Page:The Three Prize Essays on Agriculture and the Corn Law - Morse, Greg, Hope (1842).djvu/54

 remained, or were now to be returned upon their native parishes, the consequent augmentation of the rates would bring ruin upon every farmer in the country;—that this re-emigration will assuredly take place, if the present depression of trade and manufactures should unhappily continue;—and that continue it assuredly will, unless those restrictive corn-laws, which press so heavily both upon our foreign commerce and our home demand, shall be speedily removed. The repeal of the corn-laws is therefore necessary to save the farmer himself from ultimate a and entire ruin.

Let us now consider the effect of the corn-laws upon the The effect may be stated in two words:—They raise the price of the commodity he has to buy, and lower the price of the commodity he has to sell. They enhance the cost of provisions, and depress the wages of labour.

I. Like all consumers, the agricultural labourer has a paramount interest in cheap food. It is calculated, that in ordinary years one-half his whole expenditure is laid out in bread. In years of scarcity, however, he must expend much more than this, and yet obtain much less. When the price of corn is low, he has therefore a far greater command of the comforts and necessaries of life than when it is high. This requires no elaborate demonstration. The labourer knows it to be the case. A very slight consideration will show that it must be so. Uniform experience has shown that it is so.

Some persons, however, have ventured to assert, that this operation is counteracted by an alteration in the rate of wages;—that the wages of the labourer rise and fall according to the price of corn, and in proportion to the price of corn;—and that his command of the necessaries of life in consequence always remains the same. The falsehood of this statement is obvious from the following consideration: Years of high price are always years of scanty crops, and are so merely because they are years of scanty crops. To affirm, therefore, that when corn is dear, the labourer is enabled to purchase as much bread as when corn is cheap, is to affirm that he can obtain a larger proportion of a scanty crop than he can of an abundant one;—which is manifestly both an untruth and an absurdity. In years of scarcity, it is obvious that some classes must consume much less bread than they do in years of plenty; because there is much less to be consumed. What are these classes? Are they the rich, or are they the poor? Are they the higher and middle classes, or are they the labouring classes? We know that the former rarely alter at all, and never alter materially, their rate of consumption;—we know, therefore, that the consumption of the latter must fall off in a more than proportionate degree. When the rich are compelled to retrench, they retrench in luxuries, not in food. When the pressure of scarcity compels the poor man to retrench, he has no luxuries to lay down, and his retrenchment therefore falls almost immediately upon his daily bread.

It is no doubt the case in many parts of England, perhaps in all, that the wages of the farm labourer do vary to a certain extent in