ON THE PURCHASING POWER OF WAGES. 687 



in their youth. In this direction, and with the opportunity 

 before him, I make no doubt that the medieval husbandman 

 fell into the error which his descendants have so often com- 

 mitted. 



But in the vast majority of cases another alternative, that 

 of stock and land leasing, was offered. The landowner culti- 

 vating by bailiff could make head no longer against labour prices 

 and the exaltation of most materials. To have cleared his 

 farm by a forced sale would have been ruinous. Even if buyers 

 could have been found, it would have been impossible to sell f 

 at anything but a grievous loss. Hence the arrangement L/ 

 entered into, by which the tenant took stock and land, either 

 in the aggregate or in parcels, the latter being quite as 

 common as the former. 



Food and stock, when the first shock of the calamity was 

 over, were only a trifle dearer. Materials were much more 

 costly. Flax and hempen fabrics were doubled in price, woollen 

 goods sustained no great rise ; labour was the most expensive 

 article as well as the most necessary. 



But while the whole of the loss implied in this rise fell on 

 the landowner, it affected the small husbandman only partially, 

 in so far, that is to say, as he was a purchaser of labour or of 

 its products, and it hardly affected the labourer at all. The 

 husbandman was compensated by the larger value of his own 

 labour, and the wider area over which he could advantageously 

 exercise it ; the labourer was benefitted to the full, by the great 

 rise which he effected in his material condition. Let it be 

 remembered that the lowest increase in money values attained 

 by the labourer is 48 per cent., or in case my reader thinks, as 

 I do not, that payments were made in tale, a little more than 

 43 per cent. Such a change, since the old rate of wages was 

 of course abundant for subsistence in average years, was the 

 means for accumulating considerable comparative wealth. And 

 we may be sure, as land, the safest and the most profitable in- 

 vestment to the husbandman, was of easy aquisition, that great 

 saving did take place, and that even if we had no distinct 



