594 AoRicrLTURAL Labour Early Last Century. [Oct., 



*' Alternate masters now their slave command 

 Urge the weak efforts of his feeble hand, 

 And when his age attempts its task in vain, 

 With ruthless taunts, of laxy poor complain." 



Under this plan the depression of wages was inevitable. 

 During the war the plan seemed to work because prices were 

 high, farming was exceedingly profitable and unemployment not 

 very general. After the peace came, however, it was no longer 

 possible to absorb the redundant labour, with a population 

 increasing rapidly, in this wasteful roundsman system. In 

 Buckinghamshire in 1828 wages were 3s. a week for single 

 and 6s. a week for married men, and witnesses from different 

 parts of the country gave the same accounts of wages that were 

 far below subsistence level. The only exceptions were the 

 counties in the North where the Speenhamland method had not 

 been applied. The strain on the parish system became ac-ute 

 and it was met by reducing the subsistence scale. In a report 

 of the old Board of Agi'iculture we have an account of the scale 

 fixed in Northamptonshire in 1816 and it shows a decline from 

 the scale fixed at Speenhamland in 1795. We have another scale 

 in the Eepoii: of the Committee on the^ Poor Laws which shows 

 that in Wiltshire in 1817 a man was allowed little more than 

 half of the allowance of 1795. In Hampshire and in Dorset 

 scales were fixed in 18'22 and 1826 that mark a further drop, and 

 in his " Political Economy," published in 1825, ^[cCuUoch says, 



The allowance scales now issued from time to time by the 

 magistrates are usually framed on the principle that every 

 labourer should have a gallon loaf of standard wheaten bread 

 weekly for every member of his family and one over : that is 

 four loaves for three persons, five for four, six for five and so on." 

 Thus we see that the standard of subsistence had fallen by fifty 

 per cent, between 1795 and 1825, or we cnay say that a man and 

 his wife in 1825 were allowed only as much as a single man in 

 1795. That of itself would be sufi&cient evidence of the deteriora- 

 tion in the circumstances and prospects of the labourer. Yet, 

 to understand fully his bitterness we must recollect that the 

 labourers who were now sent on their roundsman job or. as in 

 some cases, put up to auction in the parishes, had often known 

 what it was to be independent men living not altogether on 

 wages but on their own resources as small farmers or cottagers 

 with common rights, and that almost all of them inherited the 

 traditions of such a life. 



The Game Laws. — There was not a uniform administration 

 of this system and the practice varied in different districts. In 



