Convention—Agriculture in alibble Ages. 
to fancy that our fathers, five hundred years ago, lived like the 
beasts of the field. Hard as was their lot, even the serfs of that 
period lived in a condition of comfort, on the whole, greater than 
that of their descendants of the last century. And the free agri¬ 
cultural laborers, who lived upon their daily earnings, had a better 
prospect before them than those of the present day; it was easier 
for them to lay up money and become the owners of land, and thus 
rise in the social scale. 
It is a difficult thing to compare the condition of people at wide¬ 
ly distant periods of time. The standard of living changes — the 
poorest of us demand comforts now which the richest could not 
afford 500 years ago. The objects of consumption change — cotton, 
coffee, potatoes, with numerous other indispensables of the present 
day, were then utterly unknown. The value of money changes,— 
the English shilling of 1300 had three times the amount of silver 
ill it that the present one has; and, what is of still more import¬ 
ance, silver has fallen enormously in value, through the discovery 
of the American mines. The quality of things changes — how can 
we compare the coarse wool, mixed with hair, of the fourteenth 
centurv, with the fine merino which we wear? Add to this that the 
laborers of the middle age, from their relation to the manor, en¬ 
joyed a great many perquisites in the way of wood, pasture, rent, 
extra food, etc.—just like the freed slaves upon the southern plan¬ 
tations,— which are hard to take into account with any definite¬ 
ness, and which yet complicate the account materially. Neverthe¬ 
less, a few statistics, in comparison of the mode of life at the two 
periods, may be of interest, if we are careful to bear in mind that 
the comparison is only approximately accurate. I take the year 
1300, because it was before any depreciation of the currency, and 
before the social revolution caused by the great plague of 1348. 
A day laborer at the close of the thirteenth century received on an 
average about 3d* a day, which in American silver, is equal to about 
18c. ; the laborer of the present day in England receives, 1 believe, 
on an average about 2s. a day, equal to 50c. of our money, nearly 
three times the amount of the earlier wages. Taking, now, a few 
of the principal objects of consumption, we find that the bushel of 
wheat then averaged about 7^d. (=47c.); at the present day it is 
* The modern prices here given are tak'-n from an English prlce-cirrent; all the rest of 
the figures are from Itogers’ “ History of Agriculture and Prices in England.” 
