says that "in a country where not one-half of the people are in constant employment, it would be unfair to state 'the average amount' obtained by a laborer throughout the year, to be more than one-half of the year: during that half, his wages cannot be fairly stated at more than 8d. for four months; and for the other two months seed and harvest times 1s. The 104 working days, at 8d., are £3 9s. 4d.; and the 52 days, at 1s., added to this, make £6 1s. 4d.; which is all the laborer, 'obtaining an average amount of employment,' may earn in a year; and this sum, divided by 365— the number of days which the laborer has to support himself and his family gives him, per day, not quite FOURPENCE! I am quite confident," he continues, "that if the whole yearly earnings of the laborers of Ireland were divided by the whole number of laborers, the result would be under this sum -FOURPENCE a day for the laborers of Ireland !"

The more careful examination that has been suggested would thus bring to light the fact, that the average earnings of the laborer were reduced to £6 1s. 4d. per annum, of which 35s. were to be allowed for rent of his cabin; and that only £4 6s. 4d. remained to supply himself with food and clothing, the latter of which was necessarily much higher than in England-all the wool of Ireland being required to pass through English factories before it reaches the Irish consumer of cloth; and the limited amount of commerce compelling the trader to claim a large proportion of the price of the cloth in exchange for his services. In these facts he would find an explanation of the apparent discrepancy; and in them we find the key to that which has so much misled economists in reference to English wages in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. Employment was to the last degree temporary, as may be seen from the vast numbers required to do a little work in harvest the wages of a single day having been required to furnish means of support for many days, if not even weeks. When it was permanent, wages were exceedingly low. In 1444, when the common laborer has been supposed to have received two pecks of wheat per day, his allowance was 15s. per annum, with clothing of the value of 3s. 4d., and meat and drink. The cloth of russet, or blanket, then used by the laborers, sold at 2s. per yard -the whole wages of the laborer, therefore, not exceeding nine yards of cloth, and his own food. Where, then, could he obtain

the means of support for a family, if so unfortunate as to have one?

The power of man to avail himself of the great natural forces then scarcely at all existing, he was required to cultivate the poorest soils those yielding the smallest return to labor. Population being, necessarily, widely scattered, there was little power of association, or combination. Labor not being in demand, the force yielded by the consumption of food was, to a great extent, wasted yielding no result. Consumption followed slowly on production, because-all being farmers-all had hides or wool to sell, and few had cloth to give in exchange for either.

Mr. Malthus and his followers having been led into serious error by their omission to notice the fact, that where population is widely scattered there can be little commerce- and that where such is the case there can be no steady demand for human laborit has been deemed necessary to give this explanation of the causes of their difficulty, with a view to satisfy the reader that the true course to be adopted in reference to the power of production is, to take the actual consumption, as exhibited in the contemporary accounts of the condition of the people, and of the wages actually paid for permanent employment.

§ 7. In the period that followed the Norman conquest, so many English slaves were exported to Ireland, that the market of the latter was glutted with them; and, down to the reign of King John, there was scarcely a cottage in Scotland in which they might not be found. In this latter, no slave could purchase his liberty with his own "proper gudes or geir, because all the cattell and gudes of bondmen are [were] understood to be in the power and dominion of the master." At the close of the thirteenth century, a slave and his family were sold for 13s. 4d. In England, a few fish, principally herrings, a loaf of bread, and some beer, constituted the allowance in harvest-time, whence we may readily imagine how small it must have been during the rest of the year. Meat and cheese were then considered as rarities not entering into the consumption of the laborer. A valuation of the personal property at Colchester, the tenth city, and one of the most thriving towns in England, exhibits the condition of the tradesmen and artificers of that period, and enables us to form

some idea of the situation of the common laborer. In most houses, a brass pot, from 1s. to 3s. in value, seems to have been the only culinary utensil then used. A cobbler's stock in trade was valued at 7s.; a butcher's stock of salt meat at £1 18s., and that of another at £1. the equivalent, perhaps, of two quarters of wheat. Almost every family was provided with a small store of barley or oats rye appearing to have been little used, and wheat scarcely at all. Some families possessed a cow or two, but more kept hogs, of which two or three were the usual stock. From the small provision of fuel, it is inferred that but few houses were provided with chimneys. By a subsequent valuation, in 1301, the household articles are ascertained to have rarely exceeded 20s. in value. Bread, milk, and beer then constituted the usual diet of the townsmen. In 1339, a gift was made of a nief, (or female slave,) with all her family, and all that she possessed, or might subsequently acquire. In 1351, under Edward III., appeared the Statute of Laborers, by which the wages of haymakers and weeders were fixed at a penny per day, payable either in money or in wheat at 10d. a bushel, at the option of their employers. The effect of thus granting an option may be readily understood, when it is known that, during the fourteenth century, wheat varied between 2s. and £4 per quarter. When it was high, the laborers would be paid in money, which would not procure them food; and when low, they would receive corn, which would not purchase clothing. No person was to quit his village in search of work in summer, if he could obtain employment at the above wages, except the people of Staffordshire, Lancashire, and a few other counties. Laborers were to be sworn twice a year to observe these regulations-offenders being punishable with three or more days' imprisonment in the stocks. In 1360, the Statute of Laborers was confirmed by Parliament-the observance of it being enforced under penalty of imprisonment, and burning in the forehead with an iron. It was optional with. the master to hire by the day or year, but the laborer was "compellable to work for the statute wages, by the day or the year."

