54 



field of employment is contracted, the demand 

 for labour is reduced, and the rate of wages de- 

 cline ; on the contrary, if the demand be increased, 

 the field of employment is enlarged, there is a 

 fresh demand for labour to produce an increased 

 supply of corn to meet the increased demand for 

 it, and the rate of wages advance. Thus the in- 

 creased demand for corn grown within our own 

 territories occasions extra capital, and extra labour 

 to be employed, and raises the rate of wages. It 

 is, therefore, of great importance to the agricultural 

 labourers that the demand for the produce of the 

 soil should increase, and that it should be supplied 

 by the employment of their own labour. 



Lord Fitzwilliam says, " that the boasted period 

 of agricultural prosperity was to the labourer a 

 season of distress and the one in which he began 

 to fall from his former station to that lower condi- 

 tion to which we now see him reduced." This is 

 the first time I ever heard it asserted, that, during 

 the war, the agricultural labourers were distressed ; 

 the universal belief is that they were then fully 

 employed, and tolerably well paid ; and though, I 

 agree with Lord Fitzwilliam, that the labourer in 

 husbandry " has fallen from his former station ;" I 

 do not agree with his lordship in the causes which 

 have occasioned this fall. Lord Fitzwilliam dates 

 the declension from the time that bread became 

 dearer, with the high price of corn which obtained 

 during the war ; because it left him a small sur- 

 plus, after the purchase of the first necessary of 



