rmer importations, or more probably the
effect of two abundant harvests, combined with the greatly extended
cultivation of grain, produced a gradual and steady reduction in prices;
so that instead of approaching the limits at which alone importation was
allowable by the Act, it sunk to a level below that of several years
past. The farmers, who were labouring under exorbitant rents in addition
to other increased expenses, were general sufferers, and the landlords
found it necessary in many instances to make great abatements in their
dues. In the result many leases were voided and farms left without
tenants.

To this most unpopular measure a satire, published by Fores on the 3rd
of March, 1815, has reference. It is entitled, _The Blessings of Peace,
or the Curse of the Corn Bill_, a very rough affair, etched by George
(as it appears to me) from the design of an amateur whose hand may be
recognised in more than one of his caricatures. A foreign vessel is
approaching our shores laden with best wheat at 50_s._ a quarter. A
figure with a star on his breast, emblematical of course of the
aristocratic influence which was supposed to have dictated the unpopular
corn law, forbids the sailors to land it: "We won't have it," he says,
"_at any price_. We are determined to keep up our own to 80_s._, and if
the poor can't buy at that price, why, they must starve. We love money
too well to lower our rents again, tho' the income tax _is_ taken off."
His sentiments are re-echoed by companions belonging to the same class
as himself. A farmer and his starving family, however, come forward.
"No, no, masters," he remonstrates; "I'll not starve, but quit my native
country, where the poor are crushed by those they labour to support, and
retire to one more hospitable, and where threats of the rich do not
interpose to defeat the providence of God!" Behind the starving family
is a warehouse absolutely bursting with sacks of grain at 80_s._ "By
gar!" says the foreign captain, "if they won't have [the wheat] at all,
we must throw it overboard," which they accordingly are depicted as
doing. The subject is followed up by a still more slovenly affair by the
artist himself, bearing the title of _The Scale of Justice Reversed_,
published by Fores on the 29th of March. An eighteenpenny loaf in one
scale is overmatched by the accumulated weight of taxes in the other.
The overbalanced scale in its descent knocks down and crushes John Bull
under its weight.