832 O.V THE PrRCHASIXG POU'ER OF WAGES. 



labour in the so-called manufacturing districts of South and 

 East England. 



Gregory King l supposed, writing at nearly the end of the 

 period before me, that the average earnings of ' labouring 

 people and out-servants' were 15 15^-. a family, a sum which 

 closely corresponds to the average of the three kinds of un- 

 skilled labour given above, which is 15 is. gd., and he 

 reckons their expenditure as decidedly in excess of their 

 income, i.e. as necessarily supplemented by the poor-rate. 

 My calculations point to the same conclusion, and are derived 

 from evidence which was not in King's hands, and but par- 

 tially in Young's, the actual wages received by workmen and 

 the prices of provisions. My reader can easily test my in- 

 ferences from the materials with which I have supplied him. 



Treat the facts as one will, this certainly remains. For 

 ill, for persistent ill, the effects which the Act of Elizabeth 

 rendered possible, and the action of the quarter sessions 

 made a serious reality, endured in the case of the artisan to 

 comparatively recent times, and have not passed away in 

 that of the peasant. The modern phenomena of rent and 

 wages and their relations to each other had their beginnings 

 in the seventeenth century. In no period of English econom- 

 ical history, except during the long continental war, was the 

 lot of the peasant (made by design and through the agency 

 of law and its administration) more depressed and degraded 

 than it was when the patriots were battling for constitutional 

 rights, than when the profligates profited by the reaction, 

 and at last the men of the second Revolution, after changing 

 the dynasty, made the industry of England their prey. We are 

 struggling with the policy of that Revolution in Ireland, and 

 a criticism, which seems likely to be destructive, is examining it 

 in the rest of the country, for I suppose, as time goes on, institu- 

 tions, however ancient and sacred they may seem, will have to 

 prove their usefulness, in order to secure their existence. 



1 Davenant's Works, ii. p. 184. 



