south
were accustomed to divide among themselves the surplus labour, not
according to their requirements but in proportion to the size of their
farms, so that a farmer who was a good economist of labour was reduced
by this system to the same level as his unskilful neighbours, and the
labourer himself had no motive to do his best, as every one, good and
bad, was employed at the same rate. (2) To the system of close and
open parishes, by which large proprietors could drive the labourer
from the parish where he worked to live in some distant village in
case he should become chargeable to the rates, so that it was a common
thing to see labourers walking three or four miles each day to their
work and back, and in one county farmers provided donkeys for them.
Between 1840 and 1850 the labourer had, however, already benefited by
free trade, for the price of many articles he consumed fell 30%; on
the other hand the rent of his cottage in eighty years had increased
100%, and meat 70%, which however did not, unfortunately, affect him
much. The great development of railway construction also helped him by
absorbing much surplus labour, and the work of his wife and children
was more freely exploited at this date to swell the family
budget.[644]

The great difference between the wages of the north and the south is
a clear proof that the wages of the agricultural labourer are not
dependent on the prices of agricultural produce, for those were the
same in both regions. It was unmistakably due to the greater demand
for labour in the north.

The housing of the labourer was, especially in the south, often a
black blot on English civilization. From many instances collected by
an inquirer in 1844 the following may be taken. At Stourpaine in
Dorset, one bedroom in a cottage contained three beds occupied by
eleven people of all ages and both sexes, with no curtain or partition
whatever. At Milton Abbas, on the average of the last census there
were thirty-six persons in each house, and so crowded were they that
cottagers with a desire for decency would combine and place all the
males in one cottage, and all the females in another. But this was
rare, and licentiousness and immorality of the worst kind were
frequent.[645]

As for the farmer, the stock raiser was doing better than the corn
grower. The following table shows the rent of cultivated land per
acre, the produce of wheat per acre in bushels, the price of
provisions, wages of labou