542 PROSPECTS OF INDUSTRY 



currency are held up as having powerfully influenced the labour 

 market, and those dependent upon it. This also is unquestionable : 

 but the energies of a working population, although they may be 

 shackled by monetary regulations, and pressed upon by taxation, 

 cannot, when otherwise favorably placed, be broken down, either by 

 one or by both. There is, in fact, an irresistible tendency to equali- 

 sation between labour and the money value of all vendible articles, 

 which is generally overlooked. Property feels the pressure of 

 monetary changes directly ; but labour, the producer of property, 

 only indirectly and that in a greatly modified form. Again, our 

 agricultural population, and agricultural property, are represented as 

 the victims of an exclusive and unwise system of Corn Laws : here 

 there is room for an article, as there is no slight degree of fallacy 

 running through the arguments used pro and con on this subject. We 

 can do no more at present than merely allude to it, remarking that 

 the trade in corn ought to be placed precisely on the same footing as 

 other great branches of barter. 



These are some of the causes held out as having produced the 

 universally acknowledged distress pervading the labouring community, 

 and too notoriously verified by the enormous impost 7,000, 000 per 

 annum, levied under the name of poor-rate. Besides this immense 

 sum, private charity is ever largely at work ; and there are multitudes 

 of institutions devoted to the alleviation of the ills pressing upon the 

 poor. This distress too must not be received as being confined solely in 

 its uneasy consequences to the parties immediately suffering : it re-acts 

 fearfully upon the class immediately above it, namely, the small 

 shop-keeper and farmer; and its effects are felt more or less severely 

 through every portion of the social union. 



During the last century, or rather from the year 1700 to the 

 present date, one of the most singular and important revolutions has 

 been operated in England, of which history gives record ; and what 

 is extraordinary, is, that Government has been unconscious of it, and 

 even those most interested have never looked beyond their immediate 

 interest in the change. This revolution has completely changed the 

 industrial character of the country, and with this change has also 

 produced some remarkable alterations in the conditions of society. 

 This revolution is the conversion of England from an agricultural 

 to a manufacturing country. From a very careful analysis and com- 



