English bushel should contain ten gallons. The standard of value being thus increased from eight to ten gallons, the occupier of these hundred acres would be compelled to add one fourth to the amount of rent which he had contracted to pay, supposing the owner still to exact from him the same number of bushels of this increased standard. He had agreed to pay 100 x 8 gallons of wheat to his landlord as rent; but an addition of 2 gallons having been made to the standard, by which the bushel is measured, he is now called upon to pay him 100 x 10 gallons of the same commodity. Every one, in this case, would instantly perceive that the share of the produce received by the land-owner as rent had increased in the proportion that 8 bears to 10, and the consequence of such an addition to corn rents would inevitably be found similar to the ruinous pressure which the agricultu rists feel at present. For whether rents be paid in corn or gold, an addition to the size or weight of the standard by which the quantity of either of these commodities is measured, must produce results precisely similar.

The statements of those individuals who have been examined by the committee appointed to investigate the present state of agriculture, prove that the depreciation which has taken place in the money value of agricultural produce since the passing of the bill enacting the prospective resumption of cash payments, amounts to 25 or 30 per cent.; and this constitutes, very nearly, the difference between the present standard of the pound sterling and the real value of the paper pound of the Bank of England, which was the only legal measure of value that existed in England from 1797 to 1819, while the obligation of the Bank to pay specie for its notes was suspended. A bushel of wheat will at this moment exchange for, pretty nearly, the same quantity of all other commodities; it will exchange even for nearly the same weight of gold which it would have exchanged for before the resumption of cash payments took place in 1820. Gold and wheat, when bartered for any other commodities, bear nearly the same exchangeable value, at the present moment, that they did during the suspension of cash payments; but, exchanged for pounds sterling, they are depreciated in value one fourth: no change has taken place in the real value of gold or wheat, but the value of the pound sterling is altered; these commodities are still of the same relative value in exchange, but the standard by which they are to be measured is increased. During some portion at least of the period which elapsed while cash payments were suspended, an oz. of gold was equivalent to five pounds sterling; the standard of the pound sterling, therefore, contained no more than 96 grains of gold: and all contracts, in money transactions, were fixed and settled upon this standard. When a landlord

therefore let his land for 100 pounds, he let it for 100'× 96 grains of gold but the late regulation of the currency having raised this standard from 96 to 120 grains, and no reduction having taken place in the number of pounds sterling claimed by the landlord, the tenant is obliged to pay him now, not the quantity of gold which he had bargained to pay, not 100 × 96 grains of gold; but he is compelled to pay his rent in a different standard; he must now pay him 100 x 120 grains of gold. A grain of gold exchanges now for the same portion of wheat or any other commodity as it exchanged for before the late regulation of the currency; the occupier of land is now therefore forced to pay 1200 grains of gold for the farm which he had rented of his landlord for 860 grains; the value of wheat, compared with gold, being the same, the tenant must sell one fourth more wheat than he sold before to procure the additional quantity of gold which this increase of the standard obliges him to pay his landlord.

I am therefore disposed to concur with those who are of opinion that the difficulties under which the agriculturists of this kingdom at present labor, must be attributed principally, if not exclusively, to this cause. The share of the produce of land which the occupier pays in the form of rent, has received an addition proportioned to the increase of the standard by which this portion is measured: a pound sterling will now exchange for or purchase at the least, one fourth more wheat, or any other commodity, than it would have bartered for previously to the repeal of the Bank Restriction Act; not because the quantity of wheat is increased when compared with gold, nor yet with any other commodity; but because the pound sterling now represents a greater weight of gold than it previously represented: the pound sterling, as fixed by the late regulation of the currency, contains 120 grains of gold, and is equal to one pound sterling of the period between 1797 and 1819, containing only 96 grains, and the fourth of another. It must therefore follow, as a matter of course, that where the income of the landlord remains nominally the same, its exchangeable value, calculated on the command over the necessaries of life which it gives him, has been improved one fourth by the operation of this recent regulation of the currency: and for the correctness of this assertion I appeal to the experience of every land-owner, and of any other individual who lives upon a fixed money payment. All fixed money rents continuing still nominally the same, notwithstanding the addition made to the standard of value, those who are entitled to receive them are all 25 per cent. richer than they were before the resumption of cash payments. Let any man examine his butler, his baker, or his cornchandler's bill, and he will find that, with the same consumption of these articles, the amount

of his expenditure has been nominally diminished one fourth. An individual with an income of 4000%., at the present moment, has as great a command over the necessaries of life as an income of 5000l. would have given him before this alteration in the standard: not because any alteration has taken place in the real value of these necessaries, but because an alteration has been made in the standard by which this value is measured. The quantity of corn then which the landlord, who exacts now the same nominal rent from his tenant, takes as his share of the produce, amounts to one fourth more than the grower had contracted to give him.

As the very expression gold seems to possess a magic power which paralyses the reasoning faculties of the chancellor of the exchequer and of those who re-echo his opinions on this subject, the word "iron" shall, in this place, be substituted for "gold," and a case be submitted to their consideration, with the hope that it may have some tendency to remove the film by which they are now blinded. Suppose a tenant hired a farm on lease, two years ago, and engaged to pay his landlord, as rent, 100 pounds of iron, each pound containing 16 ounces; assume that, in 1821, an act of Parliament be passed enacting that, for the future, the pound, by which this metal shall be measured, must contain, not 16 ounces, as it contained when this contract was entered into, but 20 ounces, or one fourth more than the previous weight of the pound. Every one must instantly perceive that if, after this alteration in the standard, the landlord continue to exact 100 pounds of iron, as rent, from the occupier, its real value would be increased 25 per cent., although its nominal amount remain still the same. The tenant, in this case, contracted to pay his landlord 100 × 16=1600 ounces of iron, but the alteration of the standard, by which it is weighed, makes the quantity which he must now pay amount to 100 × 20=2000 ounces of iron-thus adding one fourth to the amount of rent which he contracted to pay.

