ON THE PURCHASING POWER OF WAGES. 821 



could make him. The law under which his wages were fixed by 

 the quarter sessions assessments was effectually supplemented 

 by 14 Chas. II. cap. 12, by 3 Will. & Mary, cap. n, by 

 8 & 9 William III. cap. 30, by 9 William III. cap. n, and by 

 ii William III. cap. 13. ' The profligates of the Restoration and 

 the patriots of the Revolution were equally interested and 

 equally active in starving and degrading the labourer, whose 

 present condition, where the efforts of combination in labour 

 partnerships have been untried or are as yet abortive, is as surely 

 the outcome of those selfish, sordid, and unsleeping agencies 

 which were actively at work and were most effectively malig- 

 nant for three dreary centuries of oppression. 



Now during the sixty years in which legislation for the 

 relief of destitution was attempted, the decennial averages 

 of wheat were icj. 8^., 15^.3^., I2J. ioj</., i6s. 8</., 2$s. 8]</., 

 and 34J. io|*/.,the price during the last decade being greatly en- 

 hanced by the serious famine at the end of the seventeenth 

 century, though the price was to go on increasing till after the 

 Restoration. Now during this period of sixty years, and 

 of increasing prices, the Government, perhaps remembering 

 the action of Tyler and Cade, and certainly that of Ket, were 

 attempting on the one hand to relieve destitution, and on 

 the other to establish an organisation through the whole king- 

 dom by the machinery of the county magistrates (who should 

 be compelled to act under penalties, and should report their 

 decisions to the Privy Council) which should effectually check 

 the explosion of discontent, and make the peasant servile, 

 if he was starved, and apathetic under oppression. But if 

 we take the average of wheat prices over the whole period 

 of the sixty years 1541-1600, it will be found to be but 19$. 

 a quarter, and though shrewder heads might be sure that 

 there would be no recurrence to old rates, the mass of men 

 must have concluded that some evil cause was at work which 

 had substituted stint and penury for the old days of abundance. 

 The price of ordinary agricultural labour during the same 

 decades was, by the week, 2s. 3f</., 3*., 3*. 6</., $s. i i-J//., 4*., and 



