XLIII. 1848. CHAP. sterling, had no alternative but to push their business to the uttermost, in order to indemnify themselves for the interest of the enormous outlay required by the mass of gold forced upon them. Thence the lowering of interest on discounts to 2 and 24 per cent, the issue of £23,000,000 in notes, and the enormous speculation in railways and other undertakings consequent on such a state of things. Thence also the sudden contraction of credit, rise of interest to 8 per cent, and reducing of the Bank notes in circulation, the capital and wants of the country remaining the same, to £16,500,000 in 1847, and 10 per cent in 1857! The Bank Charter Act should be entitled, “An Act for the better securing the inflammation of speculation in periods of prosperity, and the entire destruction of credit in periods of adversity." 154. effects of These evils are so pressing, and so certain of recurrence Ultimate at stated periods, and after brief intervals, in any consiFree Trade, derable mercantile community, that there can be no doubt irrespective that they will ere long force on their own cure, in spite of rency. all the efforts of the great capitalists to perpetuate a state of the Cur of things so favourable to their peculiar interests. This can only be done by having an adequate portion of the currency properly regulated to prevent undue extension, and secured on the credit of Government, ready for issue when the gold is withdrawn, and not liable to payment on demand in specie. But supposing this done, there are other effects, consequent on Free Trade, not so palpable In August 1844, the circulation of bank notes for England was The Bank of England, Private banks, Being a diminution of £21,448,000 -£29,412,505 £20,062,041 3,855,971 3,113,886 27,031,898 £2,380,607 since the Act of 1844 was passed, and this to accommodate a rapidly increasing commerce, our foreign trade alone having nearly trebled since that time. XLIII. 1848. in the outset, but still more powerful, because irremediable CHAP. in the end, which deserve the most serious attention, both with reference to national independence, progress, and prosperity. These consequences are quite independent of anything erroneous in the currency, and arise from certain fixed laws of nature, over which, like the recurrence of winter and summer, man has no control, but which are not less irresistible in their operation upon the life of nations than the mutations of the seasons are upon the growth or decay of vegetable life. 155. litates ma far more The first of these is the law that the advantages of capital, machinery, and the division of labour, though not Capital faciunknown in the cultivation of the earth, are far less con-nufactures siderable than those in the production of manufactures. than agriIt is not by any means meant to be asserted, in laying culture. down this proposition, that capital and skill are of no value in the cultivation of the earth. Unquestionably they are of great service, as any one may see by comparing the agriculture of Ireland or France with that of the best parts of Flanders, England, and Scotland. But giving full effect to the greatest improvements in the cultivation of the soil-conceding as much as the most sanguine high farmer would contend for, to tile-draining, improved manuring, large farms, reaping and thrashing machines, and skilled labour-still it is evident that all they can effect in increasing the amount, or lessening the cost of agricultural produce, is very little in comparison of what may be effected by the application of capital, science, and the division of labour to the production of manufactures. The average produce of an imperial acre in cereal crops, in Great Britain, may be now taken at 3 quarters, or 24 bushels an acre. Let it be conceded that, by the application of science and skill, it can be raised to 9 quarters, or 72 bushels. Probably the most sanguine high farmer will not allege that more is possible. That change supposes the produce of a given space to be tripled; but though such an increase is considerable, it is as nothing compared XLIII. 1848. CHAP. to the increase of productive power by the application of capital and skill to the production of manufactures, which can with ease be made not three but an hundredfold. Two men can there be made, by the aid of machinery, to do the work of two hundred. There is an obvious limit, therefore, to the power of capital and science in increasing the return of agricultural labour, but none can be assigned to their influence in increasing the amount of manufacturing production. The famous arithmetical and geometrical progression, erroneously applied by Malthus to the relative powers of population and labour in the raising of subsistence, is truly applicable to labour applied to agriculture and manufactures. Hence the rich and old State must always undersell the young and poor State in manufactures, and be always undersold by it in agricultural produce. 