74 Rents, Wages, and Profits in Agriculture 



agricultural production has been, he con- 

 tinues, there is reason to believe that " a 

 far more profitable result would have 

 followed from the amount of skill and 

 enterprise and the application of capital to 

 which that increase must be ascribed, but 

 for the restrictions that have been placed 

 in the supposed interests of our agricul- 

 turalists upon the importation of articles 

 of food from other countries." His idea is 

 that the energies of our farmers had been 

 restricted to the growth of certain descrip- 

 tions of food, and that our farmers had 

 neglected the production of other articles 

 for which a demand would then have 

 arisen. There can be little doubt that, 

 from the point of view of profit, in this 

 period too much attention was given 

 to corn ; in some cases old pasture 

 being broken up, and in others very 

 inferior land being taken into cultivation. 



