[534] Inquiry into Agricultural Distress (1822), p. 38.

[535] Thoughts on Present Depressed State of Agricultural Industry (1817), p. 6.

[536] Vancouver, General View of the Agriculture of Devon, p. 357.

[537] See 14 Eliz., c. 11, and 39 Eliz., c. 18.

[538] Transactions of the Devon Association, xxix. 291-349.

[539] Average annual prices of wheat were:  1812, 126s. 6d.; 1813, 109s. 9d.; 1814, 74s. 4d.; 1815, 65s. 7d.

[540] Porter, Progress of the Nation, p. 149.

[541] A Defence of the Farmers and Landowners of Great Britain (1814), p. 49.

[542] Ibid. p. x.

[543] Ibid. p. 7.

[544] Agricultural State of the Kingdom, p. 67.

[545] Parliamentary Reports (Committees), v. 72.

[546] Thoughts on the Present Depressed State of the Agricultural Interest (1817), p. 4.

[547] Duncumb, General View of the Agriculture of Hereford, 1805.  The writer of A Defence of the Farmers and Landowners of Great Britain (1814) puts the average crop of wheat in the United Kingdom at 15 or 16 bushels an acre, p. 28.  A very low estimate.

[548] Duncumb, General View of the Agriculture of Hereford, p. 140.

[549] Tooke, History of Prices, ii. 4.

[550] Farmer’s Magazine (1817), p. 69.

[551] The duties were often evaded by smuggling; coasting vessels met the foreign corn ships at sea, received their cargoes, and landed them so as to escape the duty.

[552] Agricultural State of the Kingdom, p. 5.

[553] Observations for the Use of Landed Gentlemen (1817), p. 7.

[554] Defence of the Farmers, &c. (1814); and Parliamentary Reports, v. 72.

[555] Agricultural State of the Kingdom, p. 64.

[556] Ibid. p. 105.

[557] The agricultural horse tax was repealed in 1821, the tax on ponies and mules in 1823.

[558] There were some exceptions, but the overwhelming majority of replies to the letters were couched in the above spirit.

[559] At a time when landlords formed the majority in Parliament, it is curious to find a substantial farmer asserting that ’the landed interest has been, since the corn law of 1773, held in a state of complete vassalage to the commercial and manufacturing, and the farmers of the country in a state very little superior to that of Polish peasants.’

[560] Review of Western Department, pp. 249, 250.

[561] Morton, Cyclopaedia of Agriculture, ii. 26.

CHAPTER XVIII

ENCLOSURE—­THE SMALL OWNER

The war period was one of great activity in enclosure; from 1798 to 1810 there were 956 Bills; from 1811-20, 771.[562]