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.