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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,

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NECESSARY RATE OF WAGES.

inasmuch as the same number of labourers would be seek for employment after the rise as before, and as a rise in price of bread, occasioned by a scarcity, could not incre the demand for labour, that wages would not be increas The labourers would, in consequence, be forced to econom and the rise of price would have the beneficial effect of sening the consumption, and of distributing the press equally throughout the year. But suppose that, instead being occasioned by the accidental occurrence of a scarc the rise has been occasioned by an increased difficulty of I duction, and that it will be permanent, the question is, the money wages of labour continue at their former elevati or will they rise? Now, in this case it may be easily sho that they will rise. For it is abundantly obvious, that comforts of all classes of labourers would be greatly impai by the rise in the price of bread; and that those who, previou to its taking place, had only enough to subsist upon, wo now be reduced to a state of destitution, or rather of all absolute famine. Under such circumstances, an increase mortality could hardly fail to take place; while the grea difficulty of providing subsistence, would check the format of matrimonial connexions, and the increase of populati By these means, therefore, either the amount of the pop tion, or the ratio of its increase, or both, would be diminish And this diminution, by lessening the number of labour and increasing the proportion of capital to population, wo enable them to obtain higher wages.

These statements are not advanced on any arbitrary or s posed grounds, but have been deduced from, and are con tent with, the most comprehensive experience. Those examine the registers of births, marriages, and deaths, k in all large and populous cities, will find that there is inv ably a diminution of the former, and an increase of the lat whenever the price of corn or of the principal necessarie life, sustains any material advance. "It will be observe says Mr. Milne, in his "Treatise on Annuities," in referenc the prices of wheat in England, "that any material reduct

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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.

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M. Messance, the author of a valuable work on the popula tion 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. H. pp. 390-402.

es 18 sols, and the average annual number of death

it is needless to travel for evidence of what has no cated, beyond the valuable reports of the present Regi eneral, George Graham, Esq. Owing to the differen stances under which the population was placed in 184 45, in consequence of the fall in the price of corn, an eater demand for labour, the marriages in the latter e those in the former year by no fewer than 50,000.1 may here, perhaps, be proper to mention, that it has bee bserved that the tendency of wages is not to rise, bu to fall, in unusually dear years. Several of the wi examined before Committees of the Houses of Lord Commons, on the state of agriculture in 1814, endes

to prove, by comparing wages with the prices of cor ther necessaries, that there was really no such cor between the two as has been supposed; and that instea ying in the same way, wages were generally lowest i when the price of corn was highest. But it is not di to explain the cause of this apparent anomaly. Th is, that the number of labourers, which is never imme y reduced, is, in most cases, inmediately increased by f prices. In dear years, a greater number of females children of both sexes, are obliged to engage i species of employment; while the labourers hired b rece endeavour, by increasing the quantity of their work tain the means of purchasing their usual supply of food natural, therefore, that the immediate effect of a rise o

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1 Eighth Report of Registrar-General.

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consequently to the rate at

into market, until the miser mand for labour on the one

on the other, were generally It is this circumstance-t ing the supply of labour of wages-that gives to t pro powerful influence over the the supply of labour were s that rise would be of no adv increase their number; but in the scale of society, necessaries and conveniend

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fall of wages proportional bourers, such diminution the habits or the conditi in the vast majority of can be countervailed by which it may be supposed market, time is afforded improved tastes and habits of a day, a month, or a yea of continuous impressions quired, population will ad with capital, than former posed rather to defer the

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