CHAPTER XIX. 1816-1837

1816-1837

DEPRESSION

The summer of 1816 was wretched; the distress, aggravated by the bad season, caused riots everywhere. At Bideford the mob interfered to prevent the export of a cargo of potatoes; at Bridport they broke into the bakers' shops. Incendiary fires broke out night after night in the eastern counties. At Swanage six people out of seven were paupers, and in one parish in Cambridgeshire every person but one was a pauper or a bankrupt. Corn rose again: by June, 1817, it was 117s., but fell to 77s. in September.

In 1818 occurred a drought of four months, lasting from May till September, and great preparations were made to ward off the expected famine; immense quantities of wheat came from the Baltic, of maize from America, and beans and maize from Italy and Egypt, with hay from New York, as it was selling at L10 a ton. However, rain fell in September, brown fields suddenly became green, turnips sprang up where none had appeared, and even spring corn that had lain in the parched ground began to grow, so the fear of scarcity passed.

In 1822 came a good season, which produced a great crop of wheat; in the lifetime of the existing generation old men declared that such a harvest had been known only once before; imports also came from Ireland to the amount of nearly a million quarters, so that the price at the end of the year was 38s., and the average price for the year was 44s. 7d. Beef went down to 2s. 5d. a stone and mutton to 2s. 2d. The cry of agricultural distress again rose loudly. Farmers were still, though some of the war taxes had been remitted, heavily taxed; for the taxes on malt, soap, salt, candles, leather, all pressed heavily. The chief cause of the distress was the long-felt reaction after the war, but it was aggravated by the return to cash payments in 1819. Gold had fallen to its real value, and the fall in gold had been followed by a fall in the prices of every other article. The produce of many thousand acres in England did not sell that year for as much money as was expended in growing it, without reckoning rent, taxes, and interest on capital. Estates worth L3,000 a year, says the same writer, some years since, were now worth L1,000. Bacon had gone down from 6s. 6d. to 2s. 4d. a stone; Southdown ewes from 50s. to 15s., and lambs from 42s. to 5s.

A Dorset farmer told the Parliamentary committee that since 1815 he knew of fifty farmers, farming 24,000 acres, who had failed entirely.

In the Tyne Mercury of October 30, 1821, it was recorded that Mr. Thos. Cooper of Bow purchased 3 milch cows and 40 sheep for L18 16s. 6d. which sum four years previously would only have bought their skins. Prime beef was sold in Salisbury market at 4d. retail, and good joints of mutton at 3-1/2d. Everywhere the farmers were complaining bitterly, but 'hanging on like sailors to the masts or hull of a wreck'. In Sussex labourers were being employed to dig holes and fill them in again, proof enough of distress but also of great folly. Many thousands of acres were now a mass of thistles and weeds, once fair grass land ploughed up during the war for wheat, and abandoned at the fall of prices. There were no less than 475 petitions on agricultural distress presented to the House from 1820 to March 31, 1822. In 1822, it was proposed that the Government should purchase wheat grown in England to the value of one million sterling and store it; also that when the average price of wheat was under 60s. the Government should advance money on such corn grown in the United Kingdom as should be deposited in certain warehouses, to an extent not exceeding two-thirds the value of the corn. There were not wanting men, however, who put the other side of the question. In a tract called The Refutation of the Arguments used on the Subject of the Agricultural Petition, written in 1819, it was said that the increase in the farmer's expenditure was the cause of his discontent. 'He now assumes the manners and demands the equipage of a gentleman, keeps a table like his landlord, anticipates seasons in their productions, is as choice in his wines, his horses, and his furniture.' Let him be more thrifty. 'Let him dismiss his steward, a character a few years back only known to the great landowner, and cease from degrading the British farmer into a synonym for prodigality.' Lord Liverpool, in the House of Lords, in a speech which roused great opposition among agriculturists, minimized the distress; distress there was, he admitted, but it was not confined to England, it was world-wide; neither was it produced by excessive taxation, for since 1815 taxation had been reduced 25 per cent., while though rents and prices had fallen they were much higher than before the war. Another writer said at the time, 'Individuals of all classes have of late been as it were inflated above their natural size: let this unnatural growth be reduced; let them resume their proper places and appearances, and the quantum of substantial enjoyment, real comfort and happiness, will not be found lessened.' It was also asserted that the taxes on malt, leather, soap, salt, and candles, were not very pressing.

The persistent cries of distress produced a Bill giving still further protection to corn-growers, which was fortunately not carried into effect. There was no doubt, however, about the reality of the crisis through which the landed classes were passing. Many of the landowners were heavily in debt. Mortgages had been multiplied during the war, and while prices were high payment of interest was easy; but when prices fell and the tenant threw up his farm, the landlord could not throw over the mortgage, and the interest hung like a dead weight round his neck.

