Besides this great calamity, this year was distinguished by one of the worst harvests of the century, outbreaks of foot and mouth disease, of pleuro-pneumonia, and a disastrous attack of foot-rot. The misfortunes of the landed interest produced a Commission in 1879 under the Duke of Richmond, which conducted a most laborious and comprehensive inquiry. Their report, issued in 1882, stated that they were unanimously convinced of the great intensity and extent of the distress that had fallen upon the agricultural community. Owner and occupier had alike been involved. Yet, though agricultural distress had prevailed over the whole country, the degree had varied in different counties, and in some cases in different parts of the same counties. Cheshire, for instance, had not suffered to anything like the same extent as other counties, nor was the depression so severe in Cumberland, Westmoreland, Northumberland, and parts of Yorkshire. The rainfall had been less in the northern counties. In the midlands, the eastern, and most of the southern counties the distress was severe, in Essex the state of agriculture was deplorable, but Kent, Devon, and Cornwall were not hardly hit.[668] The chief causes of the depression were said to be these:-- 1. The succession of unfavourable seasons, causing crops deficient in quantity and quality, and losses of live stock. 2. Low prices, partly due to foreign imports and partly to the inferior quality of the home production. 3. Increased cost of production. 4. Increased pressure of local taxation by the imposition of new rates, viz. the education rate and the sanitary rate; and the increase of old rates, especially the highway rate, in consequence of the abolition of turnpikes. Some exceptionally bad instances of this were given. In the parish of Didmarton, Gloucestershire, the average amount of rates paid for the five years ending March 31, 1858, was L26 6s. 3d., for the five years ending March 31, 1878, L118 11s. 7d. In the Northleach Union the rates had increased thus in decennial periods from 1850:-- 1850-1 L5,471 1860-1 5,534 1870-1 8,525 1878-9 10,089 On one small property in Staffordshire the increase of rates, other than poor rates, amounted to 3s. 6d. in the L on the rateable value. 5. Excessive rates charged by railway companies for the conveyance of produce, and preferential rates given to foreign agricultural produce; the railway companies alleging, in defence of this, that foreign produce was consigned in much greater bulk, by few consignors, than home grown, and could be conveyed much more economically than if picked up at different stations in small quantities. As to the effect of restrictive covenants on the depression, the balance of evidence did not incline either way.[669]