Sarum - Edward Rutherfurd [567]
“I do not think,” Canon Porteus observed, “that we should reply.” And so the correspondence between Frances Shockley and her cousins ceased.
“It’s up to me to write to them now,” Ralph told Agnes.
But here laziness intervened. He meant to write. He almost did, a dozen times. But the months passed. Then years. The little war drifted to its close. He still meant to write.
In 1823, when England, was so anxious to keep the Bourbon powers from taking over the South America trade, a friendly atmosphere was made between Great Britain and the United States which resulted in the famous doctrine of President Monroe that the United States would tolerate no European rule in its southern sphere of influence.
“Monroe’s our best ally,” Ralph declared; to celebrate the fact he took pen to paper and wrote to his cousins.
He received no reply.
But far more than the situation abroad, however threatening, it was the tragedy at home in England that filled Ralph’s thoughts.
For it was the poor in England who suffered most terribly in those dark years, and nowhere in the countryside was the situation worse than at Sarum.
“I promised not to quarrel with Porteus,” Ralph said to Agnes. “But the truth is that even if I wanted to, I don’t know what can be done.”
The problem was a long-standing one. Nor was it much helped by the Poor Laws or the system of relief known as Speenhamland. This last, begun by the justices of Speenhamland in Berkshire, was a system of supplementing the wages of the poorest workers from parish funds, with the result that often the farmers simply paid them even less – a simple case of good intentions and bad economics.
And even in 1815, when Napoleon was exiled to St Helena, there had been little for the poor at Sarum to rejoice about; for the peace brought with it the worst agricultural conditions in generations. The war had left the government hugely in debt. For years it had also refused to honour its notes with gold, and printed more paper money. There was rampant inflation; bread prices rose sharply while wages did not. A labourer whose wages after the American War of Independence had bought fourteen loaves, could now buy only nine, yet the new income taxes rose, and the poor had to pay.
“The government has borrowed money from the rich: now the poor must pay taxes so that they receive their interest,” Ralph pointed out. In fact, between a third and a half of the government’s revenue went in interest.
Now, however, at the end of the war, the combination of returning soldiers and the ending of huge government war contracts produced both unemployment and a general depression. Corn prices fell. But still this didn’t help the poor. For the landowners in Parliament brought in the Corn Law. Its provisions were simple: at a time when continental Europe had massive surpluses to sell, no one in England might import corn until it had reached the price of eighty shillings a quarter. The landowners would be protected.
“It’s infamous,” Ralph protested. “It actually ensures that the poor will starve.”
“It’s worse than that,” Mason explained to him. “It’s stupid as well. The landowners and farmers themselves can’t sell grain at that price, so they’re no better off either. Everyone loses. The only people profiting are the corn merchants: they’re stockpiling corn to drive the price up quickly, buying cheap imports as soon as they’re allowed to, then reselling for high profit.”
“Then why do the Tory landowners continue to support the Corn Law?”
“Simple,” the merchant told him. “Prejudice and stupidity. They want to control everything, just as they did before the war. They won’t listen to merchants like us, who could explain the benefits of free trade.”
Many times on his visits to Mason and his family, Shockley had been treated to lectures on the subject of free markets and the reduction of tariff barriers, for Mason was a believer in the doctrines of Adam Smith.
“He wrote his book when America declared independence,” he complained,