The price to which wheat fell at the end of 1822 was to be the lowest for some years; it soon recovered, and until 1834 the average annual prices ranged from 53s. to 68s. 6d., while in 1825 beef at Smithfield was 5s. and mutton 5s. 4d. a stone.

In 1823 there was a marked improvement, and the king's speech congratulated the country on 'the gradual abatement of those difficulties under which agriculture has so long suffered.' In 1824 'agriculture was recovering from the depression under which it laboured.' In 1825 it was said, 'there never was a period in the history of this country when all the great interests of the nation were in so thriving a condition.' In that year over-speculation produced a panic and agricultural distress was again evident. In 1826 Cobbett said, 'the present stock of the farms is not in one-half the cases the property of the farmer, it is borrowed stock.' In 1828 all the farmers in Kent were said to be insolvent.

At the meeting of Parliament in 1830 the king lamented the state of affairs, and ascribed it to unfavourable seasons and other causes beyond the reach of legislative remedy. Many had learnt that high protection was no protection for farmers, and it was stated more than once that the large foreign supply of grain, though only then about one-third of the home-grown, depressed our markets. At the same time, it must be admitted that agriculture, like all other industries, was suffering from the crisis of 1825. In 1830, the country was filled with unrest, in which the farm labourer shared. His motives, however, were hardly political. He had a rooted belief that machinery was injuring him, the threshing machine especially; and he avenged himself by burning the ricks of obnoxious farmers. Letters were sent to employers demanding higher wages and the disuse of machines, and notices signed 'Swing' were affixed to gates and buildings. Night after night incendiary fires broke out, and emboldened by impunity the rioters proceeded to pillage by day. In Hampshire they moved in bodies 1,500 strong. A special Commission was appointed, and the disorders put down at last with a firm hand. In 1828 there had been a relaxation in the duties on corn, the object of the Act passed in that year being to secure the farmer a constant price of 8s. a bushel instead of 10s. as in 1815, and by a sliding scale to prevent the disastrous fluctuations in prices. The best proof of its failure is afforded by the appointment of another parliamentary committee in 1833 to inquire into the distressed state of agriculture. At this inquiry many witnesses asserted that the cultivation of inferior soils and heavy clays had diminished from one-fourth to one-fifth. It was also asserted that farmers were paying rent out of capital. Tooke, however, thought there was much exaggeration of the distress, which was proved by the way the farmers weathered the low prices of 1835, when wheat, after a succession of four remarkably good seasons, averaged 39s. 4d. for the year. In these abundant years, too, he asserts that the home supply was equal to the demand, though the committee of 1833 had stated that this had ceased to be the case. Another committee, the last for many years, sat in 1835 to consider the distress; but although prices were low the whole tenor of the evidence established the improvement of farming, the extension of cultivation, and the increase of produce, and it was noticed at this time that towns dependent on agriculture were uniformly prosperous.

On the whole, in spite of exaggeration from interested motives, the distress for the twenty years after the battle of Waterloo was real and deep; twenty years of depression succeeded the same period of false exaltation. The progress, too, during that time was real, and made, as was remarked, because of adversity. From this time agriculture slowly revived.

On one point both of the two last committees were agreed, that the condition of the labourer was improved, and they said he was better off than at any former period, for his wages remained the same, while prices of necessaries had fallen. That his wages went further is true, but they were still miserably low, and he was often housed worse than the animals on the farm. 'Wattle and dab' (or mud and straw) formed the walls of his cottage, the floors were often of mud, and all ages and both sexes frequently slept in one room. A block of ten cottages were put up in the parish of Holmer at the commencement of the nineteenth century, which were said to have combined 'comfort, convenience, and economy;' they each contained one room 12 feet by 14 feet and 6 feet high with a bedroom over, and cost L32 10s. each. They were evidently considered quite superior dwellings, far better than the ordinary run of labourer's cottages. Cobbett gives us a picture of some in Leicestershire in 1826; 'hovels made of mud and straw, bits of glass, or of old cast-off windows, without frames or hinges frequently, and merely stuck in the mud wall. Enter them and look at the bits of chairs or stools, the wretched boards tacked together to serve for a table, the floor of pebble, broken brick, or of the bare ground; look at the thing called a bed, and survey the rags on the backs of the wretched inhabitants.' The chief exceptions to this state of affairs were the estates of many of the great landlords. On that of the Earl of Winchelsea in Rutland, the cottages he had built contained a kitchen, parlour, dairy, two bedrooms, and a cow-house, and several had small holdings attached of from 5 to 20 acres. Not long before, wages in Hampshire and Wiltshire were 5s. and 6s. a week.

In 1822 it was stated that 'beef and mutton are things the taste of which was unknown to the mass of labourers. No one has lived more in cottages than I, and I declare solemnly I never remember once to have seen such a thing.' A group of women labourers, whom Cobbett saw by the roadside in Hampshire, presented 'such an assemblage of rags as I never saw before even amongst the hoppers at Farnham.'

