of those whose sufferings might have been not unnaturally expected to render them irritable. The distresses of the agricultural classes, as it appeared, had been rapidly on the increase for the two last years. In the county of Norfolk, (which, as was well remarked by Mr Western, may be considered as a fair average of the whole country, because, if on the one hand, its agriculture be excellent, on the other, its 'soil is far from being very rich,) it was said that 540 bailable writs were issued in 1814, and 670 in 1815; and during the same period the number of executions rose from 96 to 174. The rise of bailable writs and executions in Suffolk during the same period had been from 430 to 850. In Worcester, from 640 to 890. But the Isle of Ely exceeded all other districts in the increase of its distresses. Within one of its hundreds (occupying about one third of the isle) the number of arrests in 1812 and 1813 was fifty, in 1814 and 1815 two hundred and three. The number of executions had risen in like manner from seven to sixty. To these was added the fact, that at the period of the investigation in the isle and the adjoining parishes, nineteen farms were untenanted. These statements, however, were almost all derived from the proceedings of the sheriff's office, which cannot be supposed to have furnished a complete idea of the whole of the distresses. Neither could the gazettes supply this deficiency, for by a strange anomale in the laws of England, farmers are not entitled to take the benefit of the bankrupt acts unless they add some other dealings to the proper one of their profession. In various parts of the country, but above all in Cambridgeshire, the extent of the evil was rendered more fully apparent by the situation of the poor's rates. In many parishes these had increased to such an extent as completely to swallow up the whole income of those who had anything to pay them-in a word, in the heart of England, extensive districts bore every appearance of desolation and desertion which might be supposed to follow the fiercest ravages of war or pestilence. In the sister kingdom of Ireland the evil was still more extensively appalling. These distresses of the agricultural districts, although they were brought much too early under the consideration of parliament, were not in fact greater than the distresses of other parts of the empire wherein agriculture had never formed the chief object of attention-among the silk manufacturers, for instance, in Spitalfields, and the ́ iron and coal workers of Staffordshire and Wales. The distress was a very general one; and wherever it appeared, among labourers of the ground or manufacturers, it is certain that it had originated in the operation of the same general causes. These causes, however their minutiæ might be disputed, bore all of them no indistinct reference to the highly artificial state wherein our empire and all its concerns had been pla ced by the unexampled length and pertinacity of the war in which we had been engaged. The sufferings of the agricultural and commercial classes were connected with each other in their origin, and they acted reciprocally so as to increase each other in the sequel. The more immediate causes of all, may be considered as having arisen from changes thus produced in the exports, the imports, and the home demands of our commerce, in consequence of the alteration which took place in the system of our empire, and of the continental nations, by reason of the downfall of the power of France. During the continuance of the last war, many things had conspired to sti mulate to the highest extent the exertions of every class of the people of England. Cut off by the decrees of Buonaparte from direct intercourse with some of the richest countries in Europe, the policy which England had adopted in revenge of this exclusion, had greatly increased the action of those many circumstances which naturally tended towards rendering her the great or rather sole entrepot of the commerce of the world. In her the whole of that colonial trade which had formerly been sufficient to enrich, not her alone, but France and Holland al so, had now centered. The inventive zeal of her manufacturers had gone on from year to year augmenting and improving branches of industry, in which even before she had been with out a rival. The increase of manufacturers had been attended with a perpetual increase in the demand for agricultural produce, and the events of the two years of scarcity (as they were called) lent an additional spring to the motions of those whose business it was to meet this demand. The increase which took place in the agricul. tural improvements of the island, was such as had never before been equalled in any similar period of time. Invention followed invention, for economizing labour, and increasing production, till throughout no inconsiderable part of the whole empire the face of the country was entirely changed. "It may safely be said," asserted Mr Brougham," that without at all comprehending the waste lands wholly added to the productive tenantry of the island, not perhaps that two blades of grass now grow where one only grew before, but certainly that five grow where four used to be; and that this kingdom, which foreigners were wont to taunt as a mere manufacturing and trading country, inhabited by a shop. keeping nation, is, in reality, for its size, by far the greatest agricultural state in the world." Nothing could be more unfortunate than the scheme entered into by a num ber of English speculators in 1814, of buying up corn in the Baltic ports for the purpose of importation into England. The scheme ended in the ruin of most of those who engaged in it, and was never after all carried to a very great extent; but such as it was, it was enough to alarm the farmers, and of course, to make them bring every bushel into market. The succeeding harvest in England was a plentiful one, and in consequence the home market was glutted. The legislature, it began to be thought, should protect the farmers, by prohibiting the importation of corn below a certain price; and at last the corn bill was passed, of the policy of which we have already spoken at much length, but which certainly satisfied neither the