CHAPTER II 



HOW BRITISH AGRICULTURE WAS DESTROYED — ITS IN- 

 COMPATIBILITY WITH MANUFACTURES — WHAT FREE- 

 TRADERS CONTEND 



The struggle for Trade-freedom dates further back in Englisli 

 history than there is any need to follow in these pages. The 

 period wliich commenced with the outbreak of the war with 

 France in 1793, and culminated in 1846 with the triumph of 

 Free-traders over the crude Protectionists of that time is, 

 perhaps, the most momentous in the economic history of the 

 country, and that period will be taken in depicting the events 

 which gave birth to the economic system, particularly in regard 

 to agriculture, which has ever since been adopted by Great 

 Britain in defiance of all international precedent. 



For tifty years following the great war with France, British 

 trade and British economical conditions generally were, no 

 doubt, in a deplorable state. Business was bad, employment 

 was difficult to obtain and hard to keep ; wages, in many 

 instances, were at starvation point ; food and most other 

 commodities were dear, and, on the whole, there were far more 

 distress and suffering among the people than could be justified 

 even by the enormous war expenses which, at tlie close of the 

 war in 1815, reached the stupendous total of about £850,000,000. 

 For several years succeeding 1815 little or nothing was done to 

 relieve the strain on the people. Several Bills, it is true, passed 

 through Parliament with the object of affording relief to the 

 taxpayers, but as these either helped land-owners to keep up 

 the price of corn and maintain high rents, or to reheve the 

 well-to-do classes of a portion of their income-tax burdens, the 

 poorer classes were left — as the poor generally arc left in such 

 cases — out in the cold. 



Hard Times. Nobody satisfied 



Nobody was satisfied with the then existing state of affairs ; 

 the price of wheat was generally high, fiuctuatiug between GO^'. 



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