THE LANDED INTEREST AND CORN LAWS 727 
the price was as low as 44s., but on the other hand a prohibi- A.D 
ive duty was levied on importation when the price was below 
50s, and only 6d. a quarter was charged on imported wheat 
when the price rose above 54s. The interruption to commerce, 
sven though no serious effort was made to cut off our food 
supply during the Revolutionary and Napoleonic wars’, seems 
to have given a practical and effective protection to home 
production ; prices rose and the process of bringing additional 
land into cultivation went on apace. 
As a matter of fact, however, the advantages to the com- and gave 
munity generally, which Sir John Sinclair had anticipated, healthy 
. . . . timulus to 
did not arise. By far the greater part of the gain which tillage for 
came from the war prices went to the proprietors of land, & Bme. 
Agriculturists took in new ground and had recourse to 
inferior soil and worse situated land, but additional supplies 
could only be obtained at an increasing rate of cost’. Those 
men, who had good and well situated arable land, were able 
to obtain the same high price, as was necessary to recompense 
the man who worked under less favourable conditions. The 
advantage which accrued from the superior properties or 
exposure of the land, did not affect the labourers at all, and 
could only go temporarily to the tenant during the period of 
his lease; the gain was eventually transferred to the owners 
of property, whether they were enterprising or not. As 
recourse was had to worse soil and the margin of cultivation 
descended, the land-owner and the tithe-owner gained. The 
rise of prices, which rendered more strenuous tillage possible, 
swelled their incomes immensely®, Though the farmer might 
| See above, p. 684. } 
1 This law of diminishing return is a simple statement of a physical fact; it 
was brought into prominence by Ricardo, who made it the basis of his doctrine of 
Rent. It is well to remember too that the form of expression used by Ricardo 
might have been suggested by the actual occurrences of his time. Farming in 
1815 was still largely extensive; a fall of prices resulted immediately in certain 
land going out of cultivation. If prices rose again it might be predicted with 
certainty that the same land would be brought back again into cultivation. It 
was thus perfectly possible to point out the land that was on the margin of 
cultivation and which paid no rent. Now that land is carefully prepared and 
drained, and the soil made, the conditions are very different ; and the language 
which applied to & time when most English farming was still extensive, is not 
exactly suitable to modern conditions when tillage is so highly intensive 
‘Prothero, 104). In bad times land may fall ont of condition, but not immediately 
out of cultivation. 
» These were the facts for which Ricardo’s theory of Rent afforded the