This feeling was apparently prompted by the knowledge of the fact that the farmers were reaping a harvest out of the famine, while other ratepayers, such as the small tradesmen, were suffering as well as the poor. It was not, however, every farmer who had any wheat to sell at the famine prices then ruling, and hence any uniform plan of raising wages became hopeless. The course taken by the farmers and others to whom these appeals were made, was, to say the least, unfortunate, and led to no end of trouble in after years. The parish was obliged to step in, and to save the people from starvation, fixed a kind of minimum scale of income upon which each family could subsist, according to the number in family and the price of bread, and simply made up the difference between the wages and the standard. The effect of this was to pauperise for the time the whole labouring population, and that the ratepayers, employing no labourers themselves, had to help to pay for those who did! In the evidence collected by Sir Frederick Eden in 1795 as to the earnings and cost of maintenance of labourers' families, six families were taken from the parish of Hinxworth, representing Hertfordshire, and the earnings of each family averaged 12s. 6 1/2d., and their necessary expenditure exceeded their receipts by L22 3s. 6 1/2d., or about 9s. a week, which would have to be made up out of the rates. Of the peculiar hardship which thus grew up a correspondent in the _Farmers' Magazine_, for 1800, says:--"The present period to this class (small shopkeeper, &c.) who has a cow, and while he has it cannot have relief, is truly distressing, but as for the labouring people, _they are all on the parish funds_." It was stated in Parliament that farmers were making 200 per cent. profit! The probability is, however, that the great majority of farmers had little or no corn left to sell. {60} Here is a communication apparently from a farmer, to the same magazine, from a provincial market:-- "I am truly concerned to inform you that the price of grain advances every succeeding market day and that there is no prospect whatever of a fall. Wheat 23s. to 25s. per bushel. A number of principal fanners convened by the Mayor had agreed to sell their wheat at 21s. per bushel. Not long adhered to, for while I and others were selling at that price others were getting 28s., and so the matter dropped. Price of bread now almost out of reach of the poor; we have subscribed sums of money to purchase butcher's meat and potatoes for distribution, leaving them to buy bread with money received from the parish. As for rice as substitute, it, like everything else, has advanced to double the price. Herrings are strongly recommended by the Government."