nearly double the present population of twenty-eight millions in the United Empire, without taking into view the probable cultivation of the fifteen millions of acres of waste lands not yet reclaimed, or the probable improvements in agriculture, which, especially by the introduction of draining, may be reasonably expected to add at least a half to the assumed estimate of two quarters, or four bolls to an acre. Nothing, therefore, seems more reasonable than to hold, that the British Islands contain within themselves the means of maintaining, in comfort, at least triple their present population; and, consequently, all arguments drawn from the supposed impossibility of adequately maintaining our popu lation from our own agricultural produce, or of the inhabitants soon ap

proaching the limits assigned to the increasing subsistence, are perfectly chimerical and absurd."*

The experience of the present century, accordingly, clearly demonstrates that, on a fair average of years, the quantity of foreign grain imported into Great Britain is a perfect trifle, and not unfrequently disappears altogether. To establish this, we shall again make reference to the great advocate for free trade, Mr Porter. "The following short statement," says this learned author," of the quantity of wheat that has been imported in each year of the present century, will suffice to show how insignificant, when compared with the wants of the community, have been the supplies which we have drawn from foreign countries."

Thus, it distinctly appears that, on an average of the last forty years, the importation of wheat has been under 500,000 quarters annually, and has been steadily decreasing till within the last five years, when a great rise has taken place in consequence of the extraordinarily bad seasons of 1837, 38, and 39. But even the average importation has been only about 1,300,000 quarters a-year, not a twentieth part of the annual consumption, which is at an average about one quarter to every individual, or at present 28,000,000. The small quantity of subsistence imported is the more remarkable, when it is recollected that not only the population of the empire, in the last forty years, has nearly doubled, being a rate of increase probably unparalleled in any old state; but that, so extraordinary have been the growth of manufactures, and the profits of commerce during that period, that our British and Irish exports have quadrupled; so that there never was, probably, since the beginning of the world, a state in which the agriculture was put to so severe a strain, both from the magnitude of the demand upon it, and the vast profits of other occupations which withdrew capital from it. The close approximation which, under such circumstances, agriculture has made to keep pace with the national wants, affords complete demonstration that we contain resources within ourselves, if only worked out, capable not only of maintaining triple our present population, but of keeping pace with any possible rapidity of increase with which it may advance.

2. This being established, the next point of enquiry is, what is the propor

Cotton, Silk,

Woollen,

Linen,

tion which the home manufactures bear to the foreign manufactures, and which is most profitable for the British manufacturers to encourage the home market or the foreign market? Now, on this subject the estimate of statistical writers, coupled with the Parliamentary Returns, afford us the means of decisive information. The total product of manufactures is about a hundred and fifty millions a-year, of which only fifty millions are foreign, the remainder being consumed in the home market. The following is the estimate of the total amount of our manufactures, and the proportion of them which go to the foreign market.*

And the exports of the last seven years stand as follows:

1834,

1839, 1840,

...

£41,646,191 47,372,270 53,368,572

42,070,744

50,060,970

53,233,580

51,000,000

The average of these years is about £47,000,000, which may be taken as a fair average of the annual export amount of our British and Irish manufactures. The total amount of these manufactures exported, therefore, is somewhat less than one-third of the total produced.

Now, who consume the manufactures for the home market? Unquestionably the great bulk of them are consumed by the persons directly or indirectly connected with agriculture. This is proved, in the most decisive manner, by the Parliamentary returns for the year 1831, given in the note below, which proves that the total

L.31,000,000 8,000,000 16,250,000

Leather,

Hardware,

China, Glass, Pottery, &c.,

Jewellery, Plate, &c.,

-Pebrer's Stat. Tables, 356.

number of families employed in agriculture, in Great Britain alone, were 1,243,000, being considerably more than a third of the whole families. The total value of agricultural produce, raised by their hands, amounts to the enormous sum of £248,000,000 a-year. It is this immense fund, nearly double the amount of the whole produce of our manufactures, and fully five times the amount of our manufactures for the foreign market, which forms the great staple of the wealth of Great Britain; and the question the manufacturers have to consider is, whether their interests are likely to be promoted by any measure which threatens to shake this great pillar of national wealth and prosperity, and to deprive them of by far the largest and most lucrative market for their produce?

The grand error into which the anti-corn-law party always fall on this subject is, that in contending that a diminished price in the value of grain in Great Britain, by lowering the wages of manufacturing labour, would have the effect of extending the foreign market, they overlook or conceal the simultaneous effect of such a change in contracting or destroying the home market. In truth, however, this effect would necessarily and immediately ensue; and what they would loose at the one end, would much more than counterbalance what they would gain at the other; for is it not as clear as any proposition in arithmetic, that the quantity required for the wants of our people remaining the same, no advantage could possibly accrue to our manufacturers by transferring their encouragement to agriculture from the home market to foreign states? If, in consequence of living in great part on Polish grain, the Polish landholders aud cultivators are so much enriched as to be able to purchase a greater quantity of our manufactures,

it is quite clear that the British farmers, who at present exclusively supply the home market, would be impover ished to the same extent, and that what is gained on the one side would be lost on the other. If the grain at present consumed by the inhabitants of the United Kingdom is five-andtwenty millions of quarters, all raised by the home growers, which is probably not far from the mark, and in consequence of the abolition of the corn-laws, five millions of these quarters were to come to be habitually provided for us by foreign states, the market for our manufactures would in no degree be extended. British agriculture would produce five millions of quarters less, and Polish agriculture five millions of quarters more; but still the supply of five-and-twenty millions of quarters would remain the same, and the extension of our foreign exports, by the creation of five millions of quarters of new grain, would be exactly compensated by the contraction of the home market for five millions of quarters, previously in the course of annual production in the British islands.

