Page:Notes on the Anti-Corn Law Struggle.djvu/18

 procure for him nearly double the quantity of food which his wages between 1740 and 1794 procured; and that the wages obtained by him from 1834 to 1844, as measured by the quantity of produce, were considerably less than in the period between 1740 and 1794. I also showed that under the combined operation of the Poor Law of 1790 and the Corn Law of 1815 the wages of agricultural labour were lower, and the condition of the agricultural labourer was worse than at any former period except that in which the Poor Law of Elizabeth was passed.

In attempting to make a table of wages, the most that can be looked for is an approximation to the truth. Besides the difference of wages in different counties, there are the variations through the various seasons of the year—winter, summer, haytime, harvest. In a table which I drew up with great care to show the comparative amount of wages in pints of wheat from the fifteenth century to the middle of the nineteenth century, I have taken the summer wages as the basis of the calculation, because that basis afforded greater facilities for comparison, from the fact that in the early rates of wages fixed at various times by the legislature, or by the magistrates acting under the