1831.] Machinery. 171 



that to the sacrifice of the capitalists ? No : we only check the capitalist. 

 He will go on no longer than while he makes some gain, and we only force 

 him while he goes on he can quit the field when he pleases to assign 

 a reasonable share to the man without whom he can gain nothing. He 

 is at liberty to withdraw his capital when he likes. Well, but he will 

 withdraw it speedily, and then what becomes of the labourer ? He will 

 be thrown upon society upon the poor's rate ; and the capitalist, in his 

 capacity of householder, must help to support him. But England will 

 not be worth living in then let the capitalist leave it. Better he leave 

 it who has something to take with him, than he who has nothing. 



But, after all, we do not think there is yet a peremptory occasion for 

 having recourse to this act of expediency, which, however, if the same 

 career is persisted in, will, doubtless, finally become imperative. There 

 is yet the land, and the relief which the owners of that land can command. 

 The great mass of agricultural labourers are in as miserable as oppressed 

 a condition, and perhaps more so than the manufacturing. What is the 

 immediate cause of this? Diminished wages. What the cause of that ? 

 High rents. And what of that ? The exactions of landlords. Well 

 then, if the landlord exacted less, could the farmer pay his labourers 

 more ? Certainly, and the landlord would soon force him, or renew his 

 old exactions. But the case is this the landlord exacts from the tenant 

 a rack rent, and in return, gives up the labourer to the tender mercies of 

 the tenant. And what then ? The labourer has no longer any one to 

 appeal to, because the landlord has sunk into a grasping trader, and has 

 parted with his best rights the right of protection. The farmer, thus 

 freed from restraint, reduces wages below the lowest necessaries of life, 

 and throws the labourer upon the parish, for the miserable remainder, 

 and thus also forces others, who have no interest in the labour, to help 

 him to pay his exorbitant rents. Landlords are making a grand parad- 

 ing, and get the facts blazoned in the papers, if they reduce their rents 

 ten per cent ; whereas, in many cases, a reduction of a hundred per cent, 

 would not bring their rents to what they were, forty years ago. It is 

 true, that landlords have ennobled their style of living vastly within 

 that period, and cannot, upon old rents; maintain the new scale of ex- 

 pence ; it is true also, that the farmer, imitating, often at no humble 

 distance, the magnificence of his landlord, has done the same thing, and 

 is still less able, at present rents and prices, to keep up his rate of expen- 

 diture but is all this show and finery, all this ambition and extrava- 

 gance to be supported at the cost and sacrifice of the miserable labourer? 

 No, no this is not to be tolerated longer. If a sense of common jus- 

 tice will not alter matters violence, we may be sure, will. 



The relief of the country is wholly in the hands, and within the power 

 of the landlords the relief not only of the agricultural, but also of the 

 manufacturing labourer. And why do we say all is in their hands ? 

 Because the condition of the farm- labourer is directly under their con- 

 trol, and if his condition be once brought back to the state it has been 

 in, and to which, in common humanity, it should with all speed be 

 brought, an improvement in the condition of the manufacturing labour- 

 er must immediately follow ; for the agricultural labourer will thus be- 

 come again a purchaser of manufactures, and the workman in his turn, 

 by the consequent advance of his wages, become also a fellow-con- 

 sumer of the labours of his own hands and that at present he is not. 

 Exportation abroad, till lately, was greatly inferior to home-consump- 



