half of the population-Humne says that one-third of the whole- fell victims to its virulence. We are also told, as might be expected, the infliction pressed most heavily on the poorer classessome authors going so far as to say that none of the wealthier persons whatever fell victims. On principles, then, which we believe would now-adays be at once admitted by every one, the supply of labour being so greatly diminished, its value became considerably enhanced. The legislature of that period, however, thought proper to control the operation of this natural principle. The statute to which we have referred recites that no one would now work unless he was paid double wages to that which he was content to receive five years before; it therefore enacts that the several labourers, enumerating the different descriptions, should be content with the same rate of wages which they had received in the twentieth year of the King's reign, and for some few years previously; and to guard against any misapprehension in the matter, it sets out a regular scale of remuneration for each denomination of workmen. Labourers were to be sworn twice a year to the observance of this statute, and transgressors were to be punished with the stocks.

From the date of this enactment down to the reign of Elizabeth several other statutes were passed, all of them to the same effect, that of prescribing a stated sum, beyond which the rate of wages should not rise. And so low was the scale at which wages were fixed, that in seasons of dearth it did not suffice to provide the labourer with the bare necessaries of life. We have this on the authority of a statute passed in the fifth year of the reign of Queen Elizabeth, which sets out a declaration to this effect in its preamble, and consequently proceeds to change the whole mode in which the rate of wages should be determined, and enacts that justices of the peace shall fix the rate of wages from time to time with reference to the price of provisions. This Act certainly evidenced a more humane and liberal spirit on the part of the legislature, but, in the attempt to force the rate of wages to keep pace with the price of provisions, it displayed very

tle progress in economical science. It might indeed be very satisfactory to the labourer and to us all if our income could be made to increase

with the demands upon it; but if a labourer can only produce at the end of the week what will sell for ten shillings, an employer will hardly be got to give him a guinea for his week's wages, because a scarcity may have raised the price of provisions to three shillings a day. Certainly if such an employer tries the process for some time, he will shortly discover, by the rapid absorption of his capital, how faulty is the political economy which compels him to adopt such a course. Yet forty years after this Act of Elizabeth's we have another of exactly the same purport passed in the reign of James the First, enlarging the powers which were given to the justices by the former Act. And under these two Acts the wages of labourers appear to have been regulated for a length of time in England, by the justices of the peace at quarter-sessions. The latest of these ratings which we have seen is dated at Manchester, the 22nd of May, 1725. It is contained in an appendix to Sir Frederick Morton Eden's valuable work on the condition of the poor, and is thus entitled, "An order what wages servants, labourers, and artificers by the year, day, or otherwise, shall have and receive within the county of Lancaster, limited according to the statutes by his Majesty's justices of the peace for the said county, upon conference with discreet and grave men of the said county respecting the plenty of the time." The progress, however, of political science caused the abolition of all these statutes in the reign of King George the Fourth, and although the correct views on this important subject are not even yet as universally disseminated as could be desired, it still seems to be now universally ac knowledged, that the attempt to regu late the terms of the contract between the labourer and his employer by any legislative enactment is absurd in theory and impossible in practice.

We apprehend that the true prin ciple which regulates the labourer's wages is the simplest thing possible to comprehend. The natural wages of the labourer is what he produces by his labour. If he were working for himself, without any capitalist or other employer whatsoever set over him, the wages of his labour, the remuneration for his exertion, would be the product realised by his industry, whatever that

might be the finished work that at the end of a certain period he would have produced. But in every civilised community the labourer works for some capitalist, who advances him his wages; if it were otherwise, the labourer should wait for weeks, or months, or years, before the finished work might be sold, which of course would be impossible. The effect of such a state of things would be, that nothing would be made that would require more than a few hours to produce, and that was not then secure of an immediate sale; the division of employments could not exist, and men would be reduced to the condition of the lowest savages, that of mere hunters and fishers. Now as the natural wages of a labourer is the produce of his industry if he were working for himself, how are his wages affected by the circumstance of working for some capitalist? Why simply thus, that the produce of his labour, instead of being exclusively his own, is divided between him and his master; he gets all that his master does not receive. This latter quantity is in all advanced countries so small a proportion of the whole produce, that it may, for all practical purposes, be disregarded: if profits be ten per cent., and a labourer's yearly wages, say £50, be advanced by his employer at the beginning of the year, the total abolition of all profit would only raise the labourer's income from fifty pounds to fifty-five pounds. Estimating, then, the labourer's wages still in the article which he is engaged in the production of, what vitally concerns him is, that this product, the joint result of his labour and of the capital of his employer, shall be as great in quantity and as superior in quality as is pos

sible.

