182T.J Letter on Affairs in general. 41i> 



true course for securing the wealth and prosperity of every country, was to 

 give all possible encouragement, not merely to the invention of machinery, 

 but to every exertion no matter in what shape of the ingenuity of its 

 inhabitants." Now, in its full extent, and taken practically, I doubt the 

 truth of this principle very much. I think if a man could, to morrow, by 

 his " ingenuity,'* discover the secret, in England, of making gold, we 

 should find that we had no choice left, but against law, and humanity, 

 and political economy to assassinate him. And, to apply this principle 

 only to the case of the invention of machinery ! Suppose that I could 

 invent to-morrow such engines for uso in the cotton trade, the woollen 

 trade, or the iron trade, as should effect the production of goods, in those 

 trades, with half the quantity of human labour now employed, and, at a 

 reduction, as to price, say of twenty per cent, upon their present cost 

 wiiat other operation would this " invention" have upon the wealth and 

 happiness of England, than to add four millions more of starving paupers 

 to the million, or million and a half, that we have without work, or much 

 chance of work, already ? It will hardly do, in answer to this certain evil, 

 to tell me of a possible good : to wit, that our lower cost of production, 

 allowing us to undersell other people, will give us the custom of all foreign 

 nations ; beause, in the first place let us assume this to happen after we have 

 already the custom of these foreign nations ; not to speak of our free prin- 

 ciple, which allows the exportation of these very same machines to foreign 

 nations, in order that they may be enabled to produce for themselves. But 

 the most extraordinary answer to this proposition is given by a Minister in per- 

 son it appears in Mr. Wilmot Norton's speech upon the Emigration ques- 

 tion, delivered only a night or two before or after this declaration by Mr. Peel. 

 By way of shewing for he is a political economist too the absolute neces- 

 sity of emigration, to relieve the distress of Ireland, Mr. Horton refers to evi- 

 dence shewing the state of that country, and quotes a respectable authority 

 upon the state of labour there, substantially to the following effect. 

 *' Low as the rate of wages given to labourers is, in Ireland, to perform 

 any given piece of work there cosis at least as much as it would in Eng- 

 land/* And the cause of this expense is, " that the tools and machines 

 with which men work in that country are so unimproved as, compared with 

 ours at home, that it takes a greater quantity of time and labour, to 

 perform the same amount of task.*' Then, what says Mr. Horton, infer- 

 ring from this fact? Not that the exertion of improvement, or ingenuity, 

 will remedy that state of things, and give Ireland " wealth and happi- 

 ness ;" but that improvement will have the very contrary effect. He 

 says " Here is a state of things in which emigration alone can help us; 

 for, to make the least improvement in the rude engines and machines with 

 which the people of Ireland work, would only be to add to the misery of 

 the country, by making a less quantity of human labour requisite in it 

 than it now finds room for, and consequently increasing the extent of its 

 unemployed and starving population." Now I am quite convinced that 

 we cannot, by any legislative enactment, check the use of machinery : but 

 it is impossible for me to believe, looking at the various relations of civil- 

 ized society that the mass of people in any country are always neces- 

 sarily benefited, by any event or arrangement which makes their labour 

 capable of being dispensed with. 



