aw was one unworthy of a statesman. At the close of the
session, Lyndhurst delivered a masterly vindication of his own
proceedings, but he was answered by Melbourne in a speech of great
ability, and the position now occupied by the whigs appeared stronger
than when they came into office in 1835.

In this year complaints of agricultural distress once more became
urgent, and a committee was appointed by the house of commons, as in
1833, to inquire into its cause. Strange to say, the immediate occasion
for the second inquiry was the occurrence of three magnificent harvests
in succession, which brought down the average price of wheat from 58s.
8d. in 1832 to 53s. in 1833, 46s. 2d. in 1834, and 39s. 4d. in 1835,
whence it rose to 48s. 6d. after the harvest of 1836. The average
gazette price of 1835 was the lowest touched in the nineteenth century
until 1884, and was simply due to excess of production. It was stated
before the committee of 1836, by the comptroller of corn returns, that
in the period between 1814 and 1834 the quantity of home-grown wheat
only fell short of the consumption, on the average, by about 1,000,000
quarters a year, of which at least half was contributed by Ireland. The
committee published its evidence without making a report, but this fact
is highly significant as marking the later revolution in British
agriculture. If the area then devoted to wheat crops almost sufficed to
feed an estimated population of 14,500,000, when the yield per acre was
relatively small, we may safely infer, in the absence of trustworthy
statistics, that it must have been very much greater than at present.

[Pageheading: _AGITATION IN IRELAND._]

At the opening of 1837 there was a marked stagnation in home politics,
mainly due to an equipoise of parties and serious divisions in the ranks
of the ministerialists as well as of the opposition. Not only was there
a very strong conservative majority in the house of lords, with a
sufficient though dwindling liberal majority in the house of commons,
but neither majority was amenable to party discipline. The aggressive
policy and vexatious tactics of Lyndhurst were distasteful to his
nominal leader, the Duke of Wellington, and still more so to Peel, the
only possible conservative premier, who eschewed the very name of tory.
There was greater unity of counsels between Melbourne and Russell, but
Russell, who had learned moderation, was dependent on the support of his
extreme left, comp