life is the most apparent, though, perhaps, it is not, in reality, more injurious to them, than to those branches of industry which seem to be withdrawn from its influence by the more extensive employment of machinery, but in which a large part of the expenditure may be ultimately resolved into the wages of labour.

In order to place this view of the necessary effects of the Corn Laws more distinctly before you, may I be allowed to exhibit some details of the expenses of labour, in a few of our leading manufactures?

It is a subject to which your habits rarely attract your thoughts; few of you have local opportunities for considering it; and I am afraid that I have remarked in some a reluctance to enquire into the state of your manufacturing and commercial countrymen.

In the manufacture of fine woollen cloth, the wages paid by the manufacturer amount to about 60 per cent. upon the total expenditure incurred between the purchase of the wool in the foreign port, and the period when the cloth is in a state fit for sale in the ma

nufacture of linen yarn, the corresponding expenditure in wages is about 48 per cent.

In the manufacture of earthenware, the wages paid by the manufacturer amount to about 40 per cent.; that is to say, in the conversion of the requisite quantity of clay into goods worth £100., £40. are paid to the workmen in the shape of wages.

It is obvious, however, that, in these three instances, especially in the latter, a very large proportion of the remaining charges is resolvable into the wages of labour, though, perhaps, not to so great an extent as in the next instances I am about to cite. In the manufacture of pig iron, the expense of labour upon the various ingredients employed, amounts to no less than 81 per cent.; and, in its subsequent conversion into bar iron, to 84 per cent.*

In the working of collieries, the expenses are almost entirely resolvable into labour; and, in cases within my own knowledge, the wages actually paid, exceed 90 per cent. upon the ** 165 upon 200.

current expenditure. In the different branches of the steel manufacture, the following may be

stated as the proportions per cent. which materials and wages bear to each other.

In Files (coarse).. Material 50 Wages 50 per cent.

Great as is the proportion which wages bear to the direct cost of manufacturing these articles, it must never be forgotten, that by far the greater part of the price of the material itself consists of wages; and, consequently, that almost the entire value of our steel goods may be said to consist of the wages of labour.

These are only a few specimens, selected not for their peculiar applicability to my argument, but because I can speak of them, either from my own knowledge, or from information derived immediately from those who are en, gaged in these branches of industry,

With these examples before our eyes, surely it is impossible to imagine that the employment of machinery renders it a matter of indifference to our manufacturing capitalists, whether the food of the operative classes is dear or cheap. Even where machinery has been carried to the greatest extent, the wages of labour constitute a most important element in the price of manufactured goods; and high wages, when they are the result of dear provisions, not of a growing demand for labour, must ultimately tell upon commercial prosperity. Dear provisions must, indeed, produce one of the following effectsthey must either lower the condition of the labourer, or raise the rate of wages. Nobody can wish the former result; you must, therefore, wish high wages to be the result of dear corn-but if wages are high, the price of goods must be high-but if the price of goods be high, our manufacturers cannot compete with foreigners but if they cannot compete with foreigners, our export trade is diminished-if our export trade is diminished, the prosperity of our manufacturing population is undermined

D

-if their prosperity is undermined, they will consume fewer provisions; the demand for agricultural produce, in the manufacturing counties, will be rectricted-the surplus produce will remain in the hands of the farmer, and the ultimate result will be a fall of rents, occasioned, be it remembered, by an attempt to raise them. Let this sink deep into your minds.

Of the importance of the demand for corn in the manufacturing districts, and of the effect which it produces upon the welfare of the agricultural tracts, it has often appeared to me that many of you are not sufficiently aware. Your habits do not lead you to trace the winding course of commerce. In some of you, the opinions of olden times are not yet extin, guished; the prejudice is still fostered, that attention to such subjects is inconsistent with the station of a landed gentleman; among others prevails a distaste to commerce and manufactures, and, transitively, to those who are engaged in them. Some of you dislike the smoke and bustle of commercial towns; and what is originally only a matter of taste, affects ulti