to 96 pints of wheat per week; that is, were exactly doubled in the course of a century, notwithstanding the Poor Laws had been all that time in full operation. Since 1750, the value of money has again fallen, and husbandry wages have been reduced from 96 to 63 pints of wheat per week. There can be no doubt, we think, that this view of the subject is correct; and the labouring class is not the only one which is suffering from the effects of the depreciated value of money. Still, it requires to be more fully explained, how it comes to pass that wages have not in a more proportionate degree participated in the general advancement of prices. It is easy to understand that the value of labour should be the last thing to accommodate itself to the altered value of money; but its continued and excessive depreciation during a period distinguished by so very considerable an augmentation of the agricultural capital of the country, is a fact which would seem to demand some further explanation.

Mr. Barton will not admit that the employer of labour has any control over the rate of wages, or that the mischievous system of making up the wages of the labourer by parish allowances, has had any effect in keeping down the price of labour. He argues thus :

Let us suppose that while fifteen shillings per week is the natural price of labour, (that is, the price it would bear if no parochial relief existed,) an attempt be made by the cultivators of land to reduce it to twelve shillings per week;-making up the deficiency from the poor rates. Fifteen shillings per week being a fair price, of course leaves a fair profit to the master; twelve shillings per week must therefore leave him an extraordinary profit. It is then his interest to buy as mnch of this cheap labour as he can get; just as a low price tempts purchasers in all other cases. True, he pays more in poor rates than formerly, if he pays less in wages. But the saving is all his own, the expense he divides with his neighbours. Whether he employ ten workmen, or only eight, makes not a shilling difference in the amount of his rate. He has then clearly an interest to add to the number of hands in his employ. But as all his neighbours have an equal interest in doing the same thing, competition will quickly raise wages again to their former level. If indeed a conspiracy to depress the price of labour were formed at once in all parts of the kingdom, by farmers universally agreeing not to bid against one another, then undoubtedly they might dictate their own terms to their workmen. But this is just as chimerical as the notion of a conspiracy to raise the price of corn. When individual interest comes into competition with the interest of some hundred thousand other persons, of whom a vast majority are unknown even by name to each other, it requires no profound skill in the science of human nature to determine what will be the result. On the other hand, it is clear that nothing short of a national conspiracy would suffice for carrying such a scheme into effect. For if the agriculturists of any particular parish should make the attempt, what is to prevent their labourers from seeking

work elsewhere? In the adjoining parishes the rate of wages is fifteen shillings per week, without any parochial allowance; in this it is twelve shillings per week with a parochial allowance. But this allowance is not given indiscriminately, and in equal proportions, to all. Men with large families receive more; men with small families less; single men none at all. Is it to be believed, then, that any single man, or any married man whose wages and allowance amount together to less than fifteen shillings per week, will continue in such unpro fitable employment, when he may obtain a full rate of earnings without difficulty in the next village? The framers of the plot would quickly be left with no other labourers than those burdened with large families; that is to say, those whose allowances more than compensate for the reduction of wages. Thus, instead of gain, such a scheme would be attended with certain loss.' pp. 45, 46.

Had the fallacies contained in this chain of reasoning been less obvious, we should nevertheless, from our knowledge of facts, have felt assured that the Writer, in this instance, has been misled by his eagerness to make his theory explain every thing. But there is clearly more than one flaw in his argument. The quantity of labour which a cultivator of the land is able to purchase, does not depend, as this representation of the case would make it appear, altogether on its cheapness, or on the profits it would yield, but on the amount of capital which he has to employ. The cheapness of labour would, it is true, put it in his power to purchase more of it; for instance, a depreciation of wages from 158. to 128. per week, would allow of his employing five men where he now employs four; but he could go no further. It would, however, by no means follow from his being able to purchase a larger quantity of labour than before, that it must be his interest to take on a single additional hand; much less to buy as much of this cheap labour as he can get.' There are some farmers, (it is admitted the number is small,) whose consideration for their labourers induces them constantly to employ as many as the land can possibly require, and more than they derive any immediate profit from employing. Now, let a further depreciation of labour take place to the greatest extent conceivable, and it will not be the interest of such persons to purchase any more of it. The fact is, that, not the high price of labour, (for how can the present wages of labour be termed high, inadequate as they universally are to the labourer's maintenance?) but the pressure of taxation in all its varieties of tithe, rate, indirect taxes, and assessment, added to a high rent, prevent the farmer, in nine cases out of ten, from employing as many regular hands as he otherwise would do, leading him to refrain from such occasional operations as are not of pressing necessity. While, therefore, the same motive which induces him to economise labour, is constantly prompting his endeavours to obtain it for the lowest wages possible, the greater

cheapness of labour would not, under existing circumstances, induce him to employ more hands than he finds absolutely requisite; and the quantity of labour which is absolutely requisite, how high soever be the rate of wages, he does and must purchase. In the present state of our population, it is next to ridiculous to suppose that the cultivators of the land could by any possibility buy up the cheap labour that should be in the market, so as to raise wages by their competition. But instances of their controlling the rate of wages, by bargaining with the labourer that his wages shall be made up a specific sum out of the Poor's rate, are too notorious to require any proof of the fact. The labourer, Mr. Barton says, would not accept of twelve shillings per week on the condition of having it made up fifteen shillings by a parish allowance, if in a neighbouring parish he could obtain wages equal to the whole amount. We believe that there are hundreds of labourers who would care little how the fifteen shillings were made up to them, could they but secure the receipt of the sum. But the case is, that the Jabourer sells his labour for the highest price he can get for it, because he finds it difficult to get any work at all, and because, whatever wages may be paid in the neighbouring parish, that parish has too many hands already. He is in the condition of a trader in an over-stocked market, who is glad to part with his commodities at any price. Now it is utterly impossible that husbandry wages should have been forced down to the miserable pittance which is the nominal price of labour in some districts, had it not been for the systematic misapplication of the Poor's rate, which has been so often adverted to in Parliamentary and other documents as the chief source of the alarming increase of the rate itself. Parish allowances do, in fact, form a part of the price of labour,' and Mr. Barton's reasons for believing to the contrary could avail him nothing, were they as strong as they are nugatory. For this enormous abuse, we can imagine no other remedy than enacting that no labourer in the receipt of wages shall be entitled to any parish allowance whatsoever. Far better would it be for the poorer class themselves, and far better for the country, if the whole labouring population of a parish were distributed into labourers in full pay, and paupers wholly dependent on the parochial fund for their maintenance, than, as is now so often the case, to have the greater part subsisting half on low wages and half on the rate.

