rate was much heavier in the midland, eastern, and southern counties, than it was in those north of the Trent, though from the returns of the hearth tax, an official document, it appears that the North was, on the whole, as densely peopled as the South, though far more backward in the conveniences of life. Again the poor rate, relatively speaking, was exceedingly heavy. For the time at which it was taken, it was about half the revenue of the Crown in time of peace, a proportion which no later statistics have ever disclosed, even at the time when it was over eight millions, just before the change in the law. Again, the bonds of the parochial settlement was made more strict after the Revolution than they were before. The great change which settled the Constitution brought no amendment to the peasant's lot. But, in point of fact, the seventeenth century was one of almost unbroken misery to the workman. At the conclusion of it, Gregory King sets down all the labourers as a class which contributes nothing to the annual savings, and the farmer as contributing next to nothing. During this century the population doubled, and in the eighteenth was again doubled.

Arthur Young notices with dismay and anger that, though the wages of workmen had risen considerably at the date of his tours as contrasted with those of a generation before, poor rates had notably increased likewise, and he ascribes the disagreeable phenomenon to the increase of tea drinking. It was due to a far less recondite cause, one, however, which he would not have liked to admit, for it would have been a shock to a system which he greatly admired. The growth of the poor rate, despite the increase of agricultural wages from about 7s. 6d. a week to 9s., taking the harvest gains in, was due to the enclosures, the consequent exclusion of the poor from small agriculture, and to the curtailment of bye-industries. It was these bye-industries which kept rates low, and even wages low in the North. Besides, enclosures went on far more rapidly in the South than they did in the North, as Young indirectly testifies, and as the agricultural returns of his own department prove. The poor became more straitened even when prices had not seriously risen, because they were more and more divorced from the soil. At last the law of Elizabeth annexing four acres of land to every cottage, and prohibiting overcrowding was

ARTHUR YOUNG'S COMMENTS.

247

repealed. It was a great boon to the peasant, but it was a hindrance to enclosures. He has not yet recovered it.

The first half of the eighteenth century, owing to the prevalence and success of the new agriculture was one of great plenty, high profits, low prices, and increasing wages. I have no evidence on the subject of poor rates, but I conclude from Young's contrasts, that they were stationary or declining. The next quarter was not unprosperous; the last was one of high prices, low wages, and unparalleled suffering. The distresses of the poor attracted attention, and Sir Frederic Eden essayed their history. For his own time it is valuable, for the near part useful, for the remoter past his work is worthless, for he had no information, and he does not appear even to have studied the Statute Book. Rents rose rapidly, and the farmers began to grumble at the justices' assessments as too generous to the poor. Acts of Parliament were passed, restraining the use of barley in beer, restraining the excessive bolting of the bran from wheat, the king had bran loaves served on his table, and the princesses wondered that people would starve, while cake could be got. "I would sooner," said one of these innocent creatures, "eat bread and cheese than starve."

The magistrates of Berkshire, appalled at the magnitude of the calamity, and at their wits' end to devise a remedy, at the close of the century devised a new mode of relief, which, from the place of their meeting, got the name of the Speenhamland Act. They were encouraged in their course by an interpretation which they put on two Acts of Parliament, 9 Geo. I. cap. 7, and 22 Geo. III. cap. 83. They assumed a certain sum, according to the price of wheat, which would, they conceived, support a man, his wife and one child, and that they declared to be the minimum earnings. In the case of a man whose family was more numerous, they despaired of obtaining increased wages from the employer, so they added the necessary sum from the rates. This was known as the allowance system, and was greatly condemned by the more zealous Malthusians as a premium on population, or as they sometimes said, incontinence. No one was struck at the outrageous injustice of making those occupiers who did not employ labour pay the wages, often half the wages, of those who did employ labour. Shortly after its adoption, Mr. Whitbread tried to give legal

authority to the practice, but it does not seem that it was ever invested with this dignity. It prevailed till the new Poor Law was passed, and so mechanical was it, that I remember two cases in my own native place of provident and furtive day labourers, who saved up the price of a small farm from their allowances.

