HEAVY TAXATION 245 



prices had attracted a large amount of capital to the land, so 

 that there was very rapid and extensive progress, the methods 

 of tillage were improved, large tracts of inferior pasture con- 

 verted into arable, much, however, of which was soon to revert 

 to weeds ; there were many enclosures, and many fens, com- 

 mons, and wastes reclaimed. But there was a reverse side to 

 this picture of prosperity, even in the case of landlord and 

 farmer. The burden of taxation was crushing ; a contemporary 

 writer, a farmer of twenty-five years standing,^ wrote that, 

 with the land tax remaining the same, there was a high pro- 

 perty tax, house and window taxes were doubled, poor rates 

 in some places trebled, highway, church, and constable rates 

 doubled and trebled, and there were oppressive taxes on malt 

 and horses, both nags and farm animals. A man renting 

 a farm at £jo and keeping two farm-horses, a nag, and a dog, 

 would pay taxes for them of £$ os. 6<f., a fourteenth of his 

 rent.^ Indeed, poor rates of 16s. and 20s. in the £ were 

 known,^ and they were occasionally more than the whole rent 

 received by the landlord forty years before. A Devonshire 

 landowner complained that seven-sixteenths out of the annual 

 value of every estate in the county was taken from owners 

 and occupiers in direct taxes.'* And the Committee on Agri- 

 cultural Depression of 1822 asserted that during the war taxes 

 and rates were quadrupled.'"' Blacksmiths, whitesmiths, collar 

 makers, ropers, carpenters, and many other tradesmen with 

 whom the farmer dealt, raised their prices threefold ; and it was 

 openly asserted that the high prices of grain and stock were 

 not proportionate to the increase of other prices. Much of 

 the grass land broken up in the earlier years of the war was 

 before the close in a miserable condition, for it was cropped 

 year after year without manure, and was worn out. On the 



^ A Defence of the Fanners and Landowners of Great Britain (1814) 



p.49- 

 2 Ibid. p. X. 3 ibid_ p. 7. 



* Agricultural State of the Kingdom ^ p. 67. 



* Parliamentary Reports {Committees)^ v. 72. 



