Page:Notes on the Anti-Corn Law Struggle.djvu/19

 authority of a legislative enactment, a certain scale of wages is always given from Easter till Michaelmas, with the exception of harvest, when a somewhat higher rate is allowed. It appears from this table, which was drawn up from the best authorities, which authorities are cited at the foot of it, that wages were much higher in the fifteenth century than they have ever been since; that, about the middle of the eighteenth century, they were higher than they had ever been since the sixteenth; that from the middle of the eighteenth century they declined till they attained a minimum about 1824; that, after the agricultural riots and burnings of 1830-31, they rose considerably, so as to be for a time higher than they had been for upwards of fifty years. But the rise caused by the riots of 1830 and 1831 was only temporary. I subjoin the table to which I have referred.