But, in truth, this is putting the argument a great deal too favourably for the anti-corn-law party; for nothing can be clearer than that, by such a transfer of agriculture from the British islands to the shores of the Vistula, the possible, or perhaps probable, extension of the market for our manufactures, by the increased wealth thrown into foreign states, would bear no sort of proportion to the certain diminution of the home market from the depression of our agriculture. Mr Smith has long ago stated, that the most profitable trade for every state, is that which is carried on between the town and the country, and that the home market for our manufactures is worth all foreign markets put together. It is a much more profitable thing to

have a good market in our next door neighbour, than in a distant state. The habits of our own people are formed to the consumption of our own manufactures in the first instance, and the purchase of foreign luxuries only in the second. In foreign countries the case is the reverse: their principal consumption is of their own articles of luxury. A much larger proportion of the wealth derived from the sale of their produce, will be employed in the purchase of our manufactures, if they are fed by their own farmers, than if they are fed by those of foreign states. If ten millions' worth of Baltic grain is purchased for the British market, a considerable part of it may perhaps return to our operatives, in the shape of an extended demand for British manufactures ; but a much larger proportion of the same sum will take that profitable direction, if it is laid out in the purchase of grain raised in Great Britain and Ireland. The reason is obvious. British manufactures are necessary

to the British farmers and cultivators; but to the foreign landholders or cultivators, great part of our manufactures are unknown luxuries. A large portion of the agricultural wealth on the Continent will be spent on Continental luxuries, and a comparatively small portion will be directed towards the purchase of articles manufactured in the British Islands.

It is not easy to form an accurate estimate of the proportion which the consumption of British manufactures per head, in foreign countries, from which our supplies of grain will be drawn when the corn-laws are abolished, bears to what is consumed by the corresponding class in this country; but some approximation to it may be formed from the following data. The following is the estimate drawn by Mr Lewis Kennedy, whose information and accuracy are well known, as to the comparative rate of daily wages of labourers and others on the Continent and in this country.

are, literally speaking, penny wise and pound foolish. And this is the wisdom of the anti-corn-law agitation, and the Whig-Radical budget.

3. And would the working classes benefit in the smallest degree by a reduction of the price of grain, even if it could be effected? Does not all experience demonstrate that, although the wages of labour are not affected by the price of grain as it fluctuates from year to year, yet they are in a great degree dependent upon its average price as determined by permanent causes? The extraordinary difference, as shown in the table above, in the wages of labour in Great Britain and the principal European monarchies, evidently demonstrates the truth of this proposition. The extreme anxiety of the master manufacturers to force a reduction in the price of grain, by the abolition of the corn-laws, clearly shows how well they understand that wages would come down at once by a permanent reduction in the price of grain; and the common observation, that cheap bread makes low wages, proves what a permanent hold it has taken of the common sense of mankind.

In

But, in fact, there is nothing more certain than that the condition of the lower classes would be most seriously injured by a permanent reduction in the price of grain by foreign importation, and that a moderately high price of provisions is an essential element to national prosperity. Past history and present experience alike concur in demonstrating this important fact. the time of the Norman Conquest, the price of wheat was from three shillings and sixpence to five shillings a quarter; but, nevertheless, the labourers had not half the command of the necessaries and conveniences of life they have now, for the money wages of labour were a halfpenny a-day during the remainder of the year, and a penny in harvest. Provisions are incomparably cheaper in Poland and in Russia than in this country; but are the Polish or Russian peasants half as comfortably fed, lodged, or clothed, as the corresponding classes in this country? Every one knows, that so far from being so, or obtaining any benefit whatever from the cheap price of provisions in their own country, they are, in truth, the most miserable labourers in Europe, and feed

upon scanty meals of rye bread, in the midst of the splendid wheat crops which they raise for the more opulent consumers in the country. In the southern provinces of Russia, wheat is often only ten shillings a quarter, from the total want of any market. But what is the consequence? Why, that wages are so low, that the Cossack horseman gets only eight shillings and sixpence a year of pay from Government. Wheat and provisions

of all sorts are much cheaper in Ireland than in Great Britain; but, nevertheless, the Irish labourers do not enjoy one half of the comforts or necessaries of life which fall to the lot of their brethren on this side of the Channel. Provisions of all sorts are extravagantly dear in every part of America, Canada, and Australia; but, high as they are, the wages of labour, from the rapid growth of these colonies, are still higher, and the condition of the labouring classes is, beyond all precedent, prosperous and comfortable. The mere necessaries of life are sold almost for nothing in Hindostan and China; but so far from obtaining any benefit from that low rate of prices, the labouring classes are so poor as to taste hardly any thing but rice and water; and wages are so low, seldom exceeding twopence a-day, that every sea-boy, foot soldier, and horseman, has two, and every native three attendants to wait upon his Examples of this sort prove how extremely ill-founded is the common opinion, that permanent low prices must necessarily produce comfort to the working classes, and tend to show that Mr Smith was very near the mark when he said, "High prices and plenty are prosperity, low prices and want are adversity.'

person.

Lastly, if a free importation of grain permanently changes the wages of labour, and the price of every other article, what is to become of our National Debt of eight hundred millions, and the immense mass of private debt affecting almost every individual in the country? If prices and wages are lowered a half by the change, will not the debt be raised a half by the same cause? Are we to have the same years of misery which followed the contrac tion of the currency in 1826, and the same woeful crash of fortunes which in the end followed the recurrence to cash payments in 1819? Yet how