Lecture I.: On the Cost of Obtaining Money.

The average annual wages of labour in Hindostan are from one pound to two pounds troy of silver a year. In England they are from nine pounds to fifteen pounds troy. In Upper Canada and the United States of America, they are from twelve pounds troy to twenty pounds. Within the same time the American labourer obtains twelve times, and the English labourer nine times as much silver as the Hindoo.

The difference in the cost of obtaining silver, or, in other words, in the wages of labour in silver, in different countries at the same period has attracted attention, though not perhaps so much as it deserves, and various theories have been proposed to account for it.

It has been attributed to the different degrees of labour requisite to obtain the necessaries of the labourer. In Hindostan it has been said, he requires little clothing or fuel, and subsists on rice, of which he obtains a sufficient quantity with little exertion. But how then do we account for his wages in North America being twenty-five per cent. higher than they are in England, while the labour requisite to obtain necessaries is not much more than half as great in the former country as in the latter? How do we account for the low amount of wages in silver in China, where the labour necessary to obtain necessaries is proverbially great?

It has been attributed to the different densities of population. In Hindostan and in Ireland, it has been said, labourers multiply so rapidly, that the market is overstocked with labour, and the price falls from the increased supply. But if this were an universal rule, as the population of England has doubled in the last seventy or eighty years, wages ought to have fallen, whereas they have doubled or trebled in that interval. They have kept on increasing in North America during a still greater increase of population. They are, perhaps, twice as high in Holland as in Sweden, though the population of Holland is ten times as dense as that of Sweden.

It has been attributed to the different pressure of taxation: but taxation is nowhere so light as in America, where wages are the highest. It is, probably, heavier in Hindostan than in England, yet wages are nine or ten times as high in England as in Hindostan. So that it might seem that wages are highest where taxation is lowest: but, on the other hand, taxation is lighter in France than in England, yet wages are lower, and lighter in Ireland than in France, yet wages are lower still. It appears, therefore, that there is no necessary connexion between taxation and wages.

It has been attributed to the different rates of profit. The average rate of profit in England is supposed to be about one-tenth, or about eleven per cent. per annum. In Hindostan and America it is higher. We will suppose it to be one-sixth, or twenty per cent. per annum, which is probably far too high an estimate. This difference would account for the labourer, whose wages have been advanced for a year, receiving nine-tenths of the value of what he produces in England, and only five-sixths in America and Hindostan, or rather is only a different expression of the same fact, but it does not afford even a plausible solution of the present question.

If the difference in wages were solely occasioned by a difference in the rate of profit, whatever is lost by the labourer would be gained by the capitalist, and the aggregate value in silver of a commodity produced by an equal expenditure of wages and profits, or, in my nomenclature, by an equal sum of labour and abstinence, would be every where the same; and in that case, how could both wages and profits be higher in North America than in England?

Taking North America as the standard, and that the value in silver of the produce of a year’s labour of one man, his wages having been advanced for a year, is two hundred and eighty ounces of silver, the value in silver in Hindostan and in England, of the produce of a year’s labour of one man, his wages having been advanced for a year, would also be two hundred and eighty ounces, and as the labourer receives only twenty-four ounces of silver in Hindostan, and only one hundred and eighty ounces in England, the Hindoo capitalist must receive, on the sum advanced by him in payment of wages, a profit of more than two hundred and fifty-six ounces, or above one thousand per cent. per annum; and the English capitalist more than one hundred ounces, being more than sixty per cent. per annum, which we know to have no resemblance to the fact. If my statements and suppositions as to the average wages of labour, and the average profits of capital in England, Hindostan, and America be correct, a commodity unaffected by any monopoly produced by the labour of one man for a year, his wages having been advanced for a year, must sell in Hindostan for from one pound two ounces, to two pounds four ounces of silver; that is, for from twelve to twenty-four ounces as the wages of the labour, and from two to four ounces as the profit of the capital employed. In England such a commodity must sell for from about nine pounds nine ounces, to about sixteen pounds three ounces. In America for from fourteen pounds to twenty-three pounds four ounces. In other words, the same sum of labour and abstinence, or, in other words, the same sacrifice of ease and of immediate enjoyment, obtains in America twenty-three pounds four ounces; in England sixteen pounds three ounces; and in Hindostan two pounds four ounces. And this difference is the phenomenon to which I am calling your attention.

