48 Large and Small Holdings 



potatoes among a family of seven," wrote the correspondent of an 

 M.P. in I84I 1 . The old fare of bread, bacon and beer was frequently 

 replaced by water-gruel, rice and potatoes, and for drink a decoction 

 of boiled tea-leaves 2 . 



In spite of all expectations from the peace, therefore, the people 

 found themselves after 1815 not merely in no better position, but 

 perhaps degraded even below the level to which they had already 

 become accustomed. A commercial policy which raised the price of 

 the chief necessary of life and at the same time injured trade and 

 industry produced a worse state of affairs in time of peace than 

 any war could have brought about. The policy did not even profit 

 those in whose interests such a fearful burden was laid on the people 

 at large. The farmers, who were to have reaped the chief advantages 

 of the corn-laws, were in a state of almost continuous distress from 

 1815 to 1 846 s . Meantime the agricultural result of the high duties 

 was to carry still further that one-sided development of arable farming 

 which had been going on since 1760. 



The Reports of the Committees on the Distressed Condition of 

 Agriculture in 1836-7 prove clearly that pasture- farming and market- 

 gardening not only made no progress during the thirty years of the 

 corn-law period, but even deteriorated 4 . The rotation of crops, a 

 matter whose importance in relation to pasture-farming had been 

 recognised even in the eighteenth century, was only in use on a com- 

 paratively few model farms. Baker reported on Essex in 1845 that 

 experiments with winter root-crops had been made for the first time 

 in that county a few years previously 5 . In 1849 the dairy-farms of 

 Suffolk, for which that county had been celebrated in the time of 

 Arthur Young, had practically disappeared 6 . According to Raynbird's 

 figures, 90 per cent, fewer cows were kept than at that period ; every- 

 where pasture had been turned into arable. "The corn laws... have 

 induced farmers to rely for profit upon a great breadth of wheat, to 

 the neglect of stock-farming and improved systems of husbandry," 



1 Hansard, Vol. LIX, p. 759. 



2 R. Heath, The English Peasant, 1893, p. 45. 



3 Levy, Die Not etc., passim. 



4 See especially the evidence of the Scottish fanners. They had introduced the rotation 

 of crops much more commonly than their English neighbours, and one after another expressed 

 their astonishment at the poor methods of breeding and bad agricultural systems of the 

 Englishmen. See e.g. Report on Agriculture, 1837, qu. 13,813 and qu. 14,089. 



5 R. Baker, On the Farming of Essex, in Journal of the Royal Agricultural Society, 1835, 



P-3- 



6 W. and H. Raynbird, On the Agriculture of Suffolk, 1849, PP- 7' 94- 



