Condition of the labouring classes.
Another and a very interesting portion of the information which the intelligence and industry of His Majesty’s foreign Ministers and Consuls have enabled us to submit to the public, consists of the answers to the questions respecting labourers. In order to facilitate a comparison between the state of the English and foreign populations, the questions proposed were in general the same as had been already answered in England, either by the population returns, or by the returns to the questions circulated in England by the Poor Law Commissioners.
The following questions, being 1, 3, 7, and 8, correspond to the English questions 8, 10, 13, and 14, of the rural queries:—
1. (8 of English questions.) What is the general amount of the wages of an able-bodied male labourer, by the day, the week, the month, or the year, with and without provisions, in summer and in winter?
3. (10 of English questions.) What in the whole might an average labourer, obtaining an average amount of employment, both in day-work and in piece-work, expect to earn in a year, including harvest work, and the whole of all his advantages and means of living?
7. (13 of English questions.) What in the whole might a labourer’s wife and four children, aged 14, 11, 8, and 5 years respectively, (the eldest a boy), expect to earn in a year, obtaining, as in the former case, an average amount of employment?
8. (14 of English questions.) Could such a family subsist on the aggregate earnings of the father, mother, and children; and if so, on what food?
The following is a digest of the answers from all the agricultural parishes in England which have given returns to the corresponding questions circulated by the Poor Law Commissioners:—