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.
A Dorset farmer told the Parliamentary committee that since 1815 he
knew of fifty farmers, farming 24,000 acres, who had failed
entirely.[589]
In the _Tyne Mercury_ of October 30, 1821, it was recorded that Mr.
Thos. Cooper of Bow purchased 3 milch cows and 40 sheep for £18 16s.
6d. which sum four years previously would only have bought their
skins. Prime beef was sold in Salisbury market at 4d. retail, and good
joints of mutton at 3-1/2d.[590] Everywhere the farmers were
complaining bitterly, but 'hanging on like sailors to the masts or
hull of a wreck'. In Sussex labourers were being employed to dig holes
and fill them in again, proof enough of distress but also of great
folly. Many thousands of acres were now a mass of thistles and weeds,
once fair grass land ploughed up during the war for wheat, and
abandoned at the fall of prices. There were no less than 475 petitions
on agricultural distress presented to the House from 1820 to March 31,
1822. In 1822, it was proposed that the Government should purchase
wheat grown in England to the value of one million sterling and store
it; also that when the average price of wheat was under 60s. the
Government should advance money on such corn grown in the United
Kingdom as should be deposited in certain warehouses, to an extent not
exceeding two-thirds the value of the corn.[591] There were not
wanting men, however, who put the other side of the question. In a
tract called _The Refutation of the Arguments used on the Subject of
the Agricultural Petition_, written in 1819, it was said that the
increase in the farmer's expenditure was the cause of his discontent.
'He now assumes the manners and demands the equipage of a gentleman,
keeps a table like his landlord, anticipates seasons in their
productions, is as choice in his wines, his horses, and his
furniture.' Let him be more thrifty. 'Let him dismiss his steward, a
character a few years back only known to the great landowner, and
cease from degrading the British farmer into a synonym for
prodigality.' Lord Liverpool, in the House of Lords, in a speech which
roused great opposition among agriculturists, minimized the distress;
distress there was, he admitted, but it was not confined to England,
it was world-wide; neither was it produced by excessive taxation, for
since 1815 taxation had been reduced 25 per cent., while though rents
and prices had fallen they were much higher than before the war.
Another writer said at the time, 'Individuals of all classes have of
late been as it were inflated above their natural size: let this
unnatural growth be reduced; let them resume their proper places and
appearances, and the quantum of substantial enjoyment, real comfort
and happiness, will not be found lessened.' It was also asserted that
the taxes on malt, leather, soap, salt, and candles, were not very
pressing.
The persistent cries of distress produced a Bill giving still further
protection to corn-growers, which was fortunately not carried into
effect. There was no doubt, however, about the reality of the crisis
through which the landed classes were passing. Many of the landowners
were heavily in debt. Mortgages had been multiplied during the war,
and while prices were high payment of interest was easy; but when
prices fell and the tenant threw up his farm, the landlord could not
throw over the mortgage, and the interest hung like a dead weight
round his neck.[592]
The price to which wheat fell at the end of 1822 was to be the lowest
for some years; it soon recovered, and until 1834 the average annual
prices ranged from 53s. to 68s. 6d., while in 1825 beef at Smithfield
was 5s. and mutton 5s. 4d. a stone.
In 1823 there was a marked improvement, and the king's speech
congratulated the country on 'the gradual abatement of those
difficulties under which agriculture has so long suffered.'[593] In
1824 'agriculture was recovering from the depression under which it
laboured.'[594] In 1825 it was said, 'there never was a period in the
history of this country when all the great interests of the nation
were in so thriving a condition.'[595] In that year over-speculation
produced a panic and agricultural distress was again evident. In 1826
Cobbett said, 'the present stock of the farms is not in one-half the
cases the property of the farmer, it is borrowed stock.'[596] In 1828
all the farmers in Kent were said to be insolvent.[597]
At the meeting of Parliament in 1830 the king lamented the state of
affairs, and ascribed it to unfavourable seasons and other causes
beyond the reach of legislative remedy. Many had learnt that high
protection was no protection for farmers, and it was stated more than
once that the large foreign supply of grain, though only then about
one-third of the home-grown, depressed our markets. At the same time,
it must be admitted that agriculture, like all other industries, was
suffering from the crisis of 1825. In 1830, the country was filled
with unrest, in which the farm labourer shared. His motives, however,
were hardly political. He had a rooted belief that machinery was
injuring him, the threshing machine especially; and he avenged himself
by burning the ricks of obnoxious farmers. Letters were sent to
employers demanding higher wages and the disuse of machines, and
notices signed 'Swing' were affixed to gates and buildings. Night
after night incendiary fires broke out, and emboldened by impunity the
rioters proceeded to pillage by day. In Hampshire they moved in bodies
1,500 strong. A special Commission was appointed, and the disorders
put down at last with a firm hand. In 1828 there had been a relaxation
in the duties on corn, the object of the Act passed in that year being
to secure the farmer a constant price of 8s. a bushel instead of 10s.
