130 ENGLISH RURAL LIFE 



siderable rise in rates, which are said to have doubled 

 in the first fifteen years of the XlXth century, but 

 the gain to the farmers in reduced wages must have 

 counterbalanced their increased rates, or the system 

 could hardly have continued, as it did, for about forty 

 years. But if farmers benefited, labourers lost ; we see, 

 indeed, the rapid degradation of almost the whole of 

 the latter class. To illustrate the effect of this system. 

 It was almost hopeless for a man who was not willing to 

 become a pauper, to obtain work, for to live he must 

 receive full wage from the farmer ; this the latter would 

 not be prepared to give, as he could hire a pauper for 

 much less. Everyone, therefore, tended to drift into the 

 pauper class. Again, under the regulations, the larger 

 the family the more a man earned. As a result there 

 was no inducement to restraint or thrift and the pauper 

 population increased rapidly. The position of an 

 unmarried man or of a young married man with a 

 wife and, for example, one child, would be the worst, 

 as the wages might be only 35. or 6s. a week 

 respectively. 



The outcome of this system was seen not only in the 

 increase in the number of paupers, but also in the rapid 

 growth of poaching and stealing. Poaching, both for 

 food and for trade, was a recognized country custom 

 before the days of the Speenhamland system of parish 

 doles in aid of wages. Parliament was concerned about 

 it in I77O, 1 when new punishments were laid down for 

 poachers, the justices being authorized to give twelve 

 months' imprisonment and a public whipping for a 

 second offence. But men whose wages were only a few 

 shillings a week and who had perhaps a wife and 

 child to support were not deterred by these penalties. 

 1 See Appendix, p. 171. 