It has been attributed to the different prices, in silver, of necessaries. Provisions, it is said, are dearer, that is, exchange for more silver in England than in France; therefore, the labourer must receive more silver to enable him to purchase them. But provisions are cheaper in America than in England, and yet the labourer receives much less silver in England than in America. The productiveness of the worst soil cultivated, the period for which capital is advanced, and the rate of profit being given, it is clear that the average price in silver of corn, must depend on the average wages in silver of labour, not the wages of labour on the price of corn. On my hypothesis, that the services of an English labourer for a year, his wages having been advanced for a year, are worth about nine pounds nine ounces of silver, the corn produced by him in a year on the worst land, his wages having been advanced for a year, must be worth nine pounds nine ounces of silver, and cannot be permanently worth either more or less. If his wages fall one-half, the rate of profit remaining the same, the corn must be worth four pounds ten ounces and a half. If they double, it must be worth nineteen pounds six ounces. But in all cases, the productiveness of the worst land cultivated, the period for which wages are advanced, and the rate of profit remaining the same, the average amount in silver of wages must regulate the average value in silver of corn, and not the value in silver of corn the amount of wages. To suppose the contrary, is in fact the vulgar error of putting the cart before the horse, or mistaking the effect for the cause. To use Adam Smith’s illustration, “It is not because one man keeps a coach while his neighbour walks a-foot, that the one is rich and the other is poor; but because the one is rich he keeps a coach, and because the other is poor he walks a-foot.”

If the population of England should maintain its present rate of advance; if our numbers should continue to increase at the rate of more than five hundred persons every twenty-four hours, and the absolute prohibition of foreign corn, for which a violent faction is now clamouring, should be conceded, there can be no question that even though wages should not rise, the price of corn would advance. The constantly increasing additional quantity which must be raised to supply an annual addition of fifty thousand families, would be raised at a constantly increasing proportionate expense. According to the theory which I am considering, the wages of the labourer would rise in proportion. For what purpose would they rise? To enable him to consume the same quantity as before, though the whole quantity raised would bear a less proportion than before to the whole number of producers? On such a supposition wages might be ten guineas a day, and corn ten guineas a peck. According to the present administration of our poor-laws, which allots to each individual a definite quantity of corn, to be given by the landlord as relief when not paid by the employer as wages, the whole amount received by the labourer in the two forms of relief and wages might rise, not indeed ad infinitum, but until it had absorbed the whole amount of rent and tithes,—had converted the landlords and clergy into trustees for the poor. And this is the state of things which, under the united influence of corn laws, even such as they are now, poor laws, and an increasing population, seems gradually approaching. But in the absence of poor laws, what reason would there be for expecting a rise in wages? Because the labourer would want more? But would the labourer’s wants give to the capitalist the power or the will to pay him more? Does the Manchester manufacturer pay his fine spinners 30s. a week, and his coarse spinners 15s. because the fine spinner eats twice as much as the coarse spinner? He pays the fine spinner 30s. because the produce of his labour is worth 30s., and a further sum equal to the average profit obtained by a manufacturing capitalist, and because, if he were to offer less, other capitalists would engage his labourers, and his machinery would stand idle. While the labourer’s services are worth 30s. he will receive 30s., whatever be the price of corn. To suppose the contrary is to consider the labourer not as a free agent, but as a slave or domestic animal, fed not according to his value but his necessities.

All experience shews that in the case which I have been supposing, the labourer’s resource would be, not to raise his wages, but to reduce his expenditure. He must first give up his weekly pittance of animal food. He must drink his tea without sugar, and surrender his pipe, and perhaps his beer. He must sink from wheat to rye, or barley, or oatmeal, and from oatmeal to potatoes. He must look on the wheat which he would raise, as he now does on the sheep and cattle that he tends, as a luxury beyond his enjoyment. The price of corn is nearly as high in Ireland as in England; but have the wages of the Irish labourer risen to enable him to consume it? Did the exportation of corn and cattle from Ireland cease even during the rages of famine, and of pestilence occasioned by famine?

