402 History of the Eiiglish Landed Interest. 



sion ; and thougli the Berlin decree was, for what it purported 

 to do, so much waste paper, the vague fear lest our flag should 

 be excluded from the Baltic corn trade, sent up prices in the 

 home markets. The unfavourable harvest of 1809, however, 

 not only proved our dependence upon foreign grain supplies, 

 but our ability, in spite of Napoleonic edicts, to obtain them. 

 1,500,000 quarters of wheat, as well as 600,000 quarters of other 

 grain and flour, entered our ports during the ensuing year. 

 It seems to have been a more than usually disastrous season 

 for English commercial credit. Failures prevailed in almost 

 every important trade, not least so in that of the com mer- 

 chant, where speculators, deceived by the prospects of another 

 bad harvest, bought wheat in the spring at 116.§. per quarter, 

 which in the autumn they were glad to get rid of at 95s. In 

 1811 the effects of the large grain importation of the preced- 

 ing year began to lower prices in the home markets, a process 

 which, though checked by the bad harvest of 1812,' continued 

 throughout 1813, and again induced Parliament to alter the 

 protective tariff. The French defeats in the following year, 

 and the general peace which eventually ensued, tended to 

 lower the prices of the necessaries of Ufe. 



It was then that the greatest danger began to menace the 

 monopoly of the landlord. The Landed Interest may be com- 

 pared at this period to a goodly ship exposed to the fury of a 

 gathering storm. So fierce raged the gale of popular oppro- 

 brium that all which was not absolutely necessary to buoyancy 

 had to go by the board. First the property qualifications of 

 members of parliament, secondly the control of the rates of 

 labour, and thirdly the State protection of agricultural pro- 

 duce, had, like masts, to be cut away before the dismantled 

 privileges of the seignorial class could find a harbour of refuge 

 from the angry waves of popular agitation. 



One almost wonders that the political leaders of the threat- 

 ened Interest, warned by the lowering horizon, did not (to 

 carry forward our metaphor) free the ship from anything such 



^ Wheat was selling in August, 1812, at 155s. a quarter, and had sunk 

 to 112s. just twelve months later. 



