quality; they must sink to a lower scale of living, they must consume bacon instead of fresh meat, and potatoes instead of bread; or, finally, they must starve, or rob, or come upon the parishwhile their former employers carry their capital to establish manufactories in other countries;-for that they should give more for their food than the price of their labour will enable them to command, is an evident impossibility; and the attempt to get more from them by preventing importation, or any other contrivance on the part of the agriculturists, must, from the nature of things, not merely prove a signal failure, but just such a failure as that of a certain dog who lost a good bone out of his mouth by catching at the other which he fancied he saw in the water.

This then is the dilemma in which we are placed, and it is essential that it should be well and thoroughly understood. The manufacturing population (whose consumption, owing to their great number, determines the prices of provisions) cannot afford to pay more than the present prices for the food they consume, or to consume a larger quantity at the present prices-because they cannot raise the prices of their goods and labour beyond the point determined by the increasing competition of the foreign market. The farmers, on their side, can neither increase the quantity of their produce, nor lower its price to suit the diminishing means of the manufacturer,-because the soils of this country will not bear any larger quantity without an increased expense, nor the same quantity at a less expense.

Here then we are at a dead lock. The hitch is complete and effectual; and as the population, already redundant, is continuing rapidly to increase upon us, (at the rate indeed of above eight hundred per diem,) and consequently the competition for labour, and the reduction of wages, and the depression of the labouring class, and finally their demoralization, discontent and disaffection, are all increasing in the same rapid rate of progression,—it is evident that something or other must speedily give way, or the machine of society will go to rack. The great question is, what ought to be made to give way? In what direction is the opening to be safely and wisely broached for our relief from this dangerous state of accumulating pressure?

The opposing barriers which prevent the enlargement of the supply of food to meet the increase of the demand, are, as we have said, but two; the impossibility of raising the prices of the produce of our manufacturers so as to enable them to command more of the produce of our agriculturists; and the impossibility of the agriculturists lowering the price, or increasing the quantity of their produce, so as to enable the manufacturers to consume more. Now the prices of our manufactures in the foreign market are

wholly

wholly and absolutely beyond our possible control; they are determined by the comparative skill and resources (which are every day increasing) of the foreign competitors whom we meet there. In this direction therefore relief is impossible. Is the other barrier equally insurmountable? Is the difficulty of increasing our supplies of food without raising its price, as those political economists declare who most constantly have it in their mouths, an insuperable one-a cause of decay and declension which must overmatch all the improvements that man can make, and still retain him in the same position, or rather drag him yet lower and lower? Most decidedly we answer No! If this difficulty is looked at with an unprejudiced eye, it will be found as capable of removal by wisdom and foresight as any other of the numerous obstacles to his improvement, which, in the progress of civilization, man has encountered and subdued. There are, it is true, no means of increasing the quantity of food grown in this country without increasing its price, or of increasing its price without diminishing its consumption and sale, in consequence of the limited extent and fertility of our home soils. But are there no other soils to which we might have recourse for augmenting the supply of food without any increase of its cost? And if there are, and that they are accessible to us, (as who will venture to deny ?) why, in the name of common sense, common humanity, and common prudence, should we not avail ourselves of them? Why are we to suppose in theory, or enforce in practice, a limitation for which no necessity exists, and which is so ruinously hurtful in its consequences? If our home soils refuse to afford us additional supplies, except at an increased cost, why not resort-we do not say to foreign soils-though that would be the proper step were there not a preferable alternative-but to the soils, at least, of our colonies, of districts which are an integral portion of the empire, and whose interests are identified with our own? Are those soils in the same predicament? Are they too so fully cultivated, that to raise more food from them will require an increased proportionate outlay of labour and capital? Quite the contrary: their extent is almost boundless; their fertility extraordinary. A very small proportion only of the best quality of the richest vallies has yet been cleared and ploughed at all; and this, though cultivated in a most slovenly and careless manner, is wonderfully productive, and might, by the improved practices which have been adopted in this country, be made to produce, whenever it became necessary, incomparably more than it does at present.

Here then is the obvious remedy for the difficulty experienced by the population of this country in the increasing cost of pro

curing their supplies of food. Enlarge the field of their industry. Let them carry their labour and their capital to other soils beyond the narrow geographical boundaries of these islands, but which enjoy nearly the same climate, acknowledge the same government, and are peopled, as far as they are peopled, from the same families, and the difficulty vanishes at once. The same Jabour and capital which, applied here to the production of additional food, will barely reproduce the lowest rate of subsistence for the labourers, and the lowest rate of profit on the capital employed, will there produce food sufficient to maintain the cultivators in plenty, to afford a high profit to the capitalist, and, besides this, to supply our redundant manufacturers at home with subsistence in return for their labour, at such a price as will enable them to command it. By this one step we should obtain profitable employment for our excess of labour and of capital, both agricultural and manufacturing. All our great productive interests would share in the relief at once.