The only mode by which I can account for the phenomena which I have been describing is, by supposing that the countries which have the precious metals to dispose of, either as producers, or as having a temporary superfluity at their own current rate of prices, are willing to give more than one-fourth more for the exportable commodities produced by the labour of one North American in a year, assisted by an advance of capital equal in value to his wages for a given period, than for the commodities produced by the labour of one Englishman, and more than ten times as much as for the commodities produced by the labour of one Hindoo, similarly circumstanced. Or in other words, that the diligence and skill with which English labour is applied enables the English labourer to produce in a year exportable commodities equal in value to those produced in a year by eight Hindoos; and that the diligence and skill with which North American labour is applied, inferior as they are perhaps to our own, yet by the assistance of the fertile soil which he cultivates, enable the North American labourer to produce exportable commodities more than one-fourth more valuable than those produced by the Englishman in a given period, and more than ten times more valuable than those produced by the Hindoo. Or to use a still more concise expression, that labour in England is eight times as productive of exportable commodities as in Hindostan, and labour in North America is one-fourth more productive of exportable commodities than in England.

It is probable that the connexion between the value, in the precious metals, of labour, or, in other words, money wages, and the cost of importing the precious metals, may not appear so clear to many of my hearers as it does to myself. But I would ask those to whom it is not evident, Whether England and France and the other countries which use plate and money, without possessing mines, must not annually import a certain quantity of the precious metals to supply the annual wear of plate and money? Whether they must not obtain this supply directly or indirectly from the countries possessing mines? Whether the average profits of the capitalists who employ labourers to produce the commodities in return for which this supply is obtained, must not be the same as the average profits of other capitalists in the same country? Whether the gold and silver which these capitalists import are not sent by them to the mint to be coined for their own benefit, or exchanged for gold and silver previously coined? Whether the money thus obtained, after deducting what may be payable as rent, is not divided into two portions, one of which is retained by the capitalists as profit, and the other given to their labourers, as wages? Whether their labourers are likely to receive either more or less than any other labourers in the same country, undergoing equal toils? Whether therefore the wages obtained by the labourers, in return for whose labour the precious metals are imported, do not regulate the wages of all other labourers in the same country? And whether the price, or, in other words, the value in gold and silver of all those commodities which are not the subjects of a monopoly, does not depend, in a country not possessing mines, on the gold and silver which can be obtained by exporting the result of a given quantity of labour the current rate of profit, and, in each individual case, the amount of the wages which have been paid, and the time for which they have been advanced?

In fact the portableness of the precious metals and the universality of the demand for them render the whole commercial world one country, in which bullion is the money and the inhabitants of each nation form a distinct class of labourers. We know that in the small market of every district the remuneration paid to the producer is in proportion to the value produced. And consequently that if one man can by superior diligence, or superior skill, or by the assistance of a larger capital, or by deferring for a longer time his remuneration, or by any advantage natural or acquired, occasion a more valuable product, he will receive a higher reward. It is thus that a lawyer is better paid than a watchmaker, a watchmaker than a weaver, a first-rate than an ordinary workman. And for the same reason in the general market of the world an Englishman is better paid than a Frenchman, a Frenchman than a Pole, and a Pole than a Hindoo.

It has been shewn in the former Lectures, that in the mining countries all prices ultimately depend on the cost of producing the precious metals; that though the remuneration paid to the miner is not identical with that received by other producers, yet that it affords the scale by which the remuneration of all other producers is calculated. When once experience has ascertained the comparative advantages and disadvantages of different occupations, they will continue to bear, as to wages, the same proportion to one another. A fall in the cost of producing silver must raise the wages of the miner. If those of the agriculturist were not to rise in proportion, the miner’s wages would be more than in proportion to his sacrifices, and they would be reduced by the consequent competition. And on the other hand, mining would be abandoned, if, when the cost of producing silver was increased the wages in other employments could be stationary. The mine worked by England is the general market of the world: the miners are those who produce those commodities by the exportation of which the precious metals are obtained, and the amount of the precious metals, which by a given exertion of labour, and advance of capital, they can obtain, must afford the scale by which the remuneration of all other producers is calculated.