as in 1815, and by a sliding scale to prevent the disastrous
fluctuations in prices. The best proof of its failure is afforded by
the appointment of another parliamentary committee in 1833 to inquire
into the distressed state of agriculture. At this inquiry many
witnesses asserted that the cultivation of inferior soils and heavy
clays had diminished from one-fourth to one-fifth.[598] It was also
asserted that farmers were paying rent out of capital.[599] Tooke,
however, thought there was much exaggeration of the distress, which
was proved by the way the farmers weathered the low prices of 1835,
when wheat, after a succession of four remarkably good seasons,
averaged 39s. 4d. for the year. In these abundant years, too, he
asserts that the home supply was equal to the demand,[600] though the
committee of 1833 had stated that this had ceased to be the
case.[601] Another committee, the last for many years, sat in 1835 to
consider the distress; but although prices were low the whole tenor of
the evidence established the improvement of farming, the extension of
cultivation, and the increase of produce, and it was noticed at this
time that towns dependent on agriculture were uniformly
prosperous.[602]
On the whole, in spite of exaggeration from interested motives, the
distress for the twenty years after the battle of Waterloo was real
and deep; twenty years of depression succeeded the same period of
false exaltation. The progress, too, during that time was real, and
made, as was remarked, _because_ of adversity. From this time
agriculture slowly revived.
On one point both of the two last committees were agreed, that the
condition of the labourer was improved, and they said he was better
off than at any former period, for his wages remained the same, while
prices of necessaries had fallen. That his wages went further is true,
but they were still miserably low, and he was often housed worse than
the animals on the farm. 'Wattle and dab' (or mud and straw) formed
the walls of his cottage, the floors were often of mud, and all ages
and both sexes frequently slept in one room. A block of ten cottages
were put up in the parish of Holmer[603] at the commencement of the
nineteenth century, which were said to have combined 'comfort,
convenience, and economy;' they each contained one room 12 feet by 14
feet and 6 feet high with a bedroom over, and cost £32 10s. each. They
were evidently considered quite superior dwellings, far better than
the ordinary run of labourer's cottages. Cobbett gives us a picture of
some in Leicestershire in 1826; 'hovels made of mud and straw, bits of
glass, or of old cast-off windows, without frames or hinges
frequently, and merely stuck in the mud wall. Enter them and look at
the bits of chairs or stools, the wretched boards tacked together to
serve for a table, the floor of pebble, broken brick, or of the bare
ground; look at the thing called a bed, and survey the rags on the
backs of the wretched inhabitants.'[604] The chief exceptions to this
state of affairs were the estates of many of the great landlords. On
that of the Earl of Winchelsea in Rutland, the cottages he had built
contained a kitchen, parlour, dairy, two bedrooms, and a cow-house,
and several had small holdings attached of from 5 to 20 acres.[605]
Not long before, wages in Hampshire and Wiltshire were 5s. and 6s. a
week.[606]
In 1822 it was stated that 'beef and mutton are things the taste of
which was unknown to the mass of labourers. No one has lived more in
cottages than I, and I declare solemnly I never remember once to have
seen such a thing.'[607] A group of women labourers, whom Cobbett saw
by the roadside in Hampshire, presented 'such an assemblage of rags as
I never saw before even amongst the hoppers at Farnham.'[608]
The labourer's wages may have gone a little further, but he had lost
his by-industries, his bit of land and rights of common, and would
have had a very different tale to tell from that of the framers of the
reports above quoted.
In spite of the complaints made that the improvements of the coaches
and of the roads drew the countryman to the towns, many stirred hardly
at all from their native parish, and their lives were now infinitely
duller than in the Middle Ages. The great event of the year was the
harvest home, which was usually a scene of great merry-making. In
Devonshire, when a farmer's wheat was ripe he sent round notice to the
neighbourhood, and men and women from all sides came to reap the crop.