We fully agree with the present Writer, that it is not the Poor Laws in themselves considered,-that is, it is not the natural operation of the Poor Laws, which has led to the present excessive depreciation of agricultural labour, either by promoting habits of improvidence in the Poor, or by stimulating in any other way the increase of the population. A political economist

writing in the reign of George the Second, might,' he justly remarks, have maintained that the Poor Laws tend to raise the recompense of industry, and have appealed, in support of his opinion, to the undeviating experience of two centuries and 'a half. Only seventy years ago, the country gentlemen were loudly complaining of an increasing want of husbandmen and day-labourers, of the excessive and increasing prices of work'men' and 'of the impossibility of procuring a sufficient number 'at any price.' But agreeing thus far with the Writer, we see no necessity for shutting our eyes to the notorious fact, that, the wages of agricultural labour having been previously depreciated to the utmost by a fall in the value of money, the present abuse of the Poor's rate has been operating so as to produce a still further depression; or for denying that the excess of population which the stagnation of trade, the cessation of war, and the progress of agricultural improvement, have thrown upon the country, is a chief cause of its present calamitous predicament.

Mr. Barton's last section is devoted to the consideration and proposal of Remedies;' a most cheering but too often delusive utle! Many of the proposed remedies have already passed under our notice in a former article; and we need not again go over the ground, by pointing out the mischievous tendency of some which have received a high and dangerous sanction. We must 'never forget,' says the present Writer, that the low rate of wages is the root of the mischief.' In a qualified sense, this is true; and if so, the evil would seem to admit of being remedied only in one of the following ways: either, by lessening the supply of labour; or by an adequate permanent extension of the demand for labour; or by fixing a minimum price as the wages of labour; or, lastly, the money price remaining the same, by a fall in the price of commodities equal to the previous rise occasioned by the depreciation of the standard of value, which would of course restore wages to their just and natural level. The inefficiency, not to say folly, of many well-meant schemes for bettering the condition of the poor, consists in their having no tendency eventually to benefit the labourer in any one of these ways. So far as temporary employment can be furnished to those who are out of work, without prejudice to the regular, hard-working labourer, it is true benevolence to adopt this method of relieving their necessities; but whatever plan of this description falls short of ultimately increasing the permanent demand for labour, can have no pretensions to any higher character than a mere expedient to gain time, till, by some undreamed of means, the vessel of the state shall right itself. To the plan of fixing a minimum price for husbandry labour, there exist strong objections and almost invincible prejudices. Into the force of the one and the reasonableness of the

other, we shall not at this time enter, being quite ready to admit that, upon abstract principles, such an interference on the part of the legislature is to be deprecated, although in a highly taxed and over-legislated country, the application of those principles becomes a matter of no small perplexity. As to any improvement in the state of things that might arise from an enhancement of the value of money, that would in all probability be defeated, so far as regards the labouring classes, by the existing practice of mixing relief with wages, and at all events would slowly and partially benefit the existing population. The new plan' proposed by the present Writer, has for its object to reduce the supply of labour, and we shall lay it before our readers in his own words.

Having, in the first place, determined how long the period of marriage ought to be deferred, in order to reduce the supply of labour to the desired extent, and to raise wages to their due level with the cost of subsistence, we must endeavour to find motives sufficiently powerful to induce the labourer to make such a sacrifice of his inclinations; and in the mean time we must continue to provide for his necessities, until the enhanced price of labour enable him to dispense with extraneous support. With regard to the age of marriage, I should estimate that a delay of two years would in due time effectually raise wages as high as the warmest friend of the Poor could desire. For within two years, each marriage, on an average, produces one birth; and as the whole average number of births which a marriage yields is only four, it follows that an additional two years passed in celibacy by every couple would reduce the whole number of births one fourth, and of course ultimately diminish the population in like proportion. It remains then to contrive means for persuading the Poor to defer the time of their marriage each two years. But before considering what inducements may best move them to this end, it may be proper to observe, that some little difficulty arises in ascertaining whether the marriage of any particular couple is really deferred by prudential considerations or not, inasmuch as it depends on the secret inclinations of the parties, of which it is difficult to obtain any visible indication. Thus if we were to offer a reward to all who put off their marriage to a certain age, many would receive the reward who did not deserve it, because they might not have married earlier had no reward been offered; and on the contrary some might be deprived of the reward to whom it was justly due, inasmuch as they may have formed attachments while very young. It seems better, therefore, to measure the prudence of a match by the sum of money saved before marriage, rather than by the time of life at which it takes place.

Suppose then we ascertain, by careful inquiry and observation, how much ought to be required from an agricultural labourer, in order to compel him to defer marrying two years. Something more than the amount of two years' savings would probably be necessary for this purpose, because it is likely that a young man may begin to lay by part of his earnings, before he has absolutely determined on marry