But the very increase of tillage kept down prices and gave the landowners little benefit. Whenever a scarcity occurred the laws were suspended, and the bounty and duties were taken off together.[492] Exportation, however, was the rule till a little after the middle of the century, say at the beginning of George III.’s reign, when the tide had fairly turned. Especially after the Peace of Paris (Nov. 1762), commerce was extended and population with it. Canals were made, roads improved, and home trade prospered.[493] We could no longer raise enough corn for our own wants.[494] In 1766, the year of our author’s birth, there were scarcities, Corn Riots, and suspensions of the Corn Laws;[495] but the bounty was kept up in name to the end of the century. In 1795 and 1796 the price of wheat rose to 80_s._ a quarter, in 1797 and 1798 it sank to 54_s._; but, at the end of harvest, 1799, it rose to 92_s._, in 1800 to 128_s._, and before the harvest of 1801 to 177_s._ The quartern loaf (under 6_d._ in 1885) was once within ½_d._ of 2_s._! Then came a cycle of comparative plenty. Wheat between 1802 and 1807 was at 75_s._ on an average, and a new Corn Law in 1804 prohibited importation till the home price should rise to 63_s._ Between 1808 and 1813 it was 108_s._ on an average; and it was as high as 140_s._ 9_d._ in the severe winter (1812–13) of Napoleon’s retreat from Moscow. But in the spring of 1815 wheat was at 60_s._ If it should rise to 63_s._ the ports would be opened, and there was not even the Protection of war. The farmers and landowners were terror-stricken, the political economists divided, and the bill for raising the importation price to 80_s._ was hurried through the House. The bounty, relaxed in 1773, had been finally repealed, in 1814.[496] As the sliding scale of duties was not introduced till 1827, we are to regard Malthus and Ricardo as writing on rent (in 1815 and 1820) under the severe Corn Law of 1815, as well as when the wisdom of passing that measure was still under debate. All their discussions on rent bear consciously or unconsciously upon the Corn Laws of their own time.