DOI Page / Citation link:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.22140#0076
6o INDUSTRIAL AND COMMERCIAL HISTORY.
there was no famine. There was in the fourteenth, in 1315, 1316,
1321, and 1369, for in these years wheat was more than double the
average price, and once was five times above it. Then people as
we are expressly told perished from hunger. In the fifteenth
century there was only one year of famine, 1438, and only one year
of dearth, 1482. In the sixteenth there was a year of famine in
1527, and after Henry had committed the enormous crime of
issuing base money, famine was endemic. But the most dismal
record is that of the seventeenth century, when severe dearths,
consequent on deficient harvests were endured by the English,
Hartlib, an excellent observer, saying that people in numbers
died of starvation. Among these evil years, too numerous to
burden you with, the worst was 1661. I don't know whether in
those days, the newspapers, such as they were, had adopted the
phrase of the king's weather, though there is plenty of adulation
in them. For the first sixty or seventy years of the eighteenth
century, there were on the whole abundant crops, a result greatly
to be attributed to the new agriculture. But the famine of 1709
in France—we suffered seriously in England—did more to break
down the French arms than the victories of Marlborough did, and
you may perhaps remember that the last of his great fights, Mal-
plaquet, was not much of a victory, and this occurred in that
disastrous year 1709, after the hope of the harvest was well-nigh
destroyed in Western Europe. People who write about history
and dilate on the philosophy of prominent characters, are ex-
ceedingly apt to neglect that which is, after all, true history, the
indisputable facts of social life. I am willing to admit the judgment
of the first Napoleon, that Marlborough was about the greatest
military genius which the world has produced, the more willingly
because I do not pretend to be a judge. His greatness has cost us
dear. But I always feel myself on safer ground, when I find that
opinion is fortified by facts, and philosophy gives a place to
intelligible statistics. Of course people may handle statistics
foolishly. But you will find as you live that many persons arrive
at conclusions and judgments for which they would be incompetent
to discover premises. The habit however gives a kind of variety
to human life.
The most disastrous period however through which population
there was no famine. There was in the fourteenth, in 1315, 1316,
1321, and 1369, for in these years wheat was more than double the
average price, and once was five times above it. Then people as
we are expressly told perished from hunger. In the fifteenth
century there was only one year of famine, 1438, and only one year
of dearth, 1482. In the sixteenth there was a year of famine in
1527, and after Henry had committed the enormous crime of
issuing base money, famine was endemic. But the most dismal
record is that of the seventeenth century, when severe dearths,
consequent on deficient harvests were endured by the English,
Hartlib, an excellent observer, saying that people in numbers
died of starvation. Among these evil years, too numerous to
burden you with, the worst was 1661. I don't know whether in
those days, the newspapers, such as they were, had adopted the
phrase of the king's weather, though there is plenty of adulation
in them. For the first sixty or seventy years of the eighteenth
century, there were on the whole abundant crops, a result greatly
to be attributed to the new agriculture. But the famine of 1709
in France—we suffered seriously in England—did more to break
down the French arms than the victories of Marlborough did, and
you may perhaps remember that the last of his great fights, Mal-
plaquet, was not much of a victory, and this occurred in that
disastrous year 1709, after the hope of the harvest was well-nigh
destroyed in Western Europe. People who write about history
and dilate on the philosophy of prominent characters, are ex-
ceedingly apt to neglect that which is, after all, true history, the
indisputable facts of social life. I am willing to admit the judgment
of the first Napoleon, that Marlborough was about the greatest
military genius which the world has produced, the more willingly
because I do not pretend to be a judge. His greatness has cost us
dear. But I always feel myself on safer ground, when I find that
opinion is fortified by facts, and philosophy gives a place to
intelligible statistics. Of course people may handle statistics
foolishly. But you will find as you live that many persons arrive
at conclusions and judgments for which they would be incompetent
to discover premises. The habit however gives a kind of variety
to human life.
The most disastrous period however through which population