If this reasoning be correct, and I have in vain sought for a flaw in it, many important consequences must be admitted.

In the first place it follows that the amount of the income in money of each individual depends on the prosperity of our foreign commerce. If the worst land that can be profitably cultivated in England will produce per acre, at an average, two quarters of corn a-year, after deducting what must be reserved for seed, the proprietor of an estate of one hundred acres, producing at an average, after the deduction of seed, four quarters of corn per acre, is entitled to two hundred quarters as his rent. The value in money of those two hundred quarters must be the same as that of the two hundred quarters which the farmer retains and divides between himself and his labourers. The value of those two hundred quarters must be equal to the wages of the labourers after deducting the farmer’s profit for having paid those wages in advance. And those wages, though not precisely the same as the wages of the labourers who produce commodities for exportation, must bear a certain proportion to those wages. If the toils undergone by the manufacturer are supposed to be more severe by one-third than those of the agriculturist, the agricultural labourer will at an average receive just two-thirds of the wages of the manufacturer. If the foreign demand for English manufactures be such as to occasion the manufacturer to receive 15s. or about three ounces of silver a week, the agriculturist will receive 10s. or about two ounces of silver a week. We will suppose that the farmer in question employs ten labourers, whose wages are advanced for a year before the produce is sold, and that the average rate of profit is one-tenth, or about eloven per cent. per annum. When wages are 10s. a week, or 26l. a year per labourer, the wages of ten labourers amount to 260l. a year; making, with the addition of one-tenth for profits 286l., which must be the average price of the two hundred quarters annually retained by the farmer to pay his profit and his labourers’ wages. And as the landlord’s two hundred quarters sell for the same price, his rent must also be 286l. a year. But if any improvement in the skill by which English labour is assisted should so raise the value in the foreign market of English manufactures as to raise the wages of manufacturers from 15s. to 30s. a week, the same effect would be produced as if, in a mining country, the cost of producing silver were diminished by one-half. Though the labour of the agricultural labourer would not become more productive than before, yet his wages would also be doubled, or the former proportion founded on the experience of the comparative disadvantages of each occupation would not be preserved. The wages of the labourers employed in raising the two hundred quarters of corn retained by the farmer and his labourers would rise from 260l. to 520l. a year: the profit on the advance of those wages for a year must rise from 26l. to 52l., the price of the two hundred quarters would be 572l. instead of 286l.; and the price of the landlord’s two hundred quarters would of course also rise from 286l. to 572l.

In the purchase of English labour and of those English commodities in which no improvement had taken place, the English landlord would find his income unaltered, however raised in nominal amount. But his power of purchasing those English commodities, the production of which had been facilitated, would be increased in proportion to that improvement. In the purchase of foreign labour and foreign commodities, his income would be doubled. He would be able to purchase statues, pictures, and wines, which the proprietor of an equal extent of equally fertile land in the countries producing those commodities could not aspire to. He would be able to travel as a Milor Anglais, and drive the French and Italian aristocracy from the first floor to the garret, or the entresol. Little imagining that the greater part of the value of what he called his patrimony was, in fact, the creation of the chimneys and jennies of his neighbour, the manufacturer.

Such, in fact, were the events which actually occurred in this country during the latter part of the eighteenth and the beginning of the nineteenth century. The inventions of Arkwright and Watt, by making English labour ten times, or more than ten times as efficient in the production of exportable commodities, doubled, or more than doubled its value in the foreign market, and reduced to one-half, or less than one-half, the cost in England of obtaining the precious metals. It is true that clinging to the restrictions and prohibitions of our commercial code, we have, as yet, refused the greater part of the advantages which Providence seemed to press on our acceptance; but cramped as they are, and always have been, by our perverse legislation, the skill of our manufacturers has, during the last sixty years, more than doubled the rent of land and the income of every class of producers.

It would be a painful task to trace the steps by which the increasing embarrassments of commerce, occasioned partly by our own adherence to the barbarous policy called protection, and partly by the retaliatory follies of other countries, by diminishing the market for English labour, are now gradually lowering its price, increasing the cost of obtaining the precious metals, and reducing the income of every producer, while the public burthens, nominally the same, are, for that very reason, really in a state of constant increase.

