Page:Principles of Political Economy Vol 1.djvu/632

610 in 1841 it was but 55 (121 Ibs.), and there are also complaints of a falling off in the quality.

The Quarterly reviewer treats very cavalierly the explanation given of this fact by M. Cunin-Gridaine, Minister of Commerce and Agriculture. "This is to be accounted for by the revolution which has taken place in the working classes; Paris having become the most manufacturing town in Europe." Industrielle is not exactly synonymous with manufacturing, but let that pass. On this the reviewer:—"This seems a strange explanation. The new population of Paris is to starve on an ounce" (five ounces) "of meat per diem. How is that? Pooh! says the Liberal Minister, they are only manufacturers. This solution will not be very agreeable to those theorists amongst us who confound the extension of manufactures with the welfare and comfort of the working people. The more candid Minister of Louis-Philippe assumes that a manufacturing population must of necessity be worse fed than other classes." The reviewer is evidently no Œdipus. But he might have found in another page of M. Rubichon's treatise, what the Minister meant. In a town such as Paris before the Revolution, in which there was, comparatively speaking, no production at all, but only distribution—the population consisting of the great landlords, the Court and higher functionaries paid by the State, the bankers, financiers, government contractors, and other monied classes, with the great and small dealers and tradesmen needful for supplying these opuleutopulent [sic] consumers, and few labourers beyond those who cannot be wanting in so large a town—all will see that the richer must bear an unusually high numerical proportion to the poorer consumers in such a city. Suppose now that a Manchester or a Glasgow grows up in the place. It is pretty evident that while this would add a little to the richer class, it would add twenty times as much to the poorer. Considering now that the upper and middle classes in France are great consumers of animal food, while the poor consume very little of it, the portion of each poor person might in these circumstances increase very much, while yet the average consumption per head of the whole city, owing to the diminished proportional numbers of the richer class, might be considerably diminished. We have little doubt that this is the fact, and that the great increase in the inferior kinds of animal food introduced into Paris would prove to be for the use, not of those who