The Making of the Land. 2 1 5 



aflfected the grazier, and the increased wealth and comfort of 

 the people reacted on the husbandman. Instead of the un- 

 educated, poverty-stricken representative of the ancient predial 

 system, a class of keen capitalists became tenants of the 

 English soil, so that farming on a large scale came into fashion. 

 The energy of the nation as a whole had its effect on the 

 literary productions of the age ; and pamphlets, tracts, and 

 books abound with the views of Arthur Young and men like 

 him. who combined a knowledge of agriculture with a taste 

 for literary work. 



The high prices of the necessaries of life enticed several 

 would-be reformers to air their remedies in public. We find 

 every kind of defect in our national husbandry imagined 

 and every kind of cure suggested. Thus the author of Causes 

 of the Dearness of Provisions, commonly supposed to be Tucker, 

 associates the increased cost of living with everything con- 

 nected with the agricultural market which was distasteful to 

 himself. Engrossing of farms, selling by sample, the failings 

 of millers, forestalling and regrating, etc., are supposed by this 

 writer to be at the root of the evil. Soame Jennings, in 

 defence of the existing economy, sought to prove that corn, 

 though increased in price, was no dearer because money 

 had become cheaper. In An Enquiry into the Connection 

 hetween the Present Price of Provisions and the Size of Farms, 

 we find more logical reasoning. The author, a farmer (so 

 he signs himself), not only refuses to attribute the evil to 

 the usual causes assigned by popular writers, such as en- 

 grossing of farms, devices of jobbers and regrators, etc., but 

 points out that an improvement in the manner of living and a 

 greater need for horses had given rise to an increased demand 

 for provisions. He prescribes such sensible remedies as the 

 enclosure, subdivision, and culture of wastes, the utilisation 

 of royal forests for cottages and other public wants, and the 

 complete enfranchisement of the corn trade from legislative 

 restrictions. He further attempts to demonstrate, by a com- 

 parison of home and foreign prices, that the repeal of the Corn 

 Laws would not injure agricultural interests, but would, by 

 equalising prices, merely put an end to rash speculation. 



