Fiscal policy and agriculture 347 



Immediately followed free trade the condition of the 

 agricultural labourers was deplorable in the extreme. 

 The manner in which they fared during these years 

 became a national scandal in the eyes of those who 

 contrasted it with the vast and unprecedented increase 

 in wealth, luxury, and expenditure of the well-to-do 

 classes. Relief from their hopeless position was only 

 found in a continuous and ever-increasing "exodus" 

 from the land. Whatever advantages, therefore, may 

 be claimed as the result of the change in our fiscal 

 policy, such advantages were undoubtedly accom- 

 panied by the greatest calamity that can befall a 

 nation — namely, the destruction of its peasant classes. 



But as we have stated, it is not the intention here 

 to discuss fully the general question of so-called free 

 trade, but mainly to disprove the ever-repeated state- 

 ment that the price of food and the general cost of 

 the labourer's living were less after the free-trade era 

 than before, and to show that the exact contrary was 

 the case. 



Facts prove beyond dispute that the want and dis- 

 tress which existed in the so-called "hungry forties," 

 and specially in the years 1840 to 1843, were not 

 caused by dearness or scarcity of food, but by the 

 want of money wherewith to buy it. Trade was 

 bad, employment scarce, and wages universally low. 

 This distress and want were immensely aggravated 

 by the practice of inclosures already described. So 

 long as the labourer had a bit of land, he could 

 generally get from it something to eat for himself 

 and family. Deprived of that, he became totally 

 dependent on wages. If he could not work he had 

 to starve, or go on the parish. As the purely wage- 

 earning class increased, so the competition for work 



