Mowing an acre of grass 0 6 3 7-3/4 Thrashing a quarter of Wheat 0 4 4 0
Here are "_waust_ improvements, Mau'm!" But, now let us look at the relative _price of the wheat_, which the labourer had to purchase with his wages. We have seen, that the "popish _superstition slave_" had to give _fivepence_ a bushel for his wheat, and the evidence of Mr. GEORGE states, that the "_enlightened_ Protestant" had to give 10 _shillings_ a bushel for his wheat; that is 24 _times_ as much as the "popish _fool_," who suffered himself to be "priest-ridden." So that the "_enlightened_" man, in order to make him as well off as the "_dark_-ages" man was, ought to receive _twelve shillings_, instead of 3_s._ 7-3/4_d._ for mowing an acre of grass; and he, in like manner, ought to receive, for thrashing a quarter of wheat, _eight shillings_, instead of the _four shillings_ which he does receive. If we had the _records_, we should doubtless find, that IRELAND was in the same state.
56. There! That settles the matter as to _ancient_ good living. Now, as to the progress of poverty and misery, amongst the working people, during the last half century, take these facts; in the year 1771, that is, 55 years ago, ARTHUR YOUNG, who was afterwards Secretary to the Board of Agriculture, published a work on the state of the agriculture of the country, in which he gave the allowance for the keeping of _a farm-labourer, his wife and three children_, which allowance, reckoning according to the present money-price of the articles which he allows amounted to 13_s._ 1_d._ He put the sum, at what he deemed the _lowest possible sum_, on which the people could _exist_. Alas! we shall find, that they can be made to exist upon little more than _one-half_ of this sum!
57. This allowance of Mr. ARTHUR YOUNG was made, observe, in 1771, which was before the Old American War took place. That war made some famous fortunes for admirals and commodores and contractors and pursers and generals and commissaries; but, it was not the Americans, the French, nor the Dutch, that gave the money to make these fortunes. They came out of _English taxes_; and the heaviest part of those taxes fell upon the _working people_, who, when they were boasting of "_victories_," and rejoicing that the "JACK TARS" had got "prize-money," little dreamed that these victories were purchased by them, and that they paid fifty pounds for every crown that sailors got in prize-money! In short, this American war caused a great mass of new taxes to be laid on, and the people of England became _a great deal poorer than they ever had been before_. During that war, they BEGAN TO EAT POTATOES, as something to "_save bread_." The poorest of the people, the very poorest of them, refused, for a long while, to use them in this way; and even when I was ten years old, which was just about _fifty years ago_; the poor people would not eat potatoes, except _with meat_, as they would cabbages, or carrots, or any other moist vegetable. But, by the end of the American war, their stomachs had come to! By slow degrees they had been reduced to swallow this pig-meat, (and bad pig-meat too,) not, indeed, without grumbling; but to swallow it; to be reduced, thus, many degrees in the scale of animals.