ost competent judges, even after the abolition
of the Corn Laws, that English land would continue to rise in value.
Porter stated that the United Kingdom could never be habitually
dependent on the soil of other countries for the food of its people,
there was not enough shipping to transport it if it could.[650]

Caird prophesied that in the next eighty years the value of land in
England would more than double. The wellnigh universal opinion was
that as the land of England could not increase, and the population was
constantly increasing, land must become dearer. Men failed to foresee
the opening of millions of acres of virgin soil in other parts of the
world, and the improvement of transport to such an extent that wheat
has occasionally been carried as ballast. About twenty-five or thirty
years after these prophecies their fallacy began to be cruelly
exposed.[651]

About 1853[652] matters began to mend, chiefly owing to the great
expansion in trade that followed the great gold discoveries in America
and Australia. Then, came the Crimean War, with the closing of the
Baltic to the export of Russian corn, wheat in 1855 averaging 74s.
8d., and in the next decade the American War crippled another
competitor, the imports of wheat from the United States sinking from
16,140,000 cwt in 1862, to 635,000 cwt. in 1866. From 1853 until 1875
English agriculture prospered exceedingly, assisted largely by good
seasons. Between 1854 and 1865 there were ten good harvests, and only
two below the average. Prices of produce rose almost continuously, and
the price and rent of land with them. The trade of the country was
good, and the demand for the farmer's products steadily grew; the
capital value of the land, live stock, and crops upon it, increased in
this period by L445,000,000.[653]

It appeared as if the abolition of the Corn Laws was not to have any
great effect after all.

Now at last the great body of farmers began to approach the standard
set them long before by the more energetic and enterprising. Early
maturity in finishing live stock for the market by scientific feeding
probably added a fourth to their weight The produce of crops per acre
grew, and drainage and improvements were carried out on all sides, the
greatest improvement being made in the cultivation and management of
strong lands, of which drainage was the foundation, and enabled the
occupier to add swedes to his course of cropping.[654]

It was in this period that