Variation in the Price and Supply of Wheat. 
191 
The native production of com does not, actually, support 
the 19,000,000, since a considerable quantity of the extraor- 
dinary importation of maize was taken for human consumption 
in Ireland. Foreign barley is also used for malting. It will 
be remembered that large quantities of meat, live stock, and pro- 
visions are imported ; and if the number of non-agricultural 
animals has increased since ]852, they are fed chiefly on foreign 
corn, and for all that the English farmer contributes towards 
their subsistence he is more than repaid by the quantity of 
foreign corn that is eaten by his own horses. 
The revenue accruing from the enormous agricultural im- 
provements which have been effected since 1821 is found in the 
improved subsistence of the whole of the population and in 
the meat, milk, wool, &c. produced for an additional ten millions, 
— with some deduction on account of foreign grain given to 
cattle. 
The excessive dependence on foreign wheat tends to variation 
in price, because the uncertainty of foreign harvests prevents 
steadiness in the supply. Those questions, of vast social and poli- 
tical importance, connected with the food supply of this country 
will probably become subjects of pressing urgency and of prac- 
tical discussion. The rapid increase of population here and on 
the Continent, and the competition of other nations, will force 
the country to the practice of a more self-supporting system of 
agriculture. Probably few persons recognise the extent to which 
agricultural production might be profitably increased by the 
application of a portion of the capital which at present seeks 
every possible way of outlet from this country, but never finds 
its way into our fields. The average amount per acre of capital 
employed in farming is lamentably deficient, notwithstanding 
the wealth of individual farmers and the aggregate wealth of the 
class. It would be easy to enlarge on the excellence of English 
agriculture ; the following striking picture of its defects is from 
the pen of the late Professor Low, one of the most able and 
accurate of agricultural writers : — 
" If we look at the finest parts of England, we might almost imagine that 
the purpose of agriculture was to raise hay for horses and not food for men. 
We find vast tracts of the finest land yielding wretched crops of hay, at an 
enormous expense of the manure which the country produces. But if the 
farmers, or rather the landlords, will take a lesson from the hettcr cultivated 
parts of their own country, or from Flanders, they will learn that far larger 
crops of hay can be produced under a regular system of tillage skilfully pur- 
sued, than upon those large tracts of land kept continually in grass, and 
manured upon the surface. And not only for the production of hay, but for 
the production of the food of man, it is known that a far greater quantity of 
raw produce may be raised rmder a skilful system of agriculture, with a suit- 
able succession of crops than under that system of perennial meadows, in which 
the greater part of the plains of England now is, yielding not one-half the 
