218 



Monthly Review of Literature, 



[FEB. 



with a degree of clearness we have not be- 

 fore met with. We shall still express our 

 own convictions. The law which regulates 

 profit is the relation of supply and demand, 

 and that same law will raise or depress both 

 profit, and wages, though not precisely in 

 the same ratio. The rate of wages, again, 

 is not the least the labourer can live upon, 

 but the best he can get by bargain and 

 compact. Look to the common sense of the 

 thing, shown by plain facts. 



Some years ago, manufacturing labourers 

 had high wages. Why ? Because it was 

 the master's interest to give them. Why ? 

 Because he had a market for his actual pro- 

 duce, and for as much more as he could com- 

 pass. It was his interest, therefore, to em- 

 ploy as many more labourers as possible, to 

 the extent of his capital and credit, and 

 tempt them with higher wages. These 

 labourers have now low wages and why ? 

 Because it is no longer the master's interest 

 to give higher. Why ? Because he cannot 

 himself get the prices he used to do. Why ? 

 Because either he has overstocked the mar- 

 ket, or that market is contracted either he 

 has indiscreetly multiplied the supply, or 

 the demand has decreased, or both. And 

 both causes have concurred. Other coun- 

 tries manufacture for themselves ; and the 

 masters among us, calculating on the old 

 demand, have not stopped their supplies in 

 time. These are undeniable facts, and 

 surely shake to the foundation the sound- 

 ness of Mr. Ricardo's doctrine. 



Ricardo and all his school assign all to 

 labour, not meaning, nevertheless, to ex- 

 clude capital, but rather implying that 

 capital is the result of previous labour. Of 

 this an ill use has often been made by in- 

 judicious persons, especially by the author 

 of " Labour defended against the Claims of 

 Capital," who have led the labourers to 

 suppose they, the existing labourers, do all 

 are the sole producers, and, of course, are 

 entitled to all, or at least to a much larger 

 share than they ever get. It has not been 

 sufficiently urged, in company with this 

 notion, that the labourer, as things are now 

 conducted, could no more get on without 

 other people's capital, than the possessors 

 of capital without his labour. The effect 

 of this doctrine, coupled with existing 

 misery, is to exasperate, and to teach them 

 to throw more blame upon the masters than 

 fairly belongs to them. The government is 

 far more to blame than the masters ; for the 

 great mass of taxation falling upon con- 

 sumables, presses heavily upon the labourer, 

 and makes him feel the reduction of wages 

 more severely than he would otherwise do. 

 To listen to these Ricardo folks, the natural 

 and inevitable tendency of civilization is to 

 depress the condition of the workman ca- 

 pital and labour are for ever separate, and 

 their interests are for ever opposed to each 

 other. No : capital and labour are not ne- 

 cessarily and for ever separable ; and the 

 Co-operatives, now beginning to spread and 



be felt, will prove the fallacy of doctrines 

 calculated to drive the labourer to despair 

 and the country to rebellion. 



True Stories, from the History of Ire- 

 land, by J. J. Gregor. Second Series ; 



1830 Of course, these are intended as 



companions to Sir W. Scott's stories from 

 the Scottish history, as well as some other 

 person's stories from the English history ; 

 but neither of them very worthy of the dis- 

 tinction they aspire to. The first series did 

 not fall in our way ; and this, which is en- 

 titled the second, is nothing but a continu- 

 ous history of the Anglo-Irish under the 

 reigns of the Tudors. In that of Henry 

 VII. something like an approach to distinct 

 stories is attempted in the narratives of the 

 two impostors, if impostors they both were, 

 Simnel and Perkin Warbeck, both of whom 

 were favoured by the Irish, then, apparently, 

 all Yorkists. A similar attempt, though 

 blended still with both these, is the story 

 which details the ups and downs of the Earl 

 of Kildare, during the same reign. Two 

 or three similar attempts occur, as the story 

 of Lynch, the mayor of Galway, 1493, who, 

 with a sort of Roman sternness, an exagge- 

 rated sense of duty, more surely to be won- 

 dered at than admired, became the arrester 

 of his own son, charged with a murder, 

 committed in passion and mistake, and not 

 only his arrester, but his judge, and finally, 

 and literally, his executioner, for nobody else 

 could be found barbarous enough, even in Ire- 

 land, to perform the horrid office. More than 

 one half the volume is occupied with O'NeiTs 

 rebellion, during, the last twenty years of 



Elizabeth the narrative of which is full of 



confusion, and written in perfect obli vion of 

 the author's professed purpose. Though 

 O'Neil, as Essex said of him, probably 

 cared as little for religion as his horse did, 

 yet the changes in religious forms, and for 

 political purposes, violently enforced, were, 

 at least, the ostensible cause of O'NeiFs 

 rebellion ; and we are glad to see, in any 

 shape, such violences for such purposes 

 reprobated. A popular history of Ireland 

 is sadly wanted, and we are half afraid 

 Moore is scarcely to be trusted with the 

 subject. 



An Introductory Treatise on the Nature 

 and Properties of Light, and on Optical 

 Instruments. By W. M. Higgins Greek 

 and Latin used to be not simply the staple 

 but the ne plus ultra of English education, 

 and the pedagogue, to employ the language 

 of the late Dr. Parr, who failed to drive it 

 into the heads of his pupils, jerked it in 

 where he could. Things are changed now, 

 and education is required to be de omnibus 

 rebus et quibusdam aliis : we know not 

 what good can come of it: the brain of a boy 

 is not like the stomach of an ostrich, it can- 

 not digest the heterogeneous crudities with 

 which it is surcharged, and intellectual dis- 

 ease must follow. Still this system is the 

 rage of the day, and interest is too feelingly 



