lowest possible amount on which he can live … the supplies of wages and shelter are not calculated on the profit to be derived from him. He is a zero in farming calculations.[1]… The means [of subsistence] being always supposed to be a fixed quantity.[2] As to any further reduction of his income, he may say, nihil habeo nihil curo. He has no fears for the future, because he has now only the spare supply necessary to keep him. He has reached the zero from which are dated the calculations of the farmer. Come what will, he has no share either in prosperity or adversity.”[3]
In the year 1863, an official inquiry took place into the conditions of nourishment and labour of the criminals condemned to transportation and penal servitude. The results are recorded in two voluminous blue books. Among other things it is said: “From an elaborate comparison between the diet of convicts in the convict prisons in England, and that of paupers in workhouses and of free labourers in the same country it certainly appears that the former are much better fed than either of the two other classes,”[4] whilst “the amount of labour required from an ordinary convict under penal servitude is about one half of what would be done by an ordinary day labourer.”[5] A few characteristic depositions of witnesses: John Smith, governor of the Edinburgh prison, deposes: No. 5056. “The diet of the English prisons [is] superior to that of ordinary labourers in England.” No, 50. “It is the fact … that the ordinary agricultural labourers in Scotland very seldom get any meat at all.” Answer No. 3047. “Is there anything that you are aware of to account for the necessity of feeding them very much better than ordinary labourers?—Certainly not.” No. 3048. “Do you think that further experiments ought to be made in order
- ↑ Public Health. Seventh Report, 1864, p. 242. It is therefore nothing unusual either for the landlord to raise a lahourer’s rent as soon as he hears that he is earning a little more, or for the farmer to lower the wage of the labourer, “because his wife has found a tade,” l. c.
- ↑ l. c., p. 135.
- ↑ l. c., p. 184.
- ↑ Report of the Commissioners … relating to transportation and penal servitude, Lond. 1863, pp. 42, 50.
- ↑ l. c., p. 77. Memorandum by the Lord Chief Justice.