At last the system became intolerable. The rates in the open parishes were eating up the whole rent, and the landowner's device was rapidly becoming the landowner's ruin. A new system was tried by Mr. Nicholls and Mr. Lowe, at Bingham and Southwell, and its success suggested the new Poor Law, which the Whigs, guided by the metaphysical economists, carried. It was necessary, but the process of change was inverted. It should have followed, not preceded, the reform or abolition of the Corn Laws. But the Whigs thought that the landed interest would be ruined if the people had cheap food, and naturally preferred the former to the latter interest. Curiously enough, Mr. Villiers' return of wages, some few years afterwards, when he was at the Poor Law Board, showed that wages in the aggregate had risen rather more than poor rates had decreased. By this time the right persons were paying them.

The apparently selfish policy of the party which carried the new Poor Law led to the establishment of Chartism. It was of no little service in its early days to the Conservative party in the North, and even in its decadence it is of service to that party now. It coupled political reforms with a socialist or quasi-socialist economical platform. Some of these economical purposes were good, as, for example, the Factory Acts, and there is little doubt that this beneficent change was greatly aided by the working men who followed Oastler and O'Connor. These people, however, were so unintelligent that they resisted the repeal of the Corn Laws, on the plea that free trade would lower wages. Even now, it is said that not a few of them believe that a period of high prices, created artificially, would heighten them. You at least are not likely to fall into this delusion, for the whole consensus of facts proves the

reverse.

HISTORICAL EFFECTS OF HIGH AND LOW PRICES.

Gregory King's law-The foundation of the laws regulating prices— Causes which depress and raise prices-The scarcity or plenty of gold and silver- Lessened cost of production-Lessened cost of freight-The produce of silver in England-Foreign silver and gold procured by trade-The effect of plagues on prices-The younger son and the civil war-The literature of the seventeenth century-Shakespere and Dryden-The inventions of the eighteenth century—The authors of the new agriculture, and Arthur YoungThe services of Sir John Sinclair to Scottish agriculture-High prices cannot of themselves recover high rents.

WHEN I was drawing up the list of lectures which I purposed to give in the present term, I very much hesitated before I concluded to put down that which forms my subject to-day. The range of the subject is very great, the facts are very copious and very intricate, the subject from the historical point of view is as yet so utterly unknown, and the evidence is so remote and so near, that I might well despair of giving you a clear and connected outline of the elements from which to make economical inductions and historical interpretations. But, on the other hand, the topic is of such great and general importance, the issues which it raises are of such profound significance, the interests of which it treats are so varied and so vital, and the future which it seeks to penetrate by the evidence of the past is so immediate, so full of menace and withal so obscure, that if I am able to throw any light on the situation, I should be lacking in that courage which one who has special knowledge ought to show, if he thinks he can elucidate a grave

social problem. As on other occasions, I shall attempt, by way of preface to what I have to say, to state concisely and as clearly as I can what are the principles on which high and low prices depend, or, in other words, the laws and causes which induce them, and in what manner these causes which should be dominant are modified or obscured by other causes and conditions, the true force or influence of which must be, if possible, weighed and distributed. And here I may observe: (1) That there is no part of political economy in which the metaphysical or psychological method which you get up in your text-books is more misleading and delusive than it is on this subject, where the only safe course is to collect and estimate facts; and (2) that variations of high and low prices, which a century or more ago would have excited little attention, and caused little alarm, in our day, when production and trade are so sensitive and so complicated, rouse the gravest apprehensions and exercise the attention of the most laborious and acute investigators into economical phenomena and economical agencies.

Now there is one law of prices which you must know and understand before you can make the least progress in interpreting the simplest problem. It is known to some economists, I do not say all, for it is most unaccountably neglected or obscured in most treatises on the subject, as Gregory King's law. Gregory King was Lancaster Herald in the latter part of the seventeenth century. Struck, as I do not doubt, with the extraordinary fluctuations of price, particularly in the price of wheat, which characterized the seventeenth century, and being a man of really statistical mind— that is, one able not only to collect figures, but to interpret related figures he stated it in this form, and you will remember that I have often referred to it:

"We take it, a defect in the harvest may raise the price of corn in the following proportions :