Rent of           Produce of
cultivated land        Wheat            Price per lb. of
per acre.          per acre.       Bread.    Meat.    Butter.

1770    13s.  4d.            23            1-1/2d.  3-1/4d.    6d.
1850    26s. 10d.            26-3/4[646]   1-1/4d.  5d.        1s.

Price of Wool   Cottage          Labourer’s wages
per lb.         rents.             per week.

1770         5-1/2d.        34s. 8d.           7s. 3d.
1850           1s.          74s. 6d.           9s. 7d.

Thus in eighty years the average rent of arable land rose 100%, the average wheat crop 14%, while the price of bread had decreased 16%.  But meat had increased 70%, wool over 100%, butter 100%.  The chief benefit to the farmer therefore lay in the increased value of live stock and its products, and it was found then, as in the present depression, that the holders of strong wheat land suffered most, which was further illustrated by the fact that the rent of the corn-growing counties of the east coast averaged 23s. 8d. per acre; that of the mixed corn and grass counties in the midlands and west, 31s. 5d.

Writing in 1847, Porter said rents had doubled since 1790.[648] In Essex farms could be pointed out which were let in 1790 at less than 10s. an acre, but during the war at from 45s. to 50s.  In 1818 the rent went down to 35s., and in 1847 was 20s.

In Berks. and Wilts. farms let at 14s. per acre in 1790, rose by 1810 to 70s., or fivefold; sank in 1820 to 50s., and in 1847 to 30s.  In Staffordshire farms on one estate let for 8s. an acre in 1790, rose during the war to 35s., and at the peace were lowered to 20s., at which price they remained.  Owing to better farming light soils had been applied to uses for which heavy lands alone had formerly been considered fit, with a considerable increase of rent.

On the Duke of Rutland’s[649] Belvoir estate, of from 18,000 to 20,000 acres of above average quality, rents were in—­

1799 19s. 3-3/4d. an acre. 1812 25s. 8-3/4d. " 1830 25s. 1-3/4d. " 1850 36s. 8d. "

But the Dukes of Rutland were indulgent landlords and evidently took no undue advantage of the high prices during the war, a policy whose wisdom was fully justified afterwards.

It was the opinion of most competent judges, even after the abolition of the Corn Laws, that English land would continue to rise in value.  Porter stated that the United Kingdom could never be habitually dependent on the soil of other countries for the food of its people, there was not enough shipping to transport it if it could.[650]

Caird prophesied that in the next eighty years the value of land in England would more than double.  The wellnigh universal opinion was that as the land of England could not increase, and the population was constantly increasing, land must become dearer.  Men failed to foresee the opening of millions of acres of virgin soil in other parts of the world, and the improvement of transport to such an extent that wheat has occasionally been carried as ballast.  About twenty-five or thirty years after these prophecies their fallacy began to be cruelly exposed.[651]