The era of agricultural prosperity in England, which had its only considerable interruptions in the years 1727-29 and 1740-42, may be said to have met with a more serious check from the bad harvest of 1756. There was a recurrence of agrarian troubles in 1764-67, partly through actual scarcity caused by the extreme drought of 1764, partly through the pulling down of cottages and the discouragement of country villages, which Goldsmith has pathetically described in his poem of the time. Short says that the country in 1765 was in general very healthy but for children’s diseases. “In some parts the putrid fever roamed about from place to place in the highest degree of putrefaction, so as several dead bodies were obliged to be buried the same day as they died.” The price of provisions was excessive, meal riots broke out, and the export of corn was stopped, Parliament having been summoned for the occasion in November, 1766[233]. In 1769, at the time of the formation of Chatham’s ministry, the same train of incidents recurred,--bread-riots, flour-mills wrecked, corn and bread seized by the populace and sold at low prices, collisions with the military, the gaols full of prisoners[234]. The long period of cheapness, having lasted half a century, was coming to an end. Moralists and economists had much to say as to the meaning of the national distress which began to be felt in the sixties. Want of industry, want of frugality, want of sobriety, want of principle, said one, had brought trouble on the working class. “The tumults that have lately arisen in many counties of England are no other than the murmurs of the people, which have been heard for some years, bursting forth at last into riot and confusion.” The English, it seems, had returned to their old medieval taste for the best food they could get; they would not give up the finest bread, although the Irish lived on potatoes, and the French on turnips and cabbage: “The ploughman, the shepherd, the hedger and ditcher, all eat as white bread as is commonly made in London, which occasions a greater consumption of wheat.” Women must have tea and snuff, though children go naked and starved. Another writes: “The poorest people will have the finest or none.” The enclosures had made a want of tillage. “What must become of our poor, destitute of work for want of tillage?” The country had for the most part been sickly, labourers scarce, and the farmers not able to get their usual quantity threshed out. The profligacy of the poor, profane swearing, etc., are remarked upon[235].