of purchasing; but it is quite obvious, that if this price. sink below the sum required to pay the cost of producing shoes, etc., and bringing them to market, they will no longer be supplied-and such is the case with laborers They neither will, nor in fact can, be furnished, unless their wages be such as will, at an average, suffice to bring them up and maintain them. From whatever point of the economical compass we may set out, the cost of production is the principle to which we must always come at last This cost determines the natural or necessary rate of wages, just as it determines the natural or necessary price of commodities. However low the demand for labor, still if the price of the articles necessary for the maintenance of the laborer be increased, the natural or necessary rate of wages must, in the end, be increased also. Let it be supposed that, owing to a scarcity, the price of the quartern loaf rises to 4s. or 5s. In this case it is plain, inasmuch as the same number of people would be seeking for employment, after the rise as before—and as a rise in the price of bread, occasioned by a scarcity, could not increase the demand for labor-that wages could not be increased. The poor would in consequence, be forced to economise; and the rise of price, how injurious soever in several respects, would be in so far advantageous, that it would immediately lessen consumption, and distribute the pressure equally over the year. But suppose that the rise, instead of being occasioned by the accidental occurrence of a scarcity, has been occasioned by an increased difficulty of production, and that it will be permanent, the question is,—will money wages continue at their former elevation, or will they rise? Now, in this case, it may be easily shown that they will rise; for it is abundantly obvious that the comforts of all classes of laborers 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. Under such circumstances, an increase of mortality could not fail of taking place. while the greater difficulty of providing subsistence would interpose a powerful check to the formation of matrimonial connections and the increase of population. By this means,

therefore, the amount of the population, or the ratio of its increase, or both, would be diminished; and this diminution, by lessening the number of laborers, would, in the end, increase the proportion of capital to population, and enable them to obtain higher wages.

But, in endeavoring to show that the market rate cannot be permanently reduced below the natural or necessary rate of wages, it is not meant to represent the latter as fixed and unvarying. If a specified quantity of certain articles were absolutely necessary to enable laborers to subsist and continue their race, such quantity could not be diminished. But such is not the case. By the natural or necessary rate of wages, is meant only, in the words of Adam Smith, such a rate as will enable the laborers 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." Now it is plain, from this definition, that there can be no absolute standard of natural or necessary wages. It is impossible to say what commodities are indispensable for the support of life; for these, as well as the other articles required for the use of the lower orders, depend essentially on the physical circumstances under which every people is placed, and on custom and habit. The differences of climate, for example, by giving rise to different physical wants in the inhabitants of different countries, necessarily occasion corresponding variations in the necessary rate of wages. Work-people 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 same wages that would suffice to supply all the wants of those who inhabit more congenial climates, where clothing, lodging and fire are of inferior importance. Humboldt mentions, that there is a difference of nearly a third part in the cost of maintaining individuals and consequently in necessary wages, between the hot and temperate districts of Mexico; and there is still greater discrepancy in the rates of necessary wages in distant quarters. The food, too, of the laborers in different countries varies extremely.

In some it is both expensive and abundant, compared to what it is in others. În England, for example, they prinIn cipally subsist on bread and beef, in Ireland on potatoes, and in China and Hindostan on rice. In many parts of France and Spain, an allowance of wine is considered indispensable to existence; and in England, the laboring class entertain nearly the same opinion with respect to beer: whereas the Chinese and Hindoos drink nothing but water. In Ireland the peasantry live, for the most part, in mud cabins, no better than the wigwams of the American Indians, without, in many instances, either a window or a chimney; while in England the cottages of the peasantry have all 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. In consequence of these different habits, there is in these countries, an extreme difference, not in the rate of necessary wages merely, but in the actual or market rate-so much so, that while the average market price of a day's labor in England may be taken at from 20d. to 2s., it cannot be taken at more than 6d. or 7d. in Ireland, and 3d. in Hindostan! The customs of the people of the same countries, and the standard by which the natural rate of wages is determined at different periods, have been equally fluctuating and various. The habits of the English and Scotch laborers of the present day differ as widely from those of their ancestors in the reigns of Elizabeth, James I., and Charles I., as from those of the laborers of France and Spain. The standard of necessary wages 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 happily learned to form more elevated opinions respecting the amount and species of the necessaries and conveniences required for their subsistence.

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 necessary rate, it is no less true that the latter. has a tendency to rise when the market rate rises, and to fall when it falls. The reason is, that the supply of laborers is

neither speedily increased when wages rise, nor speedily diminished when they fall. When wages rise, a period of eighteen or twenty years must elapse before the influence of the increased stimulus given by the rise to the principle of population can be felt in the labor market. During all this period, therefore, work-people have an increased command for necessaries and conveniences; their habits are, in consequence, improved; and as they learn to form higher notions of what is required for their support, the necessary rate of wages is augmented. But, on the other hand. when wages decline, either in consequence of a diminution of the capital appropriated to their payment, or of a disproportionate increase of population, no corresponding diminution takes place in the number of laborers, unless they have previously been subsisting on the smallest quantity of the cheapest species of food required to support mere animal existence. If the laborers 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 has already been 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 extensive, it would require some years to make the effects of increased mortality, in diminishing the supply of labor in the market, sensibly felt; while the force of habit, and the ignorance of the people with respect to the circumstances which determine wages, would prevent any effectual check being given to the formation of matrimonial connexions, and consequently to the rate at which fresh laborers had previously been coming into market, until the misery occasioned by the restricted demand 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 labor proportionally to variations in the rate of wages-that gives to these variations their peculiar and extraordinary influence over the wellbeing of the laboring classes. Were the supply of labor suddenly increased when wages rise, the rise would be of little of no advantage to the existing laborers. It

would increase their number, but it would not enable them to mount in the scale of society, or to acquire a greater command over necessaries and conveniences; and, on the other hand, were the supply of laborers suddenly diminished when wages fall, the fall would merely lessen their number, without having any tendency to degrade the habits or to lower the condition of those that survived. But, in the vast majority of instances, before a rise of wages can be in any degree countervailed by the increased number of laborers it may be supposed to bring into the market, time is afforded for the formation of new and improved tastes and habits. After the laborers have once acquired these tastes, population advances in a slower ratio, as compared with capital, than formerly; and the laborers 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 laborers cannot be suddenly increased when wages rise, neither can it be suddenly diminished when they fall; a fall of wages has, therefore, a precisely opposite effect, and is, in most cases, as injurious to the laborer 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 mȧrriages, or by an increase in the number of deaths, or both, it is never, except in the exceedingly rare case already mentioned, suddenly effected. It must generally speaking, require a considerable time before it can be brought about; and, in consequence, an extreme risk arises, lest the tastes and habits of the laborers, and their opinions respecting what is necessary for their comfortable subsistence, should be lowered in the interim. 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, too, of an inferior species; 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 there would be nothing left that could raise wages to their former level-for the laborers would no