CHAPTER XV. 



AGRICULTURAL DEPRESSION AND THE POOR LAW. 



1813-37. 



War taxation : peace and beggary ; slow recovery of agriculture ; the harvest 

 of 1813 ; reality and extent of distress ; the fall of prices ; bankruptcies 

 of tenant-farmers ; period of acute depression, 1814-36 ; ruin of small 

 owners ; misery of agricultural labourers ; reduction in wages and scarcity 

 of employment ; allowances from the rates ; general pauperisation : the 

 new Poor Law, 1834, and its administration. 



England in 1815 had emerged from the Napoleonic wars victorious. 

 But she paid the price of victory in her huge National Debt, her 

 excessive taxation, her enormous Poor-Rate, her fictitious credit, 

 her mass of unemployed and discontented labour. Though it is 

 estimated that one in every six male adults was engaged in the 

 struggle by land or sea, the population of England and Wales had 

 risen from under 8f millions in 1792 to about 10| millions in 1815. 

 Within the same period the National Debt grew from £261,735,059 

 to £885,186,323, and the annual expenditure, including interest 

 on the pubhc debt, from under 20 milhons to £106,832,260.1 The 

 wealth and resources of the nation are shown by the comparative 

 ease with which the money was found and the increased burden met. 

 Yet the strain of the struggle had been intense, and on no class had 

 it told more severely than on agricultural labourers. If their 

 wages had approximately doubled, the cost of Hving had nearly 

 trebled. Of their distress the rise of the expenditure on poor-relief 

 afiFords evidence. It advanced from £1, 912,241, ^ which was the 



1 Porter's Progress of the Nation (1847), p. 482. 



* Eden's State of the Poor, vol. i. pp. 363-72. In 1776 the expenditure had 

 been £1,556,804. After 1785 no Returns were made till 1803, when poor-rates 

 stood at £4,077,891. See Local Taxation Returns printed by order of the House 

 of Commons, 1839. To the sums assessed and disbursed in relief of the poor 

 must be added the annual sums derived from charities appropriated to the 

 same object. These amounted, apart from educational charities, to £1,209,395 



