408

HISTORY OF ENGLAND.

CXI AP.HI.

Stale ofthe com-monpeople.

Agricul-

tural

wages.

and the Revolution. But it would be a great error to inferfrom the increase of complaint that there has been ahy in-crease of misery.

The great criterion of the state of the common peopleis the amount of their wages; and, as four fifths of thecommon people were, in the seventeenth century, employedin agi culture, it is especially important to ascertain whatwere then the wages of agricultural industry. On this subjectwe have the means of arriving at conclusions sufficiently exactfor our purpose.

Sir William Petty, whose mere assertion carries greatweight, informs us that a labourer was by no means in thelowest state who received for a day’s work fourpence withfood, or eiglitpence without food. Four shillings a weektherefore were, according to Petty’s calculation, fair agri-cultural wages.*

That this calculation was not remote from the truth wehave abundant proof. About the beginning of the year 1685the Justices of Warwickshire, in the exercise of a powerentrusted to them by an act of Elizabeth, fixed, at theirquarter sessions, a scale of wages for the county, and notifiedthat every employer who gave more than the authorised sum,and every working man who received more, would be liableto punishment. The wages of the common agriculturallabourer, from March to September, were fixed at the precisesum mentioned by Petty, namely four shillings a week withoutfood. From September to March the wages were to be only*three and sixpence a week.**

But in that age, as in ours, the earnings of the peasantwere very different in different parts of the kingdom. Thewages of Warwickshire were probably about the average,and those of the counties near the Scottish border below it:

* Petty’s Political Arithmetic.

** Stat. 5 Eliz. c-1. Archtcologia, vol. xi.