128 ENGLISH RURAL LIFE 



sible, and the ratepayers of every parish lived in fear of 

 the pauper who might secure a 'settlement,' and so 

 did their utmost to prevent poor people settling down 

 within their boundaries. Landlords pulled down cottages 

 and prevented new ones being built. Parishes spent 

 fortunes in lawsuits amongst themselves on the question 

 of liability to support individual paupers, and although 

 the provisions of the Act of Settlement were modified 

 by the act passed in 1795,* which forbade the removal 

 of any individual from one parish to another unless he 

 was in actual want, much money was spent in carting 

 poor people back to their own parishes. In 1815 the 

 parishes of England spent over a quarter of a million 

 pounds on such litigation and removals. 



Indeed, during the latter part of the XVIIIth 

 century the condition of the poor became more and 

 more miserable, especially as the rural iron trade, 

 the cloth trade and other village industries, decayed 

 with the uprising of the factory towns. The people 

 suffered greatly as the price of wheat, and therefore of 

 food, went up. In 1795 there were widespread food 

 riots, in many cases directed by women. At some 

 places crowds of women seized the corn and other 

 produce and proceeded to sell it at what they con- 

 sidered fair prices, paying the amount received the 

 fair price to the owners. Social reformers in Parlia- 

 ment introduced proposals for securing a legal minimum 

 wage for working people, but the laissez-faire theories 

 of Adam Smith had such a hold on men's minds at that 

 time that any proposal of this character had no chance 

 of success. Action was taken, however, without special 

 legislation, in 1795, the outcome of a meeting of magis- 

 trates and clergy held at Speenhamland in Buckingham- 

 1 See Appendix, p. 171. 



