238 HISTORY OF AGRICULTURE 



was nicknamed the ' Speenhamland Act ' because it was so 

 generally followed. However well meant, the effect was most 

 demoralizing and the English labourer, already too prone to 

 look to the State for help, was induced to depend less on his 

 own exertions. The real remedy would have been a sub- 

 stantial increase of his scanty wages. As it was, landowner 

 and farmer were often paying the labourer in rates money 

 that would far better have come to him in wages, and the 

 rates in some districts became so burdensome that land was 

 thrown out of cultivation. In the same year as the Speen- 

 hamland Act the statute 36 Geo. Ill, c. 33, forbade the 

 removal of persons from any parish until they were in actual 

 need of support ; but although the law was thus relaxed, the 

 fixed principle which caused the refusal of all permanent relief 

 to labourers who had no settlement in the parish acted as 

 a very efficient check on migration, though, as we have 

 seen, it did not entirely check it. In 1796 the question of 

 regulating the labourers' wages by Parliament was raised ; 

 but Pitt, remembering such schemes had always failed, was 

 hostile, and the matter dropped.^ In the same year Eden 

 made his inquiries concerning the rate of wages and the cost 

 of living. In Bedford, he found the agricultural labourer was 

 getting li-. id. a day and beer, with extras in harvest^; but 

 bacon was lod. a lb. and wheat lis, a bushel. However, 

 parish allowances were liberal, a man, his wife, and four 

 children sometimes receiving \\s. a week from that source. 



In Cumberland the labourer was being paid \od. to u. a day 

 with food, or !.$■. 6d. to \s. 8d. without ; in Hertfordshire, 

 IS. 6d. a day; in Suffolk, is. 4d. a day and beer. 



Nearly everywhere his expenditure was much in excess of 



^ Autobiography of A. Young, p. 256. 



"^ State of the Poor, i. 565 et seq. ; Thorold Rogers, Work and Wages, 

 p. 487. It is difficult to calculate the exact income of the labourer; 

 besides extras in harvest, and relief from the parish, he might have a small 

 holding, or common rights, also payments in kind and the earnings of his 

 wife and children. 



