power of capital and popular education, there can be no just ground of despair for Ireland.

The next circumstance that I shall notice, as tending to augment the demand for labour, is the security of property. Most men have an aversion to labour, that can only be overcome by the temptation of enjoying its rewards, either in future ease or present enjoyments. The merchant, manufacturer, and shopkeeper, submit to the toils and anxieties of business in the hope of reaping and enjoying hereafter the fruits of their exertions. The rights of property may not only be infringed by direct and forcible violation, but by any measures that interfere with its free use and most beneficial employment. Every one ought to be at liberty to employ his capital and industry on such objects as he deems most advantageous to himself, provided the exercise of this liberty does not abridge the enjoyment of the same right by others. A landlord ought to be free to cultivate his land as he pleases, a capitalist to fix his own rate of interest, and a labourer to choose his employment, and accept or not a fixed rate of wages. On this principle, commercial monopolies, the antiquated immunities of corporations, and combinations of workmen, are a violation of the rights of property and industry. Individuals are best able to select the occupations most adapted to their means and natural capacities; but the freedom of choice is abridged by the members of these associations enjoying advantages from which those who are excluded are denied.

Capital and industry do not flow into the most profitable channels; and as the demand for labour and its remuneration depends on this circumstance, the interests of the working classes are compromised by such arbitrary interferences with the general freedom. A state of peace and uninterrupted intercourse with other countries, are the last circumstances I shall notice as favourable to the demand for labour. Foreign war usually tends to disturb the operations of industry, either by preventing the supply of the raw material of some established manufacture, or intercepting the market for our commodities. Hostilities, it is true, give rise to new, and revive dormant employments; but this does not compensate for the loss of capital occasioned by its transfer to other branches of industry, and the stagnation and derangement produced in the pursuits of commerce and manufacture. War is a consumer, and not a creator of national wealth; and from this cause, as already explained, it must tend to lessen the demand for employment. The existence or apprehension of civil commotion has a similar tendency. A general feeling of insecurity and uncertainty, as to the future, is generated; and the mind and energies of the community are diverted from the pursuits of wealth and industry to the consideration of national affairs.

CHAP. VIII.

GENERAL CONCLUSIONS ON WAGES.

Wages can only be settled by Competition of Workmen— Wages of Farm Servants and in Factories-Distinction between Skilled and Unskilled Labour-Standard of Living-High Wages not a source of Idleness and Vice-Necessity of Relaxation-Effects of Arts, Trades, and Professions, on Health -Danger of low Diet and degrading Habits-Contrast of a Potato and Wheat-fed Population-Opinions of M'Culloch and Adam Smith-Government not less than Society interested in the wellbeing of the Working Classes.

In the two preceding chapters I have endeavoured to explain the circumstances that principally determine the rate of wages; namely, those that affect the supply of labour, and those that affect the demand or funds for its employment. Before leaving this important subject, it will be useful to recapitulate the chief conclusions at which we have arrived, and fix attention more explicitly than has yet been done on those points that essentially influence the condition of the industrious orders.

Labour, it is clear, is a commodity of sale, differing from other commodities chiefly in its more perishable nature, in the greater difficulty and expense of storing up a surplus quantity of it beyond the current demand, and in the circumstance that the supply of it cannot be augmented or diminished with the same facility as the supply of a merely physical

product.

All the principles of trade, therefore, which are applicable to buyers and sellers, are alike applicable to workmen and their employers. Wages, like prices, must be determined by the free competition of the market; there must be no arbitrary interferences either on the part of the state or of individuals; any compulsory attempt to fix the market price of labour would be as indefensible as an attempt to fix the market price of bread or butcher's

meat.

Labour is the property of the working man, and merits the same protection as other property; but no more. The trade in it ought to be free, neither protected by immunities, nor restricted by penalties.

As competition, and not any arbitrary regulations ought to determine the price of labour, it follows that high wages are only compatible with an understocked market; in other words, high wages, can only be obtained when employers compete for workmen, not workmen for employers. It is upon the ability of the working classes to maintain the market in this state that their wellbeing entirely depends. If their numbers are excessive, if they bid against each other for employment, then the market is oversupplied with the commodity in which they deal, and its price, like the price of any other redundant article, will be depreciated.

Should an excess in the supply of labour continue to lower its price, there is no depth of misery and degradation to which the working classes may not

be compelled to submit. The low wages, which of late years have been paid to weavers in Lancashire and Scotland, to framework-knitters in Leicestershire, and to farm-servants in the southern and midland counties, incontestably establish the veracity of this principle. The disgusting atrocities practised in mills and factories are another corroborative circumstance. The proprietors of these abodes of wailing and anguish, and vice, are many of them enlightened men-Christian men-men, who, in all other relations of life are swayed by intelligence and humanity, but who in this are callous to every motive, save that of gain-who know no law save that of supply and demand-and who feel justified in running against each other a race of competition in buying the greatest quantity of human toil at the lowest price an overstocked market may compel the owners to accept.

The same principle governs rural industry. Humanity suggests that labourers in husbandry should be paid higher wages in winter than in summer; they require more food, fire, and warmer clothing; but humanity does not regulate wages, they are regulated by competition for employment. In summer, especially during harvest, farmers bid against each other for servants, and thereby raise wages; in winter work is not so plentiful, and servants bid against each other for employment and lower wages. Thus, by the operation of the unavoidable principle of competition, which neither can nor ought to