r 



RECOVERY 387 



to rise in value. Porter stated that the United Kingdom 

 could never be habitually dependent on the soil of other 

 countries for the food of its people, there was not enough 

 shipping to transport it if it could. ^ 



Caird prophesied that in the next eighty years the value of 

 land in England would more than double. The wellnigh 

 universal opinion was that as the land of England could not 

 increase, and the population was constantly increasing, land 

 must become dearer. Men failed to foresee the opening of 

 millions of acres of virgin soil in other parts of the world, 

 and the improvement of transport to such an extent that 

 wheat has occasionally been carried as ballast. About twenty- 

 ve or thirty years after these prophecies their fallacy began 

 :o be cruelly exposed.^ 



About 1853^ matters began to mend, chiefly owing to the 

 great expansion in trade that followed the great gold dis- 

 coveries in America and Australia. Then came the Crimean 

 War, with the closing of the Baltic to the export of Russian 

 corn, wheat in 1855 averaging 74J. Sd., and in the next decade 

 the American War crippled another competitor, the imports 

 of wheat from the United States sinking from 16,140,000 cwt. 

 in 1863 to 635,000 cwt. in 1866. From 1853 until 1875 

 English agriculture prospered exceedingly, assisted largely by 

 good seasons. Between 1854 and 1865 there were ten good 

 harvests, and only two below the average. Prices of produce 

 rose almost continuously, and the price and rent of land with 

 them. The trade of the country was good, and the demand 

 for the farmer's products steadily grew ; the capital value of 

 the land, live stock, and crops upon it, increased in this period 

 by ;^445 ,000,000.* 



^ Progress of the Nation^ pp. 1 3 7-9. 



' Yet as the growth of population overtakes the corn and meat supply, 

 these prophets may in the end prove correct. 



* The Great Exhibition of 185 1 was said to have widely diffused the 

 use of improved implements. — R. A. S. E. Journal, 1856, p. 54. 



* R.A. S.E./ournalt 1890, p. 34. 



