42 Additional Informalion. 



CHESTER. 



John Thomas Stanley, Esq. 



If throughout the kingdom, the prices paid for labour in the years 1790 and 1804, 

 arc as different as here, there will be a report which must prove the absolute neces- 

 sity of legislative interference, in favour of the landed interest. No proposition can 

 be more clear, than that the farmer must be ruined, if the rent he has to pay, the taxes 

 he has to pay, the prices for labour he has to pay, are all to be encreased, without the 

 prices for the produce of his farm encreasing at the same time, unless we suppose, his 

 former profits to have been so great, as to allow still some balance to remain on the 

 gaining side, after exposing them to so many deductions, which nobody does suppose. 



In sending you the enclosed returns, I ought to observe, that the prices for 

 almost every kind of labour are exceedingly fluctuating at this particular period. 

 The old workmen in many instances submit to be paid the same wages as formerly, 

 but the young and independant will be tied down by no rule. Their demands vary 

 from day to day, not only for day wages, but for the pay of any measure work. 

 They fly from place to place, and from job to job, certain always of being 

 employed; two shillings a day may, however, be considered as the common price, 

 both for summer and winter; more must be paid during the harvest, or else beer 

 and ale must be allowed, which being taxed to the amount of three pence a quart, 

 cannot be considered as an addition of less than 6d. a day. 



The causes of the encreased and encreasing rate of wages are obvious, namely, 

 the encreased price of living, and the diminution of husbandmen. The first cause 

 needs no explanation; the second is owing to high wages paid in Cheshire and 

 Lancashire for weaving and cotton spinning, which induces every man who has 

 children to throw them into those employments ; even grown up persons leave 

 agriculture to follow them, and parish apprentices are so readily disposed of that 

 way, that no other one is thought of. In a few years there will certainly not be 

 husbandmen enough in this part for the common farming of the country, unless 

 trade should decline ; or such an increase of wages for husbandmen take place, as 

 may tempt those who have left the fields to return to them. We siiould be wrong 

 in considering high wages in themselves as an evil ; a very large population receiv- 

 ing high wages, is a proof that a country is rich and industrious; the only thing to 



