injured, while the agricultural labourer was permanently disabled. But it was not unnatural that enclosures should rapidly be made when farming, and especially grain-growing, had become so profitable. The reason for the profits of agriculture at this period we can now examine. [55. See _Industry in England_, p. 430.] {200} § 2. _The stimulus caused by the Bounties_--The Government of the year 1660 had imposed heavy protective duties upon the importation of grain from abroad, in fact prohibiting it except when wheat was at famine prices, as it happened to be in 1662, when it was 62_s._ 9⁠½_d._ a quarter, the ordinary price being 41_s._ But it did not reach this price again for many years afterwards. The Government of 1688, not content with the foregoing protective measure, added a bounty of 5_s._ per qr. upon the export of corn from England. But the effect of this bounty was not felt for several years, for happily, soon after the passing of the Bounty Act, a series of plentiful harvests occurred, and corn was very cheap. There were consequently loud outcries from the landlords about agricultural distress, which merely meant that the people at large were enjoying cheap food. The aim of the bounty on corn had been to raise prices by encouraging its export, and thus rendered it scarcer and dearer in England. As a matter of fact, it had the opposite effect, for it served as a premium upon which the wheat-grower could speculate, and thus induced him to sow a larger breadth of his land with wheat. The premium upon production caused producers to grow more than the market required, and so prices fell. Thus, happily for the consumer, the Corn Laws and the bounty were harmless during the greater part of the eighteenth century, for farmers competed one against the other sufficiently to keep down prices. But the inevitable Nemesis of protective measures came at the end of the century, when population was growing with unexampled rapidity and required all the corn it could get. Then the prices of corn rose to a famine pitch, while the duty upon its importation prevented it coming into the country in sufficient quantities. The landlords received enormous rents, and {201} the farmers did not mind paying them, for the profits of both were immense. But meanwhile the mass of the people was frequently on the verge of starvation, and at length the country perceived that things could not be allowed to go on any longer in this way.[56] The manufacturing capitalists of the day supported the leaders of the people in their agitation, for they hoped that cheap food might mean low wages. By their aid the landed interest was overcome, and in 1846 the Corn Laws, by the efforts of Cobden and his followers, were finally repealed. Nevertheless the British farmer and his landlords, forgetting, it seems, the days when they got high prices by the starvation of the poor, still frequently clamour for the re-imposition of the incubus of protection.