314 THE RURAL POPULATION, 1780-1813 



neighbourhood of London, less in more distant counties, least in the 

 West and South. From 1770 to 1790 there does not seem to have 

 been any appreciable and general rise. In the next twenty-five 

 years a striking advance was made. Tooke states that agricultural 

 wages were " doubled or nearly so." x Young calculated that, 

 taking the " mean rate " of wages in 1770 at 7s. 4Jd., the " price 

 of labour had in forty years about doubled." 2 Both he and 

 Tooke state that the wages of agricultural labourers had reached 

 the level of those of artisans. It is difficult to accept these 

 estimates. Few of the Reports to the Board of Agriculture 

 really belong to the later part of the period 1793-1815, and the 

 only county in which the Reporters to the Board state that wages 

 had doubled between 1794 and 1812 is Warwickshire. In Essex, 

 however, there is some indication of wages having doubled, if the 

 Is. 2d. of 1770 is taken as the starting-point. In the Report for 

 1794, the average of summer and winter wages is given as 9s. 1 Jd. a 

 week ; in that for 1807, at 12s. 7d. The evidence of the subsequent 

 rise comes from another source. On an Essex farm the rate of 

 wages paid to an ordinary labourer, who had not the care of stock, 

 rose from 10s. 6d. a week in 1800 to 12s. a week in 1802, and to 15s. 

 a week in 1812. 3 Whatever weight may be attached to the general- 

 isations of Tooke and Young, it is certain that a very important 

 advance in agricultural wages was made during the period of the 

 Napoleonic wars. Unfortunately, it is equally certain that, even 



1 History of Prices, vol. i. p. 329. 



* Enquiry into the Rise of Prices in Europe during the last twenty-five years 

 (1815), p. 215. 



8 Board of Trade Report on Agricultural Wages (1900), Cd. 346, p. 238. In 

 the Communications to the Board of Agriculture (vol. v. part i.), the average 

 weekly wages of agricultural labourers in 1803 are stated at 11s. lid. In 

 Arthur Young's Enquiry into the Rise of Prices in Europe, the weekly wages in 

 husbandry are stated to be 14s. 6d. in 1811. J. C. Curwen, M.P., moving in the 

 House of Commons for a Committee to consider the Poor Laws (May 28, 

 1816), speaks of agricultural wages at that time as ranging from 10s. to 15s. 

 (Pamphleteer, vol. viii. p. 9). A. H. Holdsworth, M.P. (Letter on the Present 

 Situation of the Country (1816), Pamphleteer, vol. viii. p. 428), speaks of agri- 

 cultural labourers receiving 2s. 6d. a day before the reductions of 1 8 1 4. William 

 Clarkson (Inquiry into the Poor Rates (1816), Pamphleteer, vol. viii. p. 392) gives 

 the average rate of wages in 1812 at 15s. ; but thinks that as wages are much 

 less in Wiltshire, Devonshire, and Cornwall, this figure is over-stated as an 

 average. 



It is not suggested that this class of evidence is at all conclusive ; but it 

 leaves the impression that, if agricultural wages in 1760 averaged 7s., they had 

 approximately doubled in 1812 in many parts of the country, and that the 

 average rise cannot be put at less than two-thirds. 



