2Q2 ON THE PRICE OF LABOUR. 



phenomenon to the diminution of the amount of stock existing 

 in the country. 



There can be, I think, no doubt that the mortality consequent 

 upon these calamities did affect in a marked manner, and to 

 some extent permanently, the wages of labour. We have seen 

 in the course of this enquiry that a considerable rise did take 

 place in the price of labour during the decade of years in which 

 the scarcity was greatest, and that this rise continued even after 

 general prices became cheaper. Now such a result could not have 

 been effected unless, in the first place, a scarcity of hands had 

 made the demand for labour excessive, and unless the labourer 

 were put into such a situation as would enable him to secure 

 the advance which he had for a time enjoyed. This rise cannot, 

 on the whole, be reckoned at less than 10 per cent. 



Much more important, however, was the change induced ' 

 upon the price of labour by the ravages of the Black Death. 

 We have seen above that the rise affected by this visitation ! 

 may be taken on the whole at 50 per cent. We shall find here- 

 after, in commenting on the prices of materials, that similar 

 consequences were exhibited on even a larger scale when the 

 relative value of manufactured articles comes to be affected. 



The Black Death appears to have had its origin in the centre 

 of China, in or about the year 1333. It is said that it was 

 accompanied at its outbreak by various terrestrial and atmo- 

 spheric phenomena of a novel and most destructive character, 

 phenomena similar to those which characterised the first 

 appearance of the Asiatic Cholera, of the Influenza, and even in 

 more remote times of the Athenian Plague. It is a singular fact 

 that all epidemics of an unusually destructive character have 

 had their home in the farthest East, and have travelled slowly 

 from those regions towards Europe. It appears, too, that the 

 disease exhausted itself in the place of its origin at about the 

 same time in which it made its appearance in Europe. Like 

 every other pestilence of the same character, its attacks were 

 infinitely more destructive at the commencement of its career 

 than after the disease had prevailed for some time. This is not 



