ALLOWANCES IN AID OF WAGES ^ 327 



the country, it is evident that most of the small landowners, who, 

 in addition to taxes and rates, had to pay annuities or interest on 

 mortgages, were forced to sell their properties. Everywhere large 

 estates were built up on the ruin of^ small proprietors. 



Morally, if not materially, no class suffered more from the pro- " 

 longed period of depression than agricultural labourers. They 

 had bitter reason to deplore the shortsighted humanity which in 

 the last twenty years of the eighteenth century had swept away 

 the old barriers against pauperism. ^ Where Gilbert's Act had been 

 adopted, every man was now secure of emplo3niient from the 

 parish or, in any case, of maintenance. In every parish, also, 

 outdoor reHef for the able-bodied poor was now compulsory on the 

 overseers. Already in some districts men out of regular work 

 were " on the Rounds," offering their labour from house to house, 

 paid, if employed, partly by the householder, partly by the parish, 

 and if unemployed, wholly by the parish. Even men in full employ- 

 ment were drawn within the net. When in 1795-6 the price of 

 provisions rose to famine height, wages were supplemented by 

 allowances from the rates. A scale of these allowances was pro- 

 claimed by the Berkshire magistrates, proportioned to the price 

 of bread and the size of families. From the wages of the unmarried 

 labourer, which were zero, the scale ascended, varying with fluctua- 

 tions in the cost of the quartern loaf and the number of the children 

 of the married labourer. Similar scales of allowances were adopted 

 in many other counties. Thus able-bodied men, whether in or out 

 of work, became dependent on the rates. That, from the first, 

 these allowances delayed the natural rise of wages, lowered earnings 

 by making the needs of unmarried men the most important factor, 

 and encouraged improvident marriages, is certain. But these evils 

 were held in check till 1813. So long as the war and the high prices 

 continued, the demand for labour was brisk ; distress was prac- 

 tically confined to those who suffered from enclosures, or from the 

 dechne of local industries other than the cultivation of the land. 

 Agricultural wages rose substantially ; emplojmaent increased owing 

 to the extension of tillage ; even the high prices of provisions affected 

 labourers less than might have been expected, since the provisions, 

 in several parts of the country, were supplied to them at a lower 

 cost than the market rates. Except for winter unemployment the 

 allowance system was sparingly used. But during the depression 

 1 See Appendix II. The Poor Law. 



