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ture or manufactures, all produce infinitely more than they consume, and are for that reason to be looked upon as producers, who, in company with landowners and farmers, thrive best upon high prices, and not as consumers, who benefit most

by low ones; the doctrine is perfectly untrue; or true only, so far as it relates merely to fundholders and stockjobbers, and the several classes of society whose circumstances in life are bettered by raising the value of money, and lowering the rewards of industry.

"Still, Mr Ricardo's plan was a profound one. The idea of sowing dissensions amongst all who happened to be engaged in production, by making a part, and that the most numerous part, believe that they were consumers, rather than producers; and setting them in this way against those who were sailing actually in the same boat with them, the landowner and farmer, in order to weaken the united influence of the entire body; was an admirable contrivance for strengthening the hands of the fundholder, and enabling him to obtain his favourite object of low prices."*

During the struggle on the Reform Bill, the great majority of the producers throughout the country, of whatever class, were seduced by the contagion of democracy and the delusion of a Press, all emanating from, and guided by, the interests of town consumers, to unite against the remnant of the Conservative-that is, the producing interest. Ninetyeight out of the hundred and one county members of England were returned in the reforming interest; and the farmers who brought them in on the shoulders of the populace, are now rewarded for their exertions by the threatened repeal of the Corn Laws-that is, the reduction of grain to forty shillings a-quarter, and wages to ninepence a-day. Almost all the manufacturing towns joined the cry, and by their threatening attitude overawed the House of Peers, when that noble body threw itself almost unsupported into the breach to save the whole producing classes; and they now see the consequences of their conduct in the obstinate adherence to free trade, the reciprocity system, the restricted currency, and all the other measures dictated by the exclusive

interests of the monied classes, and are allowed to cool, after their Reform transports, in garrets, on bread and water, and a shilling a-day to maintain a rising family.

The slightest consideration of the present constitution of Parliament must shew how enormously and unjustly the monied interest and the urban consumers have gained by the Reform Bill, at the expense of the industrious and working classes throughout the state. Out of 500 English members, there are 156 for counties, and 344 for boroughs; that is, the town members are to the county as more than two to one. Part, no doubt, of the boroughs are swayed by the landlords in their neighbourhood; but, probably, at least as many county members are returned by the growing influence of city wealth, owing to the increasing embarrassment of the country proprietors. At all events, if it be said that there are 300 English members in the interest of the consumers, and 200 in that of the producers, the fairest allowance is made for the possible efforts of the minority, of all descriptions, who are now attempting to stem the ruinous torrent which has flooded the Legislature. And in the right of voting at elections, how are the different classes of society balanced? A consumer in town, who pays ten pounds of yearly rent, has a vote; a producer in the country requires to pay five times that sum to get one. The tenpound clause virtually excludes the whole operative manufacturers from any influence, and vests unlimited power in the spiritdealers, grocers, and shopkeepers-that is, the consumers who live on the fruits of their labour. Thus, both by the places which return members, and the qualification to vote, bestowed with such flagrant inequality on the different classes of society, is that ruinous supremacy secured to the monied classes and consumers, which has been at the root of all the national distresses for the last fifteen years. Now, from the tables quoted below, it appears that the total wealth produced by the agriculturists and manufacturers, amounts to the enormous sum

Bernard's View of the Constitution, 312.

of above four hundred millions annually, and the population employed in these branches of industry is no less than 10,000,000, while the total wealth earned annually by the trading and monied classes, is L.95,000,000, and their numbers are only 5,600,000. Thus a class producing one-fifth of the national income, and composing one-third of the national numbers, have contrived, by the delusions which they have spread among the working bodies, to usurp a preponderating influence in the Legislature, and to introduce and perpetuate a series of measures, which have precipitated, and are precipitating, the very men whose hands create their income into beggary and ruin.*

In these observations we have classed the agricultural and urban producers together, and considered their joint interests as opposed to that of the money-holders and consumers. We know well the apple of discord which the consumers and the advocates of cheap prices have contrived to throw between these two vast bodies, whose united strength would be irresistible. We are quite aware of the fatal delusion which they have spread, and are spreading,

on the subject of the Corn Laws, and the efforts they are making to detach the whole urban producers from their rural brethren, by the false but specious pretence that dear grain is the interest of the one, and cheap grain the interest of the other. It is therefore of the utmost moment that the working classes of all descriptions should at length acquire just ideas on this subject, and be brought to see that their interests are identical, and cannot be separated; and that it is the fatal disunion which the town consumers and monied classes have contrived to create between them by the phantoms of democratic ascendency, free trade, cheap prices, and political power, which has enabled the adverse interest in society to mount upon their backs, and chain them like captives to their chariot wheels, in defiance of the evidence of their own senses, and the continued suffering experienced in their own persons.

