ON THE PURCHASING POWER OF WAGES. 685 



annually under the plough. Next, I have gathered my inference 

 from a year of undoubted prosperity, though not of exceedingly 

 low prices : for the rates of the different kinds of grain in this 

 year were, wheat 4^. 8f</., barley 35-. 6^., drage is. 10^., oats 

 is. 2</., beans 3*. n<, peas 35-. 5^., vetches y. iof*/., rye 

 y. 5f*f., best malt 4$-. 9!^., inferior malt y. of^. The price of 

 wool was 2J., of cheese by the wey 9*. 3^., of butter 7^. the 

 gallon. Next, I have taken the cost of maintenance from the 

 general average, not from the prices of the year. Next, I have 

 included in the expenditure only the simplest necessaries, 

 partly because such occasional purchases as were made are 

 reckoned on an average among the charges, after which I 

 have estimated ^3 as net profit, partly because there would 

 be a certain amount of cheese, milk, and perhaps butter 

 consumed in the family, which would hardly be considered 

 either cost or loss to the small proprietor. Lastly, the 

 whole calculation, though the expenditure for food is taken 

 from the general average, contemplates the period before the 

 Plague. 



But this event could have affected the fortunes of such small 

 proprietors as survived that calamity, as far as regards their 

 material prospects, only favourably. It was ruinous to the great 

 landowner, it was beneficial to the husbandman, who united 

 in his own person the functions of the small farmer and hired 

 labourer. It is clear that the cultivation of twenty acres of 

 land would not have absorbed the whole energies of the small 

 farmer and his household, his wife, and (as I have reckoned 

 them) his two children who stayed with him at home. In 

 Arthur Young's days, when agriculture had been far more 

 developed, and land was much more highly cultivated, twenty 

 acres per head of labour is reckoned, by that very careful col- 

 lector of facts, "to be the standard of excellent management 3 ." 

 But it is also clear that the labour on the spot fell short of the- 

 demand for it, at least on certain occasions; for the Statute 

 of Labourers, when it sought to rigidly confine the husbandman 



a Northern Tour, vol. iv. p. 20 : . 



