th where they may be exampled and instructed in the
fear of the Lord. Now, concerning lads being trained up as seamen, I
believe a communication from one part of the world to some other parts
of it, by sea, is at times consistent with the will of our heavenly
Father; and to educate some youth in the practice of sailing, I believe
may be right. But how lamentable is the present corruption of the world!
How impure are the channels through which trade hath a conveyance! How
great is that danger to which poor lads are now exposed, when placed on
shipboard to learn the art of sailing!

_IV.--Prices, Wages, and Religion_

On landing at London I went straight to the yearly meeting of ministers
and elders, which, by adjournments, continued near a week. I then went
to quarterly meetings at Hertford, Sherrington, Northampton, Banbury and
Shipston, and visited other meetings at Birmingham, Coventry, Warwick,
Nottingham, Sheffield, Settle, and other places.

On inquiry, I found the price of rye about five shillings, wheat about
eight shillings, per bushel; mutton threepence to fivepence per pound;
bacon from sevenpence to ninepence; cheese from fourpence to sixpence;
butter from eightpence to tenpence; house-rent, for a poor man, from
twenty-five shillings to forty shillings per year, to be paid weekly;
wood for fire very scarce and dear; coal in some places two shillings
and sixpence per hundredweight but near the pits not a quarter so much.
O may the wealthy consider the poor!

The wages of labouring men, in several counties toward London, is
tenpence per day in common business; the employer finds small beer and
the labourer finds his own food; but in harvest and hay times wages are
about one shilling per day and the labourer hath all his diet. In the
north of England poor labouring men do rather better than nearer London.
Industrious women who spin in the factories get some fourpence, some
fivepence, and so on to tenpence per day, and find their own house-room
and diet. Great numbers of poor people live chiefly on bread and water,
and there are many poor children not even taught to read. May those, who
have plenty, lay these things to heart!

Stage coaches frequently go upwards of an hundred miles in twenty-four
hours; and I have heard friends say, in several places, that it is
common for horses to be killed with hard driving. Post-boys pursue their
business, each one to his stage, all night through the winter. Some
boy