Page:The Three Prize Essays on Agriculture and the Corn Law - Morse, Greg, Hope (1842).djvu/20

 food is cheap, many farmers prefer (correctly for their own interest) taking on more hands, to sending the subsistence fund to market. This demand occasionally raises the money wages paid to the labourers. When provisions are easily obtained, labourers can afford to be occasionally idle; at least, they are not so readily obliged to agree to the terms offered by masters as in dear years, which so increase the difficulty of obtaining subsistence, that workmen are glad to close with the first offer of employment. But it is not so long since 1836. You may remember the demand for labour, the rate of wages, and the price of grain at that time, and compare it with what you experienced last year. It has been found that, in every country, wages are high in proportion as the people are increasing in wealth; that however wealthy a nation may be, if that wealth be stationary, wages are very moderate; but when a nation retrogrades, the working classes die off from absolute starvation. Now, free and unrestricted commerce is the only means that can give Britain a chance to continue to progress; without it we must even go back. When it is recollected that millions in this country exist by manufacturing goods for foreign markets, which our own policy is constantly losing us, this will be at once conceded. Unless this policy is speedily changed, and we accept, as payment for our manufactures, American flour, Dantzic wheat, Baltic timber, and Brazilian sugar, an immense proportion of our population must inevitably be starved off through famine, which God forbid! or, what is almost equally to be deprecated, compete with you, the agricultural labourers, in your already over-stocked market. If there is one class more interested than another in this great question, it is you. With the impetus which every one admits Free Trade in food would give to our manufacturing body, I ask, is it too much to expect, that at least a portion of your number would be drawn off to that class, and thus leave a better remuneration to those who should remain? An additional demand for manufactures would raise the price of goods, and increase the profits of capital; workmen would be better paid, so that they and their families might enlarge their consumption of agricultural produce, to the benefit of all classes.

An intelligent farmer and shrewd writer, at the close of last century, objected to Free Trade in corn on this ground amongst others, that it would raise the wages of agricultural labourers, while the farmer, by the admission of foreign corn, would be prevented remunerating himself by enhancing the price of his produce. Can there,