was also said that but for the restrictions that had been imposed in the supposed interests of agriculture, the skill and enterprise of farmers would have been better directed than it had been. By means of these restrictions and the consequent enhancement of the cost of living, the cultivation of the land had been injuriously restricted, for the energies of farmers had been limited to producing certain descriptions of food, and they had neglected others which would have been far[634] more profitable. The landlord had profited by higher rents, but, according to Caird, a most competent observer, had generally speaking been induced by a reliance on protection to neglect his duty to his estates, so that buildings were poor, and drainage neglected. The labourer was little if any better off than eighty years before. It was a mystery even to farmers how they lived in many parts of the country; 'our common drink,' said one, 'is burnt crust tea, we never know what it is to get enough to eat.'[635] Against these disadvantages can only be put the fact that protection had kept up the price of corn, a calamity for the mass of the people.

The amount of wheat imported into England before the era of Corn Law repeal was inconsiderable. Mr. Porter has shown[636] how very small a proportion of wheat used in this country was imported from 1801-44. From 1801 to 1810 the average annual import of wheat into the kingdom was 600,946 quarters, or a little over a peck annually per head, the average annual consumption per head being about eight bushels. Between 1811 and 1820 the average importation was 458,578 quarters, or for the increased population a gallon-and-a-half per head, and the same share for each person was imported in the next decade 1821-30. From 1831-40 the average imports arose to 607,638 quarters, or two-and-a-quarter gallons per head, and in 1841-4 an average import of 1,901,495 quarters raised the average supply to four-and-a-half gallons per person, still a very small proportion of the amount consumed.

In 1836 a small association had been formed in London for advocating the repeal of the Corn Laws, and in 1838 a similar association was formed in Manchester.[637] At one of its earliest meetings appeared Richard Cobden, under whose guidance the association became the Anti-Corn Law League, and at whose invitation John Bright joined the League. Under these two men the Anti-Corn Law League commenced its great agitation, its object being 'to convince the manufacturer that the Corn Laws were interfering with the growth of trade, to persuade the people that they were raising the price of food, to teach the agriculturist that they had not even the solitary merit of securing a fixed price for corn'. The country was deluged with pamphlets, backed up by constant public meetings; and these efforts, aided by unfavourable seasons, convinced many of the errors of protection. In 1840 the League spent £5,700 in distributing 160,000 circulars and 150,000 pamphlets, and in delivering 400 lectures to 800,000 people. Bakers were persuaded to bake taxed and untaxed shilling loaves, and, on the purchaser choosing the larger, to demand the tax from the landlord; in 1843 the League collected £50,000, next year £100,000, and in 1845 £250,000 in support of their agitation.

Yet for some years they had little success in Parliament; even in 1842 Peel only amended the laws; and it was not until 1846 that, convinced by the League's arguments, as he himself confessed, and stimulated by the famine in Ireland, he introduced the famous Act, 9 & 10 Vict. c. 22.

By this the maximum duty on imported wheat was at once to be reduced to 10s. a quarter when the price was under 48s., to 5s. on barley when the price was under 26s., and to 4s. on oats when the price was under 18s., with lower duties as prices rose above these figures, but the most important part of the Act was that on February 1, 1849, these duties were to cease, and only a nominal duty of 1s. a quarter on foreign corn be retained, which was abolished in 1860.

By 9 and 10 Vict. c. 23 the duties on live stock were also abolished entirely. Down to 1842 the importation of horned cattle, sheep, hogs, and other animals used as food was strictly prohibited,[638] but in that year the prohibition was withdrawn and they were allowed to enter the country on a payment of 20s. a head on oxen and bulls, 15s. on cows, 3s. on sheep, 5s. on hogs; which duties continued till 1846.

It is interesting to find that so shrewd an observer as McCulloch did not expect any great increase in the imports of live animals from the reduction of the duties, but he anticipated a great increase in salted meat from abroad; cold storage being then undreamt of.

The full effect of this momentous change was not to be felt for a generation, but the immediate effect was an agricultural panic apparently justified by falling prices. In 1850 wheat averaged 40s. 3d. and in 1851 38s. 6d. On the other hand, stock farmers were doing well. But on the corn lands the prices of the protection era had to come down; many farms were thrown up, some arable turned into pasture; distress was widespread. Owing to the depressed state of agriculture in 1850, the Times sent James Caird on a tour through England, and one of the most important conclusions arrived at in his account of his tour is, that owing to protection, the majority of landowners had neglected their land; but another cause of neglect was that the great body of English landlords knew nothing of the management of their estates, and committed it to agents who knew little more and merely received the rents. The important business of being a landowner is the only one for which no special training is provided. Many of the landlords, however, then, as now, were unable to improve their estates if they desired to do so, as they were hopelessly encumbered, and the expense of sale was almost prohibitive. The contrast between good and bad farmers was more marked in 1850 than to-day, the efforts of the Royal Agricultural Society to raise the general standard of farming had not yet borne much fruit. In many counties, side by side, were farmers who used every modern improvement, and those who still employed the methods of the eighteenth century: on one farm wheat producing 40 bushels an acre, threshed by steam at a cost of 3s. 6d., on the next 20 bushels to the acre threshed by the flail at a cost of 9s.[639]