remuneration of the workmen arrives at the lowest he line of its variation.

hen the price has arrived at this point, there are two causes why it should linger obstinately there. The aruced by operative bakers is carried off in a single day; is always a fresh recurring demand for the same quanrk from them. Their work does not admit of being ended; and therefore an excess of workmen must mmediate and certain fall of wages. But neither does ce of their work admit of being accumulated, so that intervening stock of their article between them and umers; and therefore, in parting with the excess of ls, the restoration of their wages would be just as sudfall. But the work of weavers does admit of being and therefore the fall of their wages may be gradual. uce of their work admits also of being accumulator this reason the reviving of their wages is gradual e stock on hand may be a barrier for many months e need of the purchaser, and the work of the operain the declining prices of a glutted market, the infor keeping up this stock may be done away. In mstances, a much larger excess of weavers must go ployment, that the matter may be righted speedily. enough that the quantity of work be reduced to the mand for the article. It must be reduced beneath d, so as to permit the stock to clear away. If more can be taken on in this line of industry than in 5, without so immediate a reduction of their wages, must go off, for the purpose of bringing about a toration. So that we are not aware at present of of employment whatever where the circumstances atives, both in respect of the price of their work, mber of workmen, are doomed to alternate along so n arch of vibration.

e is still another cause by which this ascending proe retarded. If the price of labour is reduced, while time it is paid according to its quantity, the workmen ly strive to make up by the latter, what they lose in It is in vain that a small fraction of the labourers vn, if they who remain shall, by increased applicawork, continue to throw off the same quantity of Сс

III. NO. 66.

hands, ere the supply of their labour can be so far diminished, as that the stock of goods should clear away, and the demand of the consumer come again into contact with the work of the operative. So much is there in this cause, that when it was understood in Glasgow that the number of working looms was only reduced from eighteen to thirteen thousand, it was feared that the supply of work would still be as great as ever, and that the process of clearing away the piled and accumulated produce could not yet begin. In the mean time, there cannot be conceived a more cruel dilemma for the poor operative, than that, in eking out a subsistence for his family, he should thus overwork himself, and, by that miserable effort, should only strengthen the barrier that lies in the way of his final deliverance; that for the relief of the present urgencies of Nature, he should be compelled to put forth more than the strength of Nature, and yet find, as the direct result of his exertion, a lengthening out of the period of his distress; that the necessity should thus be laid upon him of what may be called a self-destroying process, accumulating as he does, with his own hand, the materials of his own wretchedness, and so annoying and overwhelming the earth with the multitude of his commodities, that she looks upon his offerings as an offence, rather than an obligation, and refuses to sustain him. Misery like this may appear singular in its origin; and therefore is it of importance to know, that it is so frequent and extensive in its operation, as to be realized amongst us in the form of a periodic visitation, and often prolonged for months, or even for years together—lest it should be left to pine in neglect, or, what is still worse, should be aggravated by mischievous and misjudging interferences.

We have not here taken into account that fluctuation of demand which arises from a change in the state of foreign markets: though this, of course, will aggravate all the effects that we have now adverted to. But independently of this new and powerful element, we conceive that the phenomenon of our present severe and lengthened depression is sufficiently explained. Nor ought it to be a matter of wonder, that the great accession of hands which came in upon the body of our operative weavers at the breaking up of the war establishments, should gradually have conducted them to this extremity of distress; and that now, though at the distance of several years, and certainly with a few intermediate vibrations in their state of comfort, they should have arrived at a degradation from which assuredly nothing but

areduction in their numbers can either permanently or effectually deliver them.

There appear to be three ways of meeting such a calamity. The first is, to supply the defective wages, by a direct charitable allowance. This looks the most obvious way of it. Should a family be starving on five shillings a week, there is not a more obvious and straight forward method of relieving them, than simply to eke out for them, say three shillings more, and thus enable them to live on eight shillings a week. This is just what a kind and wealthy neighbour would do with a destitute family at his door; and much of what is tantamount to this, is done by generous individuals going forth unseen on the territory of such a visitation. But what may be done in detail, by the distinct and separate liberalities of the charitable, is often attempted to be done in the gross, by means of a public, and, therefore, visible combination. No one can question the amiableness of such a proceeding; but if truth be permitted to have a place in the argument along with tenderness, it will soon be acknowledged, that what is compassion at the origin, is cruelty in the result: For a fund raised to supply a defect in the wages of any class of labourers, has the sure effect of keeping many at their employment, who would else have cast about for another mode of subsistence. Wherever there is such a fund, there will not be so free or so copious a dispersion of hands away from a branch of overstocked industry; insomuch that, had a plan of this kind been adopted previous to the month of August, there would not have been nearly so great a reduction in the number of working looms, as from eighteen thousand to thirteen thousand, in the neighbourhood of Glasgow. The glut would have been longer perpetuated in the market; and either a further, or a more lengthened depression of wages would have resulted from such an interference. We have sometimes known, as the effect of a subscription fund, that the argument employed by the manufacturer, in the higgling which obtains between him and the operative, is, that the latter has his recourse upon the fund. But at all events, and whether there be any such avowal or not upon the subject, the fund which is raised to supply wages, is sure in the end to reduce them: This, indeed, is its precise function and necessary operation: So that, after all, the individual cases of alleviation which it produces, are far more than counterbalanced by the general and protracted sufferings which it brings upon the whole;the consequence infallibly being, that that fractional excess of workmen, which it is of so much importance to detach from the mass, still adheres to it; till the nominal wages and the

