The Descent of the Landlords. 403 



as internal disputes, which might distract the attention of tliose 

 concerned with her navigation. If ever there was a time when 

 everybody connected with the soil, from the cowman to the 

 peer, should have combined in presenting a solid front to the 

 common foe, surely it was now, when the leaders of the Man- 

 chester school were overrunning the country to beat up re- 

 cruits for their coming raid on the monopoly of the landlord. 

 Yet never was there less cohesion between the three classes 

 which composed the Landed Interest. Proprietors had been 

 doubling their rentals, enclosing commons, and expending 

 capital in the erection of new homesteads. Farmers, attracted 

 by the prospects of making fortunes out of wheat husbandry, 

 had grasped at opportunities for pi'olonging their leases, had 

 entered with light hearts on the arduous task of reclaiming 

 waste lands, and had ploughed up excellent pasturage without 

 a qualm of conscience. Meanwhile, labourers had been starving 

 on high prices and low wages, while those who employed them 

 had grown rich. 



The peace came, prices fell ; in 1819 the Bank Restriction 

 Act was repealed, and the time of reckoning had arrived. The 

 great flaw in the system of long agricultural leases became 

 evident, and Ricardo's theory of rents had hardly been pub- 

 lished before it proved inapplicable to many of the vicissitudes 

 of circumstance and season. Farmers now found themselves 

 fettered to contracts which had been designed so as to divide 

 equally the benefits derived from war prices. A large pro- 

 portion of the increased rentals represented the interest on 

 landlords' capital sunk in permanent improvements. Though 

 the jirices of a time of war had ceased, its taxes continued, 

 and it is doubtful whether landlords, if ever so willing, could 

 have ceded any adequate reduction of rents without beggaring 

 their own families. 



All this seems to have been sufficiently clear to the select 

 committees on the corn trade which sat from time to time 

 throughout the early decades of the century. The}'- fully 

 recognised that the landowning class was enormously over- 

 taxed, and the shortest way out of the difficulty would have 

 seemed to be the continuance of the protective system. So it 