It is a lamentable proof of the public ignorance on these subjects, that the general fall of prices, or in other words, the increasing difficulty of obtaining the precious metals, of which every one is sensible, should, by almost every one, be attributed to some cause of almost ridiculous inadequacy. It has been attributed to our return to a metallic currency, as if the subtraction of twenty millions of sovereigns, or less than four hundred thousand pounds troy of gold, from the ten millions of pounds troy of gold bullion, coin, and plate supposed to be in use throughout the world, that is to say, the removal of one-twenty-fifth part, could sensibly affect the value of gold. It has been attributed even to the substitution of gold and silver for the three or four millions of one pound notes lately called in, as if the value of the two thousand millions sterling of gold and silver bullion, coin, and plate, supposed to be in use throughout the world, could be materially affected by the subtraction of less than one-five-hundredth part of it. It has been attributed to over production. We have been told that our agriculturists and manufacturers all produce too much; as if it were possible that every body could have too much of everything; as if there were a single family that would not like to spend 1000l. a year. It has been attributed, which is nearly the same explanation, to the increased use of machinery, as if it were possible that general embarrassment could be the result of the improved efficiency of labour; as if all men would be impoverished if their force and their skill were doubled. It has been attributed even to free trade, as if anything approaching to free trade had ever been conceded; as if free trade were not specifically the cure of the evil of which it is represented as the cause; as if the allowing every man to exert his industry in the mode which he finds, from experience, to be most productive would diminish its value; as if we could increase the incomes of the inhabitants of Manchester, by forcing them to turn their bleaching grounds into corn fields, or those of the neighbouring farmers, by forcing them to weave their own shirts.

We are often told of the artificial state of the country. The vagueness of that expression affords a never-failing refuge to those who are pressed by reasonings which they want sense to comprehend or candour to admit. In one sense indeed we are in an artificial state. We have succeeded in raising to an extraordinary height the value of our industry. We obtain the precious metals at much less than their average cost throughout the world, or even in the most civilized parts of it. This is not only the consequence of a great advantage, of the superior productiveness of our industry, but the cause of many other advantages. It enables us to obtain the products of other countries so far as our legislature allows us to receive them, so far as they are not prohibited on account of their cheapness, not merely at the expense of less labour than it would cost to produce them, but often at the expense of less labour than they cost in the producing countries. While one Englishman can produce calico worth one hundred and fifty ounces of silver in the same time within which five Poles can produce corn worth only one hundred and forty ounces, it must be advantageous to Poland to give for the calico produced by one Englishman the corn produced by five Poles.

It is probable that if public attention had been earlier drawn to these circumstances, if we had sooner and more anxiously inquired into the causes which have enabled us to obtain the precious metals so much more easily than our neighbours, our national conduct might have been materially altered. We should have found that these causes are not resolvable into any peculiar local advantages, but principally into our comparatively greater and more skilful use of machinery and our better division of labour: and we should have felt that the progressive improvement of our rivals must quickly destroy our superiority if we remain stationary, and diminish it if our advance be less rapid, and that our progress can be maintained or accelerated only by allowing our industry to flow with perfect liberty into the channels in which it is found to be most productive.

Unhappily these inquiries were not made. We appear to have considered the comparative cheapness of the precious metals a permanent gift of nature, as little susceptible of diminution or increase as the warmth of our climate. With more than the rashness of a merchant who in his prosperity should allow his expenses to equal his profits, we have subjected ourselves to the obligation of perpetual money payments, which we can support only while we continue not merely to outstrip, but to distance the rest of Europe. By encumbering commerce with every sort of vexatious restraint, we have done our best to force our own industry into the channels which are least beneficial, and to force the industry of other nations into those in which their concurrence is most dangerous. By act of Parliament we have converted our customers into our rivals, and then complain of their competition.

