262 ON THE PRICE OF LABOUR. 



to those who study the economy of population, they are resolved 

 to maintain. And further, we should also anticipate that if 

 a rise does take place it will not necessarily affect all labour 

 alike, but will be discerned most distinctly in such kinds as 

 those the demand for which is regular, but is urgent and tem- 

 porary. We shall also expect that the price of labour will be 

 higher in those districts where manufactures exist. Again, we 

 shall anticipate that though the price of labour and the price 

 of food are not dependent on the same causes, and that there- 

 fore fluctuations in the rate of either do not regularly and 

 mutually agree, that they are nevertheless in some measure, 

 and on a large scale, relative ; that where food, and particularly 

 the higher kinds of food, are high, labour is also high, higher 

 even than the increased cost of food would necessarily induce. 

 And furthermore, as there was no machinery in the Middle 

 Ages by which a temporary diminution in the supply of food 

 could be met by importation, and no large provision was made 

 for the support of those who were destitute, that all the phae- 

 nomena of the relations between food, labour, population, and 

 wages can be, as far as the elements for the calculations are 

 supplied, studied with great accuracy in the time before us, 

 and are susceptible of economical interpretation in the fullest 

 sense. It is not, of course, possible to decide how far the tra- 

 ditional duty of almsgiving laid on Christian societies in the 

 Middle Ages, and especially on the monastic establishments, 

 might have to some extent alleviated distress, but we may 

 be certain that however liberal may have been the contribu- 

 tions of these bodies, they could not have met any real and 

 serious emergency, still less have effected that which, I fear, 

 the English Poor Law with all its merits has effected, the com- 

 plete dissolution of any but the closest obligations between the 

 members of a family among the poor, and a general destructioi 

 of those habits of self-reliance and forethought which can alone 

 raise the condition of the great mass of the labouring classes d . 



rt In vol. ii. p. 6n.ii. will be found a remarkable entry from the roll of account 

 from the Merton College estate in Cambridge. It would seem that during the terrible 



