continue at their former elevation, or will they rise? Now, in this case it may be easily shown, that they must rise. For it is abundantly obvious, that the comforts of all classes of labourers would be greatly impaired by the rise in the price of bread; and those who previously to its taking place had only enough to subsist upon, would now be reduced to a state of destitution, or rather of all but absolute famine. Under such circumstances, an increase of mortality could hardly fail to take place; while the greater difficulty of providing subsistence, would check the formation of matrimonial connections, and the increase of population. By these means, therefore, either the amount of the population, or the ratio of its increase, or both, would be diminished. And this diminution, by lessening the number of labourers, and increasing the proportion of capital to population, would enable them to obtain higher wages.

The statements now made are not advanced on any arbitrary or supposed grounds, but have been deduced from, and are consistent with, the most comprehensive experience. Those who examine the registers of births, marriages, and deaths, kept in all large and populous cities, will find that there is invariably a diminution of the former, and an increase of the latter, whenever the price of corn or of the principal necessaries of life, sustains any material advance. "It will be observed," says Mr Milne, in his valuable "Treatise on Annuities," in reference to the prices of wheat in England, "that any material reduction in the price of wheat is almost always accompanied by an increase both of the marriages and births, and by a decrease in the number of burials; consequently by an increase in the excess of the births above the deaths. Also, that any material rise in the price is generally attended by a corresponding decrease in the marriages and births, and by an increase in the burials; therefore, by a decrease in the excess of the births above the deaths. Thus it appears, that an increase in the quantity of food, or in the facility with which the labouring classes can obtain it, accelerates the progress of the population, both by augmenting

the number of births, and diminishing the rate of mortality; and that a scarcity of food retards the increase of the people, by producing in both ways opposite effects.” And in proof of the correctness of this statement, Mr Milne gives, among many others to the same effect, the following account of the number of births and deaths within the London bills of mortality in 1798, 1800, and 1802.

M. Messance, the author of a valuable work on the population of France (" Recherches sur la Population,") has collected a great deal of information on the same subject. He shows that those years in which corn has sold at the highest price, have also been those in which mortality was greatest and disease most prevalent; and that those, on the contrary, in which corn has been cheapest, have been the healthiest and least mortal. In 1744, for example, when the price of wheat at Paris was 11 livres 15 sols the septier, the number of deaths amounted to 16,205; and in 1753, when the price of wheat was 20 livres 3 sols, the deaths amounted to 21,716. In the four years of the greatest mortality at Paris—in the interval between 1743 and 1763-the average price of the septier of wheat was 19 livres 1 sol, and the average annual number of deaths 20,895; and in the four years of the least mortality during the same interval, the average price of the septier was 14 livres 18 sols, and the average annual number of deaths 16,859.

1 Treatise on Annuities, vol. ii., pp. 390-402.

But it is needless to travel for evidence of what has now been stated, beyond the valuable reports of the present Registrar-General, George Graham, Esq. Owing to the different circumstances under which the population was placed in 1842 and 1845, in consequence of the fall in the price of corn, and the greater demand for labour, the marriages in the latter exceeded those in the former year by no fewer than 50,000.1

It may here, perhaps, be proper to mention, that it has been long observed that the tendency of wages is not to rise, but rather to fall, in unusually dear years. Several of the witnesses examined before Committees of the Houses of Lords and Commons, on the state of agriculture in 1814, endeavoured to prove, by comparing wages with the prices of corn and other necessaries, that there was really no such connection between the two as has been supposed; and that, instead of varying in the same way, wages were generally lowest in years when the price of corn was highest. But it is not difficult to explain the causes of this apparent anomaly. The truth is, that the number of labourers, which is never immediately reduced, is, in most cases, immediately increased by a rise of prices. In dear years, a greater number of females, and of poor children of both sexes, are obliged to engage in some species of employment; while the labourers hired by the piece endeavour, by increasing the quantity of their work, to obtain the means of purchasing their usual supply of food. It is natural, therefore, that the immediate effect of a rise of prices should be to lower, not to raise, wages. But we should fall into the greatest imaginable error if we supposed that, because this is the immediate, it is also the permanent effect of such rise. It is obvious, indeed, that the fall of wages which is thus occasioned, and the greater exertions which the rise of prices forces labourers to make, must tend, as well by lessening their supplies of food as by adding to the severity of their labour, to increase the rate of mortality, and consequently, by diminishing their

1 Eighth Report of Registrar-General.

numbers, to hasten that rise of wages which will certainly take place if prices continue high.

In endeavouring to show that the market rate of wages cannot be permanently reduced below the amount required to supply the labourers with necessaries, it is not meant to represent the latter as fixed and unvarying. If a given quantity of certain articles were absolutely necessary to enable labourers to subsist and continue their race, then it is clear no lasting deduction could be made from that quantity. But such is not the case. By the natural or necessary rate of wages, is meant only, in the words of Dr Smith, such a rate as will enable the labourer to obtain, "not only the commodities that are indispensably necessary for the support of life, but whatever the custom of the country renders it indecent for creditable people, even of the lowest order, to be without." It is plain, as well from this definition as from the previous statements, that there neither is nor can be any absolute standard of natural or necessary wages. It is impossible to say what articles are indispensable for the support of the lower orders; for they depend essentially on the physical circumstances under which every people is placed, and on custom and habit. Differences of climate, for example, by giving rise to very different physical wants in the inhabitants of different countries, necessarily occasion corresponding variations in the necessary rate of wages. Labourers in cold climates, who must be warmly clad, and whose cottages must be built of solid materials and heated with fires, could not subsist on the wages that suffice to supply all the wants of those who inhabit more genial climates, where clothing, lodging, and fire, are of inferior importance. Humboldt mentions, that there is a difference of nearly a third in the cost of his maintenance, and consequently in the necessary wages, of a labourer, in the hot and temperate districts of Mexico. The food, too, of labourers in different and distant countries varies extremely. In some it is both expensive and abundant, compared to what it is in others. In England, for

example, the lower classes principally live on wheaten bread and butcher's-meat, in Ireland on potatoes, and in China and Hindostan on rice. In many provinces of France and Spain an allowance of wine is considered indispensable. In England the labouring class entertain nearly the same opinion with respect to porter, beer, and cider; whereas the Chinese and Hindoos drink only water. The peasantry of Ireland live in miserable mud cabins, without either a window or a chimney, or anything that can be called furniture; while in England the cottages of the peasantry have glass windows and chimneys, are well furnished, and are as much distinguished for their neatness, cleanliness, and comfort, as those of the Irish for their filth and misery. These differences in their manner of living occasion equal differences in their wages; so that, while the average price of a day's labour in England may be taken at from 20d. to 2s., it cannot be taken at more than 7d. in Ireland, and 3d. in Hindostan. The habits of the people of the same countries, and the standard by which the natural rate of wages in them has been regulated at different periods have not been less fluctuating and various. The customary mode of living of the English and Scottish labourers of the present day is as widely different from that of their ancestors in the reigns of Elizabeth, James I., and Charles I., as it is from the mode of living of the labourers of France or Spain. The standard by which the necessary rate of wages was formerly regulated has been raised; there has been a greater prevalence of moral restraint; the proportion of capital to population has been increased; and the poor have learned to form more elevated opinions respecting the amount of necessaries and conveniences required for their subsistence.

But it is not necessary to travel beyond the confines of England to be satisfied of the great extent to which the rate of wages is dependent on the food and condition of the labourers. At present (1851) the wages of common field labour in Yorkshire and most parts of the north and east of England may be reckoned at about 14s. a week, whereas in Dorset, Somerset, and other south-western counties,