Many economists have maintained that no country can be injured by the improvement of her neighbours. If the continent, they say, should be able to manufacture cottons with half the labour which they now cost in England, the consequence would be, that we should be able to import our supply of cottons from Germany or France at a less expense than it costs us to manufacture them, and might employ a portion of our industry now devoted to the manufacture of cottons, in procuring an additional supply of some other commodities. These opinions have such an appearance of liberality, that I am sorry to dissent from them. But it must be remembered that England and the continent are competitors in the general market of the world. Such an alteration would diminish the cost of obtaining the precious metals on the continent, and increase it in England. The value of continental labour would rise, and the value of English labour would sink. They would ask more money for all those commodities, in the production of which no improvement had taken place, and we should have less to offer for them. We might find it easier to obtain cottons, but we should find it more difficult to import everything else.

The last remark which occurs to me as connected with the present subject, is one which I somewhat anticipated in my first course, namely, the absurdity of the opinion that the generally high rate of wages in England unfits us for competition with foreign producers. It is obvious that our power of competing with foreigners depends on the efficiency of our labour, and it has appeared that a high rate of wages is a necessary consequence of that efficiency. It is true, indeed, that if we choose to misemploy a portion of our labourers we must pay them, not according to the value of what they do produce, but according to the value of what they might produce if their labour were properly directed. If I call in a surgeon to cut my hair, I must pay him as a surgeon. So if I employ, in throwing silk, a man who could earn three ounces of silver a week by spinning cotton, I must pay him three ounces of silver a week though he cannot throw more silk than could be thrown in the same time by an Italian whose wages are only an ounce and a half. And it is true, also, that I can be supported in such a waste by nothing but an artificial monopoly, or, in other words, that I shall be under-sold by the Italian in every market from which I cannot exclude him by violence. But do these circumstances justify me in resorting to that violence? Do they justify me in imploring the legislature to direct that violence against my fellow-subjects? If that violence is relaxed, but not discontinued, have I, or has the consumer, the more right to complain? If my estate were water-meadow, I should lose if I were to endeavour to convert it into corn-fields. But surely that is no subject of complaint; surely it is no reason for prohibiting my neighbours from purchasing corn in any adjoining parish. To complain of our high wages is to complain that our labour is productive—to complain that our workpeople are diligent and skilful. To act on such complaints is as wise as to enact that all men should labour with only one hand, or stand idle four days in every week.

Nature seems to have intended that mutual dependence should unite all the inhabitants of the earth into one great commercial family. For this purpose she has infinitely diversified her own products in every climate, and in almost every extensive district. For this purpose, also, she seems to have varied so extensively the wants and the productive powers of the different races of men. The great superiority of modern over ancient wealth depends in a great measure on the greater use we make of these varieties. We annually import into this country about thirty million pounds of tea. The whole annual labour required to purchase and import this quantity does not exceed, probably does not equal, that of fifty thousand Englishmen. With our horticultural skill, and our coal mines, and at the expense of about three guineas a pound; that is to say, by employing more than one million two hundred thousand men instead of less than fifty thousand, we might produce our own tea, and enjoy the pride of being independent of China. But one million two hundred thousand is about the number of all the men engaged in agricultural labour throughout England. A single trade, and that not an extensive one, supplies as much tea, and that probably of a better quality, as would be obtained if it were possible to devote every farm and every garden to its domestic production.

The greater part of the advantage of rather importing than growing and manufacturing tea arises, without doubt, from the difference between the climates of China and England. But a great part also arises from the different values of labour in the two countries. Not only the cultivation of the tea-plant, but the preparation of its leaves, requires great labour. The wages of labour are so low in China, that these tedious processes add little to the cost of the tea. In England the expense would be intolerable. When a nation in which the powers of production, and consequently the wages of labour, are high, employs its own members in performing duties which could be as effectually performed by the less valuable labour of less civilized nations, it is guilty of the same folly as a farmer who should plough with a race-horse.

It has been a general remark of political economists, that the home trade of every country is more extensive and more important than its foreign trade.

As applied to nations of considerable extent, and at the present time, this is probably true. But as a general proposition, as indicating the state of things, such as it may be expected to be in the absence of peculiar disturbing causes, I am satisfied that it is false. In China, a country comprising probably one-fifth of mankind, and separated from the rest of the civilized world by vast deserts, or ten thousand miles of sea, the internal trade is necessarily the principal one. It must also be the principal trade in those countries, which, though of moderate extent, and favourably situated for foreign commerce, perversely refuse her advantages; or, like Spain, submit to them only when inflicted by the smuggler. The home trade is also, at this instant, the principal trade of Great Britain; but whether necessarily, or naturally so, may be doubted.