As early as eleven or twelve, so much ale and cider had been drunk
that the shouts and ribald jokes of the company were heard to a
considerable distance, attracting more helpers, who came from far and
near, but none were allowed to come after 12 o'clock. Between 12 and 1
came dinner, with copious libations of ale and cider, which lasted
till 2, when reaping was resumed and went on without interruption
except from the squabbles of the company till 5, when what were called
'drinkings', or more food and drink, were taken into the field and
consumed. After this the corn reaped was bound into sheaves till
evening, when after the sport of throwing their reaping hooks at a
sheaf which had been set up as a mark for a prize, all proceeded to
supper and more ale and cider till the small hours.[609]
No wages were paid at these harvestings, but the unlimited amount of
eating and drinking was very expensive, and about this date the
practice of using hired labour had largely superseded this old custom.
The close of this period was marked by two Acts of great benefit to
farmers: the Poor Law Amendment Act of 1834 (4 & 5 Wm. IV, c. 76),
which reduced the rates,[610] and marked 'the beginning of a period
of slow recovery in the labourer's standard of life, moral and
material, though at first it brought him not a little adversity'[611];
and the Tithe Commutation Act of 1836 (6 & 7 Wm. IV, c. 71), which
substituted for the tithe paid in kind or the fluctuating commuted
tithe, a tithe rent charge equivalent to the market value, on a
septennial average, of the exact quantities of wheat, barley, and
oats, which made up the legal tithes by the estimate in 1836. Thus was
removed a perpetual source of dispute and antagonism between
tithe-payer and tithe-owner. The system hitherto pursued, moreover,
was wasteful. In exceptionally favourable circumstances the clergy did
not receive more than two-thirds of the value of the tithe in kind.
The delays were a frequent source of loss. In rainy weather, when the
farmer desired to get his crops in quickly, he was obliged to shock
his crops, give the tithe-owners notice to set out their tithes, and
wait for their arrival; in the meantime the crop, perhaps, being badly
damaged.[612]
FOOTNOTES:
[585] Walpole, _History of England_, i. 161.
[586] _Inquiry into Agricultural Distress_ (1822), p. 40.
[587] Walpole, _op. cit._ ii. 22.
[588] _A Letter to the Earl of Liverpool by an Old Tory_, 1822. The
Committee on Agricultural Distress found that farmers were paying rent
out of capital (_Parliamentary Reports. Committees_, v. 71), and that
leases fixed on the basis of the high prices of the war meant ruin to
the farmer if held to his engagement.
[589] _Parliamentary Reports, Committees_, ix. 138.
[590] Cobbett, _Rural Rides_ (ed. 1885), i. 3, 16.
[591] _Report of the Committee on Agricultural Depression_ (1822), pp.
3, 4.
[592] Walpole, _History of England_, ii. 23.
[593] _Hansard_, ix. 1544.
[594] Ibid. x. 1, 2.
[595] Ibid. xii. 1.
[596] _Rural Rides_, ii. 199.
[597] Walpole, _History of England_, ii. 526. The distress was
aggravated by rot among sheep, which is said to have destroyed
one-fourth of those in the kingdom. See _Parliamentary Reports,
Commissioners_ (1836), viii (2), p. 198.
[598] Tooke, _History of Prices_, ii. 227.
[599] _Report_ of 1833, p. 6.
[600] Tooke, _History of Prices_, ii, 238.
[601] Imports fell considerably at this date; they were:
1832 1,254,351 quarters.
1833 1,166,457 "
1834 981,486 "
1835 750,808 "
1836 861,156 "
1837 1,109,492 "
1838 1,923,400 "
There were also considerable exports:
1832 289,558 quarters.
1833 96,212 "
1834 159,482 "
1835 134,076 "
1836 256,978 "
1837 308,420 "
1838 158,621 "
McCulloch, _Commercial Dictionary_ (1847), p. 438.
[602] Porter, _Progress of the Nation_, p. 151.
[603] See Duncumb, _General View of Herefordshire_, (1805).
[604] Rural Rides, ii. 348.
[605] London, _Encyclopaedia of Agriculture_ (1831), p. 1156.
[606] Cobbett, _Rural Rides_, i. 149. The average, however, now was
about 9s.; see _Parliamentary Reports_, v. 72.
[607] _A Letter to the Earl of Liverpool by an Old Tory_ (1822), p.
16.
[608] _Rural Rides_, i. 18.
[609] Moore, _History of Devonshire_, i. 430.
[610] By this Act and the various amending Acts the law of settlement,
so long a burden on the labourer, is now settled thus: a settlement
may be acquired by birth, parentage, marriage, renting a tenement, by
being bound apprentice and inhabiting, by estate, payment of taxes,
and by residence.--Stephen, _Commentaries on the Laws of England_
(1903), iii. 87.
[611] Hasbach, _op. cit._ p. 217.
[612] _R.A.S.E. Journal_ (1901), p. 9.