We cannot here examine into the circumstances which determine what proportion of the finished work shall belong to the capitalist. But the least reflection will show, that the proportion of it which goes to the labourer is much more increased by the use of his employer's capital in the production of the article, than is the proportion of it which becomes the property of the employer himself. Look merely to the use of capital in machinery: how many hundred, how many thousand-fold more can the labourer produce of any arti cle, and how infinitely superior in quality, when he is aided by efficient machinery, to what he could have pro

duced if he were working merely with his hands; and yet the profits of the capitalist are not more than ten or twenty per cent., not more, at the outside, than one-sixth of this whole produce, which, but for the machinery which his capital supplies, would not have been one-thousandth part of what it is the whole of this increase, which is thus created by the use of machinery, the labourer gets, less only by the fraction of it which the capitalist receives.

We have been estimating the labourer's wages in the article which he produces, which appears to us to be the simplest view of the matter. It introduces no new principle into the case, to be told that the labourer does not get the many miles of cotton thread which he spins, but the value of it in money, which he exchanges for what he wants. The more he makes, and the better its quality, the more he must receive for it. If we would increase the wages of the labourer, we must increase the productiveness of his labour, and the efficiency of the capital by which he is assisted. Everything that adds to his intelligence, his industry, and perseverance, increases almost instantaneously the wages of his labour. Every improvement in the use of capital, whether employed in machinery or otherwise, must also add to the amount of his wages, although, for reasons which we cannot now enter upon, the effect will not be so instantaneous in this case as in the former. The recognition of this great principle, that the wages of the labourer depend upon his productiveness, is to be found everywhere throughout Mr. Burton's book.

"If a man," he says, 66 can be found to do any of the purposes of a machine, he is sometimes a cheaper agent. But woe to him whose indolence tempts him to fall into this gulf! It is the general character of the workmen who are neither skilled nor possessed of great physical strength, that they merely perform the simple and uniform functions of a routine occupation, which machinery could be got to execute, were it not that a human being offers to do it for less; in other words, were it not that the unskilled and indolent man offers to undertake the details for a less sum than the skilled and highly industrious machine-maker demands for making a machine adapted to the execu tion of the task. Our working classes are always in an evil position when men are to be had so cheap. LABOUR SHOULD BE DEAR,

AND TO BE DEAR IT MUST BE POWERFULLY PRODUCTIVE."

And again :-

"The truth is, that the skilled labourer, unless he be vicious or idle, never becomes a permanent pauper; he suffers occasionally by the calamities of the times and the convulsions of trade, as the professional man and the capitalist do; but he rights himself again, and in ordinary times he has always the means of possessing a comfortable home, with the necessaries and the main enjoyments of life. Now it will be said that this may be attributed, not to the skill of these labourers, but to their limited number. This is begging the great question before us. The wide principle is this, that there are no limits to available productiveness; that it is a part of the great scheme of Providence, that in the general case, AS A MAN PRODUCES HE WILL POSSESS; AND THAT THE CAUSE OF THE POVERTY OF THE POOR IS THAT THEY PRODUCE LITTLE."

This is the principle which accounts for that apparent anomaly in our social state, that notwithstanding the strides which we have been making in skill, industry, and intelligence, there should yet remain so great an amount of wretchedness and poverty preying on the heart of our labouring population. We leave our own country out of account; for, to say nothing of the successive years of famine with which it has been the will of Providence that she should be afflicted, her social condition has been for centuries so deranged by perverse influences, that she stands forth, in every respect, an anomaly amongst the nations of the earth. But in England, wealthy and prosperous England, such glimpses of misery and debasement are sometimes revealed to us, as must startle the coldest of us to emotion. How, then, is this? One sentence from Mr. Burton explains it all:"The cause of the poverty of the poor is, that they produce little." The unskilled workman of the present day encounters a fearful opposition; his ri vals are brutes, his competitors are machines; uneducated, undisciplined, he is incompetent, either by knowledge or habit, to take his part in the great work of production, and he is driven to sustain a precarious existence by crime, or by the performance of services so abject, that no independent workman could be found to engage in them.

