Besides the enclosure of the common-fields,and the consolidation of farms,the enclosure of the commons and wastes likewise contributed to the growth of pauperism.Arthur Young and Eden thought that commons were a cause of idleness;the labourers wasted their time in gathering sticks or grubbing furze;their pigs and cows involved perpetual disputes with their neighbours,and were a constant temptation to trespass.No doubt this was true where the common was large enough to support the poor without other occupation.But on the other hand,where the labourer was regularly employed,a small common was a great extra resource to him.Arthur Young himself mentions a case at Snettisham in Norfolk,where,when the waste was enclosed,the common rights had been preserved,and as a result of this,combined with the increased labour due to the enclosure,the poor-rates fell from 1s.6d.to 1s.or 9d.,while population grew from five to six hundred.He goes on to say that enclosures had generally been carried out with an utter disregard for the rights of the poor.According to Thornton,the formation of parks contributed to the general result,but I know of no evidence on this head.A further cause of pauperism,when we come to the end of the century,was the great rise in prices as compared with that in wages.In 1782the price of corn was 53s.91/4d.,which was considerably higher than the average of the preceding fifty years;but in 1795it had risen to 81s.6d.,and in the next year it was even more.The corn average from 1795to 1805was 81s.21/2d.,and from 1805to 181597s.6d.In 1800and 1801it reached the maximum of 127s.and 128s.6d.,which brought us nearer to a famine than we had been since the fourteenth century.Many other articles had risen too.The taxes necessitated by the debt contracted during the American war raised the prices of soap,leather,candles,etc.,by one-fifth;butter and cheese rose 11/2d.a pound,meat 1d.And meanwhile,'what advance during the last ten or twelve years,'asks a writer in 1788,'has been made in the wages of labourers?Very little indeed;in their daily labour nothing at all,either in husbandry or manufactures.'Only by piece-work could they obtain more in nominal wages.Lastly,in the towns there had come the introduction of machinery,the final establishment of the cash-nexus,and the beginning of great fluctUations in trade.In the old days the employer maintained his men when out of work,now he repudiated the responsibility;and the decline in the position of the artisan could be attributed by contemporary writers to 'the iniquitous oppressive practices of those who have the direction of them.'
Such seem to have been the causes of the growth of pauperism and of the degradation of the labourer;the single effective remedy attempted was the workhouse test,and this was abandoned in 1782.But might not landlords and farmers have done something more to check the downward course?Were there no possible remedies?One cannot help thinking the problem might have been solved by common justice in the matter of enclosures.Those who were most in favour of enclosing for the sake of agricultural improvements,like Eden and Young,yet held that,in place of his common field and pasture rights,the labourer should have had an acre,or two acres,or half an acre,as the case might be,attached to his cottage.By such compensation much misery would have been prevented.A more difficult question is,whether anything could have been done directly to relieve the stress of high prices?Burke contended that nothing could be done,that there was no necessary connection between wages and prices;and he would have left the evil to natural remedies.And,as a matter of fact,in the North where there was no artificial interference with wages,the development of mining and manufactures saved the labourer.
