Pagina 189 van 2651

Secondly, the wages of labour do not, in Great Britain, fluctuate

with the price of provisions. These vary everywhere from year to

year, frequently from month to month. But in many places, the

money price of labour remains uniformly the same, sometimes for

half a century together. If, in these places, therefore, the

labouring poor can maintain their families in dear years, they

must be at their ease in times of moderate plenty, and in

affluence in those of extraordinary cheapness. The high price of

provisions during these ten years past, has not, in many parts of

the kingdom, been accompanied with any sensible rise in the money

price of labour. It has, indeed, in some; owing, probably, more

to the increase of the demand for labour, than to that of the

price of provisions.