Page:Thoughts on the Corn laws, addressed to the working classes of the county of Gloucester.djvu/27

23 The next point of view in which we will look at this question is, how the taking off the duty of corn would affect the different descriptions of labourers—would they all be equally affected or not?

Let us first take the manufacturing labourer. The stimulus given to manufactures by the fall of wages, occasioned by a repeal of the corn laws, will continue to create for a length of time an extra demand for labour, so that the workman, though he gets less wages, obtains more constant employment; and this extra demand for labour may, to certain extent, prevent wages from falling quite so fast as the price of corn falls. It is, however, quite evident that wages must fall considerably, or the repeal of the corn laws could give no increased stimulus to trade. As soon, however, as the number of labourers had increased to the full number that the manufactures were capable of supporting, these advantages would be at an end; or, in other words, the stimulus given to manufactures by the fall of wages would let the manufacturing labourer down rather easier and less rapidly than those in other occupations.

Let us now turn to the agricultural labourer. His case is just the reverse; for if corn can be imported much cheaper than it is grown at home, large tracks of second-rate land will no longer pay to be cultivated as corn land. They will require no longer any ploughing, or harrowing, or weed-