The Industrial Revolution

Bibliographic data

Monograph

Identifikator:: 1027928145

URN:: urn:nbn:de:zbw-retromon-159926

Document type:: Monograph

Author:: Cunningham, William http://d-nb.info/gnd/128907487

Title:: The Industrial Revolution

Place of publication:: Cambridge

Publisher:: The University Press

Year of publication:: 1922

Scope:: xxii S., S. 404-886

Digitisation:: 2021

Collection:: Economics Books

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728 LAISSEZ FAIRE get high profits occasionally during the wars with France and the United States, a sudden fall of prices ensued at the bimes when importation became possible, and this proved disastrous to the men who were cultivating inferior lands or who had a very small capital. Similar results occurred in years of plenty, when prices dropped suddenly’. On the whole there was an immense stimulus to agriculture, and the landed proprietors gained largely; but, like other trades, farming was subject to fluctuations, and the business of the tenants had a much more speculative character than formerly. The The prospect of peace in 1815, and of the importation of Sailr cereals grown in America and the Baltic lands to English ened with ports, suddenly opened the eyes of landed proprietors to the Peace, instability of their prosperity. A fall of prices would have placed many of the land-owners in grave difficulties; there had, of course, been an unprecedented rise of their incomes during the war. Rents had increased, as it was said, about seventy per cent. since the war began; and few of the land- owners had realised that their gains were merely temporary. They had burdened their land with jointures, or mortgaged it to make real or fancied improvements; and thus, when there began to be a difficulty about getting rents paid, there was a general feeling among the landlords, that if there was a fall either of rents or prices, they would be unable to meet the obligations which they had incurred. It was necessary that the inflated prices of the war period should be main- tained somehow, if the landed proprietors, as a class, were to be saved from ruin. As the whole course of agricultural improvement had been pressed on by their enterprise, and to some extent at their cost? it appeared that the agricultural explanation. There must have been much land in his time which was actually on the margin of cultivation, and was sown with corn or not, according to the prospects of a high or low price. In giving his explanation a general form, Ricardo enunciated a doctrine which applies to differential advantages of every kind; but the public did not sufficiently appreciate the fact that the payments made by the tenant to the landlord are not merely differential, bat at all events include the landlord's share of profit for the capital which he has sunk in the land (Cunningham, Modern Civilisation, 161). The mistaken impression thus diffused tended to increase the irritation which was felt in the commercial community against the landed interest. 1 Arthur Young, Annals of Agriculture, xL1. Pp. 809. * The cost of actual enclosure, and of erecting buildings suited to the improved system of cultivation, had been largely defrayed at the expense of the landlords. A.D. 1776 — 1850.

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