Page:Report from the Select Committee on Steam Carriages.pdf/235



Col. Torrens, M.P.. 9 September, 1831. the demand for labour without any adequate compensating advantages?—Upon the case supposed, namely, that Steam Carriages should be employed in conveying passengers only, and the whole change to be effected in a sudden manner. I think that there would in the first instance be a diminished demand for agricultural produce, but the following process would take place. As the demand for agricultural produce was diminished, the price of such produce would fall, food would become cheaper, and the cheapening of food would benefit partly the labouring class and partly the capitalists, the one obtaining higher real wages, and the other higher profits; this increase in real wages and in profits, would effect a great encouragement to manufacturing industry, and would necessarily lead to an increase in the manufacturing population, and to the amount of capital employed in manufactures. The consequence would be, that after some degree of pressure upon agriculture, the increased number of human beings would create the same demand for agricultural produce which the employment of horses formerly created. So that even upon the extreme and most improbable supposition, that Steam Carriages should never be employed in conveying agricultural produce to market at a cheaper rate, still the benefit to the country would be very great, inasmuch as we should have a vastly increased industrious population, and England would become much more extensively, than she is at present, the great workshop of the world. In point of fact, superseding horses by mechanical power, would have precisely the same effect in increasing the population and wealth of England, as would be produced were we to increase the extent of the country by adding thereto a new and fertile territory, equal in extent to all the land which now breeds and feeds all the horses employed upon common roads. Such addition to the extent of fertile territory in England suddenly effected, would in the first instance lower the value of agricultural produce, and be injurious to the proprietors of the old portion of the territory, but no person would therefore contend that if we could enlarge