party who demanded, nor those who condemned it. By raising the import price to a very great extent, from 63s. per quarter to 80s., it threw upon manufacturers the load of a very considerable increase in the rate of the wages of workmen; and by not having been passed sufficiently early, it had allowed time for the alarm among the farmers to sink agricultural prices below their just level. This was the history of the first of our embarrassments; it fell principally on the agriculturists, but it soon affected in a very striking manner the home demand for the produce of the manufacturing districts. The same opening of the continental ports, which furnished the temptation out of which these misfortunes arose, acted in a manner equally unhappy upon a much larger class of specu lators. Misled partly by the violence of their own cupidity, and partly, we suspect, by the false nature of the information received concerning the state of the continent, our manufacturers and merchants thought that the demand for British goods in the countries recently under the sceptre of Napoleon, would be altogether immense. To meet this demand, immense exportations of colonial and manufactured produce took place. But it was soon found, that the supply, like the necessity, had been mightily over-calculated. We had, in truth, in spite of Buonaparte's blockade, continued to supply the continent, during the war, by means of a contraband trade, with such of our articles as were most needed by it, and the people of the continent had gradually become accustomed to do very well without others. The increased demand upon the opening of the ports was utterly insignificant in comparison with what had been expected, and the English adventurers were soon compelled to sell their goods abroad far below the price they had cost themselves at home. Besides, the foreign governments took some alarm at the prodigious scale of our exportation, and began to restrict it by new prohibitory duties, which of necessity lessened the consumption. And thus we had to encounter at the same moment, in these foreign markets, the two chief elements of depressed price-excessive supply, namely, on the one hand, and inadequate demand on the other. In addition to these causes, the reduction in the expenditure of our own government, consequent upon the termination of the great war, was sufficient to throw no inconsiderable damp both on the agriculturalists and the commercialists. Of the extent of the demand thus taken out of the market, some idea may be formed, when it is stated, that in 1814, the expenditure of the army, the navy, and the ordinance, amounted together to 60,237,8521. ; that in 1815, notwithstanding the new war and the battle of Waterloo, the expenditure was less by upwards of 17,000,000l. ; and that in this year, the whole did not probably amount to twofifths of the expenditure of 1814. This great blow fell, indeed, upon every species of industry, but it was soonest felt in its effects upon agriculture. The farmers were everywhere afflicted in a high degree by the operation of these causes; and the proprietors of the soil, burdened with an undue weight of many particular taxes, and, in consequence of the poor laws, with the whole maintenance not only of the labouring poor, but of those thrown out of employment by the manufacturers, partook in this discontent. * This circumstance, which lies at the root of much more than the evils now narrated, is well explained in the following passage from a speech of Mr Brougham's. (April 9.) It is well known to the committee, that whatever may have been the intention of the legislature, (and the meaning of the statute of Elizabeth is sufficiently plain), yet, from a defect in the powers of the act, the money raised for the support of the poor, is paid entirely by the land. Persons in trade only pay in so far as they are also owners of real property. Thus a manufacturer who is deriving ten or twelve thousand a-year from his trade, is rated as if he only had a large building worth four or five hundred a-year beside bis dwelling-house, while his neighbour, who possesses a farm of the same yearly value, pays as much; that is, the man of ten thousand a-year in trade, pays no more than the man of five hundred a-year in land. Yet, only observe the difference between the two in the relation to labour and to the poor. The farmer employs a few hands-the manufacturer a whole colony;-the farmer causes no material augmentation in the number of paupers-the manufacturer multiplies paupers by wholesale; the one supports-the otber makes paupers, manufactures them just as certainly, and in something of the same proportion, as he manufactures goods. The inequality of this distribution is plain enough, but I am now speaking of it in its relation chiefly to the subject of wages. From the abuse of the poor laws, it has be come the prevailing practice to support by parish relief, not merely persons who are At the very time when all these causes were co-operating most effectually to depress the spirits of the agriculturists, a change took place in the state of the currency, which tend ed to aggravate all their distresses in a very remarkable degree. It is not easy to ascertain whether any blame can be with justice attached to the conduct of any particular corporation, but it is certain that the sudden resolution adopted by the Bank of England, of drawing in their issues of paper to the amount of three millions below the average of several preceding years, immediately spread an alarm throughout the whole of the country banks, which of course followed the same course, and indeed lessened their circulation to even a greater extent. The effects of this sudden change were felt by all classes, but by none more than by that great class of the agricultural body-the speculators in land. These persons had commenced a series of operations in the main beneficial to the country, by means of the support which they received from the monied interest, and the liberal accommodation of cash which was, during the last years of the war, accorded to them upon the security of their purchases. This accommodation was now entirely taken away at the very moment when it was most needed, and the consequence was