charitable allowance put together, come in fact to make out no more than the scanty remuneration which is ever attendant on an overdone employment. Thus it is, that men who, with the clearing away of goods from the market, might in a few monthshave been earning an adequate subsistence for their families, and that in the shape of a fair and honourable recompense for their work, be forced to drivel out a much longer period in a penury composed of two stinted ingredients, and rendered more degrading by the contribution which charity has made to it.

This is just the operation of Poor-rates in England, when employed in supplying the inadequacy of wages. They ultimately displace as much in the shape of wages, as is rendered in the shape of charity; and men who, if the regulation of their numbers had been left to natural causes, would have continued scarce enough to have dictated the remuneration of an entire maintenance for their work, have been collected in such multitudes, as to have stripped themselves of all control over this matter, and brought the question of their subsistence under the determination of Church-wardens and overseers. It is thus that this fallacious system has inflicted on the labouring classes of that country a permanent degradation. What the Legislature intended as a boon, has turned out to be a sore bereavement. Had they confined it to one class of labourers, as weavers for example, then weavers would just have sunk under the oppression of this apparent privilege, and been singled out to public notice as the miserable and degraded caste of our nation. They would thereby have descended beneath the level of all other labourers, and been, in our land, what hewers of wood, and drawers of water were in the land of Judea. And these are not the judicious friends of the poor, but their unwise advocates, or perhaps their designing agitators, who would plead, as a right of theirs, for that which passes in the first instance into the pockets of their employers, and then goes to stamp an unnatural cheapness on the produce of their employment.

Such works as those of Mr Cleland are of great value, and are well fitted to pioneer the way of the economist to a sound and experimental conclusion on questions of great interest. He has extended his survey beyond the precincts of the immediate neighbourhood of Glasgow; or rather, instead of a survey, he has given an estimate of the country looms now employed by the manufacturers of Glasgow, and compares it with the number employed antecedently to the present depression in that branch of our manufactures. We should like to see a similar estimate for Manchester and its vicinity; as nothing could be more important than to learn the proportion between the em

ployed and unemployed looms in the great weaving districts of England, and thus to ascertain what effect the Poor-laws have had in fixing the labourers of a declining branch of industry down to their employment, and so in increasing and accelerating its declension. It is quite clear, that neither the feeling nor the clamour of distress were at all less in the country where a compulsory provision has a full, than in the country where it has yet only obtained a partial operation. But it were desirable to know in how far, allured by the promise of their own institutions, the weavers of England were kept together at their work, instead of going off by those outlets which, in times of fluctuation and distress, enable the people of every country, in a certain degree, to shift their wonted employments.

And here we may state an inequality between Scotch and English operatives, to which many of our Southern neighbours may never perhaps have adverted. Should the Poor-rates of England reduce the nominal price of weaving there to five shillings a week, that becomes the real price to the operative in Scotland. This at least holds true, without any qualification, in as far as the Poor-rate for manufacturing workmen is contributed, not by the capitalists who employ them, but by other capitalists, or by the landed interest of the country. The manufacturers of Glasgow must be undersold by those of Manchester, if the latter can hire their workmen with a bounty upon their work, in the shape of a legal provision; and, to put the capitalists in both places on a footing, the whole hardship of the difference must fall on the weavers whom they employ. To obtain an equalization, there are only two methods; either to extend the Poor-rate to Scotland, or to abolish that part of the English practice, by which the fund is made applicable to a defect of work, or to a defect of wages. We are quite satisfied, that the effect of the former method would be, to sink the whole profession, as by a death-warrant, into a state of helpless and incurable degradation-and that the effect of the latter method would be, to raise the price of weaving to the rate of allowance that is now made up of its present nominal price, and of the supplemental charity which goes to the English operative. It would ultimately work out a great and a glorious emancipation for the weavers of England; and, to Scotland, it would come with all the force and charm of an immediate deliverance. And, placed as we are, in the pestilent neighbourhood of our sister country, we would plead for this partial abolition of her whole. charitable system, as the prelude to a gradual and entire abodition; so that this worthless and pernicious nuisance which her