On Wages and Combination. By

R. Torrens, Esq. M.P. THERE are in this pamphlet many important subjects investigated with sound principles of reasoning, and illustrated by a familiar and comprehensive knowledge. It may appear at first sight singular, that so much variety of opinion, such violent opposition of argument, such direct contradiction, should be found on almost all points connected with the subject of Political Economy; but a little consideration will lead us to attribute this principally to the immense extension of the subject; to its enormous surface, which admits of being contemplated from so many different points, and seen under such diversified aspects; in fact, it is the greatness of the inquiry that causes the difficulty. Our errors in reasoning spring, not from being totally ignorant, but from having partial knowledge; we catch hold of one or two bearings of some great question, and suppose we are in possession of all; we build our reasonings, and make our inferences on these, and in the mean time we are ignorant that there are other parts of the subject of equal importance and magnitude, totally unseen by us, and without the knowledge of which all our conclusions will only lead us into error. Men's information may be relatively great and sound, but it is seldom or ever coextensive with the subject on which it is employed. Thus arise the embarrassments and difficulties connected with the great questions that present themselves to the deliberation of legislative wisdom. Mr. Pitt seemed to entertain very erroneous opinions on the subject of population, and the laws that govern it. Mr. Ricardo, with all his knowledge, was in error with regard to the fall of prices at the return to cash payments; and the subjects of poor-laws, free trade, and the corn question, are so many arenas of dispute, into which ingenious men are for ever descending to exhibit their knowledge and skill. Now, as we said before, it is the vast extent of GENT. MAG. VOL. II.

these subjects that refuses to be comprehended in one view; it is the boundless complication of parts, through which the whole must be surveyed; and the obstacles constantly raised, by men obtruding their partial views and limited observations, which form the difficulties that for ever thicken around them. Undoubtedly, too, men's interests bias them both openly and secretly, and the love of theory has its force, and the dislike of demolishing the conclusions to which we have painfully and la'boriously arrived, and again building up new ones from the same materials; all these things being taken into account, we shall then be able more accurately to understand what has occasioned such diversity of opinion among the professors of the science, and what has given rise to the contempt and indifference with which it has been looked at by the public in general. Still, we must recollect that the subject is most important; that truth does exist, and may be discovered; that every science has its infancy and its errors, and that it is not the part of a wise or judicious man to forsake a pursuit, only because of the difficulties or impediments which he can but slowly and partially remove. It must either be to the advantage or disadvantage of the nation to have a free trade in corn:—that is a truism; it must either be more conducive to her provincial and commercial prosperity to have a paper currency, or a metallic one; if so, it is amply worth an immense sacrifice of time, and thought, and labour, and observation, and inquiry, to know on which side the balance of truth lies. Those only throw out their ridicule or angry invective against political economy, who cannot or will not understand it; forgetting that the only difference between them and those whom they oppose is, whether the science which directly bears upon the welfare, the subsistence, and happiness of mankind, should be constructed on the solid basis of extensive observation and inductive reasoning, or on

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the shifting sands of partial interests and temporary views. Two of the most important questions now calling for the attention of the Legislature, are undoubtedly the poor laws and the corn laws, as we consider the question of currency to be adjusted and disposed of. Now both these questions extend very widely, and the discussion of them will ramify into very minute, diversified, and remote inquiries; hence the difficulty that arises around them. With the poor laws is connected the support of population, the rate of its increase, the causes of the same, the amount of wages, the mode of paying them, the rise and fall of prices, the proportion of capital and labour, the action and reaction of manufacturing and agricultural labour, the effect of machinery, the advantage of emigration to foreign settlements, the consideration of home colonization, the effect of a country like Ireland without poor laws on a country like England with them, on the relative importance of home and foreign markets, on popular education, on allotments of land, on grants of national money for works, on taxes, and in what proportion they ought to be levied; all these are leading subjects, running like the great main veins and arteries through the body of the poor law question; each of these subjects requires a distinct, deep, and copious investigation. Some of them demand the exercise of very patient thought, and very acute habits of reasoning; and no wonder therefore, that ignorance, and doubt, and error, and partial knowledge, have so long taken their hold of a subject, from which there is no prospect that they will be speedily or substantially removed; Look at that picture, and at this!' Here is England in a state of great distress with poor laws; here is Ireland in a state of greater, without

them. Then comes the question, Is their distress consequent on these laws, or independent of them? or how much do they act upon it? This is the first pouring out of the waters of strife; and here we shall insert a passage from Col. Torrens's pamphlet, which demands the attention of all, on account of the important truth that it asserts, and its effect upon the most vital interests of the country.

