118 SECTIONAL ADDRESSES. 



was the harvest failure of 1816. In the latter part of 1810 (Decem- 

 ber) wheat fell in England to 55s. Id., although no grain imports were 

 allowed, except of oats. Early in 1816 the United Kingdom was 

 actually exporting a little wheat. Then came a terrible spring— a long 

 irost ; snow lying about Edinburgh in May ; all the rivers of Western 

 Europe in flood. An equally disastrous summer followed. There was 

 dearth, in places amounting to real famine, everywhere — worst of all in 

 Germany. Unlike France, the German States of a century ago were 

 extraordinarily ill-provided with roads. What roads there were had 

 gone to pieces in the wars. In winter even the mails could hardly get 

 through with sixteen and twenty horses. Food supplies could not be 

 moved over long distances by land; and the slightly more favoured 

 regions could not help the most unfortunate. There was a far wider 

 gap between prices in Eastern and Western Germany in 1816 than there 

 had been in the last bad famine year (1772). Each German State, in 

 its. anxiety, began to forbid export early in 1816, thus making things 

 w^orse. At Frankfurt, the representatives of the German States, 

 gathered for the Diet, could hardly feed their horses. Prices rose 

 amazingly and quite irregularly, with the varying food conditions of tlie 

 various provinces. In the spring of 1817 pallid, half-starved people 

 were w^andering the fields, hunting for and grubbing up overlooked and 

 rotten potatoes of the last year's crop. 



In England the harvest failure of 1816 drove wheat up to 103s. 7d. 

 a quarter for December of that year, and to 112s. 8J. for June of 

 1817. In Paris the June price in 1817 was equivalent to 122s. 5t/. 

 At Stuttgart the May price was equivalent to 138s. 7c/. These are 

 only samples. Think what these figures mean at a time when an 

 Enghsh agricultural labourer's wage was about 9s. M., and a French 

 or German unskilled wage far less. It must be recalled that there 

 were no special currency causes of high prices either in France or 

 Germany. These were real dearth prices. In the spring of 1817 the 

 French Government was buying corn wherever it could find it — in 

 England, North Africa, America — as another bad harvest was feared. 

 Happily, the 1817 harvest was abundant, here and on the Continent. 

 By September the Mark Lane price of wheat was 77s. 7d., and the 

 Paris price 71s. Vd. 



I have gone into price details for the purpose of drawing a contrast 

 between a centui-y ago and to-day. Except for the damage done to 

 the German roads, the wars had very little to do with these food 

 troubles of 1816-17. High and fluctuating food prices were the natural 

 consequence of the general economic position of Western Europe a 

 century ago. It was only in the most comfortable age in all history — 

 the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries — that low and stable 

 food prices came to be regarded as normal. In the eighteenth century, 

 when England fed hprself and often had an exportable surplus, fluctua- 

 tions were incessant. Take the ten years 1750-1760. The mean price 

 of wheat at Eton in 1752 was 45 per cent, above the mean price in 1750. 

 The mean price in 1757 was nearly 100 per cent, above the mean price 

 of 1760. On Lady Dav 1757 the price was 60s. 5id. On Lady Day 

 1769 it was 37s. id. On Lady Day 1761 it was 26s. Sd. The 1761 

 mean price was exactly half the 1757 mean price. 



