502 History of the English Landed Intei^est. 



trolling the price of food left the local authorities one remedy 

 only, and that was to regulate wages according to prices. -But 

 it was open to the Central Authority to indirectly reduce the 

 cost of bread by altering the Protective duties. Consequently 

 when in 1795 the minimum price of wheat rose seventy per 

 cent., the Government directed its attention to lowering prices, 

 and the magistrates to raising wages. Pitt succeeded in getting 

 the assent of the House to resolve itself into a committee for 

 the consideration of the Corn Laws, while the justices of Speen- 

 hamland in Berkshire, and other districts of the southern 

 counties, convened public meetings to consider the best means 

 of reconciling the low rate of wages with the high price of 

 food. At the Speenhamland meeting, the first of its kind, it 

 was decided that it was not expedient that the justices should 

 render the extra relief required,- by availing themselves of their 

 powers under the Elizabethan statute to fix a minimum rate 

 of wages, but that they should bring persuasive pressure to 

 bear on the employers of labour, to raise wages in proportion 

 to prices. The decision of the Speenhamland meeting was 

 widel}" adopted. Tables were published containing what the 

 magistrates considered as fair rates of labour-remuneration 

 after taking into consideration the high price of bread and the 

 numbers of each family in their locality. The parish officers 

 were empowered to make up from the poor funds the allowance 

 thus fixed in each individual case. The same year Mr. Whit- 

 bread brought in a Bill to definitely fix a rate below which 

 wages should not be allowed to fall.^ In the following year he 

 again introduced the same measure, and drew a moving pic- 

 ture of marriage among the labouring classes rapidly becoming 

 impossible,^ and the birth of a child being regarded as a curse. 



' It must be remembered that the olil wages clause of the Elizabethan 

 Statute of Labourers was not repealed till 1813 Wliitbread's motion, 

 therefore, was to revive this section of the obsolete but not extinct law. 

 Parliament had had constantly to complain that the statute was not kept. 

 Comp. Six Centuries of Work and Wages, stereo, ed., p. 230, Th. Rogers, 

 and Growth of English Industry and Commerce, Cunningham, Part II. 

 p. 39, n. 1, and p. 470. 



^ Compare Young's description of the labouring classes: a young 

 stranger wishes to marry and is given notice by the authorities to 



