This doubling of price in the course of Thirty years, has not a little embarrassed political arithmeticians: it is commonly attributed to the influx of metallic currency from the American mines before an outlet was found for it in India and China, but from our experience of the limited effect of such a cause in subsequent times, particularly since the late peace, we are inclined to lay no little stress on the general prevalence of war throughout Europe, from the middle of the sixteenth to that of the seventeenth century. Be this as it may, the enhancement contmued progressive; for in 1623 the export limit was raised to 328. the quarter for wheat, and 16s. for barley and malt. In the succeeding age, particularly under Cromwell, our markets were considerably higher, but the rise was in some degree nominal, our coin, though no longer debased by government, being deteriorated by clipping and filing, and brought at times, no less than twenty per cent. below its legal value, an abuse not completely remedied till 1717.

In the reign of Charles II. the prices of corn declined, and though several acts were passed (in 1660, 1663, 1670), imposing a duty on foreign corn, their effect in our market was inconsiderable, because our growth equalled, or more than equalled our consumption. Prices accordingly did not rise, the agriculturists complained, and the epoch of the revolution was marked by a new refinement of legislation in their favour. The necessity of providing supplies for the formidable contest with Louis XIV. led government to contemplate a land-tax, and to offer as a douceur to the landed interest, a premium on export, which, accompanied by a prohibition of the import of foreign corn, implied a certainty of increase of price, and consequently of rent. The chief provisions of the act were the payment of a bounty of 5s. for every quarter of wheat exported, so long as our price continued at or below 48s., and 2s. 6d. for every quarter of barley or malt, so long as our home currency for that grain did not exceed 24s.

A deficiency of documents in regard to the extent of our tillage, prevents our tracing the effects of the bounty act: it doubtless stimulated production, and, under ordinary political circumstances, would, after creating a temporary superiority of demand to supply, have in degree lowered prices; but the market was, during many years, kept up by causes not unlike those which followed in our day the French revolution,

some

war, and a more than usual prevalence of bad seasons. The proportion of the latter in the twenty years between 1692 and 1712, was not inferior to that between 1792 and 1812; and as our drain' of men and capital for the war in these days, måde no slight approximation to that of our late contest, there were wanting to complete the analogy of high price only two of the characteristics of our age, a depreciated currency and an annual insufficiency of growth.

After the peace of Utrecht, the causes of fluctuation in our corn-market were much simplified, and the half century that succeeded presented the following results:

Ditto Ditto

Average Price of Wheat computed by the Winchester quarter. £. s. d. For ten years ending with 1725 1 15.5 Ditto ending with 1735 1 15 2 Ditto ending with 1745 112 1 ending with 1755 1 13 8 ending with 1765 1 19 3 During the whole of this period, we were exporters of corn; the quantity varied, of course, from year to year, but was almost always sufficient to establish the fact, that the market price in England was little higher than throughout the maritime part of the west of Europe; we mean the Netherlands, Denmark, the North of France, and the North-west of Germany. The cheapness was materially greater only in inland districts of the continent, where, as at present in Lorraine, the south of Poland, or south-west of Russia, the want of water conveyance kept down the market.

During this half century of stationary price, and of scanty agricultural profits,

this period when inclosure bills were so rare, and lease after lease was signed in long succession, without any idea of increase of rent, it must not be inferred that our tillage was on the decrease: it evidently received an extension, but somewhat more slowly, as appears by the ultimate result, than the increase of our population.

After 1764, began a new era; our consumption equalled, and somewhat surpassed our growth, so that our import predominated over export. This change, so unsuitable to a season of peace, so contrary to calculation, at a time when additional labour and capital were appli cable to agriculture, was owing to several reasons,-an unusual proportion of bad seasons; the increase of consumers from the extension of our manufactures, particularly cotton; and in part, doubtless,

to

to the general disposition to withhold surplus capital from the so long unprofitable investment of agriculture.

The rise in our market, whatever may have been its causes, was such in the ten years preceding 1773, as to lead to an act of a new kind; an act implying that in regard to corn, England was to be considered rather an importing than an exporting country. It permitted the import of foreign wheat whenever our own reached or exceeded 48s. the quarter; a limit just and moderate, which, while it relieved the consumer from an exorbitant rise on the occurrence of a bad harvest, was productive of no injury to our agriculture, the prices of corn continuing to afford a steady return for the labour and capital employed. Our market now exhibited all the advantages of supply duly proportioned to demand: in some years a partial import was necessary; in others, the nature of our crops enabled us to export; but after 1788, a time of extension and prosperity to most of our manufacturers, import decidedly predominated.

