AGRICULTURE UNDER FREE TRADE, 1846-96. 29 



are confronted with the difficulty that official returns of 

 crops and stock only commenced in 1866 and of production 

 not until twenty years later. There is no doubt that 

 the returns nowadays are reliable, and probably the 

 most trustworthy in the world, but it is difficult to say 

 as much of the earlier estimates which I shall mention, not 

 because those who made them were not careful, but 

 because the data at their command were incomplete. 

 With this general observation I will not (as this is not a 

 statistical paper) give details, but will simply state the 

 figures as they stand. 



According to McCulloch, the area under crops i.e., 

 arable land in the United Kingdom was, in 1846, 

 21,930,000 acres. In 1867, according to the Agricultural 

 Returns, it was over 23,000,000 acres, and in 1896 it was 

 under 20,000,000 acres. It will be observed that twenty 

 years after the adoption of Free Trade the land under the 

 plough had increased by 1,000,000 acres, while within the 

 last thirty years it has decreased by 3,000,000 acres. As 

 this fact runs counter to what is probably the common 

 belief, viz., that there was more land under the plough 

 during the existence of the Corn Laws than there has been 

 since, I quote, in support of it, some figures recorded in a 

 paper read by Major Craigie before the Royal Statistical 

 Society in 1883. He there refers to an estimate laid by 

 Mr. William Couling before a Parliamentary Committee on 

 Emigration, which, he says, " we are told was the result of 

 personal researches conducted both between 1796 and 

 1816, and again in 1824-27, involving journies of over 

 50,000 miles in 106 counties of the United Kingdom." 

 The result was an estimate of the " arable and 

 garden land " of the United Kingdom of 19,137,000 

 acres. 



The acreage of the principal crops in England and Wales 

 in 1846, as stated by McCulloch, is given as follows, and I 

 have added for comparison the official figures for 1867 

 and 1896 : 



