27H HISTORY OF AGRICULTURE 



respectively. But to obtain the real effect of free trade on 

 prices, the prices for the period between 1815 and 1846 must 

 be compared with those between 1846 and the present day, 

 when the fall is enormous. 



The Act of 18 15, which Tooke said had failed to secure 

 any one of the objects aimed at by its promoters, had received 

 two important alterations. In 1828 (9 Geo. IV, c. 60) a duty 

 of ^6s. 8d. was imposed when the price was 50J., decreasing 

 to IS. when it was y^s. 



In 1843 (5 Vict. c. 14) a duty of 20s. was imposed when the 

 price was 50^-., and the duty became ys, when the price 

 reached 6^s. 



A contemporary writer denies that these duties benefited 

 the farmer at all : ' if the present shifting scale of duty was 

 intended to protect the farmer, keep the prices of corn steady, 

 insure a supply to the consumer at a moderate price, and 

 benefit the revenue, it has signally failed. During the con- 

 tinuation of the Corn Laws the farmers have suffered the 

 greatest privations. The variations in price have been extreme, 

 and when a supply of foreign corn has been required it has 

 only reached the consumer at a high price, and benefited 

 the revenue little.'^ Rents of farms were often calculated 

 not on the market price of wheat, but on the price thought 

 to be fixed by the duties, which was occasionally much 

 higher. ^ 



It was also said that but for the restrictions that had 

 been imposed in the supposed interests of agriculture, the 

 skill and enterprise of farmers would have been better directed 

 than it had been. By means of these restrictions and the 

 consequent enhancement of the cost of living, the cultivation 

 of the land had been injuriously restricted, for the energies 

 of farmers had been limited to producing certain descriptions 

 of food, and they had neglected others which would have been 



' Tooke, History of Prices , iv. 32. 

 "^ Cobden's Speech, March 12, 1844. 



