ON THE PRICE OF LABOUR. 513 



feet, the seventh, eighth, and ninth of the tiler, the thatcher, and 

 the man serving each ; the tenth to the thirteenth is the cost of 

 threshing and winnowing a quarter of wheat, barley, beans, 

 peas, and oats; the fourteenth is that of mowing an acre of hay ; 

 the fifteenth, sixteenth, and seventeenth those of reaping an 

 acre of wheat, barley, and oats ; the eighteenth and last is that 

 of the ordinary unskilled farm hand. 



The second table is that of decennial averages, as far as 

 procurable, of these kinds of labour, with the addition, in the 

 schedule of artisan's wages, of the plumber 1 . 



1 The debate between the English and French heralds, by John Coke, printed by the 

 Societe des anciens textes Franjais, Paris, 1877, as an appendage to a French work 

 of a century earlier, to which Coke's production is a sort of reply, has the following 

 suggestive passage, put by the writer into the mouth of the French speaker after the 

 statement that French artisans generally live in towns : 



'It is not so in England, for your clothiers dwell in great farms abroad in the country, 

 having houses with commodities like unto gentlemen, where as well they make cloth, 

 and keep husbandry, and also grass and feed sheep and cattle, taking thereby away the 

 livings of the poor husbandmen and graziers. Furthermore, in England, some one man 

 keepeth in his hands two or three farms, and where hath been six or eight persons 

 in every farm, he keepeth only a shepherd or wretched herdman and his wife. 



'Likewise, many gentlemen, for their private commodities, enclose a mile or two 

 about their houses, destroying thereby not only the farms and cottages within the same 

 circuits, but also the good towns and villages near adjoining, so that for these reasons, 

 marvel not, though we far exceed England in riches, number of people, good towns^ 

 and villages,' p. 105. I have modernised the spelling only. 



VOL. IV. L 1 