156. that is plentiful be comes cheap. The second law is, that everything that is plentiful, and Everything money among the rest, becomes cheap. This may seem. so obvious that it does not require to be stated, but nevertheless its effects, as of all laws in universal operation, are in the highest degree important. It often determines the life of nations as certainly as the law which makes a stone fall to the ground retains the planets in their orbits. As money, from being plentiful, becomes cheap, the result of course is, that everything, as measured in money, becomes dear. Hence the wages of labour in the rich State become high in comparison of those in the poor one-the latter, as Dr Johnson said of eggs in the Highlands being cheap, "not because eggs are many, but because pence are few." In manufacturing industry, the application of capital, machinery, and the division of labour, much more than compensates the height in the money wages of labour; but in agriculture no such compensation is possible. The poor State always undersells the rich one in the produce of the fields. England can undersell India in cotton manufactures made of an article which grows on the banks of the Ganges; but it is undersold by the fellahs of Egypt, the serfs of Russia, and the peasants of Poland, in the produc XLIII. 1848. tion of wheat or barley, though grown at the gates of Lon- CHAP. don. Hence there is a constant pressure in the rich State on rural labour, arising from foreign competition; and where it is excluded by prohibitory duties, an incessant clamour for their removal. When this clamour becomes irresistible, and Free Trade is introduced, domestic agriculture must of necessity decline, unless supported for a time by accidental causes, and the growth of the rural inhabitants be checked; but no similar check is to be looked for in manufacturing industry, unless impeded by hostile foreign tariffs; and therefore, for a very long period at least, no retarding of urban population is to be apprehended. 157. mortality districts. The third law is, that great cities are the grave of the human race, while the country fields are its cradle. This Greater truth, long and stoutly denied by the commercial and of cities Free-trade parties, is now completely set at rest by the than rural Registrar-General's returns in Great Britain, and similar statistics in other countries. It is now ascertained by this unexceptionable evidence, that no great towns can maintain their own numbers unless fed by immigration from the country. In Manchester, Liverpool, Birmingham, and Glasgow, 49 per cent of deaths are children under five years of age; and even in London, probably the most healthy metropolis in the world, three-fifths of the persons above twenty years of age were born in the country. Where the annual mortality in rural districts in England is 18 in 1000 of the whole population, in 1Registrarmanufacturing districts it is 1 in 24. In Scotland, in Report, 138 town districts, the annual deaths were 1 in 37; in 4. 14 agricultural, only 1 in 68.1* Sanitary improvements, "In Scotland, 41,925 deaths were registered during the fourth quarter, being an increase to the extent of 744 above those of the corresponding quarter of the previous year, and an increase of 2076 above those of the previous quarter of 1856. Allowing for increase of population, this would give the annual proportion of 196 deaths in every 10,000, or nearly 1 death in every 50 persons. The proportion of deaths was lowest in the north-western and northern counties, and highest in the south-western and south-eastern counties. Of the individual counties, the proportion of deaths was lowest in Orkney and Peebles, where it was at the rate of 101 and 107 deaths respec General's Jan. 1856, XLIII. 1848. CHAP. improved medical treatment, and an elevation of general comfort, may do much to check this frightful mortality, but it can never remove it entirely, or stamp any other character on great cities but that of being the great charnel-houses of mortality. But the effect of the law upon the strength and lifetime of empires is obvious, especially when taken in conjunction with the tendency, in rich and old societies of industry, to flock to the towns and shun the country. This state of things may for a time exhibit a great increase in urban, and proportional decline in rural population; but it must in the end seriously affect the growth of the entire body, and augment the preponderance of towns over the country, which is the invariable precursor of national decline. 158. circumstan ces arrest This universal law of nature has taken effect with such Manner in severity in France, since the vast migration of its rural which these inhabitants into the great towns which has taken place during the last five years, that while the increase of its inhabitants from 1845 to 1850 was 1,240,000 persons, from 1850 to 1855 it was only 250,000; a decline which has justly struck the philosophers of that country with population. 1 Courrier, niteur, Dec. 31, 1856. astonishment. The census of 1856 shows that the metropolis, and all the manufacturing districts during this 1856; Mo period, have largely increased in numbers, while most of the rural have decreased. It is easily explained by the fact, that agriculture has so much declined, that from being an exporting country, France had come, in 1856, a year of scarcity, to import 4,000,000 quarters of wheat, while Paris had increased, in the same five years, by 350,000 souls. The change here so strikingly evinced is one which takes place in every old country at a certain stage of its progress in regard to population, and arises from two causes. In the first place, the loud and menacing cry for cheap bread in the towns, by forcing on foreign tively in every 10,000 persons, and the highest in Lanark, where, allowing for increase of population, it was at the rate of 268 deaths in every 10,000 persons."-Quarterly Return, 1856. |