progress of the scarcity the poor complained to the justices that their wages were too low to buy bread at present prices; the justices thereupon inquired at what, as the lowest wages, they would have been able to buy it, and then “very humanely, and I am far from saying improperly,” gave parish relief accordingly.[702] But, like the water from the mouth of Tantalus, the corn slipped from the grasp of the poor; prices rose a step further, and the relief had to follow the prices. The rates accordingly rose in many places from four to fourteen shillings in the pound. By the double burden of dear food and high rates, perhaps five or six millions of the richer classes were certainly made to feel the pinch of the scarcity, which would otherwise have been borne, say by two millions of the poorest, who would have died under it.[703] In this instance the Poor Laws did the country a distinct service. But it was done by taking from the first guests to give to the importunate intruders, and could not justify a general eulogy of the Poor Laws. The whole drift of the _Essay on Population_ had gone against such institutions; and “two years’ reflection,” says the writer of the _Essay_, “have served strongly to convince me of the truth of the principle there advanced, and of its being the real cause of the continued depression and poverty of the lower classes of society, of the total inadequacy of all the present establishments in their favour to relieve them, and of the [certainty of] periodical returns of such seasons of distress as we have of late experienced.”[704] In the first essay he had spoken strongly not only against Pitt’s new Poor Bill, but against all legal relief, and amongst other reasons precisely on the ground that it caused food to rise in price beyond the point to which scarcity would have raised it apart from interference.[705]