SCIENCE WITH PRACTICE, 1812 TO 1845 91 



tal, bad become parish paupers ; bankruptcies, seizures, 

 executions, imprisonments for debt, were universally preva- 

 lent. The evidence laid before the Select Committee of 

 1821 confirms the truth of these reports. In Dorsetshire, 

 for instance, fifty-two farmers, cultivating between them 

 24,000 acres, failed between 1815 and 1820. Eents were 

 lowered in Somersetshire by a third, and the small farmers 

 were reduced in point of diet to the condition of labourers, 

 and the latter were compelled to subsist on bread and pota- 

 toes. In Sussex, again, rents fell, upon an average, 53 per 

 cent. Even on large farms in Norfolk tenants suffered 

 severely, and put down their chaise and riding horse. The 

 blow fell the more heavily on the southern counties, among 

 other reasons because the old practice of lodging and feed- 

 ing labourers in farmhouses had been discontinued during 

 the war, and money wages could only be paid by unprofit- 

 able sales of produce. Rents fell into arrear ; tithes and 

 poor rates remained unpaid ; improvements were discon- 

 tinued ; live stock dwindled, and gangs of poachers and 

 depredators kept the country in continual alarm. Nume- 

 rous tradesmen, innkeepers, and shopkeepers, who depended 

 on farmers for their principal custom, were involved in the 

 same ruin. War prices were gone, war taxes remained. 

 Out of falling profits owners of land were unable to meet 

 augmented taxation and heavy charges ; occupiers could 

 not pay rents which had been raised upon fallacious esti- 

 mates of agricultural prosperity, and were slowly and re- 

 luctantly reduced. Meanwhile the credit of the paper 

 currency was undermined ; bank notes were discounted at 

 a loss, and guineas sold at a premium. The failure of 

 numerous county banks, which between 1797 and 1814 

 had increased in number from about 200 to 940, added 

 to the ruin of country districts. As the year 1816 ad- 



