This

it is little, if anything, more than half that amount. comparative lowness of their wages is at once a consequence and a cause of the depressed condition of the peasantry in the counties referred to. Their greater dependence on the potato, by enabling them to subsist and increase their numbers on a less expensive food, has reduced their wages; and this reduction, by encroaching on their other comforts, has depressed their condition still lower.

The natural or necessary rate of wages is not, therefore, fixed and unvarying. And though it be true that the market rate of wages can never sink permanently below its contemporary natural rate, it is no less true that this natural rate has a tendency to rise when the market rate rises, and to fall when it falls. The reason is, that the supply of labourers in the market can neither be speedily increased when wages rise, nor speedily diminished when they fall. When wages rise, a period of eighteen or twenty years must plainly elapse before the increased stimulus which the rise gives to the principle of population can be felt in the market. During all this period, therefore, the labourers have an increased command over necessaries and conveniences. Their habits are in consequence improved. And as they learn to form more exalted notions of what is required for their comfortable and decent support, the natural or necessary rate of wages is gradually augmented. But, on the other hand, when wages fall, either in consequence of a diminution of capital, or of a disproportionate increase of population, no corresponding diminution can immediately take place in the number of labourers, unless they have previously been subsisting on the smallest quantity of the cheapest species of food required to support mere animal existence. If the labourers have not been placed so very near the extreme limit of subsistence, their numbers will not be immediately reduced when wages fall by an increase of mortality; but they will be gradually reduced, partly, as already shown, in that way, and partly by a diminished number of marriages and births. And in most countries, unless the fall were both sudden and ex

C

tensive, it would require some years to make the effects of increased mortality, in diminishing the supply of labour in the market, be very sensibly felt; while the force of habit, and the universal ignorance of the people with respect to the circumstances which determine the rate of wages, might prevent any effectual check being given to matrimonial connec▾ tions, and consequently to the rate at which fresh labourers had been coming into market, until the misery occasioned by the restricted demand for labour on the one hand, and the undiminished supply on the other, had been generally and widely felt.

It is this circumstance the impossibility which usually obtains of speedily adjusting the supply of labour proportionally to variations in the rate of wages-that gives to these variations the peculiar and powerful influence they exert over the condition of the labouring classes. If the supply of labour were suddenly increased when wages rise, that rise would be of no advantage to the existing labourers. It would increase their number; but it would not enable them to rise in the scale of society, or to acquire a greater command over necessaries and conveniences. And on the other hand, if the supply of labourers were suddenly diminished when wages fall, that fall would merely lessen their number without having any tendency to degrade the habits or the condition of those that survived. But, in the vast majority of instances, before a rise of wages can be countervailed by the increased number of labourers it may be supposed to be the means of bringing into the market, time is afforded for the formation of those new and improved tastes and habits, which are not the hasty product of a day, a month, or a year, but the late result of a long series of continuous impressions. After these tastes have been acquired, population will advance in a slower ratio, as compared with capital, than formerly; and the labourers will be disposed rather to defer the period of marriage, than by entering on it prematurely to depress their own condition and that of their children. But if the number of labourers cannot suddenly increase when wages

