262 BRITAIN FOR THE BRITON 



Here are a few more references to the subject from the 

 same work — 



" Rent of land had risen nearly threefold during the war, and 

 the prices of all consumable goods were hi^ii." * 



" The same parliament, composed largely of landowners, had 

 already passed a bill (1815) which had for its object to maintain 

 the price of corn and keep up rents, while it aimed alr^o at keeping 

 the land under cultivation and providing a sufficient supply of 

 home-grown corn." f 



" Kents, which had been lowered after the fall in prices in 1814-, 

 again rose, and prices fluctuated ; in good years the crops realised 

 less than half that which they produced in bad years. . . . From 

 1820 to 1822 there were no less than 475 petitions to the House of 

 Commons complaining of the distress and of the exhaustion of agri- 

 cultural capital, of high rents and rates, and of the poverty of the 

 farmers, whose rents had been based on the assumption of the higher 

 prices to be secured under the Corn laws." % 



"A good harvest in 18:35 reduced wheat to 35.9. per quarter. 

 Farmers were despondent, and complained that they would be ruined 

 by the plentiful crop, since they could not pay their rents." § 



The pages of the work we are quoting from so fully were 

 intended rather to denounce the old Corn Laws and reveal the 

 ugliness of Protection and the blessings of Free-trade, than to 

 afford examples of the ineptness and the iniquity of the land 

 tenures of Cobden's time, with the object of drastically amend- 

 ing them for the people's good to-day. As they, however, 

 enunciate a living truth in regard to agriculture, this fact must 

 constitute our apology to the author for putting an interpre- 

 tation to his utterances which he probably never intended they 

 should bear. 



FaiiTiiEK PiiooF OF Tenancy System Failures 



In further proof of the impossibility of working the greatest 

 industry of the country on the tenancy system, the Right Hon, 

 Jesse Collings, M.P., in his able work "Land Reform," gives 

 some pertinent facts. 



In the first place he says — 



" The laws relating to land are so complicated that only lawyers 

 can understand them." || 



"Land throughout England is the subject of 'tenure' and not 

 of ownership ; that absolute ownership of land is unknown to 



* " The Free-Trade Jlovcment," p. 43. t Ibid., p. U. 



X Ibid., p. 57. § Ibid., pp. 61, G2. 



11 "Land Keform," the Right Hon. Jesse Collings, M.P., p. 42. 



