At the meeting of Parliament in 1830 the king lamented the state of affairs, and ascribed it to unfavourable seasons and other causes beyond the reach of legislative remedy.  Many had learnt that high protection was no protection for farmers, and it was stated more than once that the large foreign supply of grain, though only then about one-third of the home-grown, depressed our markets.  At the same time, it must be admitted that agriculture, like all other industries, was suffering from the crisis of 1825.  In 1830, the country was filled with unrest, in which the farm labourer shared.  His motives, however, were hardly political.  He had a rooted belief that machinery was injuring him, the threshing machine especially; and he avenged himself by burning the ricks of obnoxious farmers.  Letters were sent to employers demanding higher wages and the disuse of machines, and notices signed ‘Swing’ were affixed to gates and buildings.  Night after night incendiary fires broke out, and emboldened by impunity the rioters proceeded to pillage by day.  In Hampshire they moved in bodies 1,500 strong.  A special Commission was appointed, and the disorders put down at last with a firm hand.  In 1828 there had been a relaxation in the duties on corn, the object of the Act passed in that year being to secure the farmer a constant price of 8s. a bushel instead of 10s. as in 1815, and by a sliding scale to prevent the disastrous fluctuations in prices.  The best proof of its failure is afforded by the appointment of another parliamentary committee in 1833 to inquire into the distressed state of agriculture.  At this inquiry many witnesses asserted that the cultivation of inferior soils and heavy clays had diminished from one-fourth to one-fifth.[598] It was also asserted that farmers were paying rent out of capital.[599] Tooke, however, thought there was much exaggeration of the distress, which was proved by the way the farmers weathered the low prices of 1835, when wheat, after a succession of four remarkably good seasons, averaged 39s. 4d. for the year.  In these abundant years, too, he asserts that the home supply was equal to the demand,[600] though the committee of 1833 had stated that this had ceased to be the case.[601] Another committee, the last for many years, sat in 1835 to consider the distress; but although prices were low the whole tenor of the evidence established the improvement of farming, the extension of cultivation, and the increase of produce, and it was noticed at this time that towns dependent on agriculture were uniformly prosperous.[602]

On the whole, in spite of exaggeration from interested motives, the distress for the twenty years after the battle of Waterloo was real and deep; twenty years of depression succeeded the same period of false exaltation.  The progress, too, during that time was real, and made, as was remarked, because of adversity.  From this time agriculture slowly revived.