"The rapidity with which all kinds of useful instruction are at this time spreading amongst the labouring classes of Great Britain, would speedily bring about this consummation so devoutly to be wished, (i. e. the independence and comfort of the labouring classes) were it not for one most fatal counteracting cause, the annual inundations of Irish labour. Until this cause is removed, no considerable improvement in the condition of the labouring classes in England and Scotland can by possibility take place; until a taste for a higher scale of comfort becomes prevalent among the people of Ireland, no prudential calculations, no desire of lifting themselves from their degradation, will control the power of increase, and thus raise the reward of their labour to a level with that which is obtained in England. But the two islands are SO intimately connected; steam navigation has brought their shores into such immediate contact, that if Irish wages do not rise to the level of English, English wages must fall to the level of Irish. Let the people of England look to this! let the labouring classes throughout England and Scotland, rest assured, that, if effectual means be not applied for improving the habits of their Irish brewhich they have fallen, will, in the reacthren, the political degradation into tion of moral causes, sink the great body of the people throughout the united kingdom to one immense level of hopeless and extreme misery."

Of this melancholy truth no doubt can exist in any way; Ireland, which ought to have been the granary of England, seems to be unhappily of food, and the support and strength appointed as the centre of her difficulties, and the cause of her embar

rassment and weakness. What a moral and political monster is the fact, that an island possessing a fertile soil, a mild climate, noble harbours and shores, a shrewd ingenious po

pulation of six millions, united to another country by the closest ties of language, long connexion, mutual interest, and only a few hours' sail apart, should, from the intervention of circumstances, prove the greatest curse which that country could receive! How great the error, how fundamental the mistakes, how long the misgovernment to produce such results!

We are sorry to find ourselves opposed to Col. Torrens on the subject of a free trade in corn; and more so, as we acknowledge the soundness of many of his separate reasonings; but we confess that we cannot arrive at the same conclusion that is so satisfactory to him and to those who side with him. The question surely is, which is most conducive to the welfare and the prosperity of the country, to the stability of its institutions, and the real happiness of the people; an agricultural or a manufacturing preponderance of interest. Now, though it is true that Col. Torrens takes another ground, and attempts to show to the agricultural tenantry (the farmer) that such low prices as would follow an unrestricted importation of corn, would be advantageous to them: even granted that were true, he does not advance his argument one step further, and show that it would also be advantageous to the landowners; nor do we understand what the conclusion would be that he must reach on this head, except that which he would most reluctantly advise, that the squirearchy and aristocracy are to be sacrificed for the advantage of the commonalty. At any rate, this is clear, if a free importation of corn does not reduce prices, we cannot see the beneficial result proceeding from it. If it does, it must lower the money value of rents in the same proportion; it must drive out of cultivation all inferior soils, it must dismiss from employ all hands formerly occupied on that inferior soil; and it must tend to swell the manufacturing population: supposing this had taken place, and that after long years of misery, from impoverished landlords, ruined tenants, and starving paupers, the remaining peasants were slowly sucked into the vortex of manufacturers; who is to insure the sale, who to command the markets, who to open all foreign ports, who to ensure the regulated supply of foreign harvests, who to order all foreign steam-engines to bow down their iron necks to ours, and to cease to move their hundred arms? who is to cajole Russia? and to blind Prussia to her own interests? who is to open the Elbe and the Rhine? who is to charm the mandarins of China? and who is to depend on the farmers of Vir

ginia? Who is to insure this? And if not, if we have erected our machinery, sold our ploughs, or turned them into steam-engines, turned our fallows into grass or woodland; and if the time came, as assuredly come it would, when foreign nations would not take our manufactures in lieu of their own, and could not supply us with the food which they themselves wanted, what would be the situation of the great manufacturing warehouse of the world? We confess, as we know, that agriculture requires the assistance of manufactures, just as a seller wants a buyer; but we also know that in our country, even without artificial stimulus, a sufficient supply of manufactured wealth will not be wanting. But if it is said that the wealth produced by manufacturing industry can alone enable us to meet our enormous demands and tremendous expenses; then we say, let those expenses be reduced, and those demands lessened; for better a country be poor with safety, than rich with danger and convulsion. Where now is the focus of all discontent and sedition and anarchy, but in the heart of the manufactures, in Manchester and Sheffield, and Nottingham and Leeds? Where is the press, the very rank hot-bed of blasphemy and wickedness and falsehood, but there? Where does the Trades Union lift its monstrous and savage head, hungry and gaunt, but there? Nothing can insure a perpetual flow of commerce and trade and manufacture, without the intervention of periodical checks and calms. Changes of fashion, discoveries of science, inventions, oversupplies, caprice, home-frauds, and foreign industry, all are perpetually crossing the path of regular trade, and interfering with, and for a time checking or breaking it down; and woe to England, if ever the day should come, when its rural districts should be only considered of value, as feeding the enormous many-headed monster that is constantly clamouring for food, to supply fresh strength to those gigantic arms, which are endeavouring to compass the whole globe within their grasp. We believe in none of the fictions of plenty, and ease, and tranquillity and happiness, that would follow. We form no Elysium for ourselves in the vallies of Lancashire, or