FORTUNES OF AGRICULTURE. 249 



of the statesman who then ruled the destiny of England, 

 Sir R. Peel, that it was wrong to tax the food of the 

 masses, and the repeal of the Corn Laws was the out- 

 come of this conviction. At first "a heavy blow, and 

 great discouragement " fell on the cultivators of the 

 land, the years 1848 — 1852 were very disastrous, many 

 cultivators were ruined, and the price of wheat fell from 

 the average of 69^". ^d. in 1847 to 38^-. ']d. in 185 i. 



The years 1852 and 1853 witnessed the same calamity 

 that oppressed us again in 1879 and 1880 in their con- 

 tinuous rains and floods, rotting the sheep and destroying 

 the crops. Then came the good harvests of 1854, 1855, 

 and 1856 ; the Russian War stopped the supplies of corn 

 from the Black Sea and the Baltic, and the price of 

 wheat rose respectively to 72^. jd.^ J^s. 9^., 89^-. 2d. I 

 myself sold in 1856 a considerable quantity of fine wheat 

 at 100^. per quarter; little attention was at that time 

 bestowed upon American produce, but we have lived to 

 see how the application of steam machinery both on 

 land and sea has annihilated space ; the European 

 supply of agricultural products has fallen off, but tlie 

 importation of American corn and meat has grown to 

 gigantic proportions ; with bad harvests, the partial 

 destruction of our herds by pleuro-pneumonia and foot- 

 and-mouth disease following that direful scourge the 

 rinderpest, and during some of the past years the frightful 

 loss of our flocks by liver rot — with all this added to 

 lowering of prices, I fear many of our best farmers have 

 been ruined, and under present circumstances there 

 seems little or no hope of amelioration. But I trust 

 that, as before, when times are at the worst they begin 



