A CHRONIC CONDITION OF PANIC 269 



out aggravated by an unusual recurrence of unproductive 

 seasons. 



The wheat harvests in the twenty-two years 1793-1814 ^ may be 

 thus analysed. Fourteen were deficient ; in seven out of the 

 fourteen, the crops failed to a remarkable extent, namely, in 1795, 

 1799, 1800, 1809, 1810, 1811, 1812. Six produced an average yield. 

 Only two, 1796 and 1813, were abundant ; but the latter was long 

 regarded as the best within living memory. Towards the close of the 

 period, the increased extent of the wheat area to some degree com- 

 pensated for the comparative failure of the crops. But the repeated 

 deficiencies created an almost continuous apprehension of real 

 scarcity which was expressed in abnormal prices. To a generation 

 which draws its supphes from sources so remote that climatic con- 

 ditions vary almost infinitely, the panic may seem unintelligible. 

 It was not so in the days of the Napoleonic wars. The quantity 

 available from the United States was scanty, and over the corn 

 areas of Europe a similar series of unproductive seasons seems to 

 have prevailed. To this, however, there was one notable exception. 

 The harvests of 1808 and 1809 were remarkably favourable in 

 France and the Netherlands, and, at the very height of the struggle 

 with Napoleon, it was from the French cornfields that England 

 obtained her additional supphes. 



The deficiency of the home harvests and the consequent fear of 

 scarcity naturally raised prices of corn. The upward tendency was 

 in various ways enormously increased by the progress of the war 

 and the commercial blockade which it developed. No doubt the 

 struggle in which the country was engaged quickened the activity 

 and industry of the population, stimulated agricultural improve- 

 ments, sharpened the mventive faculties to economise both in 

 money and in labour. On the other hand, the war raised the rate 

 of interest, added to the burden of taxation, increased the cost of 

 corn-growing, and withdrew into unproductive channels a con- 

 siderable portion of the capital and labour of the country. Besides 

 these ordinary results, the peculiar character which the struggle 

 gradually assumed threatened to deprive England of any alternative 

 supply of foreign grain which could supplement the resources that 

 she derived from her own soil, from Scotland, and from Ireland. 

 Again and again the political situation was reflected in Mark Lane. 



1 Tooke's History of Prices, ed. 1857, Appendix vi. " Seasons 1792-1866 " 

 vol. vi. pp. 471-83, and vol. i. pp. 213-376, and vol. ii. pp. 1-3. 



