ther than theory, that the higher the wages labourers and artisans received the less they worked, and that, while low wages bred industry and diligence, high wages bred laziness, disorderliness and debauchery. Thus, Thomas Manley wrote in 1669 that English workmen `work so much the fewer days by how much the more they exact in their wages'; Sir Henry Pollexfen pronounced in 1697 that `the advances of wages hath proved an inducement to idleness; for many are for being idle the oftener because they can get so much in a little time'; and Bernard Mandeville in 1714 asserted that `Every Body knows that there is a vast number of Journey-men ... who, if by Four Days Labour in a Week they can maintain themselves, will hardly be persuaded to work the fifth; and that there are Thousands of labouring Men of all sorts, who will... put themselves to fifty Inconveniences... to make Holiday'.(13)Along with the allure of leisure and linked logically with it was a belief in the prevalence among the poorer sort of a `target consumption', which fixed their horizons close to subsistence levels, so that the amount of work which they were prepared to undertake was directly linked to the amount of money required to satisfy a basket of basic needs. The purchase of food comprised the bulk of the expenditure of the poor and, since food prices were more volatile than money wages, the inverse relationship that existed between the price of provisions and the desire for work was repeatedly stressed. Sir Josiah Child wrote in 1694: `In a cheap year they will not work above two days in a week; their humour being such that they will not provide for a hard time; but just work so much and no more, as may maintain them in that mean condition to which they have been accustomed',(14) It seemed self-evident to those who observed the labour market that `this habit of idleness and sloth [was] contracted by plenty'.(15) Indeed, so powerful and ubiquitous were the limited materi...