As the British islands make but a small portion of the globe, and that portion is remarkably uniform in soil, climate, and produce, it might have been supposed that the market of the whole world would have been more extensive and more varied, than that of England, Ireland, and Scotland. The communication between the eastern and southern coasts of Great Britain, and the western coast of Europe, and that between the western coasts of England, Ireland, and Scotland, and the eastern coast of North America, is more easy than that between most of our counties which are not absolutely contiguous. The freight of a cask of wine from Oporto to London is rather less than the cost of its carriage from London to Oxford. It might have been supposed that the whole of our trade with those regions, so vast, so accessible, and so varied, producing so much that we want, and wanting so much that we produce, would be at least equal to the whole trade of our different provinces with one another. That it is not so, is to be attributed to war and mischievous legislation; or, in other words, to crime and to folly. From the conquest to the present time, have our legislators laboured to repel the advantages which our situation and our habits have almost forced upon us. In the earlier periods of our history, when our want was of manufactures, parliament accumulated restriction on restriction, and penalty on penalty, until they had at length prohibited the importation of almost every wrought article then in ordinary use. And that exportation, or at least one sort of exportation, might not be destroyed by the absence of importation, they taxed the whole community to raise annually sums which, even now, would be called large, to pay a bounty to exporters of corn; or, in other words, to pay, on the behalf of the foreign purchaser, a part of the price which he was prohibited from paying in the mode most advantageous to us and to himself. A conduct, of which the curious absurdity could be paralleled only by that of a nation which should, at the same time, prohibit the importation of subsistence, and endeavour to raise funds to aid the emigration of its inhabitants.

After centuries of legislation and poverty, the reformation, the revolution, and the inventions of a few gifted individuals, raised us almost suddenly to be the greatest manufacturers in the world; and, with our increasing population and prosperity, the price of corn rose until our former situation was reversed: we became exporters of manufactures, and importers of raw produce. With perverse ingenuity, measures were adopted to meet this alteration in our circumstances. Because it became profitable to import corn, its importation was prohibited; because we were supposed not to be in want of manufactures, their importation was allowed. It is of great importance, as a part of the history of human folly, to mark that these are the grounds on which the public is generally called upon to approve of the commercial legislation of the last fifteen years. The ground on which the present limited admission of French silks (to take a single instance) is generally defended, is, that our silk manufacturers can undersell or at least compete with the foreign producers. Those who oppose Mr. Huskisson’s measures always expatiate on the quantity that we import, and the low price at which it may be obtained: those who defend them maintain that the quantity imported is trifling, and cannot be obtained at a less price than it could be produced at home. In other words, the measure is defended as useless, and opposed as beneficial. With similar perversity, those who defend the corn laws try to shew that wheat may be obtained from abroad at 30s. a quarter, while those who oppose those laws endeavour to prove that it could not be imported at less than 52s.

It is not enough to say that our barbarous policy deprives us of many of the advantages offered to us by nature; in many cases it turns her bounties into positive evils. There are scarcely any articles of raw, or slightly manufactured produce, of which the price in England does not exceed the average price throughout Europe, except those articles which our soil and our climate do not enable us to produce at home. If coffee or sugar were of English growth, we should soon have coffee laws and sugar laws, and must submit to hear them defended on the ground that the low taxation and superior fertility of other countries make it necessary to protect the domestic producer against foreign competition. This seems to be the circumstance which makes the public submit so quietly to the apparently strange law which prohibits the growth of tobacco in the British islands. It seems felt that our only chance of obtaining that commodity on fair terms is absolutely to prohibit the owners of our own soil from having anything to do with it. That, under these circumstances, our home trade far exceeds our foreign trade is true; but it is true only in consequence of laws introduced and perpetuated by the prejudices of some, the avowed and arrogant selfishness of others, and the ignorant supineness of almost all. Is habitus animorum fuit, ut pessimum facinus auderent pauci, plures vellent, omnes paterentur.