In Cumberland the labourer was being paid 10d. to 1s. a day with food, or 1s. 6d. to 1s. 8d. without; in Hertfordshire, 1s. 6d. a day; in Suffolk, 1s. 4d. a day and beer.
Nearly everywhere his expenditure was much in excess of his earnings, the yearly budgets of fifty-three families in twelve different counties showed generally large annual deficiencies, amounting in one case to £21 18s. 4d. In one case in Lindsey, where the deficiency was small, the family lived on bread alone. The factory system, too, had already deprived the labourer of many of his by-industries, and thus helped the pauperism for which landlord and farmer had to pay in rates.
About 1788 Sir William Young proposed to send the unemployed labourers round to the parishioners to get work, their wages being paid by their employers and by the parish. This method of obtaining work was known as the 'roundsman system'.[523]
Landlords, however, and farmers were profiting greatly by the high prices, which fortunately received a check by the abundant harvest of 1796, which, with large imports,[524] caused the price of wheat to fall to 57s. 3d., and in 1798 to 47s. 10d. It is difficult to conceive what instability, speculation, and disaster such fluctuations must have led to. In 1797 the Bank Restriction Act was passed, suspending cash payments, and thereby causing a huge growth in credit transactions, a great factor in the inflated prosperity of this period. In January, 1799, wool was 2s. a lb., and prices at Smithfield:
Beef, per stone of 8 lb. 3 0 to 3 4 Mutton " " 3 0 " 4 2 Pork " " 2 8 " 3 8
The summer of that year was uninterruptedly wet; some corn in the north was uncut in November, so that wheat went up to 94s. 2d., and in June, 1800, was 134s. 5d., the scarcity being aggravated by the Russian Government laying an embargo on British shipping.[525] Yet Pitt denied that the high prices were due to the war.[526] They were due, indeed, to several causes:
2. Increase of consumption, owing to the great growth of the manufacturing population, England during the war having almost a monopoly of the trade of Europe.
3. Napoleon's obstructions to importation.
4. The unprecedented fall of foreign exchanges.
5. The rise in the price of labour, scanty as it was.