Let the operative workmen and manufacturers, before they give ear to these insidious attempts on the part of their real oppressors, attend

to

the following consideration: When were they in a prosperous

• The following Table illustrates this in the most striking manner. It is taken from Pebrer's and Moreau's Tables, and all compiled from Parliamentary documents, Annual produce of agriculture in all its branches,

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L. 246,600,000 21,400,000 3,400,000 148,000,000

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state? Was it during the war, when prices were high, and, in consequence, a great surplus produce was created throughout the state, or has it been since the peace, when the blessings of cheap produce, cheap prices, and low wages, have been fully experienced? We shall give the answer in their own words.

"The fundamental cause of the Trades' Unions is a want of the necessaries of subsistence. This is certified by the deplorable statements of Messrs Cobbett, Fielden, and Attwood, in the House of Commons, with reference to the manufacturing districts, in many parts of which the average income of an individual was not sufficient to buy bread alone. Mr Cobbett, in reply to Mr Macauley, stated that he would pledge himself to prove that 10,000 persons in Leeds did not get three-pence per day, and he affirmed that his colleague had a statement, which he could verify on oath, and which he obtained by his own personal enquiries, that there were 50,000 persons about Manchester who did not receive each 24d per day. Mr Fielden's Tables, published last year, exhibit the following facts::

In 1815, wages per piece to hand

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Now, add to this appalling fact that eight millions of pounds were last year collected for Poor's rates, and I think, without entering further into dry statistical details, it must be obvious to all but the pampered minions of corruption, that distress, long, deep, and hopeless distress, is the cause of the organization of the Trades' Union."- -Trades' Union Gazette, Jan. 25, 1834.

The same fact is stated in the same terms in the Newcastle Press, Dec. 21, 1833.

"The gigantic organization of the Trades' Unions is beginning, and with reason, to attract the attention of the country. These unions are only one amongst the many signs of that great change which is impending over this kingdom: and which it is now impos

sible either for human cunning or human courage to avert. These unions have sprung out of the long and increasing pressure upon the laborious classes, whose misery has gone on increasing with their knowledge. The fruit is perfectly natu

ral.

Education will never bring men to believe that they can be half starved to

all eternity under a just or proper government; or that society has any right to call upon men in general to be miserable, for the sake of the continuation of a system. Of this, the productive classes of England are now fully convinced, and they are as fully determined that they at all events will suffer no longer."

Now this, be it recollected, is the state to which the operatives have been brought by the adoption of all the principles of the democratic party; by the system of cheap bread, free trade, and the Reform Bill. During the last five years of the war, wheat was at 148.6d. per bushel, and all classes, and more especially the operatives, were prosperous and contented; for the last five years wheat has been at an average 8s. a bushel, and they have been, by their own admission, constantly getting worse and worse. At present wheat is at 5s. 4d. a bushel, lower than it has been for the last forty years, and the workmen, as they themselves tell us, are so far from thriving, that they are literally starving by hundreds of thousands on seven shillings a-week. Unless these unhappy men were literally infatuated by the monied demagogues who lure them by democratic flattery to perdition, they would see that cheap prices are immediately followed to them by still cheaper wages, and that just in proportion as the price of grain falls, is the quantity of that grain, which they are able to purchase with their wages, lessened also. If by a miracle the price of grain could be lowered to half-acrown a-bushel, its price in Poland, the only result would be, that their wages would immediately fall to sixpence a-day, and the last state of that man would be worse than the first.