In 1791, the landed interest, not satisfied with the advantage secured to them by the act of 1773, carried it a step farther, and obtained a law preventing import, except where our wheat should reach or exceed the price of 54s. the quarter. Whether this measure would have operated to raise prices, or by directing an extra share of capital to tillage, would have, in some degree, lowered them, we had no opportunity of ascertaining, so soon was it followed by

the war of 1793.

The wars of the present age, attended by an unparalleled drain of both labourers and capital, could not fail to raise the price of corn. For some time, however, the rise was gradual, the average price of our wheat, during the first seven years of the war, not exceeding 63s.; but two successive bad harvests (1799 and 1800) altered the state of the market, and carried prices to a rate (61. and upwards) till then unprecedented in our history. The seasons of 1801, 1802, and 1803, were favourable, and produced a fall to nearly 3., a fall which, in concurrence with the demands of the Treasury on the land-holders for our renewed contest with France, led to the corn law of 1804, by which the import of foreign wheat was in a manner prohibited, until our own should be at or above 63s., and taxed till our own reached 66s. These prices, high as they then seemed, were soon surpassed by the currency of our

market, in consequence, party of an unfavourable season (1804), partly of the continued drain of hands and capital for the war. These causes operated in a greater or less degree over the rest of Europe, and greatly lessened the relief which importation would otherwise have afforded.

The non-convertibility of our paper currency had existed since 1797, and passed, in vulgar estimate, for the prin cipal cause of this progressive rise; but the degree of enhancement proceeding from it was slight (not exceeding three or four per cent,) until 1809, when it was suddenly accelerated by an unfortunate concurrence of circumstances; ex. penditure in Spain, the stoppage of neu tral traffic, and above all, a deficient har vest. From this time forward, our pur chases of foreign corn were made a sacrifice of eighteen, twenty, or twenty-five per cent. a loss incurred on the whole of the very large sum of 7,000,000!. expended on the purchase of corn in 1810. The currency of our market was now between 51. and 61., and though, for one year, a rise was prevented by the abun dant harvest of 1810, the case became very different after that of 1811, although only partially deficient. A supply from abroad was now, in a manner, out of the question, partly from the anti-commercial edicts of the time, more from our want of specie and the fall of our bank paper. Accordingly, during 1812 and 1813, our prices averaged above 67. a rate ill-calculated to prepare our farmers for the great and general fall to be expected from the approaching change in the state of Europe.

Never were the effects of peace more promptly or generally felt, than in 1814; import co-operated with favourable seasons; the price of corn fell rapidly, and it was in vain that parliament passed, early in 1815, a new act, forbidding im port till the home price of our wheat exceeded 80s.: the market continued low, and for a time exposed both the farmers and the public to all the evils of sudden transition. In 1816 a deficiency of crop, more serious both in England and the continent, than any in the present age, reversed this state of things, raised prices, and led, during 1817 and 1818, to an import of unexampled magnitude.

A succession of seasons more favourable than during the war; the Continent, like England, having had, since the peace, only one bad summer (1816); and if, from the magnitude of the failure on that occasion, we consider it equivalent to two seasons of ordinary deficiency, the proportion is still considerably more favourable than during the war.

Next, as to the causes of decline peculiar to this country, we have

The re-instatement of our paper currency; and

The great reduction of freight and other charges of transport; a principal cause of the magnitude of the import in 1817 and

1818.

high prices of a state of war, and the fall attendant on peace. To begin with the rise in a state of war, its effects are first felt in the price of labour, the interest of money, and the direct taxes: an enhancement of these is soon followed by enhancement of the important articles of team and manure: an increase in the price of seed is necessarily identified with a rise of corn: an increase of tithe, as expressed in money, is a consequence almost equally direct; while an advance of poor-rate has, ever since the days of Queen Elizabeth, followed, at no distant date, an augmented price of bread.

ORIGIN OF OUR POOR LAWS.

The origin of the English poor laws, a system so different from that of neighbouring countries, is to be traced to two causes, -the call, at the time of the Reformation, for a provision for the poor, when deprived of charitable aid from monasteries; and the enhancement, both progressive and rapid, which, as we have seen in the preceding chapter, took place in provisions during the 16th century. The former may perhaps be termed the ostensible, the latter the real cause. Be this as it may, their conjunct operation led to various enactments in favour of the poor, which were definitely consolidated in the act of 1601, -an act prepared with all the care and deliberation characteristic of the ministers of Elizabeth, and which would never have received a pernicious extension had its execution fallen into proper hands. Its provisions were intended at first for the relief of merely the aged and infirm, and led to little beyond the degree of aid afforded at present to the poor in Scotland or in France; but, from unfitness on the part of annually changed overseers, and from the remissness always attendant on the unchecked disposal of public property, the act was in time construed into an obligation to find work for the unemployed generally, as well as to make up to those who had children the disproportion which in dear seasons took place between the price of bread and the rate of wages.

