2 OCTOBER 1886, Page 15

"HOUSED BEGGARS."

[TO THE EDITOR OP THE "SPECTATOR."] SIR,-The assailant of my pamphlet incorrectly represents me as saying without qualification that the condition of the tabourer has grown worse. My assertion is, that from Edward III. to Victoria the rural labourer has been steadily losing ground. First, let us take the question of wages and their purchasing power. Professor Thorold Rogers, in his " Six Cen- turies of Work and Wages," states that five centuries ago the rural labourer earned 2s. per week, and a woman ls., equal to 24s. and 12s. of our money. The working day was commonly eight hours, and the wages often included " nonschenes," or luncheon. These wages lasted for nearly a century, and afterwards, as campared with their purchasing power in wheat, steadily fell. F rom 1260 to 1540 the price of wheat averaged from 5s. 11d. to 6s. per quarter. In the fotirteenth century, a labourer paid for a quarter of wheat with eighteen days' labour. Until the repeal of the Corn Laws, this never happened in England again. In 1837, labourers' wages averaged 10s. 4d. per week, and wheat averaged 52s. 6d. per quarter, requiring thirty days' labour to purchase, against eighteen days' labour five centuries earlier. In 1449 and 1450, the following prices prevailed in Oxford :-Wheat, 5s. 10d. per quarter ; beef and mutton, 4s. ld. and 4s. 6d. per cwt.; butter, id. per lb. ; eggs, 120 for 51d. Clothing was dearer propor- tionately, shirting being 6d. per yard, and cloth, ls. 51d. per yard. House-rent, including a plot of laud, and almost in- variably a run on the common, would be about 2s. per year. A multiple of twelve is a fair one to reckon in comparing these prices with the present purchasing power of money. The following details, gleaned from Professor Rogers's " Six Centuries of Work and Wages," give particulars respectively of wages and prices of wheat for nearly four hundred years, and especially when taken in connection with the loss by the poor of the commons, go to prove something of their loss as a class during the period in question, and to upset the totally wrong idea of your corre- spondent, "that wages have gone up, and that the price of food, &c., has gone down :"- A.D. Wages.

1495 2s. Od. per week 1564 3s. 6d.

1634 4e. Gd.

1725 Is. Od.

1805 8s. 03.

1837 10s. 4d.

Nash, the well-known historian of Worcestershire, writing in 1781, laments the loss to the industrious poor involved in the enclosing of the commons, and speaks in terms very much resembling those employed by Sir T. More and Lord Bacon in the sixteenth century.

The labourer five centuries ago had not been placed under the " Statute of Labourers," which empowered magistrates to settle the rates of wages, and which lasted down to 1814. Further, they were free from the law, lasting from Edward VI. until George IV., by which combinations for the purpose of raising wages were made a felony, and punishable by dire penalties. The Law of Settlement, by which it was almost impossible for the labourer to gain a footing in a new locality, also prevailed until a recent date. Beyond all these terrible inflictions, and intensifying the distress of the people, there was steadily proceeding all over England that policy of enclosure which drew from Lord Bacon the indignant denunciation which he winds up by the prediction that its results will make of the industrious rural population only "housed beggars." Seldom is a statesman's forecast more surely verified than in this instance. The absorption of ten million acres of common lands between 1710 and 1846 left the rural poor of England permanently impoverished beyond the fate of any similar class known to modern European history. As Cobbett wrathfully inquired in 1826, what justice was there in the landowner enclosing the common and growing wheat to sell at a famine price, whilst the miserable labourer, deprived of his common rights, starved on eight or nine shillings per week, eked out by a parish allowance P Even Young, the farmers' advocate, declared that in 1813 labourers' wages were insufficient to buy necessary food. At the present time, despite cheap corn, happily lower in price than during any two years for five centuries, the lot of the labourer continues to be sorely pinched by low wages and the difficulty of hiring land.

The consideration of these facts points the way to a remedy. The chief one must be to restore the community to some powers over the soil which Professor Stubbs declares our ancestors had, and which Professor Pollock states existed before manors and their lords were heard of. The comparison suggested by your correspondent between the claim of the community to control land and the claim of journeyman-printers to a press apiece is totally beside the mark. The labourer does not claim from the community a plough or any other implement, press or what not, but simply a restoration of a right (which Parliament, without consulting him, deprived him of) to hire some land on which he may work and improve his livelihood. If printers or any other class could show they once had a right to standing-room for a press, which the law had unjustly deprived them of instant interference on their behalf would be only too much justified.

It is a mistake to suppose that farmers, or any one else, will be obliged to provide means for enabling rural workmen to carry on their trade in a small way, as your correspondent suggests. The rural voter requires access to land in lots small enough for the means which he, and not any other class, will provide. It is also in evidence that the labourer does not thereby become a worse, but rather a better servant. A large seed-grower, harvesting crops requiring most anxious watching, within the last few days has stated that his best men are those who grow something on their own account. I received the same evidence in Cheshire respecting labourers of whom 270 have " three acres and a cow " on Lord Tollemache's estate. We have only to go to Switzerland to see the Communal Law system of our ancestors in beneficent working to this day. Provision of small plots of land at fair rents will ease the poverty of rural districts, and bring comfort and comparative ease to countless poverty-stricken households. Rateable values will improve, local business centres will feel fresh impulse of life and trade, and, as happened once before to a bitterly maligned object, " no one will be one penny the worse."-I atn,

Wheat.

4e. Od. per quarter.

„ 20e. Od. „ „ 40e. Od.

„ 46e. Id.

93s. 4d.

tP

„ 52s. Gd.

/1