SCIENCE WITH PRACTICE, 1812 TO 1845 87 



not depend on chance-directed discoveries by unlettered 

 rustics, but on experiments conducted by the rich and 

 learned. History shows that unaided agiiculturists have 

 by sheer doggedness conquered most formidable difficulties. 

 Foreign competition is a more insidious foe than the open 

 revolt of nature's ' wayward team ; ' but the forces arrayed 

 on the side of English agriculture are now indefinitely 

 multiplied. Within the last century capitalists, mechanics, 

 architects, geologists, chemists, physiologists, botanists, 

 have been enlisted on the side of the farmer. The agricul- 

 tural progress of the present century is, in fact, summed 

 up in the application of science and capital to the cultiva- 

 tion of the soil. 



In the years 1812 to 1845 is included one of the most 

 disastrous periods of English farming. It is also the 

 period of Protection.' Inflated prices raised rentals and 

 the standard of living, and vastly increased the area under 

 corn cultivation. Prices fell when the war terminated. 

 Contracts of all kinds had been made in the expectation 

 that those prices would continue. Landlords declared 

 that their ruin was inevitable if rents were reduced, and 

 farmers, holding under leases, felt the full pressure of the 

 crisis. These facts came out in the Reports of the Select 

 Committee on the Corn Trade, which sat in 1814, and in- 

 creased Protection was the result. Farmers had learned 

 that fortunes were to be made by growing corn, and once 

 more expectations and rents rose together. But wheat 

 steadily declined. For a few years farmers paid their 

 exorbitant rents out of capital ; but the end could not be 

 long deferred. Again Select Committees sat in 1821-2. 

 It was shown that rents had increased not less than 70 

 ' See Appendix IV., The Coru Laws. 



