pensable articles may rise, the labourers must always receive a supply equivalent for their support. If they did not obtain this much, they would be left destitute; and disease and death would continue to thin the population, until their numbers were so reduced, as compared with capital, that they could obtain the means of subsistence.

The opinion of those who contend that the rate of wages is in no degree influenced by the cost of the articles consumed by the labourers, has obviously originated in their confounding the principles which determine the current or market rate of wages with those which determine their natural or necessary rate. Nothing can be more true, than that the market rate of wages at any given moment, is exclusively determined by the proportion between capital and population. But in every inquiry of this nature, we should refer not only to particular points of time, but also to periods of some five, seven, or ten years duration; and if we do this we shall immediately perceive that the average rate of wages does not depend wholly on this proportion. The market price of shoes, to take a parallel case, is plainly dependant on the magnitude of their supply, compared with the demand of those who have the means and the wish to buy them. But if this price be less than the sum required to produce them and bring them to market they will cease to be supplied. And such is the case with labourers. They neither will, nor in fact can, be brought to market, unless the rate of wages be such as may suffice to bring them up and maintain them. From whatever point of the political compass we may set out, the cost of production is the grand principle to which we must always come at last. This cost determines the natural or necessary rate of wages just as it determines the average price of shoes, hats, or anything else. However low the demand for labour may be reduced, still, if the price of the articles required for the maintenance of the labourer be increased, the natural or necessary rate of wages must be increased also. Let us suppose, in illustration of this principle, that owing to a scarcity, the price of the quartern loaf rises to 5s. In this case it is plain,

inasmuch as the same number of labourers 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 labour, that wages would not be increased. The labourers would, in consequence, be forced to economize, and the rise of price would have the beneficial effect of lessening the consumption, and of distributing the pressure equally throughout the year. But suppose that, instead of being occasioned by the accidental occurrence of a scarcity, the rise has been occasioned by an increased difficulty of production, and that it will be permanent, the question is, will the money wages of labour 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 labourers would be greatly impaired by the rise in the price of bread; and that 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 connexions, 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.

These statements 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 "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

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

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.

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 connexion 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 cause 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

1 Eighth Report of Registrar-General.

prices should be to lower, not to raise wages. But those will fall into the greatest imaginable error who suppose 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 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 work people to subsist and continue their race, then it is clear that 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 Adam 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 can be no invariable standard of natural or necessary wages. It is impossible to say what articles are indispensable for subsistence; inasmuch as 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 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