It was not merely a vague and general suffering which stimulated political discussion among the working classes at this time. They had definite grievances, which were obviously produced by their disfranchisement and could only be removed by their admission to political power. When the Industrial Revolution began, there was still on the Statute Book the Act of Elizabeth, which allowed the magistrates to fix wages in proportion to the prevailing local price of corn. It is doubtful whether this method of establishing a minimum wage based on the standard of bare subsistence could have been used successfully in the new conditions. Country gentlemen might have been able to make an accurate guess at a fair wage when industry was stable and competition not acute. They would certainly be incompetent in the age of machinery, of violent fluctuations of trade, and of intense competition between employers. The only people who can ever fix minimum wages are the employers and workmen themselves, acting through representatives. But the Act offered at least the opportunity of experiment, and any attempt to preserve a decent standard of life among the workpeople would have been better than the alternative of leaving the standard to the discretion of the employer, who would naturally be disposed to make it low. The agricultural labourers made several attempts to get their wages fixed in this way.[83] For {77} various reasons the Act was not enforced, and in 1795 the magistrates began to adopt the alternative of granting poor relief regulated by the price of corn. This was the fatal Speenhamland policy, which, by securing a subsistence to all labourers, irrespective of their work, degraded their character by making up wages to the subsistence level, whatever their amount, induced employers to reduce wages for pauper labourers and independent labourers alike, and, by enormously increasing the burden of rates, seriously injured the whole agricultural industry.