But the evil, arising from the additional value thus given to the pound sterling, does by no means stop at the burden which this increase of rent has cast upon the farmer: however grievously this increase may be felt for a time, it will cease with the present contracts, as rents must by degrees adjust themselves to this new standard. But, what is much worse, and more difficult to be remedied, it extends also to the taxes which he must pay; to the interest of the capital he may have borrowed; to the wages of labor; in a word, this addition to the real amount of the pound sterling proceeds throughout the whole range of all pecuniary transactions between debtor and creditor where the payments were fixed on the old standard.

The situation to which this alteration in the standard of the

pound sterling has reduced the English farmers, must fill every bosom not steeled against every sentiment of justice or humanity, with the deepest grief. They have already suffered a degree of distress of which those who are unacquainted with their condition, can form no conception. They have hitherto manfully and fearlessly struggled against the pressure which they feel. They have sacrificed all the superfluities, all the comforts, to which their station fairly entitled them; but notwithstanding all these enormous sacrifices-sacrifices which must make the most unfeeling heart bleed; the prospect before them is still more gloomy and alarming. If some alteration be not made in their condition, the distress which they now feel, must end in their irretrievable ruin.

I am grieved beyond measure to find them misled with respect to the cause of these difficulties, and turning all their hopes towards a measure which never can, under any circumstances, minister even the least alleviation of their present sufferings. Were the legislature to pass a law, to-morrow, prohibiting the importation of foreign corn till a quarter of British wheat exchanged for a ton of gold, and employ an army of custom-house officers in carrying this regulation into full effect, it would afford them no relief, it could in no respect ameliorate their condition while they are compelled to satisfy the pecuniary claims upon them in a standard different from that in which their contracts were made.

Were the subject less distressing, one might be disposed to smile at the cause to which the agriculturist ascribes his difficulties. The British farmer might be represented as standing by his produce, collected into one heap, and the different individuals who have claims upon him coming to receive the portion of this produce to which they are respectively entitled: these claimants have enlarged the standard by which their demands are to be measured. But he seems perfectly unconscious of this fact; a pound with him is still a pound, although it be now equivalent to a pound and a quarter of the standard in which his contracts were made: they all, therefore, take out of the heap, by which he stands, one fourth more than he had agreed to give them, and the remainder of the produce left for his own share, which used to be a fair portion, he finds absolutely vanished. But, when this takes place, instead of telling these claimants upon his property that they use a standard, in measur ing what he owes them, differing from that in which he had contracted to pay, he turns round to a foreigner, who happens to be passing by, at the time, with a load of corn to be converted into cotton goods in Lancashire, and insists that he is the person who has robbed him. He insists that the remainder of the produce of his farm, which should fall to his share, has been lessened and reduced almost to nothing, not by the increased quantity which those,

who have fixed pecuniary claims upon him, take in consequence of an increase in the standard by which their demands are measured; but by the permission granted a foreigner, to carry over his land a load of corn and return the same way with a load of cotton : and with a degree of credulity and simplicity which is perfectly unaccountable, he believes that if the passage of this foreigner over his land were rigidly prohibited, his own portion of the produce of his farm would instantly swell to its original bulk, notwithstanding the increase in the quantity taken out of it by those who have demands upon him.

When he hired his farm, let it be assumed that he calculated the average produce as equal in value to 400 pounds of iron, on the standard of 16 ounces to the pound to his landlord he contracts to pay 100lb. as rent, and the taxes on this land may amount to 40lb.; in this case, there would remain to the occupier 400 140 260 pounds of iron, to meet the demands of the tithe owner, to pay the wages of the laborer, and to yield him a fair return for the capital employed in cultivating his farm. Suppose the legislature, yielding to the suggestions of a reformer of this standard of value, should enact that the pound should be increased, and fixed at 20 ounces instead of the 16, which it contained when the pecuniary claims on the tenant were arranged. The result of such an enactment would be, that the landlord and the tax-gatherer, still claiming the same number of pounds of this increased standard, would take from him 175 pounds instead of the 140 which he had calculated upon paying, and leave him to meet other claims only 400-175-225 pounds, instead of 260 which would have remained to him on the old standard. When payments are made in sterling gold, an alteration in the quantity or weight of this metal, which the pound contains, must produce precisely the same result. The agriculturists had contracted to make all their money payments in pounds sterling which were equivalent only to 96 grains of gold: by the operation of the bill passed in 1819, to regulate the currency, this value has been increased; and they are now compelled to make their payments in pounds sterling equivalent to 120 grains of the same metal.

I feel therefore the firmest conviction, that the alteration of the standard of the pound sterling, made in 1819, is the main cause and source of all the difficulties under which the agriculturists of this realm have, for some time, labored. They are difficulties which they must continue to feel, and which, if not removed, will absolutely crush them. They are difficulties which, if not by some means alleviated, must ruin, irretrievably, the industrious, the spirited and independent race of yeomanry, which has hitherto constituted the pride, the glory, and the safety of England. It is then an object of the VOL. XIX. NO. XXXVII.

Pam.