262 THE ENGLISH CORN LAWS 



they were almost equally disastrous. The winters of 1708-9 and 

 1739-40 were two of the three winters l which were famous in the 

 eighteenth century for their prolonged severity. Both were followed 

 by deficient harvests. The wet spring, summer, and autumn of 

 1756 produced a scarcity of corn, and the great heat of 1757 caused 

 the crops to be too light to make good the previous shortage. 

 These unfavourable seasons were not peculiar to England. They 

 prevailed throughout Northern Europe, and the advance of prices 

 was general. But in France, where the Government discouraged 

 exports of grain and encouraged imports, the distress was acuter and 

 more lasting than in England, where the opposite fiscal policy was 

 adopted. England, in other words, profited in these years of 

 scarcity by the large reserve which the bounty helped to maintain. 



With the exception of the years in which these deficient harvests 

 occurred, the period was generally prosperous for the labouring 

 classes in England. The level of prices was low and steady. As 

 compared with the average price of wheat in the seventeenth 

 century, the first sixty-five years of the eighteenth century show a 

 fall of 16 per cent., and this relative cheapness was accompanied by 

 a rise of the same percentage in the wages of agricultural labour. 

 It seems probable that the reign of George II. was the nearest 

 approach to the Golden Age of the labouring classes. Necessaries 

 of life were cheap and abundant ; population showed no rapid 

 increase, but the standard of living improved. Complaints of the 

 low prices 2 were loud. It was said that farmers could not pay their 

 rents and landowners could " scarce support their families." The 

 low range of prices quoted by Eden 3 for the years 1742-1756 is 

 remarkable for a country which was entirely dependent upon home 

 supplies, was a considerable exporter of grain, and in nine out of 

 the fifteen years was engaged in war at home or abroad. 



A succession of prices so low as those shown in the Table 

 on page 263 would naturally have driven a considerable area 

 out of cultivation for corn, and an advance of price would 

 have been caused by a diminution of the supply. The practical 

 effect of the bounty seems to have been that this natural 

 result was to some degree counteracted, though throughout the 



1 The third winter was 1794-6. 



2 See The Landlord's Companion, by W. Allen (1736) ; Considerations on 

 the Present State of Affairs, by Lord Lyttelton (1739). 



3 History of the Labouring Classes, Appendix, p. Ixxx. 



