But the edifice of artificial prosperity was already tottering.  After 1812 prices fell steadily,[539] the abundant harvest of 1813 and the opening of the continental ports accelerated this, and by December, 1813, wheat was 73s. 3d.  Yet agriculture had made solid progress.  The Committee of the House of Commons which inquired into the state of the corn trade in 1813 stated that through the extension of, and improvements in, agriculture the agricultural produce of the kingdom had increased one-fourth in the preceding ten years.[540] The high prices had attracted a large amount of capital to the land, so that there was very rapid and extensive progress, the methods of tillage were improved, large tracts of inferior pasture converted into arable, much, however, of which was soon to revert to weeds; there were many enclosures, and many fens, commons, and wastes reclaimed.  But there was a reverse side to this picture of prosperity, even in the case of landlord and farmer.  The burden of taxation was crushing; a contemporary writer, a farmer of twenty-five years standing,[541] wrote that, with the land tax remaining the same, there was a high property tax, house and window taxes were doubled, poor rates in some places trebled, highway, church, and constable rates doubled and trebled, and there were oppressive taxes on malt and horses, both nags and farm animals.  A man renting a farm at L70 and keeping two farm-horses, a nag, and a dog, would pay taxes for them of L5 0s. 6d., a fourteenth of his rent.[542] Indeed, poor rates of 16s. and 20s. in the L were known,[543] and they were occasionally more than the whole rent received by the landlord forty years before.  A Devonshire landowner complained that seven-sixteenths out of the annual value of every estate in the county was taken from owners and occupiers in direct taxes.[544] And the Committee on Agricultural Depression of 1822 asserted that during the war taxes and rates were quadrupled.[545] Blacksmiths, whitesmiths, collar makers, ropers, carpenters, and many other tradesmen with whom the farmer dealt, raised their prices threefold; and it was openly asserted that the high prices of grain and stock were not proportionate to the increase of other prices.  Much of the grass land broken up in the earlier years of the war was before the close in a miserable condition, for it was cropped year after year without manure, and was worn out.  On the whole it may be doubted if the bulk of the farmers of England made large profits during the war; many no doubt profited by the extraordinary fluctuations in prices, and it was those men who ‘kept liveried servants’; but there must have been many who lost heavily by the same means, and the rise of rent, taxes, rates, labour, and tradesmen’s prices largely discounted the prices of corn and stock.  The landowners at this period have generally been described as flourishing at the expense of the community, but their increased rents were greatly neutralized by the weight of taxation and the general rise in prices.  A contemporary writer says that owing to the heavy taxes, even in the war time, he ’often had not a shilling at the end of the year.’[546]