522 Notes of the Month on [ May, 
Our manufacturers are crying out in all directions. Meetings are held 
in which the masters tell the men, and doubtless tell them truly, that if 
things go on in this way, they must consider whether the human stomach 
cannot adapt itself to the food of the ox and the donkey, and whether 
they should not be led by their reason to do what King Nebuchadnezzar 
was led to do by his madness, and eat grass. The silk weavers are 
starving by twenty thousand at a time, in this very city of London, in 
the very centre of the opulence of the earth. The glovers are in the 
same condition.» The whole tribes of manufacturig commerce are say- 
ing or shouting the same thing from end to end of the land ; and what 
is to be the remedy? It will be found, we conceive, a much more puz- 
zling thing to his Majesty’s Cabinet, than any purchase of live stock that 
they have lately made, whether in the shape of noble individuals or ig- 
noble, or both in one. Mr. Vesey Fitzgerald’s argument has, we con- 
ceive, no chance of producing any other kind of conviction than that he 
is at an immeasurable distance from discovering the remedy, wherever 
it may lie. His answer to the complaint, that a hundred thousand men, 
willing to work, and perhaps the best workmen in the world, were with- 
out food, was the old official answer of the Huskisson school, from 
which and whose pupils may Heaven soon relieve our persons and 
purses. ‘ There is more raw silk imported this year than there was 
last year.”, Undoubtedly, if the weaver could eat silk, or if it could be 
stewed, in Sir Humphry Davy’s newly-invented crucible, into any sub- 
stantial expulsion of the feeling of emptiness from the stomach, the Pre- 
sident of the Board of Trade’s answer might have some meaning. But 
are we to take the desperate struggles of expiring trade, the mere 
fierce and gambiing throws of commerce,’ for its solid success? In the 
words of our intelligent contemporary, the Morning Journal—*« The im~ 
portations of silk have nothing to do with the question. On the same 
grounds might the President of the Board of Trade adduce, in proof of 
the prosperity and the high wages of the cotton weavers, the large and 
increased importations of cotton wool. The question at issue is, not 
whether more or less raw silk has been imported, but whether the manu- 
facturer is pursuing a profitable business, and the weaver earning ade- 
quate wages? It is true we may be weaving more yards of broad silks 
and calicoes ; but if we be giving ten pieces of silks and fifty pieces of 
calico, for one barrel of tallow, instead of the five pieces, and twenty-five 
pieces, which we were wont to give, does not this show that our labour 
is of less value than it was before, and that, under the new system, we 
are following a ruinous trade? If we now give fifteen hours’ labour for 
that foreign commodity which we were wont to purchase with ten 
hours’ labour, does not this show that our condition is worse, and the 
condition of the foreigner better? What does it signify how much silk 
and wool we import if the persons employed in the manufacturing of 
this silk and wool be starving? It is not a question of quantity—not a 
question of yards—not a question to be settled by the ell-measure ; buta 
question whether t eaver be adequately remunerated, and the capital 
of the manufacturer } ofitably employed? Now, we say that, under the 
present system, both of these parties are reduced toa state of unexampled 
distress. The employer is nearly ruined, the workman is reduced, to 
pauperism. This is the only fact worthy our consideration. The Mi- 
‘nister of the Crown, if he be an honest Minister, must endeavour first to 
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