,'<>S Population of Great Britain and Ireland. [Dec. 



Tho existence, then, of amass of pauperised labour in some parts of 

 Great Britain and Ireland, which is rapidly going on to degrade the whole 

 productive labour of the country to its level, we think may be assumed. 

 The Committee, in its Report, seems to address itself rather by preference 

 to the condition of the agricultural population of the kingdom ; but the 

 evidence of all the witnesses examined from the manufacturing districts 

 shews that the state of things there is no less deplorable. The question, 

 therefore, shortly is the evil being proved What is the remedy ? 



In proceeding to this question, then, it becomes first necessary that we 

 should set out by understanding the nature of the evil which we have to 

 cure; and, with this view, we must call the fact to our remembrance, that 

 the Surplus with which we are dealing is not a Surplus of Population as 

 regards the capabilities of the land ; but a Surplus of Labour over and 

 above the wants and demands of the community. It is not that we have 

 more people than the soil can maintain; because in England, Scotland, 

 and Ireland there are more than ten million acres of land uncultivated; 

 full two-thirds of which is capable, according to the best authorities, of 

 being reclaimed, and which, being reclaimed, would produce food to 



tain ten times trie amount of " surplus population" that the wildest scheme 

 of Emigration could ever be calculated to provide for. Nor is it apart 

 from this fact that the power of subsisting population in Great Britain is 

 at all necessarily limited by the cultivation or working of our land ; be- 

 cause every manufacturer probably in the country might find abundance 

 of employment to-morrow, if he were at liberty to accept the cheap corn 

 of Russia or of Poland in exchange for the cloths which he produces. 

 Therefore, we must distinguish. It is not the physical absence of means 

 to live, but the artificial institutions and position of society, which prevent 

 us from increasing our population, or oblige us to diminish it : we have not 

 more labour than we can maintain ; but we have more than the circum- 

 stances of the time afford a demand for : and the result is, that the lower 

 classes, whose labour is the only 'commodity they have to dispose of, are 

 ruined by its abundance, and the consequent diminution of its price. 



In suggesting a remedy, therefore, for the evil, it is necessary to select 

 that remedy, not with a view to its powers or operation in the abstract, but 

 with a reference to those peculiar circumstances in the state of this coun- 

 try, subject to which, in practice, if adopted, it will have to be worked. 

 We must examine how it bears, not merely upon the incident of the sur- 

 plus population or surplus labour of the British empire, but how it may 

 work in conjunction with all the various vested rights and interests which 

 we must support : how it will suit and operate in connexion with the agri- 

 cultural interest that holds the property of our land ; with the foreign trade, 

 that gives subsistence to our manufactures ; with the public burthens and 

 customary religious dues, which, as long as the present system holds toge- 

 ther, we must pay ; and, last not least, with the arrangements and distri- 

 bution of all private property, and with the liens to which such property is 

 subject. 



In the abstract, a choice of expedients presents itself. We may extend 

 our home cultivation : we may admit foreign grain, and increase the sale 

 of our manufactures: or we may do what it is now proposed to do send 

 our surplus population abroad. And it is only necessary purposely to leave 

 out of sight any one collateral circumstance which ought to be referred to; 

 and in favour of any one of these courses all opposite to, and striving in 



