ON THE PRICE OF LABOUR. 2,6$ 



least, than barley and its congener, is reaped at less than the 

 former, but at equal rates with the latter. At the same time it 

 will be seen that the variation is not considerable, and it may 

 be added, that as the evidence for the price of reaping rye is 

 wanting in the first decade and the last but one, that the 

 rate is most likely unduly depreciated in the second general 

 average. 



The payments made represent the same singular but tempo- 

 rary rise in the decennial period, 1311-1320, that is, during the 

 time in which the great famines occurred. As before, it would 

 have been even higher had 1321 been included. In the fifty 

 years before this period but little variation occurs in the 

 decennial averages; after it, a permanent rise of a penny an 

 acre is effected in all kinds of grain, and sometimes more. 

 This is just what might have been expected with such labour as 

 that of reaping. A service the demand for which is regularly 

 great at a certain time of the year is sure to be affected 

 permanently, and to a larger extent than that for which the 

 demand is steady and the employment of which is regulated by 

 the discretion of the employer. The exigencies of weather put 

 certain powers into the hands of labourers at harvest time, 

 which, when their numbers were scantier, they were able to 

 use to the full; but on the other hand, when the employer 

 could use winter labour as he thought proper, and when it was 

 convenient to himself, for the purpose of threshing corn, he was 

 able to recover the old rates. I conclude, then, that the 

 famines of the reign of Edward the Second raised the rate 

 of reaping permanently by about 20 per cent., and must 

 therefore have affected population, though not to the full 

 extent indicated by the first rise in the period commencing 

 with the ten years 13111320; for the rise on the ten years 

 alone varies from 22 to 30 per cent. 



Still more considerable, however, is the rise effected by the 

 Great Plague, and still more plain is it that the Statutes of 

 Labourers, insisting on the retention of the old rates of pay- 

 ment under pain of imprisonment or fine, were practically 



