sale, like the blood to the heart, and from thence dispersed, in lesser quantities, to the other parts of the kingdom by retail.' A breach of this circulation, he said, must necessarily distemper the body; and he saw that the disturbance was made, and the ill effect appearing. For most enterprise, as well as capital, being found in London, when both were brought into full employ by the impulse which a long war had given, manufactures were established there in rivalry of those which were flourishing in the provincial towns. The consequence was, that as their trade declined in the country, those persons engaged therein, who were not ruined by the change of affairs, and could bear the expense of removal, removed their property to London, engaged hands there, and left those whom they had employed at their old establishments, to shift for work. Norwich, Sudbury, and Canterbury are specified as suffering by this shifting of the channels. In the latter city, of two hundred broad looms, not fifty were in employment; and, in consequence, business of every kind was declining, the people removing, and houses standing empty. These,' said he, are the effect of transposing manufactures, and interrupting the circulation of trade.' This might have led Defoe to perceive that employment was not, as he had affirmed, always to be obtained by men who were able and willing to work; and that the most industrious labourers might be reduced to want, not by any misconduct of their own, not by any affliction befalling them in the course of nature, not by any natural visitations of pestilence, or famine,—not by the ravages of war, but by those changes in trade, which, though improvements in themselves, and at length greatly beneficial upon the great scale, are injurious and even ruinous to many in their immediate effects. Indeed, he saw that the introduction of machinery into our manufactures must bring with it this consequence. The stocking-frame had been brought into use within his memory, and with it the effect of almost wholly transferring the manufacture of stockings from Norwich to London.

Now,' says he,' as the knitting-frame performs that in a day which would otherwise employ a poor woman eight or ten days, by consequence a few frames performed the work of many thousand poor people; and the consumption being not increased, the effect immediately appeared-so many stockings as were made in London, so many the fewer were demanded from Norwich, till, in a few years, the manufacture there wholly sunk: the masters then turned their hands to other business; and whereas the hose trade from Norfolk then returned at least five thousand pounds per week, and, as some say, twice that sum, 'tis not now worth naming. All methods to bring our trade to be managed by fewer hands than it was before, are in themselves pernicious to England in general, as it lessens the employment of the

VOL. XXXVII. NO. LXXIV.

2 N

poor,

poor, unhinges their hands from the labour, and tends to bring our hands to be superior to our employ, which as yet they are not.'

The evil which was thus apprehended more than an hundred years ago, has in our days come upon us in a greater degree than the most far-sighted sagacity could at that time have anticipated; and there would be little utility here in inquiring whether it might have been averted or mitigated by any prospective enactments. The introduction of machinery, for the purpose of performing more expeditiously, and in greater perfection, by few hands, the work which used to be done by many, is a necessary consequence of advancing science, and of that increased activity and spirit of enterprise which accompany the progress of civilization. King Canute, if he had really been serious in the act which was intended as an histrionic reproof to his flatterers, might as well have attempted to stop the flowing tide, by forbidding it to advance, as a legislature to check this tide in the affairs of a commercial nation. The very persons who were themselves suffering most severely from the depreciation of their labour, which had been thus brought about, declared, on their examination before the committee, that they were clearly convinced of this; and this distinct perception and fair acknowledgment, under such circumstances, is the best proof that has yet reached us of the march of intellect.' The representatives of the Glasgow weavers, at a time when they could obtain only four and sixpence or five shillings for the same work, which, only twenty years ago, would have produced them twenty, were asked if they attributed the insufficiency of this remuneration for their labour to the introduction of machinery, and if they considered that, on that account, the introduction was objectionable? There could be no doubt, in this case, of the immediate relation between the cause and the effect; but they replied in these remarkable words:

'The weavers, in general, of Glasgow and its vicinity, do not consider that machinery can, or ought to be stopped or put down; they know perfectly well that machinery must go on, that it will go on, and that it is impossible to stop it. They are aware that every implement of agriculture and manufacture is a portion of machinery; and, indeed, everything that goes beyond the teeth and nails (if I may use the expression) is a machine. I am authorized by the majority of our society to say, that I speak their minds, as well as my own, in stating this.'*

The whole evidence, which these persons gave before the committee, is characterized by the same good sense † and good feeling,

*Second Report, p. 12.

which

One gentleman, indeed, who appeared on the part of certain emigration societies in Scotland, had no hesitation in saying, that the poor people themselves have sufficient

which are apparent in this declaration. Nor, when they alluded to those moral causes, which had rendered that power, whereof they acknowledged the utility and the necessity, thus injurious, and even ruinous to themselves, did they evince the slightest impatience or resentment; but spoke with the same calmness of that over-production which had glutted all their markets, and of that competition among the master manufacturers which had been the immediate cause of the evil; for the merchants selling lower, who could bring their goods lower to market, the manufacturers, when they wished to have a large profit, reduced the wages, and so brought them down to the present price.'

It is gratifying to observe, that the English weavers also, upon whom the late pressure bore with equal weight, manifested the same good feeling, and the same spirit of patient endurance under privations of the severest kind. The Bishop of Chester, whose exertions for relieving the manufacturing districts cannot be more justly represented, nor more highly praised than by saying, that they were such as might be expected from the energy of his character, his sense of duty, and his goodness of heart, went through those parts of his diocese, in which the greatest distress prevailed, and the quietness, and good order, and resigned contentedness which he found among the people, under circumstances so trying, excited, he says,† his admiration.

'The moral condition of the people,' said he, I confess, appeared to me to be considerably better than I had always been told that it was. The hand-loom weavers are a very orderly, and, generally speaking, a well-disposed body of men: they manifest a great readiness to listen to good advice; and, from personal inquiries amongst the poor, I am led to hope, that a considerable moral improvement has taken place in many of them, in consequence of their sufferings.'

