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Lord Fitzwilliam considers two-thirds of a bushel 

 to be about the consumption of the family of an 

 agricultural labourer, and he remarks that there 

 are no labourers who spend so much upon the 

 article of bread as those engaged in husbandry. 

 The consumption of the manufacturing labourer and 

 his family would, on the average, be about half a 

 bushel a week. In a manufacturing workman's 

 family there will, on an average, perhaps, be three 

 persons who though partaking of this half bushel, 

 are nevertheless earning wages which go towards 

 the payment of it. Now the wages of these three 

 operatives, other things remaining as before, would 

 only be reduced three- pence halfpenny a week 

 from the fall of Is. 9d. a bushel in the price of 

 wheat. But, even, suppose they consume two- 

 thirds of a bushel of wheat, the reduction would 

 only be about k\d. And this reduction would only 

 be effected by the price of corn ruling entirely the 

 price of labour, which, it is evident, it does not 

 do. And would this small reduction in the price 

 of labour lower the price of manufactured articles, 

 even if manual labour were the only labour em- 

 ployed, and this entirely influenced by the price 

 of corn ? When we consider, that in almost all 

 branches of trade, machinery is the great operating 

 power, and manual labour only a smaller compo- 

 nent part of the value of the commodity, we affirm, 

 that the trifling effect upon wages, even if they 

 were governed by the price of corn, which it is 

 evident they are not, between the price of wheat at 



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