762 TRANSACTIONS OF SECTION M. 



in 1914. Nevertheless, even at that time, the country was not self-supporting 

 in breadstuffs. In 1810, 1,305,000 qrs. of wheat and 473,000 cwt. of flour were 

 imported. The average annual imports of wheat from 1801 to 1810 were 

 601,000 qrs., and from 1811 to 1820 458,000 qrs. Up to the last decade of the 

 eighteenth century England was an exporting rather than an importing country, 

 and bounties on exports were offered when prices were low, from 1689 to 1814, 

 though none were, in fact, paid after 1792. 



During the war period we are considering, the annual average price of wheat 

 ranged from 49s. 3d. per qr. in 1793 to 126.S. 6f/. per qr. in 1812 ; the real price 

 in the latter year, owing to the depreciation of the currency, being not more 

 than 100s. In 1814 the nominal price was 74s. 4rf. and the real price not more 

 ■-han 54?. per qr.'' The extent to which these high and widely varying prices 

 were affected by the European war has been the subject of controversy. As 

 we mainly depended on the Continent for any addition to our own resources, 

 the diminished production during the earlier year.s in the Netherlands, Ger- 

 many, and Italy, and in the later years of the war in Russia, Poland, Prussia, 

 Saxony, and the Peninsula, reduced possible supplies. At the same time the 

 rates of freight and insurance, especiaUy in the later years of the war, 

 increased very considerably. Tooke mentions a freight of 30?. per ton on hemp 

 from St. Petersburg in 1809. On the other hand, a powerful impetus was given 

 to home production, which was stimulated by Government action and private 

 enterprise. Inclosure was encouraged by the General Inclosure Act of 1801, 

 and 1,934 Inclosure Acts were passed from 1793 to 1815. The schemes for 

 increasing and conserving food supplies were various. The Board of Agricul- 

 ture, for example, offered prizes of 50. 30, and 20 guineas respectively to the 

 persons who in the spring of 1805 cultivated the greatest number of acres — 

 not less than 20 — of spring wheat." In 1795 a Select Committee recommended 

 that bounties should be granted to encourage the cultivation of potatoes on 

 'lands at present lying waste, uncultivated, or unproductive,' and that means 

 .should at once be adopted to add at least 150,000 and perhaps 300,000 acres to 

 thn land under cultivation ' as the only effectual means of preventing that impor- 

 tation of corn, and disadvantages therefrom, by which this country has already 

 so deeply suffered.' Another view of importation is presented by Tooke, who, 

 in a discussion of the effect of the war, says : ' Although the war cannot 

 have been said to have operated upon the supply of agricultural produce of our 

 own growth and other native commodities, sufficiently to outweigh the circum- 

 stances favourable to reproduction, it operated most powerfully in increasing 

 the cost of production and in obstructing the supply of such commodities as we 

 stood in need of from abroad. It is therefore to war chiefly as affecting the 

 cost of production and diminishing the supply, by obstructions to importation, 

 at a time when, by a succession of unfavourable seasons, our own produce became 

 inadequate to the average consumption, that any considerable proportion of the 

 range of high prices is to be attributed.'' 



The main cause of high prices and scarcity was the failure of the harvest'?. 

 Mr. Prothero thus analyses the wheat harvests of the twenty-two years 179;-3- 

 1814 : ' Fourteen were deficient ; in seven o"ut of the fourteen the crops faile<l 

 to a remarkable extent, namely in 1795, 1799, 1800, 1809, 1810, 1811, 1812. Six 

 produced an average yield. Only two, 1796 and 1813, were abundant; but the 

 latter was long regarded as the best within living memory. ' 



It appears paradoxical, bu^ in a sense it is true, to say that the scarcity of 

 wheat in certain years arose from the fact that the country was too laiyely 

 dependent on its own crop. The risk of a bad harvest in a climate such as that 

 of the British Isles must always be serious, and by the fortune of war this 

 risk between 1793 and 1814 turned out to be very high. When supplies are 

 drawn from the four quarters of the globe, it is evident that the risk of a. 

 shortage in time of peace is greatly reduced. Whether in a great war it is 

 preferable to be more dependent on the sea than on the season is debatable. 



* Porter's Progress of the Nation, by F. W. Hirst, p. 183. 



' Annals of Agriculture, 1805. 



» Histnrii of Prices, ed. 1838, vol. i. p. 116. 



' English Farinituj, Past and Present, p. 269. 



