صفحة 199 من 2651

The real recompence of labour, the real quantity of the

necessaries and conveniencies of life which it can procure to the

labourer, has, during the course of the present century,

increased perhaps in a still greater proportion than its money

price. Not only grain has become somewhat cheaper, but many other

things, from which the industrious poor derive an agreeable and

wholesome variety of food, have become a great deal cheaper.

Potatoes, for example, do not at present, through the greater

part of the kingdom, cost half the price which they used to do

thirty or forty years ago. The same thing may be said of turnips,

carrots, cabbages; things which were formerly never raised but by

the spade, but which are now commonly raised by the plough. All

sort of garden stuff, too, has become cheaper. The greater part

of the apples, and even of the onions, consumed in Great Britain,

were, in the last century, imported from Flanders.