180 Slaney on Rural Expenditure. 



of Hawsted, much curious and important information, re- 

 garding the former state of agriculture, and of the agricul- 

 tural labourers, may be derived. 



First: the agricultural labour is much inferior in ability 

 to support a family to his ancestors, three or four centuries 

 ago. We are aware that, besides food, clothing, habitation, 

 and fuel are among the barest necessaries of life, and that 

 some kinds of clothing are much cheaper at present than they 

 were formerly ; while the habitations of the poor are more 

 adapted to health, and to defend them from the inclemencies 

 of the weather, as well as more clean and comfortable. But of 

 how little avail to the great mass of the agricultural labourers, 

 those who have a wife and three or four children to support, 

 is it, that all the articles of their dress made of cotton are a 

 very great deal cheaper than they ever were, if at the same 

 time all articles of food are much dearer; for after all, the 

 real condition of the poor must, and ought to be estimated 

 by their ability to procure food — what will keep them in 

 healthful and strong existence, able to work and support 

 themselves and families. A father of a family will care 

 little that he can purchase a pair of cotton stockings for his 

 child by the wages of half a day's labour, whereas his an- 

 cestors could not have purchased them by the wages of a 

 week's labour, if it require his wages of a week to purchase 

 as much bread for his child, whereas his ancestors could have 

 obtained the same by the wages of two or three days. By a 

 comparison of wages and the price of corn, therefore, at 

 different periods, we must gain our knowledge of the real 

 condition of the poor at these periods. 



The labouring classes, especially those engaged in agri- 

 culture, were better provided with the means of subsistence, in 

 the reign of Edward III., or of Henry VI., than they are at 

 present. Sir John Cullum, in his History of Hawsted, has 

 shown, that in the fourteenth century, a harvest man had four- 

 pence a day ; this enabled him in a week to buy a comb or 

 four bushels of wheat; when Sir John published his work, 

 in 1784, a man was obliged to work ten or twelve days to 

 purchase the same quantity of wheat. In the time of Henry VI. 

 meat was about a farthing and a half a pound ; a labourer, 

 therefore, whose wages were three-pence a day, or eighteen 

 pence a week, could buy a bushel of wheat at six shillings a 

 quarter, and twenty-four pounds of meat for his family; 

 whereas a labourer at present, earning twelve shillings a 

 week, can purchase only half a bushel of wheat at sixty-four 

 shillings a quarter, and six pounds of meat at eight-pence 

 a pound. 