The slightest consideration must shew for what reason it is that cheap prices, whether of manufactured or agricultural produce, are immethe operatives. The facts, the imdiately followed by great distress to portant facts already noticed, that the produce of agricultural labour in Great Britain is L.246,000,000 annually, and that the home consumption of manufactures is L.88,000,000 annually, while the foreign, even at this time, is only L.60,000,000, alone

explain it. The agricultural producers are the chief and best customers of the manufacturers: they consume a half more than all foreign nations put together. Low prices, therefore, which cripple and depress all branches of home purchasers, who are all more or less dependent on this prodigious flood of two hundred and forty six millions annually poured into the state, cripple and diminish, in just a similar degree, the home market—that is, the market which is half greater than all foreign markets put together. Suppose our exports of manufactures were to fall from L.60,000,000 annually to L.40,000,000, in consequence of some general calamity which had befallen their purchasers in foreign states; what prodigious misery would this spread among our operative workmen; and yet the fall of agricultural produce from 60s. to 408. the quarter, would contract the home market much more powerfully it would cut off eighty millions annually from the funds destined to the purchase of domestic manufactures. These considerations shew decisively that in a nation such as Britain, which rests chiefly on its agricultural produce and manufactures consumed in the home market, the prosperity of the operative classes is mainly dependent on the maintenance of high and remunerating prices to the agriculturists; because it is thus, and thus alone, that their chief customers are provided with funds to buy their goods. In such a state, high prices of rude produce

are immediately followed by still higher wages to all classes in general. Prosperity and credit is immediately diffused through all classes of society; whereas, under the wretched paralysis of low prices, the funds for the purchase of the produce of manufactured industry are constantly contracting, the wages of the operative workman fall to a greater degree than the grain which he consumes, and he is starving in the midst of nominal plenty. This doctrine was long ago laid down by Adam Smith.-"High prices," says he, "and plenty, is prosperity: low prices and depression, are misery."

To illustrate the ruinous state of depression to which the operative workmen have been brought by the combined operation of Free Trade, low prices, and democratic principles, we have extracted, in the Table below, the prices of labour, &c., from 1815 to 1832, with the prices of grain, taken from Mr Fielden's Tables, published by the National Regeneration Society. From them it appears, that since 1815 the price of grain has declined, on an average of years, about twenty-five per cent, but that the wages of the operatives have declined above sixty-six per cent during the same period of their former amount; and that the total returns for "labour, expenses, and profit," under the halcyon days of cheap bread and free trade in 1832, is little more than a fourth of what it was under the high prices of the years immediately succeeding the war.+

Average price of five years, before 1820, 77s. per quarter; of five years before 1832, 63s. per quarter of wheat.

† AN ACCOUNT OF THE COST, &c. OF ONE PIECE OF THIRD 74s. CALICO, from 1815 to 1832 INCLUSIVE,

References to the Columns in the Table.

No. 1. Shows the number of lbs. weight of cotton required to make a piece of third

74s. calico.

2. The average price of the cotton per pound in each year.

3. The average of cotton required to make one piece in each year.

4. The average price of such calico in the Manchester market.

5. The average sum the manufacturer had for labour, expenses, and profit, in every year, from 1815 to 1832, both years inclusive.

6. Average price of a quarter of wheat and a quarter of oats in each year, from official returns.

It is as clear as mathematical demonstration, therefore, that the principles by which the Democratic body are governed, have been proved by experience to be adverse to the interests of the producers of commodities; and that the working classes, seduced and blinded by the flattery of Democratic demagogues, who all resided in, and were actuated by, the interests of towns, have given a fatal ascendency in the Legislature to the very class in the State to whom all their misfortunes have been owing, and whose interests are directly adverse to their own.

The operative workmen feel this; they are aware that they have been misled, deceived, betrayed; that amidst the incessant eulogies of the Democrats, they have been constantly getting poorer; amidst a continual fall of prices, have had daily less to eat, and that, as Cobbett well expresses it, just in "proportion as education has been thrust into their heads, their clothes have been slipping from their backs."

It is in consequence of the strong, the galling, the heartrending sense of their deception,-it is because the

utter worthlessness of all the Democratic projects advanced in the interest of the monied and consuming classes in towns to ameliorate the State, has been fully and universally experienced, that Trades' Unions, with all their attendant starvation, perils, and anarchy, have risen up in the land. But are they the way to remedy the evil? Is a complete stoppage of labour on the part of several hundred thousands, perhaps a million of workmen, a way to ameliorate their condition? Is, to use their own haughty expressions, the "snapping asunder every link in the chain which binds society together, by this inert conspiracy of the poor against the rich," the way to augment the resources of their customers-the rich, without whose wealth to buy their commodities all their labour must go for nothing? Alas! such a convulsion, if it once becomes general, is calculated to inflict a degree of wide-spread misery upon the operatives, compared with which, all they have hitherto experienced would be regarded as the sunshine of prosperity. On this subject, we cannot do better than quote the eloquent words of that stanch

7. Wages paid to the hand-loom weaver for weaving one piece of third 74s. calico.

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