an immediate fall in the value of land; because, without the assistance of further advances from the banker, nothing whatever could be raised upon the land except by bringing it into the market; which last step was universally, and in many cases unwisely avoided, from the feeling that at such a conjuncture the price given for the land would be far from sufficient to cover the expenses which had been, in the preceding years, incurred in its improve ment. Upon the whole, we are far from believing that the reduction in the currency has been productive of any true or general evil to the country; but there can be no doubt that it occurred too suddenly, and disabled from working by disease or age, but those who, though in health, cannot earn enough to maintain them; and, by a short-sighted policy, wholly unaccountable, the custom has spread very widely of keeping down the wages of labour by the application of the poor-rates, as if any thing could equal the folly of paying rates rather than hire; of parting with the disposition of your own money, and of paying for labour, not in proportion to your own demand for that labour, but in proportion to some general average of the district you chance to live in. I pass over the inevitable effect of this arrangement, in raising the total amount of the sums paid for labour, and in throwing upon one farm the expenses of cultivating another less favourably circumstanced; it is enough for my present purpose to remark, that the whole effect of the system is to make the land pay a sum yearly, levied in the most unequal manner, applied in the least economical way, for the purpose of lowering the wages generally, and lowering the wages of manufacturing as well as agricultural labour. From this unquestionable position, I draw two inferences, I think equally undeniable, and bearing directly upon the subject of our present inquiry;-the one is, that the effects of taxation in raising the price of labour are not distributed equally over all classes of the community, but fall exclusively upon the land, the land paying for the rise which the taxes have occasioned, both in agricultural labour, and in all other kinds of work -the other is, that, even if the fall in the price of provisions should apparently restore wages permanently to their former level, the real rate of wages would still be raised, and the real costs of cultivation be augmented, unless the poor rates also had been brought back to their former amount. The sum now levied upon the land for this purpose, exceeds eight millions. Before the American war it was less than two." contributed in a very alarming manner to aggravate the distresses which then pressed with sufficient weight upon all classes of the agriculturists. It was far more easy to account for these distresses, than to propose any feasible method of relieving them. Ac cordingly, the discussion which arose in Parliament, in regard to this part of the subject, was very far from producing any exhibition of satisfactory views, even on the part of those gentlemen who appeared to have studied the matter with the greatest ability and diligence. The reduction of the tax upon malt was one of the measures recommended, and this, we have already seen, was adopted by ministers. The removal of the permission to warehouse foreign corn, was suggested by Mr Western; and the same gentleman recommended a bounty upon exportation-both measures of very du bious policy. Mr Brougham enlarged upon the propriety of removing the penal statutes against usury, and for enabling the farmers and others afflicted by immediate want of capital, to supply their deficiences by means of richer temptation offered to the moneyed men. Others thought the same end might be attained by the issue of money in the way of public loan to the farmers, and argued, that as this species of accommodation had already been afforded to the mercantile, there could be no reason for withholding it from the agricultural body. The discussions to which these various proposals gave birth, were loaded with so many dis cordant statements, and irreconcileable arguments, that no step was adopt ed by the legislature on the instant; and ere long, things took such a turn, that its interference, in any such shape, ceased to be regarded as desirable, even by those who had most loudly called for it, both within and without the walls of Parliament. As the year advanced, the inclemen cy of the weather was such, that the fears of the corn-growers lest they should be ruined by the continuance of a too great abundance in the market, were very soon lost altogether in the fears of the consumers, lest there should be too little. And in truth, it became sufficiently manifest in the issue, that had Parliament rashly adopted any of the violent measures proposed by some of its members, in regard to the importation of foreign corn, such precipitation must have been attended with the most calamitous effects upon the lower orders of the people. As it was, the distress of the poor population in many counties was excessive, and in some manufacturing districts, where a less rigid morality characterizes the minds of the people, their distress led to acts of serious violence, which were not checked without very decided measures on the part of the executive. In Norfolk, Suffolk, Huntingdon, and Cambridge, the same spirit of tumult successively made its appearance. The workmen in different towns of these counties, irritated by the reduction which had taken place in their wages, and alarmed at the same time by the prospect of a general scarcity of provisions, thought themselves equally entitled to blame the manufacturers and the farmers, and destroyed indiscriminately the machinery of the former, and the barns and rick yards of the latter. In Staffordshire, the stoppage of several great iron works produced an immediate stoppage in some of the immense collieries, and the men thus thrown out of employment, being commonly supposed to be of a very rude and savage disposition, did not begin to manifest symptoms of riot, without exciting very serious alarm in the minds of their neighbours. The colliers, however, did not carry themselves in the sequel so as to justify these apprehensions. They filled huge |