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 approximate more and more nearly to it, The constant tendency of capital is to force the cost of labour back towards this zero. A writer of the 18th century, often quoted already, the author of the “Essay on Trade and Commerce,” only betrays the innermost secret soul of English capitalism, when he declares the historic mission of England to be the forcing down of English wages to the level of the French and the Dutch. With other things he says naïvely: “But if our poor” (technical term for labourers) “will live luxuriously … then labour must, of course, be dear.… When it is considered what luxuries the manufacturing populace consume, such as brandy, gin, tea, sugar, foreign fruit, strong beer, printed linens, snuff, tobacco, &c.” He quotes the work of a Northamptonshire manufacturer, who, with eyes squinting heavenward, moans: “Labour is one-third cheaper in France than in England; for their poor work hard, and fare hard, as to their food and clothing. Their chief diet is bread, fruit, herbs, roots, and dried fish; for they very seldom eat flesh; and when wheat is dear, they eat very little bread.” “To which may be added,” our essayist goes on, “that their drink is either water or other small liquors, so that they spend very little money.… These things are very difficult to be brought about; but they are not impracticable, since they have been effected both in France and in Holland.” Twenty