The year 1795 was one of great scarcity owing to the wet and stormy summer, and in August wheat went up to 108s. a quarter.[520] As usual many other causes but the right one were put forth, and the old accusations of monopoly, forestalling, and regrating were heard again.  The war with France, with more reason, was considered to have helped in raising prices, but the chief cause was the bad season.  The members of both Houses of Parliament bound themselves to reduce the consumption of bread in their homes by one-third, and recommended others to a similar reduction.  It was a period of terrible distress for the agricultural labourer.  His wages were about 9s. a week, and it was impossible for him to live on them, so that what is known as ’the allowance system’ came in.  At Speenhamland in Berkshire, in this year, the magistrates agreed that it was not expedient to help the labourer by regulating his wages according to the statute of Elizabeth, but recommended the farmers to increase their pay in proportion to the present price of provisions, and they also granted relief to all poor and industrious men according to the price of bread.  They were merely giving effect to Gilbert’s Act of 1782, which legalized the supplementing of the wages of able-bodied men from the rates, and the decision was nicknamed the ‘Speenhamland Act’ because it was so generally followed.  However well meant, the effect was most demoralizing and the English labourer, already too prone to look to the State for help, was induced to depend less on his own exertions.  The real remedy would have been a substantial increase of his scanty wages.  As it was, landowner and farmer were often paying the labourer in rates money that would far better have come to him in wages, and the rates in some districts became so burdensome that land was thrown out of cultivation.  In the same year as the Speenhamland Act the statute 36 Geo. III, c. 23, forbade the removal of persons from any parish until they were in actual need of support; but although the law was thus relaxed, the fixed principle which caused the refusal of all permanent relief to labourers who had no settlement in the parish acted as a very efficient check on migration, though, as we have seen, it did not entirely check it.  In 1796 the question of regulating the labourers’ wages by Parliament was raised; but Pitt, remembering such schemes had always failed, was hostile, and the matter dropped.[521] In the same year Eden made his inquiries concerning the rate of wages and the cost of living.  In Bedford, he found the agricultural labourer was getting 1s. 2d. a day and beer, with extras in harvest[522]; but bacon was 10d. a lb. and wheat 12s. a bushel.  However, parish allowances were liberal, a man, his wife, and four children sometimes receiving 11s. a week from that source.

In Cumberland the labourer was being paid 10d. to 1s. a day with food, or 1s. 6d. to 1s. 8d. without; in Hertfordshire, 1s. 6d. a day; in Suffolk, 1s. 4d. a day and beer.