Ch. V. Of Poor- Laws. 69 



were assisted by their parishes, had no reason 

 whatever to complain of the high price of grain ; 

 because it was the excessiveness of this price, 

 and this alone, which by enforcing such a saving 

 left a greater quantity of corn for the consumption 

 of the lowest classes, which corn the parish al- 

 lowances enabled them to command. The greatest 

 sufferers in the scarcity were, undoubtedly, the 

 classes immediately above the poor ; and these 

 were in the most marked manner depressed by 

 the excessive bounties given to those below them. 

 Almost all poverty is relative ; and I much doubt 

 whether these people would have been rendered 

 so poor, if a sum equal to half of these bounties 

 had been taken directly out of their pockets, as 

 they were, by the new distribution of the money 

 of the society which actually took place.* This 

 distribution, by giving to the poorer classes a 

 command of food so much greater than that to 



* Supposing the lower classes to earn on an average ten shil- 

 lings a week, and the classes just above them twenty, it is not 

 to be doubted, that in a scarcity these latter would be more 

 straightened in their power of commanding the necessaries of life, 

 by a donation of ten shillings a week to those below them, than 

 by the subtraction of five shillings a week fi'om their own earnings. 

 In the one case, they wouW be all reduced to a level ; the price 

 of provisions would rise in an extraordinary manner fiom the 

 greatness of the competition ; and all would be straightened for 

 subsistence. In the other case, the classes above the poor would 

 still maintain a considerable part of their relative superiority^ the 

 price of provisions would by no means rise in the same degree ; 

 and their remaining fifteen shillings would purcliase much more 

 than their twenty shillings in the former case. 



