A contemporary writer denies that these duties benefited the farmer at all:  ’if the present shifting scale of duty was intended to protect the farmer, keep the prices of corn steady, insure a supply to the consumer at a moderate price, and benefit the revenue, it has signally failed.  During the continuation of the Corn Laws the farmers have suffered the greatest privations.  The variations in price have been extreme, and when a supply of foreign corn has been required it has only reached the consumer at a high price, and benefited the revenue little.’[632] Rents of farms were often calculated not on the market price of wheat, but on the price thought to be fixed by the duties, which was occasionally much higher.[633]

It was also said that but for the restrictions that had been imposed in the supposed interests of agriculture, the skill and enterprise of farmers would have been better directed than it had been.  By means of these restrictions and the consequent enhancement of the cost of living, the cultivation of the land had been injuriously restricted, for the energies of farmers had been limited to producing certain descriptions of food, and they had neglected others which would have been far[634] more profitable.  The landlord had profited by higher rents, but, according to Caird, a most competent observer, had generally speaking been induced by a reliance on protection to neglect his duty to his estates, so that buildings were poor, and drainage neglected.  The labourer was little if any better off than eighty years before.  It was a mystery even to farmers how they lived in many parts of the country; ‘our common drink,’ said one, ’is burnt crust tea, we never know what it is to get enough to eat.’[635] Against these disadvantages can only be put the fact that protection had kept up the price of corn, a calamity for the mass of the people.

The amount of wheat imported into England before the era of Corn Law repeal was inconsiderable.  Mr. Porter has shown[636] how very small a proportion of wheat used in this country was imported from 1801-44.  From 1801 to 1810 the average annual import of wheat into the kingdom was 600,946 quarters, or a little over a peck annually per head, the average annual consumption per head being about eight bushels.  Between 1811 and 1820 the average importation was 458,578 quarters, or for the increased population a gallon-and-a-half per head, and the same share for each person was imported in the next decade 1821-30.  From 1831-40 the average imports arose to 607,638 quarters, or two-and-a-quarter gallons per head, and in 1841-4 an average import of 1,901,495 quarters raised the average supply to four-and-a-half gallons per person, still a very small proportion of the amount consumed.