[287] The dearth of 1794-95 called forth one notable piece, the ‘Thoughts and Details on Scarcity,’ drawn up by Mr Burke, from his experience in Buckinghamshire, originally for the use of Mr Pitt, in November, 1795. Burke takes an optimist line, and preaches the economic doctrine of laissez faire: “After all,” he asks, “have we not reason to be thankful to the Giver of all good? In our history, and when ‘the labourer of England is said to have been once happy,’ we find constantly, after certain intervals, a period of real famine; by which a melancholy havock was made among the human race. The price of provisions fluctuated dreadfully, demonstrating a deficiency very different from the worst failures of the present moment. Never, since I have known England, have I known more than a comparative scarcity. The price of wheat, taking a number of years together, has had no very considerable fluctuation, nor has it risen exceedingly within this twelvemonth. Even now, I do not know of one man, woman, or child, that has perished from famine; fewer, if any, I believe, than in years of plenty, when such a thing may happen by accident. This is owing to a care and superintendence of the poor, far greater than any I remember.... Not only very few (I have observed that I know of none though I live in a place [Beaconsfield] as poor as most) have actually died of want, but we have seen no traces of those dreadful exterminating epidemicks, which, in consequence of scanty and unwholesome food, in former times not unfrequently wasted whole nations. Let us be saved from too much wisdom of our own, and we shall do tolerably well.” The last sentence is his favourite principle of “a wise and salutary neglect” on the part of Government.
[288] A labourer at Bury St Edmunds, receiving a weekly wage of five shillings, was able to buy therewith at the old prices:
| Cost of same in 1801 | |||||||||
| £ | s. | d. | |||||||
| 5s. | { { { | A bushel of wheat | 0 | 16 | 0 | ||||
| A bushel of malt | 0 | 9 | 0 | ||||||
| A pound of butter | 0 | 1 | 0 | ||||||
| A pound of cheese | 0 | 0 | 4 | ||||||
| Tobacco, one penny | 0 | 0 | 1 | ||||||
| £1 | 6 | 5 | |||||||
| Weekly wage in 1801, 9s. | |||||||||
| Parish bonus6s. | 15 | 0 | |||||||
| 0 | 11 | 5 | deficiency | ||||||
[289] Loidis and Elmete, 1816, p. 85.
[290] Thorp, Tract of 1802, cited by Hunter, Ed. Med. Surg. Journ. April, 1819, p. 239.
[291] Currie, Med. Phys. Journ. X. 213.
[292] Beddoes.
[293] Goodwin, Med. Phys. Journ. IX. 509. Cf. Gervis, Med. Chir. Trans. II. 236.
[294] Elizabeth Hamilton, The Cottagers of Glenburnie, Edin. 1808: “The only precaution which the good people, who came to see him [the farmer] appeared now to think necessary, was carefully to shut the door, which usually stood open.... The prejudice against fresh air appeared to be universal.... The doctor did not think it probable that he would live above three days; but said, the only chance he had was in removing him from that close box in which he was shut up, and admitting as much air as possible into the apartment.... While the farmer yet hovered on the brink of death, his wife and Robert, his second son, were both taken ill.... Peter MacGlashan had taken to his bed on going home and was now dangerously ill of the fever.... All the village indeed offered their services; and Mrs Mason, though she blamed the thoughtless custom of crowding into a sick room, could not but admire the kindness and good nature with which all the neighbours seemed to participate in the distress of this afflicted family.”
[295] Charlotte Brontë’s story of Shirley falls in this period and turns upon the industrial crisis in Yorkshire; but it is on the whole a happy idyllic picture. Harriet Martineau wrote in Household Words, vol. I. 1850, Nos. 9-12, a story entitled “The Sickness and Health of the People of Bleaburn,” a Yorkshire village supposed to have been Osmotherly. It is, in substance, an account of a terrible epidemic of fever in the year 1811, the story opening with the news of the victory of Albuera and the rejoicings thereon. It appears to have been constructed very closely from the real events of the plague of 1665-66 in the village of Eyam, in the North Peak of Derbyshire, and had probably a very slender foundation in any facts of fever in Yorkshire or elsewhere in the year 1811. “Ten or eleven corpses,” says the novelist, “were actually lying unburied, infecting half-a-dozen cottages from this cause.” Cf. infra, Leyburn, p. 167.