758 ON THE PURCHASING POWER OF WAGES. 



class hind are reckoned at 8 7^. 8^., so that he could hardly 

 live at the same standard of comfort that his ancestor did a 

 century before on his earnings, and hardly save at all. But, 

 as the statute of Elizabeth complains, the custom of building 

 cottages without curtilages had attracted the attention of the 

 government, and we must conclude that the house rent of the 

 labourer, which, in my first volume, I treated as wholly unim- 

 portant, or at the worst paid by poultry rents, was now becoming 

 a serious addition to the family charges of the labourer in 

 husbandry. Even if we take the wages of a labourer in hus- 

 bandry, not hired by the year, at 8 4^., the margin of earnings 

 by the side of expenditure is very narrow. That the labourer 

 had to reduce his expenditure is plain. The general cost of 

 maintenance in the early period is %d. a week of six days, the 

 Rutland proclamation makes it zs. 9 and so acknowledges, un- 

 consciously, a triple rise. Had I made such a difference in 

 my calculations, the cost of a family of four on the old standard 

 would have been g 43. 



Still the labourer of Elizabeth's time was better off than his 

 descendant was in the time of Arthur Young. I have quoted, 

 vol. i. p. 690, his average price of farm labour by the week. It 

 is 7.?. 3^., or 18 14^. 7^. the year, and deducting house rent 

 and firing, .15 its. 6d. But wheat in 1771, was 48 s., butter 

 6\d., cheese 3^., meat 3^., and malt not much less, the duty 

 included, than 30^. ; i. e. the necessaries of life were from three 

 to four times as dear as they were in the latter part of my 

 period, while the wages of labour were not much more than 

 double. 



Still more striking is the contrast between the rate at which 

 Elizabeth's proclamation estimates the wages and board of 

 a first-class hind, and that which Young thinks exceedingly 

 high. In 1563 they are rated at 8 7.$-. 8d., in 1771 at 

 10 8s. 6d. Even in Elizabeth's days, however, the cost of 

 living had become so disproportionate to the rate of wages, 

 that the legal relief of destitution was the only remedy dis- 

 cernible against a growing pauperism. 



