five years standing,[541]
wrote that, with the land tax remaining the same, there was a high
property tax, house and window taxes were doubled, poor rates in some
places trebled, highway, church, and constable rates doubled and
trebled, and there were oppressive taxes on malt and horses, both nags
and farm animals. A man renting a farm at L70 and keeping two
farm-horses, a nag, and a dog, would pay taxes for them of L5 0s. 6d.,
a fourteenth of his rent.[542] Indeed, poor rates of 16s. and 20s. in
the L were known,[543] and they were occasionally more than the whole
rent received by the landlord forty years before. A Devonshire
landowner complained that seven-sixteenths out of the annual value of
every estate in the county was taken from owners and occupiers in
direct taxes.[544] And the Committee on Agricultural Depression of
1822 asserted that during the war taxes and rates were quadrupled.[545]
Blacksmiths, whitesmiths, collar makers, ropers, carpenters, and many
other tradesmen with whom the farmer dealt, raised their prices
threefold; and it was openly asserted that the high prices of grain
and stock were not proportionate to the increase of other prices. Much
of the grass land broken up in the earlier years of the war was before
the close in a miserable condition, for it was cropped year after year
without manure, and was worn out. On the whole it may be doubted if
the bulk of the farmers of England made large profits during the war;
many no doubt profited by the extraordinary fluctuations in prices,
and it was those men who 'kept liveried servants'; but there must have
been many who lost heavily by the same means, and the rise of rent,
taxes, rates, labour, and tradesmen's prices largely discounted the
prices of corn and stock. The landowners at this period have generally
been described as flourishing at the expense of the community, but
their increased rents were greatly neutralized by the weight of
taxation and the general rise in prices. A contemporary writer says
that owing to the heavy taxes, even in the war time, he 'often had not
a shilling at the end of the year.'[546]

The following accounts, drawn up in 1805,[547] do not show that
farmers were making much money with wheat at 10s. a bushel:

Account of the culture of an acre of wheat on good fallow land:

Dr. L s. d.

Two years' rent 2 0 0
Hauling dung from fold 10 0
Four ploughings