rise, neither can it suddenly diminish when they fall. A fall of wages has therefore a precisely opposite effect, and is, in most cases, as injurious to the labourer as their rise is beneficial. In whatever way wages may be restored to their former level after they have fallen, whether it be by a decrease in the number of marriages, or an increase in the number of deaths, or both, it is never, except in the rare cases already mentioned, suddenly effected. It must, generally speaking, require a considerable time before it can be brought about; and hence an extreme risk arises lest the tastes and habits of the labourers, and their opinion respecting what is necessary for their subsistence, should be lowered in the interval. When wages are considerably reduced, the poor are obliged to economise, or to submit to live on a smaller quantity of necessaries and conveniences, and those probably, too, of an inferior species than they had previously been accustomed to. And the danger is, that the coarse and scanty fare which has thus been, in the first instance, forced on them by necessity, should in time become congenial from habit. Should this unfortunately be the case, the condition of the poor would be permanently depressed; and no principle would be left in operation, that could elevate wages to their former level. Under the circumstances supposed, the cost of raising and supporting labourers would be reduced; and it is by this cost that the current rate of wages must in the end be determined. A people, for example, who have been accustomed to live chiefly on wheat, may, from a scarcity of that grain, or a fall in the rate of wages, be forced to have recourse to oats, or even potatoes, and in the event of their becoming satisfied with either, the standard of wages among them, will be permanently reduced; and instead of being, as formerly, mainly determined by the price of wheat, it will, in time to come, be mainly determined by the price of oats or potatoes. This lowering of the opinions of the labouring class with respect to the mode in which they ought to live, is perhaps the most serious of all the evils that can befall them. "If," says Mr Laing, "the English labourers, instead of considering wheaten bread and

meat necessary for their proper sustenance, were to be content with potatoes and salt herrings, the increase of pauperism amongst them would be in proportion to the diminished value of their food, and the ease of obtaining it. The man who now thinks himself ill-off without the finest bread, would then think himself entitled to marry if he could earn potatoes for himself and a family. Our pauper population would thus increase with frightful rapidity."1 Let a population once become contented with a lower description of food, and an inferior standard of comfort, and they may bid a long adieu to anything better. And every reduction in the rate of wages, which is not of a transient description, contributes to bring about this undesirable result, unless its debasing influence be defeated by greater industry and economy, and an increased prevalence of moral restraint.

CHAPTER IV.

Disadvantage of low wages, and of having the labourers habitually fed on the cheapest species of food. Advantage of high wages,

THE opinion, that a low rate of wages is advantageous, has frequently been advocated; but we are firmly persuaded that there is none more completely destitute of foundation. If the condition of the labourers be depressed, the prosperity of the other classes can rest on no solid foundation. They always form the great bulk of every society; and wherever their wages are low, they must, of necessity, live on coarse and scanty fare. Men placed under such circumstances are without any sufficient motive to be industrious, and, instead of activity and enterprise, we have sloth, ignorance, and improvidence. The examples of such individuals,

1 Travels in Norway, cap. 1,

or bodies of individuals, as submit quietly to have their wages reduced, and who are content if they get only mere necessaries, should never be held up for public imitation. On the contrary, everything should be done to make such apathy be esteemed discreditable. The best interests of society require that the rate of wages should be elevated as high as possible that a taste for comforts and enjoyments should be widely diffused, and, if possible, engrafted into the national character. A low rate of wages, by rendering it impossible for increased exertions to obtain any considerable increase of comforts and enjoyments, effectually hinders such exertions from being made; and is of all others the most powerful cause of that idleness and apathy that contents itself with what can barely continue animal existence.

Ireland furnishes a striking example of the disastrous effects resulting from the depressed condition of the labouring classes. The natural or necessary rate of wages is there determined by the lowest standard. Having no taste for conveniences or luxuries, the Irish peasantry are satisfied if they have turf hovels for their habitations, rags for their raiment, and potatoes for their food. But as the potato is raised at less expense than any other variety of food hitherto cultivated in Europe, and as wages, where it forms nearly the sole subsistence of the labourers, are chiefly determined by its cost, it is evident that those who depend on it must be reduced to a state of almost irremediable distress, whenever it happens to be deficient. When the standard of wages is high-when wheat and beef, for example, form the principal food of the labourer, and porter and beer the principal part of his drink, he can bear to retrench. Such a man has room to fall. In a period of scarcity he can resort to cheaper varieties of food-to barley, oats, rice, maize, and potatoes. But he who is habitually and constantly fed on the cheapest species of food, has nothing to resort to when deprived of it. You may take from an Englishman, but you cannot take from an Irishman. The latter is already so low