328 AGRICULTURAL DEPRESSION AND POOR LAW 



fanners were driven to economise in their labour bills. Wages 

 were greatly reduced or even ceased altogether. The replies to 

 the Circular Letter of the Board of Agriculture insist on the deplor- 

 able scarcity of employment. Preston x speaks of the daily 

 increase in the number of paupers, and of " a large part of the 

 community ... in want of employment though willing to labour." 

 " At no period in the memory of man," writes Jacob, 2 " has there 

 been so great a portion of industrious agricultural labourers 

 absolutely destitute as at the present moment." It was now that 

 the Poor Law was most perniciously relaxed ; now also that the 

 demoralising system of allowances became the most conspicuous 

 feature in its administration. 



The immediate effects of the depressed condition of agriculture 

 was a great reduction in the rates of wages, and in the demand for 

 permanent labour. Unless the farmer could lessen his costs of 

 production, he was rapidly sinking into bankruptcy. The Poor 

 Law, as it was administered in 1813-34, in two ways came to his 

 assistance. It enabled him to reduce wages to the lowest possible 

 point, because it made good the deficiency out of allowances from 

 the rates. Men discharged as supernumeraries were taken on again 

 as soon as they were on the poor-book. It also provided him with 

 an inexhaustible supply of cheap and temporary labour. Bound 

 to defray the whole cost of maintaining the able-bodied poor, the 

 parish gladly accepted any payment, however small, in part relief 

 of their liability. It became almost impossible for a farmer to 

 keep a man in permanent employment at reasonable wages. If 

 he did, he was only saving the rates for neighbours, who put their 

 hands into his pockets to pay their labour bills. Sometimes the 

 ratepayers in the parish arranged among themselves to employ 

 and pay a number of men proportionate to the rateable value of 

 their property. Sometimes the parish agreed with employers to 

 sell the labour of so many paupers at a given sum, and paid the 

 men the difference between the agreed price and the scale allowance 

 awarded to them according to the cost of bread and the number 

 of their children. Sometimes the paupers were paraded by the 

 overseers on a Monday morning, and the week's labour of each 



1 Review of the Present Ruined Condition, etc., by R. Preston, M.P. (1816), 

 (Pamphleteer, vol. vii. p. 129). 



2 Inquiry into the Causes of the Agricultural Distress, by W. Jacob, F.R.S. 

 (1817), (Pamphleteer, vol x. p. 411). 



