fact which cannot now admit of any reasonable
doubt; and the proof of it is, if possible,
still more decisive with regard to Scotland
than with regard to England. It is in Scotland
supported by the evidence of the public
fiars, annual valuations made upon oath, according
to the actual state of the markets, of
all the different sorts of grain in every different
county of Scotland. If such direct proof
could require any collateral evidence to confirm
it, I would observe, that this has likewise
been the case in France, and probably in
most other parts of Europe. With regard to
France, there is the clearest proof. But though
it is certain, that in both parts of the united
kingdom grain was somewhat dearer in the
last century than in the present, it is equally
certain that labour was much cheaper. If the
labouring poor, therefore, could bring up their
families then, they must be much more at
their ease now. In the last century, the most
usual day-wages of common labour through
the greater part of Scotland were sixpence in
summer, and fivepence in winter. Three shillings
a-week, the same price, very nearly still
continues to be paid in some parts of the
Highlands and Western islands. Through
the greater part of the Low country, the most
usual wages of common labour are now eightpence
a-day; tenpence, sometimes a shilling,
about Edinburgh, in the counties which border
upon England, probably on account of
that neighbourhood, and in a few other places
where there has lately been a considerable rise
in the demand for labour, about Glasgow,
Carron, Ayrshire, &c. In England, the improvements
of agriculture, manufactures, and
commerce, began much earlier than in Scotland.
The demand for labour, and consequently
its price, must necessarily have increased
with those improvements. In the last
century, accordingly, as well as in the present,
the wages of labour were higher in England
than in Scotland. They have risen, too, considerably
since that time, though, on account
of the greater variety of wages paid there in
different places, it is more difficult to ascertain
how much. In 1614, the pay of a foot
soldier was the same as in the present times,
eightpence a-day. When it was first established,
it would naturally be regulated by the
usual wages of common labourers, the rank
of people from which foot soldiers are commonly
drawn. Lord-chief-justice Hales, who
wrote in the time of Charles II. computes the
necessary expense of a labourer's family, consisting
of six persons, the father and mother,
two children able to do something, and two
not able, at ten shillings a-week, or twenty-six
pounds a-year. If they cannot earn this by
their labour, they must make it up, he supposes,
either by begging or stealing. He appears
to have enquired very carefully into this
subject[9]. In 1688, Mr Gregory King, whose
skill in political arithmetic is so much extolled
by Dr Davenant, computed the ordinary
income of labourers and out-servants to be
fifteen pounds a-year to a family, which he
supposed to consist, one with another, of three
and a half persons. His calculation, therefore,
though different in appearance, corresponds
very nearly at bottom with that of Judge
Hales. Both suppose the weekly expense of
such families to be about twenty-pence a-head.
Both the pecuniary income and expense of
such families have increased considerably since
that time through the greater part of the kingdom,
in some places more, and in some less,
though perhaps scarce anywhere so much as
some exaggerated accounts of the present wages
of labour have lately represented them to the
public. The price of labour, it must be observed,
cannot be ascertained very accurately
anywhere, different prices being often paid at
the same place and for the same sort of labour,
not only according to the different abilities
of the workman, but according to the
easiness or hardness of the masters. Where
wages are not regulated by law, all that we
can pretend to determine is, what are the
most usual; and experience seems to shew
that law can never regulate them properly,
though it has often pretended to do so.
The real recompence of labour, the real
quantity of the necessaries and conveniencies
of life which it can procure to the labourer,
has, during the course of the present century,
increased perhaps in a still greater proportion
than its money price. Not only grain has become
somewhat cheaper, but many other
things, from which the industrious poor derive
an agreeable and wholesome variety of food,
have become a great deal cheaper. Potatoes,
for example, do not at present, through the
greater part of the kingdom, cost half the
price which they used to do thirty or forty
years ago. The same thing may be said of
turnips, carrots, cabbages; things which were
formerly never raised but by the spade, but
which are now commonly raised by the plough.
All sort of garden stuff, too, has become cheaper.
The greater part of the apples, and even
of the onions, consumed in Great Britain,
were, in the last century, imported from Flanders.
The great improvements in the coarser
manufactories of both linen and woollen cloth
furnish the labourers with cheaper and better
clothing; and those in the manufactories of
the coarser metals, with cheaper and better instruments
of trade, as well as with many agreeable
and convenient pieces of household
furniture. Soap, salt, candles, leather, and
fermented liquors, have, indeed, become a