vanced to them, in exchequer bills, when the average price of wheat was under sixty shillings. Great efforts were made to make the country believe that the agricultural labourers were in a most wretched condition in consequence of the low prices of corn; but it began then to be understood that the wages of farm labour never rose in proportion to the rise in the price of farm produce, and that, although they had fallen in 1822, the recipients were more than compensated by the low price of food. In the olden time abundant harvests were regarded as the greatest of blessings. It was a special promise, often repeated, that the Israelites should have plentiful harvests if they obeyed the commandments of God. The framers of the English Prayer Book directed the people to supplicate for plenty and cheapness. It was reserved for the enlightened nineteenth century to regard them as deeply to be deplored evils. In 1822, a million of money was lent to enable the growers of corn to keep it out of the market till its price should rise; to withhold it till the people should begin to curse. The consumers said little about the loan or the law. It was well with them then, and they did not look to the future. Merchants and manufacturers, rejoicing that Hunt and his followers had been put down, were neither disposed to become agitators themselves, nor to sanction agitation by others. They suffered for their regardlessness of consequences. The real prosperity 1822-23,of was followed by the reckless speculation of 1824-5, and that was followed by the panic of 1826, and by that severe depression of trade, and that depth of discontent which made the Reform Bill a measure absolutely necessary for the conservation of the public peace.
On the return of the whigs to office, in the spring of 1835, they found the agricultural members, for whom a preponderance in the house, according to Lord John Russell's confession, had been provided in the distribution of seats under the Reform Bill, again complaining of the
