build-up on the English economy. The historian J.E. Thorold Rogers, for instance, observed that the cost of the Napoleonic Wars was high indeed: Thousands of homes were starved in order to find the means for the great war . . . the resources on which the struggle was based, and without which it would have speedily collapsed, were the stint and starvation of labor, the overtaxed and underfed toils of childhood, and the under-paid and uncertain unemployment of men (Rogers, 1891, quoted in Hartwell, 1971, p. 326). Modern statistical evidence and economic theory lends support to such observations. Government war spending and borrowing increased interest rates, thus "crowding out" private investors who desperately needed capital to construct new factories, build better canals, and design new inventions. Growth was present during the war, but it was excruciatingly small. In the long run, this meant fewer jobs and lower wages for the working class. But, for the common man, the war had more painful and immediate consequences than slowing the rate of economic growth. Various government schemes to finance the war debt led to monetary instability and uncertainty. This monetary instability, coupled with severe harvest failures, led to rapidly increasing food prices throughout the Napoleonic Wars (Redford, pp. 89-93). In fact, food prices soared upward by more than twenty-five per cent (Williamson, p. 187). Considering that the British working class then only earned on the average little more than Ј11 per year, it is no wonder how these developments led to hardships and deprivation that invariably resulted in social unrest. Although decidedly the most important, war was not the only form of government intervention that decreased the quality of life. Government monopolies, such as the East India Company and Cutler's Company, served to lessen economic efficiency and growth. The entire area of foreign commerce and trade was forced to contend with...