The labourer's wages may have gone a little further, but he had lost his by-industries, his bit of land and rights of common, and would have had a very different tale to tell from that of the framers of the reports above quoted.

In spite of the complaints made that the improvements of the coaches and of the roads drew the countryman to the towns, many stirred hardly at all from their native parish, and their lives were now infinitely duller than in the Middle Ages. The great event of the year was the harvest home, which was usually a scene of great merry-making. In Devonshire, when a farmer's wheat was ripe he sent round notice to the neighbourhood, and men and women from all sides came to reap the crop. As early as eleven or twelve, so much ale and cider had been drunk that the shouts and ribald jokes of the company were heard to a considerable distance, attracting more helpers, who came from far and near, but none were allowed to come after 12 o'clock. Between 12 and 1 came dinner, with copious libations of ale and cider, which lasted till 2, when reaping was resumed and went on without interruption except from the squabbles of the company till 5, when what were called 'drinkings', or more food and drink, were taken into the field and consumed. After this the corn reaped was bound into sheaves till evening, when after the sport of throwing their reaping hooks at a sheaf which had been set up as a mark for a prize, all proceeded to supper and more ale and cider till the small hours.

No wages were paid at these harvestings, but the unlimited amount of eating and drinking was very expensive, and about this date the practice of using hired labour had largely superseded this old custom.

The close of this period was marked by two Acts of great benefit to farmers: the Poor Law Amendment Act of 1834 (4 & 5 Wm. IV, c. 76), which reduced the rates, and marked 'the beginning of a period of slow recovery in the labourer's standard of life, moral and material, though at first it brought him not a little adversity'; and the Tithe Commutation Act of 1836 (6 & 7 Wm. IV, c. 71), which substituted for the tithe paid in kind or the fluctuating commuted tithe, a tithe rent charge equivalent to the market value, on a septennial average, of the exact quantities of wheat, barley, and oats, which made up the legal tithes by the estimate in 1836. Thus was removed a perpetual source of dispute and antagonism between tithe-payer and tithe-owner. The system hitherto pursued, moreover, was wasteful. In exceptionally favourable circumstances the clergy did not receive more than two-thirds of the value of the tithe in kind. The delays were a frequent source of loss. In rainy weather, when the farmer desired to get his crops in quickly, he was obliged to shock his crops, give the tithe-owners notice to set out their tithes, and wait for their arrival; in the meantime the crop, perhaps, being badly damaged.

FOOTNOTES:

Walpole, History of England, i. 161.

Inquiry into Agricultural Distress (1822), p. 40.

Walpole, op. cit. ii. 22.

A Letter to the Earl of Liverpool by an Old Tory, 1822. The Committee on Agricultural Distress found that farmers were paying rent out of capital (Parliamentary Reports. Committees, v. 71), and that leases fixed on the basis of the high prices of the war meant ruin to the farmer if held to his engagement.

Parliamentary Reports, Committees, ix. 138.

Cobbett, Rural Rides (ed. 1885), i. 3, 16.

Report of the Committee on Agricultural Depression (1822), pp. 3, 4.

Walpole, History of England, ii. 23.

Hansard, ix. 1544.

Ibid. x. 1, 2.

Ibid. xii. 1.

Rural Rides, ii. 199.

Walpole, History of England, ii. 526. The distress was aggravated by rot among sheep, which is said to have destroyed one-fourth of those in the kingdom. See Parliamentary Reports, Commissioners (1836), viii (2), p. 198.

Tooke, History of Prices, ii. 227.

Report of 1833, p. 6.

Tooke, History of Prices, ii, 238.

Imports fell considerably at this date; they were:

1832 1,254,351 quarters. 1833 1,166,457 " 1834 981,486 " 1835 750,808 " 1836 861,156 " 1837 1,109,492 " 1838 1,923,400 "

There were also considerable exports:

1832 289,558 quarters. 1833 96,212 " 1834 159,482 " 1835 134,076 " 1836 256,978 " 1837 308,420 " 1838 158,621 "

McCulloch, Commercial Dictionary (1847), p. 438.

Porter, Progress of the Nation, p. 151.

See Duncumb, General View of Herefordshire, (1805).

Rural Rides, ii. 348.

London, Encyclopaedia of Agriculture (1831), p. 1156.

Cobbett, Rural Rides, i. 149. The average, however, now was about 9s.; see Parliamentary Reports, v. 72.

A Letter to the Earl of Liverpool by an Old Tory (1822), p. 16.

Rural Rides, i. 18.

Moore, History of Devonshire, i. 430.

By this Act and the various amending Acts the law of settlement, so long a burden on the labourer, is now settled thus: a settlement may be acquired by birth, parentage, marriage, renting a tenement, by being bound apprentice and inhabiting, by estate, payment of taxes, and by residence.--Stephen, Commentaries on the Laws of England (1903), iii. 87.

Hasbach, op. cit. p. 217.

R.A.S.E. Journal (1901), p. 9.