492 ~ APPENDIX. 



a system to expect any essential benefit from saving banks 

 or any other institutions to promote industry and economy 

 is perfectly preposterous. When the wages of labour are 

 reduced to the level to which this system tends, there will 

 be neither power nor motive to save. 



Mr. VVeyland strangely attributes much of the wealth and 

 prosperity of England to the cheap population which it 

 raises by means of the poor-laws ; and seems to think, that, 

 if labour had been allowed to settle at its natural rate, and 

 all workmen had been paid in proportion to their skill and 

 industry, whether with or without families, we should never 

 have attained that commercial and manufacturing ascendancy 

 by which we have been so eminently distinguished. 



A practical refutation of so ill founded an opinion may be 

 seen in the state of Scotland, which in proportion to its 

 natural resources has certainly increased in agriculture, ma- 

 nufactures and commerce, during the last Jifty years, still 

 more rapidly than England, although it may fairly be said 

 to have been essentially without poor-laws. 



It is not easy to determine what is the price of labour 

 most favourable to the progress of wealth. It is certainly 

 conceivable that it may be too high for the prosperity of 

 foreign commerce. But I believe it is much more frequently 

 too low ; and 1 doubt if there has ever been an instance in 

 any country of very great prosperity in foreign commerce, 

 where the working classes have not had good money wages. 

 It is impossible to sell very largely without being able to buy 

 ■very largely; and no country can buy very largely in which 

 the working classes are not in such a state as to be able to 

 purchase foreign commodities. 



But nothing tends to place the lower classes of society in 

 this state so much as a demand for labour which is allowed 

 to take its natural course, and which therefore pays the un- 

 married man and the man with a family at the same rate; 

 and consequently gives at once to a very large mass of the 

 working classes the power of purchasing foreign articles of 

 consumption, and of paying taxes on luxuries to no incon- 

 siderable extent. While, on the other hand, nothing would 

 tend so effectually to destroy the power of the working 

 classes of society to purchase either home manufactures or 

 foreign articles of consumption, or to pay taxes on luxuries, 

 as the practice of doling out to each member of a family an 

 allowance, in the shape of wages and parish relief combined^ 



