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,

it is little, if anything, more than half that amount. This 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