We by no means lend ourselves to the mawkish sentimentality of modern

times, nor to its whine, that while the rich are daily becoming richer, the poor are becoming poorer. The rich are unquestionably more wealthy than they have ever hitherto been; they have a greater command over the enjoyments and comforts of life; they possess more of everything that can possibly minister to their wants or gratify their desires; but the same is, with one exception only, equally true of the working classes.

We say, with one exception, for we are compelled to acknowledge that, comparing the labourer in full employment now with the labourer in full employment some centuries ago, the condition of the latter was, in one most important particular, greatly superior to that of the former. It is impossible to doubt that the labourer's wages in England, in the past centuries, enabled him to procure a much greater quantity of the essential articles of food, bread, meat, and such like, than the labourer of the present day can command. We have examined, with the utmost care, the various tables of prices and rates of wages, derived from the most authentic sources, which are contained in the Appendix to Sir Frederick Morton Eden's "History of the Poor," and we find it impossible to question the truth of this proposition. At the beginning of the sixteenth century the labourer's wages in England, without diet, was about 4d. a day; but at that period he could buy a bullock for 7s. 3d.; a ewe for 1s. 1d.; a wether for 1s. 8d.; a cow for 8s.; wheat at an average, one year with another, of 5s. a quarter; barley 3s. 4d., and so on. Now, even admitting that the size of cattle and sheep was not one-half what it now is, there is, nevertheless, a fearful balance of disadvantage in the article of food against the labourers of the present day. An examination of the several

tables which are set forth in the valuable work to which we have referred, compels us to acknowledge that the same conclusion is equally true, whether we contrast the labourer of the present time with the labourer of either the sixteenth, seventeeth, or the early part of the eighteenth century. It is a conclusion to which Mr. Hallam has been reluctantly forced to yield :—

"After every allowance," says that eminent historian, "I find it difficult to resist

the conclusion, that however the labourer has derived benefit from the cheapness of manufactured commodities, and from many inventions of common utility, he is much inferior, in ability, to support a family to his ancestors, three or four centuries ago."

In every respect, however, but this one of food, the condition of the English labourer is rapidly improving, and has long continued to improve; and there cannot be a question that although it may take a greater proportion of his wages to buy food now than it did formerly, yet that, viewing the whole of his condition, his position, both physical and moral, now, is incalculably superior to what it ever was. The spirit of independent exertion, which spurns the debasement of relying on voluntary relief, is now general throughout the whole English nation. If we are yet unable to say as much for our own people, we must bear in mind the unavoidable demoralisation of three years of famine, from which, by the goodness of Providence, the English people were exempt.

A hundred and fifty years ago, when the population of England did not amount to six millions, it was computed, by Gregory King and Davenant, that the proportion of the population who were dependant for support on the poor-relief funds amounted to one-fifth of the whole; now that the population is three times the amount, the proportion receiving poor-relief does not amount to one-tenth. Let any one who would be convinced of the superiority of the England of the present day to the England at the period of the Revolution, turn to the admirable chapter which Mr. Macaulay has devoted to this subject in his first volume. We can add nothing to what he has there written, and can say nothing so well.

Yet notwithstanding this advancement in the condition of the working classes generally, there is, unquestionably, deep distress prevailing amongst many of their numbers; but it prevails amongst those who, in the words of Mr. Barton, "can produce little ;" those whose industry or skill falls much short of that of their fellows; those who are not fitted to take any part in the great work of production which is going on around them. For such there is but one remedy-industrial education, a reformation of their habits,

and a cultivation of their yet undeveloped powers of production.

There is, however, another problem connected with the economical condition of the working classes which has frequently attracted the attention of those who have investigated their condition, and to the solution of which both our authors have addressed themselves. It is this that although machinery and all other applications of capital have vastly increased the productiveness of human labour-although the industry and intelligence of the workman have likewise advanced-although his day's earnings will procure more of the comforts of life, yet that the tax upon his exertion is not one whit abated, nay rather, that he must now toil longer and more intensely than ever he did, or submit to be thrown out of the race altogether. Mr. Burton frequently recurs to this feature in our social condition, but as it occurs to us, he rather impresses his readers with its existence, than accounts for it; but we will let him speak for himself:—

