In 1822 came a good season, which produced a great crop of wheat; in the lifetime of the existing generation old men declared that such a harvest had been known only once before; imports also came from Ireland to the amount of nearly a million quarters, so that the price at the end of the year was 38s., and the average price for the year was 44s. 7d. Beef went down to 2s. 5d. a stone and mutton to 2s. 2d. The cry of agricultural distress again rose loudly. Farmers were still, though some of the war taxes had been remitted, heavily taxed; for the taxes on malt, soap, salt, candles, leather, all pressed heavily.[586] The chief cause of the distress was the long-felt reaction after the war, but it was aggravated by the return to cash payments in 1819. Gold had fallen to its real value, and the fall in gold had been followed by a fall in the prices of every other article.[587] The produce of many thousand acres in England did not sell that year for as much money as was expended in growing it, without reckoning rent, taxes, and interest on capital.[588] Estates worth £3,000 a year, says the same writer, some years since, were now worth £1,000. Bacon had gone down from 6s. 6d. to 2s. 4d. a stone; Southdown ewes from 50s. to 15s., and lambs from 42s. to 5s.
A Dorset farmer told the Parliamentary committee that since 1815 he knew of fifty farmers, farming 24,000 acres, who had failed entirely.[589]
In the _Tyne Mercury_ of October 30, 1821, it was recorded that Mr. Thos. Cooper of Bow purchased 3 milch cows and 40 sheep for £18 16s. 6d. which sum four years previously would only have bought their skins. Prime beef was sold in Salisbury market at 4d. retail, and good joints of mutton at 3-1/2d.[590] Everywhere the farmers were complaining bitterly, but 'hanging on like sailors to the masts or hull of a wreck'. In Sussex labourers were being employed to dig holes and fill them in again, proof enough of distress but also of great folly. Many thousands of acres were now a mass of thistles and weeds, once fair grass land ploughed up during the war for wheat, and abandoned at the fall of prices. There were no less than 475 petitions on agricultural distress presented to the House from 1820 to March 31, 1822. In 1822, it was proposed that the Government should purchase wheat grown in England to the value of one million sterling and store it; also that when the average price of wheat was under 60s. the Government should advance money on such corn grown in the United Kingdom as should be deposited in certain warehouses, to an extent not exceeding two-thirds the value of the corn.[591] There were not wanting men, however, who put the other side of the question. In a tract called _The Refutation of the Arguments used on the Subject of the Agricultural Petition_, written in 1819, it was said that the increase in the farmer's expenditure was the cause of his discontent. 'He now assumes the manners and demands the equipage of a gentleman, keeps a table like his landlord, anticipates seasons in their productions, is as choice in his wines, his horses, and his furniture.' Let him be more thrifty. 'Let him dismiss his steward, a character a few years back only known to the great landowner, and cease from degrading the British farmer into a synonym for prodigality.' Lord Liverpool, in the House of Lords, in a speech which roused great opposition among agriculturists, minimized the distress; distress there was, he admitted, but it was not confined to England, it was world-wide; neither was it produced by excessive taxation, for since 1815 taxation had been reduced 25 per cent., while though rents and prices had fallen they were much higher than before the war. Another writer said at the time, 'Individuals of all classes have of late been as it were inflated above their natural size: let this unnatural growth be reduced; let them resume their proper places and appearances, and the quantum of substantial enjoyment, real comfort and happiness, will not be found lessened.' It was also asserted that the taxes on malt, leather, soap, salt, and candles, were not very pressing.