labourers may be benefited precisely in the same manner, and by the operation of analogous causes. The weaver, or the miner, may be temporarily benefited by a sudden rise in the price of cloth, or of iron, and a consequent rise in the wages of weavers, or of miners;* it would, however, be extremely illogical to affirm that it was permanently advantageous to either of these classes of labourers to raise the price of cloth, or of iron, by measures calculated to restrict the supply of those indispensable articles; and it is equally illogical to affirm, that the ploughman is benefited by a law which raises the price of bread, by causing a scanty supply of corn. In the case of a restricted supply of iron, the ultimate advantage, if any, would accrue to the owners of iron mines, and in that of cloth to those of wool, or of sheep; and so, in the case of corn,

* Whether this rise of price be occasioned by an encreased consumption, or by a diminished supply, is, in this view, perfectly immaterial, as, in either case, the wages of the producers will experience a temporary rise..

the owner of land alone can ultimately be benefited, and even he is far less benefited than is commonly supposed.

Now, if it be an error that the farming labourer, considered as a class, is benefited by an artificial enhancement of the price of corn, it is well worth enquiring into the origin of this error; but, in pursuing this enquiry, we must not lose sight of one of the most efficacious principles of the human mind-the association of ideas. The tendency which this principle has to connect in our minds, as cause and effect, ideas, between which there is no essential connexion, inclines me to suspect that the opinion in question may have been generated in the following manner.

During the period which embraces the close of the last, and the commencement of the present century, corn frequently bore a high price, occasioned partly by natural, partly by artificial causes; great enclosures, drainages, and other agricultural improvements, were the consequence. Hence arose, in the extensive

districts where they were progressing, an unusual demand for labour-bence a rise in wages-hence the opinion that the condition of the labourers was permanently and generally prosperous and hence the supposition that high prices, and the prosperity of the labourers, were inseparably and necessarily connected. A very small share of reflection, however, is requisite to convince us, that though the prosperity of the labourers, (a point by no means established,) and a high price of corn, inay have been contemporaneous, the latter was not the cause of the former, except with the aid and through the intervention of concomitant causes, which cannot be again brought into operation. The concurrence of these other causes, must be constantly borne in mind. It must never be forgotten, that, if the labourer did enjoy prosperity at that period, there were many other causes, besides dear corn, that contributed to it; among other, the unceasing demand for men to supply our various military establishments, which may be exemplified

by the fact, that, in the latter years of the war, the price given for substitutes in the militia, in some agricultural counties, varied from £35. to £50. Notwithstanding, however, all these causes, the prosperity of the labourer, even in those days, is a point not yet sufficiently established. Most earnestly, therefore, do I entreat you to investigate the following question dispassionately.

Did the period of the so called agricultural prosperity, which is supposed to have reached its highest pitch in the year 1810, really bring comfort into the cottage of the labourer? Did it give him a greater command over the first necessary of life? Did it enable him to obtain something beyond the necessaries of life, and thus to raise himself in the scale of society? To those landowners who took advantages of the times, and to those tenants whose landlords did not, I know well that it brought wealth; but whether it brought comfort to the labourer, except in districts where enclosures, or other improvements, which cannot be repeated, were in actual progress, is a very

different question.*

It is, nevertheless,

a

question which must be solved, before we can determine whether agricultural prosperity can be truly predicated of that period of our history. Summon, therefore, into your presence, the men who are old enough to remember those times, and who are both able and willing to give you an account of their then condition. Let these enquiries be made in various situations. Make them in districts of old enclosure-make them in districts of open field-make them in the North, and in the middle, and in the South of England, excluding only those particular spots where such improvements were in actual progress, as, when once finished, cannot be repeated. your enquiries are so conducted, I am much mistaken, if you will not find that the boasted

If

*The drainage and allotment of the fens in Lincolnshire, the enclosure of the wolds in the East Riding of Yorkshire, and of the downs in Sussex and Wiltshire, are operations that have ceased, never to return. There can be no repetition of these extraordinary sources of demand for a species of labour usually (though not with very strict propriety) termed agricultural.