62 



the value of the last twelve years, were not the 

 immense fortunes, which have been made in this 

 great branch of trade, made during that period ? 

 Is this any proof that a high price of corn, not that 

 I am an advocate for a high price, but is it any 

 proof that it prevents the prosperity of the manu- 

 facturers ? 



Lord Fitzwilliam, and other advocates for a free 

 trade in corn, say, that the Corn Laws keep up the 

 price of labour ; they reason as if it were a truth 

 fully established, that the price of the necessaries 

 of life entirely governs the rate of wages ; indeed 

 that the price of wheat, one article only of neces- 

 sity, does so ; and therefore, the lower the price 

 of corn, the lower the price of all labour, and the 

 lower the price of labour, the lower the price of 

 manufactured goods. But, neither the premises 

 nor the inferences are correct. And the evidence 

 which the advocates of a free corn trade bring 

 forward to prove that the price of corn entirely 

 controuls the price of labour is always drawn from 

 its effects on the price of agricultural labour, and 

 yet they assert that it affects and governs the value 

 of all labour. They seem to consider this a pro- 

 position admitted and established. That it affects 

 the wages of the labourer in husbandry we have 

 conceded, for the reasons before given ; but we 

 cannot admit that it governs the wages of the 

 artisan, for though it is a chief article of his con- 

 sumption, he does not spend so large a portion of 

 his earnings in bread as the labourer in husbandry ; 