Our poor-rate became thus a fund, not merely for charitable purposes, but for the equalization of wages; a counterpoise to the fluctuations arising from inclement seasons, or from any cause productive of a rapid fall in the value of money. This result, certainly well intended, and which at first sight seems of beneficial operation, is found, on trial, to be replete with all that irregularity and abuse which is so difficult to avoid in any interference with the natural course of productive industry. Of this, a striking proof is given not only in this country, but in the New England States

and in the state of New York; for even in these, the countries of the world in which the pay of the labourer is most liberal, the number of the paupers is large. They are, happily, the only foreign countries in which our example has been imitated. On the continent of Europe the public institutions afford protection only against infirmity and extreme penury: even Holland, so long noted for its hospitals and charities, has not a poor-rate on the comprehensive plan of England.

Our records of the distribution of relief to the poor during the seventeenth century are very imperfect: its amount, however, must have been considerable in the first half of the century, in consequence of the continued rise of corn during the reign of James I., and part of that of Charles I. But during the thirty years that intervened from 1660 to 1690, the price of corn was on the decline, and the country experienced in no great degree either the visitation of inclement seasons or the burden of military expenditure. In the reigns of William and Anne the case was far different; an enhancement of corn consequent on bad seasons, on war, and interrupted navigation, concurred with the disorder in our currency to render a state of suffering general among the lower orders, and to give a melancholy corroboration to their claims for parochial relief. The number of persons receiving such aid is said (Clarkson on Pauperism) to have amounted towards the close of the seventeenth cen. tury, to as large a portion of our population as at present, viz. a tenth part of the inhabitants of England and Wales. The amount of money collected for this pur. pose has not been put on record: it is said somewhat loosely, but without much appearance of exaggeration, to have ap proached at the period in question to a million sterling; a burden heavily felt in these days of limited rental, and productive consequently of great complaints.

The long peace and reduced price of provisions which followed the treaty of Utrecht, were both conducive to the decrease of poor-rate, and, notwithstanding an increase in our population, we find that in the middle of the century, viz. in the three years ending with 1750, its amount did not (Reports on the Poor Laws in 1817 and 1821) exceed an average 700,000. After 1760, the charge for the poor participated in the general charge which took

of

place in the state of prices, and amounted in that year to 965,000, while at a subsesequent date, in 1770, it was carried to 1,306,000/.;

so much did the effect of indifferent seasons and the enhancement of corn counterbalance the otherwise favourable circumstances of the period-the enjoyment of peace, the extension of our manufactures. Next came the contest with our colonies, along with the various losses attendant on interrupted export, and the suspension of undertakings dependent on a low inte rest of money, the result of which, in concurrence with other causes, carried the charge of poor-rate in 1780 to 1,774,000/

The peace of 1783, though favourable in the main, was not unaccompanied by the evils of transition. Our productive industry partook at first of the discourage ment excited by the loss of our colonies; and though it soon exhibited symptoms vigour, and even of prosperity, the price of bread was kept up by the indifferent harvests of 1788 and 1789. When to this we add the increase of our population, and make allowance for the progressive introduction of abuse into a system subject to so little check or controul," we need not be surprised that in 1790, the sum collected for the poor amounted, when joined to the minor rates for highways, church, and county charges, to 2,567,000/

Such was the state of our poor-rate at the beginning of the French Revolution, the time when we entered on a course of circumstances productive of a rapid change in the value of money. Hitherto the aug mentation of our rates had been gradual, a century elapsing before they doubled, a ratio of increase little greater than that of our population. But after 1793, the concurrent effect of war and indifferent seasons rendered the price of bread so disproportioned to the wages of country la bour, that in 1800 the poor-rate, exclusive of the highway, church, and county-rate, amounted to 3,861,009/ 5,407,000/

In 1810 to

And in 1812 to

- 6,680,000.

The peace of 1814 was followed, as is well known, by a rapid fall in the price of corn, which continued during two years, and had, notwithstanding the many new claims for parish relief arising from want of work, the effect, on the whole, of a partial reduction of the poor-rate. This is apparent from the subjoined table.

RETURNS

highway-rate

£1,212,918

5,714,506

clergymen, and elders or deacons, whose functions were permanent, and whose personal acquaintance with the poor enabled them to act with discrimination. The good effects of this plan, evinced as they have been by the practice of two centuries, induced the Committee on the Poor Laws in 1817, to recommend that in England the overseer should be a permanent officer with a salary, and should act, if necessary, for several districts; a practice that has since been adopted' with a beneficial result in a number of the parishes and townships of England. Proportion of the Wages of the Country Labourer to the Price of Corn.