This disposition, on the part of this large body of people, is the more meritorious, because they clearly perceived what were the causes of the distress which they were then enduring, and were, at the same time, fully aware, that although intervals of comparative prosperity might be expected, the same causes would continue to act, and the same consequences must, of necessity, be again brought on. They knew that, however low the price of labour might be, and however deplorable, on that account, the condition of the labouring artisans, machinery would not be withmind not to ascribe the evils they have endured to machinery, but to taxation weighing upon labour, and restrictions preventing markets.' This gentleman has no hesitation' on many other points, upon which it might be better if he would hesitate; but he belongs to a profession (that of the newspaper press) in which hesitation seems to be seldom allowed. He thinks that if taxation were abated, and restrictions abolished, there would not be a redundant population in any part of Great Britain, not even with all the Irish that come over! + Ibid. p. 203, 209,

* Second Report, pp. 10-13,

holden for any such considerations. Some persons,' says Major Thomas Moody,* may withhold it, but others said, they never deferred, for one moment, any improvement that they could make in their machinery; the desire of competing with others induced them instantly to use it.' The manufacturers of machinery deliver an opinion, that it will still be increased, to the substitution of human labour.' That system, like the car of Jaggernaut, will move on, and be thrust forward, whatever may be crushed in its course! And as to any benefit which the manufacturing workmen might expect from a reduction in the price of food, (in other words, from the ruin of the landed interest,) the Glasgow deputies plainly stated, that if the coarse food, whereon they then subsisted, (' the coarsest that is used by human beings, and of which the wages that they at that time received were not sufficient to procure a sufficient quantity,') should become cheaper, they should be compelled to take a lower rate of wages, in proportion to the reduction; and, therefore, it would be no relief to them.' There are certain writers, who will not believe that cannibalism is, at this time, or ever has been practised, by any savages, however ferocious; and yet they live in a country where man thus preys upon ! But this opinion was calmly stated before the committee, and with a just conviction, that the inhumanity belonged to the system, not to the individuals who are engaged in it.

man

These evils have no tendency to bring about their own cure. Formerly, when commercial speculation and competition were kept within the bounds of prudence and probity, our merchants contented themselves with the certain profits of a settled trade, and took care never to glut the foreign markets. A market is now no sooner opened, in any part of the world, than adventurers pour in their goods in such profusion, that it is instantly overstocked. They run a race of ruin with each other, such as we sometimes see stage-coach proprietors engage into the benefit of a traveller's pocket, and the risk of his limbs and life. For a season, the manufacturers are in full employ, the sum of exports mounts up, there is a great increase in the customs for the quarter, trade is alive everywhere, and we congratulate ourselves upon the state of the country. Then comes the cold fit: returns are looked for in vain; bills are dishonoured; the goods are unpaid for-sold at a loss, damaged, wasted, spoiled, or, perhaps,

Yet, even then, more goods were produced than there was vent for; most commodities and manufactories, it was complained, were brought to so low an ebb, that slow workmen could not get their living. Many such were become the poor of the parishes wherein they dwelt; and poor tradesmen, with their families, had grown to be a far greater tax to the nation than all that the king's customs amounted to.'-Harl. Miso., 8vo. edit., xii. 250.

re-shipped

re-shipped for England, like property snatched from the ravages of fire or flood: week after week the list of bankrupts lengthens, and lofty fabrics of credit fall like a child's house of cards. After a while, what with waste, loss, and rapid wear, (the goods, like the razors in the story, being made for sale and not for service,) the foreign warehouses begin to be cleared; there is an opening; trade revives; the pulse of our prosperity quickens; a new race of merchant-adventurers (in the modern acceptation of that word) comes forward to speculate, or, rather, to gamble with the capital of others; the same desperate game is again played with the same ruinous, but certain consequences, and thus the burning and the shivering fits alternate. Meantime, the population, which has been produced by the manufacturing system, has increased, is increasing, and will continue to increase. The check of prudence, which operates so powerfully (sometimes even with more than its due weight) in the middle class, has, upon this, no effect; and, as for misery, miserable experience has manifestly shown, that here, as well as in Ireland, it acts as an incentive. One of the witnesses before the committee, who said, that he never could have imagined the possibility of such distress as he had beheld, unless he had seen it, added, that amidst the distress population went on increasing,

inasmuch as the unfortunate beings become reckless, and desperate, and marry without thought.' 'In proportion,' says this witness,† as people become more wretched, the population increases. I mean to say, that where men are reckless and desperate in their character, they do not look for improvement in their social condition, and they take the only enjoyment they have in their power-they marry, Hence, in the worst parts of Ireland, and in Lancashire, population more rapidly increases than in places where the people are better off.'

The excellent Bishop Berkeley among those Queries, many of which are as pertinent to existing circumstances as they were when first propounded, asks,‡'whether one may not be allowed to conceive and suppose a society or nation of human creatures, clad in woollen cloths and stuffs; eating good bread, beef, and mutton, poultry and fish, in great plenty; drinking ale, mead, and cyder; inhabiting decent houses, built of brick and marble; taking their pleasure in fair parks and gardens; depending on no foreign imports for food and raiment ?' He had at that time, and could have, no anticipation of a state of things in which a portion of the community, fearfully large, would depend for subsistence, not upon the imports of a nation but upon its exports; and depend thus upon the foreign market so wholly and miserably as to afford an answer, equally unforeseen, to another of his queries,§ 'Whether *Second Report, p. 54. + Ibid. p. 61. Query 223. § Query 325.

there