A much more general and important fact, however, is the depression of the
 actual farm-labourer's wage below its normal average, so that part of it is
 deducted to become part of the lease money and thus, in the guise of
 ground-rent, it flows into the pocket of the landlord rather than the labourer.
 This is, for example, quite generally the case in England and Scotland, with
 the exception of a few favourably situated counties. The inquiries into the
 level of wages by the parliamentary investigating committees, which were
 appointed before the passage of the Corn Laws in England — so far the
 most valuable and almost unexploited contributions to the history of wages in
 the 19th century, and at the same time a pillory erected for themselves by the
 English aristocracy and bourgeoisie — proved convincingly and beyond a
 doubt that the high rates of rent, and the corresponding rise in land prices
 during the anti-Jacobin war, were due in part to no other cause but deductions
 from wages and their depression to a level that was even below the physical
 minimum requirement; in other words, to part of the normal wage being handed
 over to the landlords. Various circumstances, such as the depreciation of money
 and the manipulation of the Poor Laws in the agricultural districts, had made
 this operation possible at a time when the incomes of the tenants were
 enormously increasing and the landlords were amassing fabulous riches. Indeed,
 one of the main arguments of both tenants and landlords for the introduction of
 duties on corn was that it was physically impossible to depress farm labourers'
 wages any lower. This state of affairs has not significantly changed, and in
 England, as in all European countries, a portion of the normal wage is absorbed
 by ground-rent just as ever. When Count Shaftesbury, then Lord Ashley, one of
 the philanthropic aristocrats, was so extraordinarily moved by the condition of
 English factory operatives and acted as their spokesman in Parliament during
 the agitation for a ten-hour day, the spokesmen of the industrialists took
 their revenge by publishing wage statistics of agricultural labourers in the
 villages belonging to him (see Buch I, Kap. XXIII, 5, e [English edition: Ch
 XXV 5 e — Ed])("The British Agricultural Proletariat"), which
 clearly showed that a portion of the ground-rent of this philanthropist
 consisted of loot filched for him by his tenants out of the wages of
 agricultural labourers. This publication is also interesting for the fact that
 its revelations may bravely take their place beside the worst exposures made by
 the committees in 1814 and 1815. As soon as circumstances force a temporary
 increase in the wage of agricultural labourers a cry goes up from the
 capitalist tenant farmers that raising wages to the normal level, as done in
 other branches of industry, would be impossible and would ruin them, unless
 ground-rent were reduced at the same time. Therein lies the confession that
 under the head of ground-rent there is a deduction of the labourers' wages
 which is handed over to the landlords. For instance, from 1849 to 1859 the
 wages of agricultural labourers rose in England through a combination of
 momentous events: the exodus from Ireland, which cut off the supply of
 agricultural labourers coming from there; an extraordinary absorption of the
 agricultural population by factories; a war-time demand for soldiers; an
 exceptionally large emigration to Australia and the United States (California),
 and other circumstances which need not be dwelt upon here. At the same time,
 average prices of grain fell by more than 16% during this period, with the
 exception of the poor agricultural years 1854 to 1856. The tenant farmers
 clamoured for a reduction in rents. They were successful in individual cases,
 but on the whole failed to achieve this demand. They had recourse to a
 reduction of production costs, among other things by the mass production of
 steam-engines and new machinery, which to some extent replaced horses and
 pushed them out of the economy, but also brought about, in part, an artificial
 over-population by throwing agricultural day-labourers out of work, and thereby
 caused a new drop in wages. And this took place in spite of the overall
 relative decrease in agricultural population during that decade as compared
 with the growth of total population, and in spite of an absolute decrease in
 agricultural population in some purely agricultural districts.[32] Thus Fawcett, then professor of
 political economy at Cambridge [who died in 1884 while Postmaster General],
 stated at the Social Science Congress on October 12, 1865: