CHAPTER III 



FROM THE ABOLITION OF THE CORN-LAWS TO THE 

 DEVELOPMENT OF FOREIGN COMPETITION 



(a) The Agricultural History of the First Thirty Years 

 of Free Trade. 



IN 1846 the landed interest believed that the much dreaded fall 

 in wheat-prices, which had begun after the break-up of the Con- 

 tinental System, would now at last become a serious fact. The 

 Free Traders too believed that the price would fall rapidly, and 

 the only difference between their view and that of the Protec- 

 tionists was that they regarded the prospect from an optimistic 

 instead of a pessimistic standpoint. This coming revolution in prices 

 was also expected to produce considerable alteration in the relative 

 positions of the various types of agricultural holding. James Caird, 

 the best authority on agriculture whom England has ever possessed, 

 predicted in iSsi 1 that in the immediate future there would be a 

 decrease in corn-production, but that with the increasing population 

 and its growing wealth, together with the improved means of com- 

 munication, pasture-farming and market-gardening would prosper. 

 And as these branches of production, which would partly replace 

 arable farming, required industry, care, skill and attention to so much 

 greater a degree than corn-growing, large holdings such as existed in 

 the eastern counties would no longer be profitably manageable by one 

 man. Accordingly there would be a decrease in the number of large 

 farms, and more capital and labour would be concentrated on the 

 working of smaller areas. Thornton 2 , Alister 3 and others wrote in 



1 Caird, English Agriculture^ pp. 483 f. 



2 Thornton, op. cit. p. 329 : " The repeal of the corn-laws might thus cause the race of 

 large capitalists to disappear from the occupation of the soil, and to be replaced by small 

 farmers, holding on an average, perhaps, not more than fifty acres each." 



3 R. Alister, Barriers to the National Prosperity of Scotland^ Edinburgh, 1853, p. 51 : 

 " High-farming must now be the order of the day ; and the inevitable consequence will be, 

 that farms will become less in size, for it will not pay now for one man to take two farms 

 while his capital is barely sufficient for one." 



