414

HISTORY OP ENGLAND.

CHAP.

III.

Numberof pau-pers.

It must be remembered that those labourers who wereable to maintain themselves and their families by means ofwages were not the most necessitous members of the com-munity. Beneath them lay a large class which could not sub-sist without some aid from the parish. There can hardly be amore important test of the condition of the common peoplethan the ratio which this class bears to the whole society.At present the men, women, and children who receive reliefappear from the official returns to be, in bad years, one tenthof the inhabitants of England, and, in good years, one thir-teenth. Gregory King estimated them in his time at morethan a fifth; and this estimate, which all our respect for hisauthority will scarcely prevent us from calling extravagant,was pronounced by Davenant eminently judicious.

We are not quite without the means of forming an estimatefor ourselves. The poor rate was undoubtedly the heaviesttax borne by our ancestors in those days. It was computed,in the reign of Charles the Second, at near seven hundredthousand pounds a year, much more than the produce eitherof the excise or of the customs, and little less than half theentire revenue of the crown. The poor rate went on in-creasing rapidly, and appears to have risen in a short time tobetween eight and nine hundred thousand a year, that is tosay, to one sixth of what it now is. The population was thenless than a third of what it now is. The minimum of wages,estimated in money, was half of what it now is; and we cantherefore hardly suppose that the average allowance made toa pauper can have been more than half of what it now is.It seems to follow that the proportion of the English peoplewhich received parochial relief then must have been largerthan the proportion which receives relief now. It is good tospeak on such questions with diffidence: but it has certainlynever yet been proved that pauperism was a less heavy burden