ABSTRACT
T HE impact of new conditions of supply and demand was feltmore quickly and more forcefully by agriculture than byany other branch of economic activity. Though the relative importance of manufacture had been increasing for so long, agriculture in 1870 was still one of the largest groups of industries and was still much the largest sphere in which home producers catered almost exclusively for the basic needs of home consumers. Sir James Caird calculated in 1868 that 80 per cent of the food consumed in the United Kingdom was produced within the country and that for livestock products the proportion was as high as 90 per cent.! To some extent the surplus of rural Ireland supplied some of the deficiencies of industrialized England but most of the Englishman's food was raised in England. It seemed, however, that the output of such staple foods as bread and meat could not quickly be increased much more. The future to which landlords and farmers hopefully looked forward was one in which a rising population and standard of living would expand the demand for food and keep up its price, with the supply being shared less unequally between home and foreign producers, to the detriment of neither.f Anything which drastically altered either the condition of the home market or the expectations about the cost and volume of foreign supplies was bound to have a substantial effect on the whole national economy.
