CHAPTER XXVI. 



ON THE PROFITS OF AGRICULTURE. 



I HAVE been unable to discover, as I did in the materials of 

 my first two volumes, such full and distinct evidence as enabled 

 me, by the proof of figures, to indicate the profits of agriculture 

 before and after the Great Death of 1348 1 . That economical 

 revolution was fortunately recorded in the struggles of those 

 who were unwilling to accept the events to which, within a few 

 years, they were forced to succumb, and in the unavailing efforts 

 of Parliament to arrest the disasters of suddenly exalted wages 

 in the face of deficient crops and declining profits. But the 

 facts of the situation once fairly understood, it is possible, even 

 in the absence of decisive evidence as to the numerical value 

 of the details of what constituted the costs of production, and 

 of what was the price of produce on any particular estate, or 

 aggregate of estates, to give general statements as to the posi- 

 tion of those who carried on agriculture on their own account, 

 either with their own land, or by a stock and land lease, or in 

 an ordinary occupancy, and even to suggest a probable balance- 

 sheet. 



I stated above (p. 128) that, from an analysis of a farm 

 belonging to New College during the latter half of the fifteenth 

 and the first quarter of the sixteenth century, the profits of the 

 landowner's stock may be taken at a gross amount of 15 per 

 cent., the inference being supported by figures. So large a rate 

 of profit, land being generally in the same period bought at 

 twenty years' purchase, would have induced most landowners, 

 if they could contrive to maintain such an investment, to con- 



1 Vol. I, pp. 678-681. 