How far the employers availed themselves of this option, may be seen from the fact already noticed, that 250 reapers were employed to cut 200 acres of corn. The masters had it in their power to compel the men to engage by the year when they

required it, but they were not bound to grant engagements in that way unless they deemed it to their interest so to do. Harvest-time over, no employment could be obtained, and the result is seen in the facts, that "many became staff-strikers, and wandered in parties of two, three, or four from village to village;" while great numbers "turned out sturdy rogues, and infested the kingdom with frequent robberies." In 1388, the wages of labor were again regulated a plough-driver being allowed "78. per annum, with food, but without clothing, or any other perquisite." The wages of a year would thus purchase seven yards of russet cloth, the price of which was fixed at 18. per yard. Eden, from whose work these facts are drawn, says that we may form an idea of the bad husbandry of the period, and of the "consequent misery of the laborers," from considering the diminutive produce of arable land-five and six bushels per acre being then the usual yield of wheat. The population having then been less than two and a half millions, the power of association could have existed but in a very slight degree. The powers of the land were then as great as now, and so were those of the mind of the men who occupied it, but both were latent waiting the further growth of numbers for the production of those differences without which there can be neither combination of action, nor commerce. Towns and cities having, however, gradually grown, employment was by slow degrees becoming more diversified, and commerce was increasing these regulations being only evidences of the necessity then experienced, on the part of great landholders, for obtaining legal aid in their efforts to compel the laborers to accept from them a smaller remuneration for their services than could be obtained elsewhere. The insurrection of Wat Tyler followed close on the heels of the regulation last referred to. It failed, but the language then held by the working-people towards those who governed them, is evidence of the important change then in course of being effected. Half a century later, another act of Parliament fixed the wages of a servant in husbandry at 15s., with meat and drink, and an allowance of 3s. 4d. for clothing; but that, in its turn, was followed by the insurrection in which Jack Cade was so much distinguished. The Wars of the Roses following, we find the people generally siding with the House of York, as opposed to the great proprietors, whose lands had heretofore been cultivated by men whose VOL. III.—3

commerce with each other was maintained through the medium of their masters.

The destruction of wealth and population attendant upon these wars was little calculated to promote the interests of commerce; yet a succession of laws in relation to forced labor, furnishes evidence of constantly increasing difficulty experienced by the landowners in commanding the people's services under a system so nearly akin to serfage. In 1496, a new statute fixed the year's wages at 16s. 8d., with an allowance of 4s. for clothing; but so ineffectual did it prove, that within twenty years afterwards it became necessary to provide that persons refusing to work were to be imprisoned, and every vagabond, "whole and mighty in body," was to be tied to the cart's tail and whipped "till his body was bloody by means of such whipping." How numerous were those vagabonds, and how great was the difficulty of obtaining regular employment, is evident from the fact, that out of a population of only three millions, there were executed, in the reign of Henry VIII., no less than seventy-two thousand "great and petty thieves"-the rapines committed by the infinite number of wicked, wandering, idle people having become intolerable to the poor countrymen, and having obliged them to a perpetual watch of their sheepfolds, pastures, woods, and cornfields.

Early in the reign of Edward VI., new laws were passed for putting down "idleness and vagabondrie," by which it was enacted that "if any man or woman, able to work, should refuse to labor and live idly for three days, he or she should be branded with a red-hot iron on the breast, with the letter V, and should be adjudged to be slave, for two years, of any person who should inform against such idler." Further, the master was directed to "feed his slave with bread and water, or small drink, and such refuse meat as he should think proper" - compelling "his slave to work, by beating, chaining, or otherwise, in such work and labor (how vile soever it be) as he should put him unto"-adding thereto, that "if he runs away from his master for the space of fourteen days, he shall become his slave for life, after being branded on the forehead, or cheek, with the letter S." The punishment for running away a second time was death. A subsequent clause of the same statute enacts, that "although there be no man which shall demand such loiterer, or loiterers, yet,