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Show 168 OF THE HENT OF LAND. ( CH. III. Janel of the same quality could not have been cultivated, nor could equal rents have been obtained with the same rate of profits and the san1e real 'vages of labour. Effects of a sin1ilar kind took place in our own countrJ from a similar demand for corn during the twenty years fron1 1793 to the end of 1813, though the den1and \vas not occasioned in the satne way. For sorne tin1e before the \var, 'vhich commenced in 1793, we had been in the habit of in1porting a certain quantity of foreign grain to supply our habitual consumption. The war naturally increased the expense of this supply by increasing the expense of freight, insurance, &c. ; and, joined to son1e bad ~easons. and the subsequent decrees of the French governn1ent, raised the price, at which , 'vheat could be i1nported, in the quantity vvanted to supply the den1and, in a very extraordinary manner. This great rise in the price ~f imported corn, although the import bore but a sn1all proportion to what was grown at home, necessarily raised in the same proportion the \Vhole tnass, and gave the satne sort of stin1ulus to dotne~tic agriculture as would have taken place fron1 a great detnand for our corn in foreign countries. In the mean time, the scarcity of hands, occasioned by an extending \Var, an increasing commerce, and the necessity of raising more food, joined to the ever ready invention of an ingenious people when strongly stiin ulated, introduced so tnuch saving of ·manual labour into every department of industry, that the new SEC. III.] OF THE RENT OF LAND. 169 and inferior land taken into cultivation to supply the pressing 'vants of the society, was worked at a 1ess expense of labour than richer soils son1e years before. Yet still the price of grain necessarily kept up as long as the most trifling quantity of foreign grain, which could only be obtained at a very high price, was wanted in order to supply the existing demand. With this high price, which at one titne rose to nearly treble in paper and above double in bullion, ,compared with the prices before the war, it \vas quite impossible that labour should not rise nearly in proportion, and vvith it, of course, as profits had not fallen, all the commodities into which labour had entered. We had thus a general rise in the prices of commodities, or fall in the value of the precious metals, compared with other countries, which our increasing foreign commerce and abundance of exportable comtnodit1es enabled us to s.ustain. That the last land taken into cultivation in 1813 did not require more labour to work it than the last land in1proved in the year 1790, is incontrovertibly proved by the acknowledged .fact, that the rate of interest and profits \vas hjgher in the later period than the earlier. But still the pro- , fits 'vere not so much higher as not to have rendered the interval most extren1ely favourable to the rise of rents. This rise durino· the interval in ' b question, Vilas the theme of universal ren1ark; and though a severe and calan1itous check, frotn a cotnbination. of unfortunate circun1stances, has since occurred; yet the great drainings and per~11anent |