which is maintained only by bayonets and by a state of siege, now open, now disguised, they have to observe all the precautions of language that their colleagues in England disdain. In spite of this, however, they do not let their government cradle itself in illusions. According to them the rate of wages in the country, still very low, has within the last 20 years risen 50-60 per cent., and stands now, on the average, at 6s. to 9s. per week. But behind this apparent rise, is hidden an actual fall in wages, for it does not correspond at all to the rise in price of the necessary means of subsistence that has taken place in the meantime. For proof, the following extract from the official accounts of an Irish workhouse.
Average Weekly Cost per Head.
| Year ended | Provisions and Necessaries. |
Clothing. | Total. |
| 29th Sept. 1849 | 1s, 3¼d. | 3d. | 1s. 6½d. |
| 29th Sept.„ 1869 | 2s. 7¼d. | 6d. | 3s. 1¼d. |
The price of the necessary means of subsistence is therefore fully twice, and that of clothing exactly twice, as much as they were 20 years before.
Even apart from this disproportion, the mere comparison of the rate of wages expressed in gold would give a result far from accurate. Before the famine, the great mass of agricultural wages were paid in kind, only the smallest part in money; to-day, payment in money is the rule. From this it follows that, whatever the amount of the real wage, its money rate must rise. "Previous to the famine, the labourer enjoyed his cabin . . . with a rood, or half-acre or acre
in Dublin, 1870." See also "Agricultural Labourers (Ireland) Return, etc. 3 March 1862, London 1862."
