On 29 October 1843 he writes, “They must leave off meddling by Acts of Parliament with agricultural produce.... I fear great distress will show itself hereabout amongst the farmers this winter: corn a low figure, and in all probability will be lower, for I see the Canada Corn Bill came into operation the 10th of this month, and many arrivals, and a vast quantity expected: the Americans of course will take advantage of it and smuggle over to Canada. Will the League carry their point next Session? Hope they will, that things may be settled and let people know what they have to trust to: now everything is uncertain.” In the summer of 1845 the Potato Disease reached England from abroad. He writes, 31 August, “All those beautiful green fields of potatoes around me, that were so pleasing to the sight in my little walks, have lost all their green and turned a regular brown. It makes things so dreary, and brings to mind the misery it will create, particularly with the little renting farmers.” He writes on 18 August 1852, “A renting farmer generally requires three or four years to recover a bad harvest or a blight, from want of capital; and the small owners are not much better off.” He writes on 23 May 1847, “Everything is very dear, and all owing to the failure of the potato: no potatoes is the cause of the advance and scarcity of corn: no potatoes no pork, consequently an advance in beef and mutton.” His reasoning is obscured by brevity, but really comes to this--if people cannot get potatoes, they will want more bread, and will want more beef and mutton, if they cannot get any pork; and there cannot be much pork unless there are potatoes, as potatoes are the staple food of fatted pigs. A friend at Moreton writes to him, 11 January 1846, “The poor will suffer much from the high price of corn and no potatoes. The farmers never had such times. Cattle and sheep are at enormous prices--a farmer told me his stock was worth £1300 more than last year.” He writes again, 30 September 1849, “Farmers are down in the mouth: cattle selling very low, and there is a complete panic. All the little farmers will be ruined.” The same friend writes him, 5 July 1846, “I had a man here yesterday who has just £300 a year in land, and he thinks that corn will during the next fourteen years be very little (if at all) lower than during the last fourteen. [That was so.] The increase of population and the demand for labour thro’ the extension of trade and making of railroads will, he thinks, tend to keep up the price. He says we are only now beginning to expand.”