Page:The Three Prize Essays on Agriculture and the Corn Law - Morse, Greg, Hope (1842).djvu/34

 cannot get the price of labour down to a level with the price of corn. It would thus be necessary if the price of corn were to fall much, that rent should fall in a greater ratio to compensate the farmer for the increased proportion of the produce taken off by the labourer. A better proof, perhaps, cannot be given of the poverty and stationary physical existence of the agricultural labourer of this country, than the fact of his having been so habituated to wages rising and falling with the price of provisions, as to be scarcely sensible of the advantage of a steady price of corn. Well did Mr. Burke say—"The squires of Norfolk had dined when they gave it as their opinion that wages ought to rise and fall with the price of provisions." If they really did so it would involve the supposition that the rich alone should share the good things of this life, and that whatever may be the abundance in the land, the poor shall not partake.

The charitable feelings of some landlords and farmers, may at times keep the wages of labour higher than they might otherwise be, but this cannot exist every where, and if it did it would surely be better that the labourer should earn his bread by an honest independence than by the charity of the rich, and that he should obtain his wages as his right, and not as a favour bestowed by the patronage or caprice of the powerful.

America, perhaps, affords a better illustration of the principle that regulates the exchange of labour and food, than is to be found in England. It is a very general opinion, that because America is a newly settled country, the wages of labour are high merely on account of the vast quantity of fertile and uncultivated land, and that as the country becomes more densely peopled, the wages of labour will fall. The supposition usually is, that the reward of labour is highest in newly settled countries, and that with the progress of civilization it usually diminishes. But as far as the history of America will guide us, the very contrary appears to be the case. Instead of the population approaching nearer to the limits of human subsistence, it appears that food has increased faster than the population. The habits of industry, the light taxation, the high intelligence and general education of the people, appear to have rendered their condition as a producing nation the most prosperous on the face of the earth. The price of flour, by which we may obtain a tolerably correct estimate of the costs of other agricultural products,