"But to this onward progress of productive energy, there is, as we already said, a condition attached. He who would securely enjoy its advantages, must keep up with it,

or he will be left behind in desolation and

misery. Where nothing is produced, and men live on what they find upon the earth, the most indolent may secure something; but when the slothful man appears in active industrial life, he finds everything appropriated; all things have been created by the productive powers of man, and all are retained by the producers, or those whom the complex social institutions of society invest with some peculiar claim to their enjoyment. The farther the community has made industrial progress from the original unproductive habits of the savage, the more does it tax the energies of each individual member, and the less will any one, who is afflicted with the original indolence of the barbarian, be able to cope with its demands, or find himself a place within its privileged arena. A Hindoo must practice more productive industry than a New Hollander; a Chinese must practice more than a Hindoo; a Parisian must practice more than a Chinese; and, generally speaking, the inhabitant of London exercises more skill and untiring industry, and requires to exercise it, in gaining his daily bread, than the inhabitant of any other spot throughout the world."

Mr. Heron likewise adverts to the same subject, and undertakes to account for it. We are not quite cer tain that he has rightly apprehended

the difficulty, but as he quotes the pas. sage which we have just taken from Mr. Burton, we presume he means to advert to the same feature in our social condition :

"Now it has often excited surprise that with the advance of nations in wealth, liberty, and general prosperity, which compose our modern civilisation, poverty at the same time increases [this we submit is plainly erroneous], and able-bodied men are unable to support themselves by their labour. The principal reasons for this are to be found in the greater amount of labour required, according as the society advances in civilisation. Labour increases in intensity with the progress of society [the cause of this is the difficulty to be accounted for it]; the same amount of labour which in an imperfectly organised and thinly inhabited community, would be sufficient to maintain a person in tolerable comfort, will, in a more advanced community, scarcely keep him from starvation. This principle has been well exemplified by Mr. Burton, in his 'Political and Social Economy.'"

Mr. Heron then proceeds to give the extract which we have already taken from Mr. Burton's book, and seems to think that he has sufficiently explained the difficulty by simply restating it.

Now without professing to be competent to undertake the solution of this problem ourselves, we would submit the following suggestions to those whose opportunities are more favourable for prosecuting such investigations.

The difficulty to be encountered is, not why so many persons are still unemployed this Mr. Burton has fully accounted for; he rightly ascribes it to the imperfect education and imperfect industrial habits of those unhappy persons, which unfits them for taking any part in the great work of production which is going on around them. But the difficulty noticed by Mr. Burton, and which we believe it was Mr. Heron's intention also to allude to is, why those who are qualified to get work, and who succeed in procuring it, are obliged to toil harder than the labouring classes ever did before to earn their daily wages; those wages are higher than ever they were; they afford the labourer a greater command over the comforts of life, but he must work harder than ever he did to secure them, or submit to be thrown out of the race altogether. It is the same difficulty which is noticed by Mr. Mill when he says, "Hitherto it is questionable whe

ther all the mechanical inventions yet made have lightened the day's toil of any human being."

Now it occurs to us that somewhat of this may be accounted for by the tendency of large capitalists to supplant or to absorb the smaller ones in a nation's progress to wealth; the lines of demarcation become then more distinct and more remote between the wealthy employer and the workman. The large factories of the city have abolished the domestic manufacture of the country. The great engrosser of land, "adding field to field until there be no room," has exterminated the small farmer and yeoman of England. At the time of the Revolution, according to Mr. Macaulay, the yeomanry of England and their families constituted one-seventh of the population; they derived their subsistence from their own properties, which they cultivated with their own hands; their average income, being made up of rent, profit, and wages, amounted to about £70 a year (the value of money at that period being, however, much higher than now), and they are described by Mr. Macaulay as "an eminently manly and truehearted race," who persisted in "regarding popery and arbitrary power with unmitigated hostility." How fares it now with the small shopkeeper of the town. He had, or perhaps he still retains, a little capital, but what does it avail him? Superintended by himself, and by his wife and daughters, it afforded a happy, peaceful, honest livelihood to a united family. But his shop is now vacant; he is crushed by the competition of the all-engrossing mart; there is no mode of investment in which his petty capital, deprived of his own superintendence, can yield him the means of support. He may, perhaps, get some of his family situations at small salaries in the great establishment which has overwhelmed him, and then transport himself and his capital to some younger country, where wealth is not yet so concentrated. Now the workmen who are engaged by small employers, and who are obliged to put their hands to everything in the course of the day, working along with their masters, who are not very much removed from them in station, constantly shifting from one occupation to another, will fall into a dawdling, easygoing, gossiping habit, that will enable them to get through their day's