considerable fall in the price of corn, and of the expected
continuance of low prices, have shewn themselves in a very severe
shock to the cultivation of the country and a great loss of
agricultural capital.

Whatever may be said of the peculiar interests and natural
partialities of those who were called upon to give evidence upon
this occasion, it is impossible not to be convinced, by the whole
body of it taken together, that, during the last twenty years, and
particularly during the last seven, there has been a great increase
of capital laid out upon the land, and a great consequent extension
of cultivation and improvement; that the system of spirited
improvement and high farming, as it is technically called, has been
principally encouraged by the progressive rise of prices owing in a
considerable degree, to the difficulties thrown in the way of
importation of foreign corn by the war; that the rapid accumulation
of capital on the land, which it had occasioned, had so increased
our home growth of corn, that, notwithstanding a great increase of
population, we had become much less dependent upon foreign supplies
for our support; and that the land was still deficient in capital,
and would admit of the employment of such an addition to its present
amount, as would be competent to the full supply of a greatly
increased population: but that the fall of prices, which had lately
taken place, and the alarm of a still further fall, from continued
importation, had not only checked all progress of improvement, but
had already occasioned a considerable loss of agricultural advances;
and that a continuation of low prices would, in spite of a
diminution of rents, unquestionably destroy a great mass of farming
capital all over the country, and essentially diminish its
cultivation and produce.