THE CUSTOMS REFORM. 175 



is to say, much higher than anywhere else wages must 

 rise in order to satisfy the new wants of the working 

 population. English manufactures will no longer be able 

 to sustain a foreign competition ; exports will fall off ; and 

 the distress of manufactures and commerce will react 

 upon agriculture, which will no longer be able to sell its 

 productions. A fall will then become inevitable ; but it 

 will be a terrible fall, produced by poverty. Popular 

 outbreaks of the worst kind will again take place, and no 

 resistance can oppose a starving population. Better give 

 in beforehand, when times are quiet, when a judicious 

 concession may not only prevent interference with manu- 

 facturing production, but will add to its activity. In- 

 crease of population and wealth will soon return to agri- 

 culture more than it has lost, by increasing at once the 

 number and the means of consumers. 



To these arguments supported by facts, the conviction 

 gradually arose that the evil was not altogether uni- 

 versal and irremediable ; that a good number of pro- 

 prietors and farmers had been only slightly injured ; 

 and that the rest had means of making up the loss in 

 price by increased production. From that moment the 

 cause of reform was secured, for the English nation is 

 instinctively a nation of economists, they all very well 

 understand the advantages of cheapness when it is pos- 

 sible. There have been, and no doubt will still be, many 

 individual cases of suffering ; but, upon the whole, as is 

 now admitted, this check, which appeared likely to be 

 so fatal to English farming, will, on the contrary, open 

 out for it a new path ; and, in addition to the immense 

 advantage of dissipating all fear concerning the national 

 supply of food, and the no less great advantage of re- 

 moving all cause of inferiority for English manufactures 

 in the markets of the world, there must be added that of 