For it is undeniable, that there is as great a redundancy of capital in the country as of labour. Capitalists are as anxiously seeking, and as grievously vexed at not being able to discover, a demand for their capital, as are labourers for a demand for their labour. And to what is this redundancy of capital owing, but to the same cause as the redundancy of labour; the fact, namely, that enough, and more than enough, of manufactures are already produced, or in course of production, for the existing demand-that they encumber the market-and that the employment of capital in supplying the demand for agricultural produce, where alone the deficiency lies, cannot take place with profit in this country, because of the impossibility of increasing the produce of our limited soil without an increased proportional expenditure.

The economical position of Britain possesses, indeed, at this moment, a singular and most anomalous character. There exists at the same time an excess of capital, that is, of all the artificial auxiliaries to production, causing anxiety and distress among its owners; and an excess of labour, that is, of the active powers of production, causing the distress of the labourers. Now there are but three sources of production-land, labour, and capital. And, since there cannot be any general excess of the means of production, unless we suppose a general falling off in the desire to con sume, which is quite repugnant to the most obvious principles of human nature-it follows, as a necessary consequence of the acknowledged excess in this country of the two last sources of production, labour and capital, that there must be a deficiency of the third, namely, of land-of land, that is, sufficiently fertile to repay the employment of labour and capital upon it-that production

has,

upon

has, for this reason, increased of late in an unequal ratio, the increase being nearly confined to objects of secondary importance, whilst the primary product of land, labour, and capital, the food which human life is sustained-that species of capital which is by far the most important of all, since without it none other can be set in activity-has been comparatively stationary,-has not indeed kept pace with the increase of demand for it, caused by the continually enlarging number of consumers.

In confirmation of this view of the real cause of our present position, let us suppose for an instant that the means of enlarging the supply of food had advanced as rapidly as the means of supplying clothing and superfluities, either by reason of extraordinary agricultural improvements, rivalling those which have so stimulated our manufacturing industry-or through a miraculous increase of fertility in our soils-or the rapid accession of a large extent of new and rich land to our coasts. It is evident, that in this case none of the evils of our present economical condition could, by possibility, be in existence. The comparative cheapness of food, consequent on its increased production, without any increase in the cost, would not only afford an abundance of the necessaries of subsistence to our whole working population, but enabling them to spare a far larger proportion of their earnings than they can at present for the purchase of clothing and superfluities, would multiply the demand for such objects, and add greatly to the remuneration of both capital and labour employed in manufactures; while this thriving condition of the manufacturers must in turn ensure an equal remuneration to the agriculturists. All our productive interests would be in a state of sound and permanent prosperity.

Now though improvements in agriculture do not occur fast enough to meet the demand of our growing population from our limited home soils, and it is idle to expect any increase in the fertility of those soils, or any considerable accession of rich land to our coasts, yet the same beneficial consequences which would flow from these hypothetical circumstances, were they possible, must follow from our cultivation of the rich soils that are separated from Britain by the Atlantic, and fully to the same extent as if these soils were attached to our coast, but for the single circumstance of the cost of conveying their raw produce across the Atlantic. This cost, however, is diminishing daily. Already, within a few years past, the Atlantic has been practically reduced to one-third its width by the establishment of steam navigation. The cost of conveying flour from Quebec to Liverpool or Manchester is scarcely more now than that of its land carriage, a century back, from a distance of fifty miles. And by further improvements

improvements in communication, which are advancing with greater rapidity than any others, we may reasonably expect our North American colonies to be every year approaching still nearer to our great manufacturing districts, and their supply to be shortly effected from thence with no more difficulty or expense than it could be from a miraculous accession of rich land along the Norfolk and Essex coast; and effected, let it be remembered, through the agency of our own shipping and seamen.

Let but our redundant capital and labour take that direction, and give as free an admission to its produce as if it were really grown in Norfolk or Essex, and the double object will be answered, of increasing our supplies of food at home, and opening new avenues for the profitable employment of our surplus labour and capital, both agricultural and manufacturing.

And herein is seen the vast superiority of the trade with a colony over that with an independent country, though most political economists refuse to open their eyes to it. Were corn to be imported freely from Poland or the United States, in exchange for our manufactures, we not only become dependent for the first necessaries of life on the caprices of the governments of those countries, which may, at any time, interfere with our supply, but we become dependent also upon the rate at which capital, population, and the agricultural arts may chance to advance among their inhabitants, a rate which we can do nothing to accelerate. Moreover, though our manufacturing industry may be benefited by such a trade, our agriculturists do not profit from it in any degree, since there is no correspondent increase of employment for their labour and capital, but rather a decrease, in case the importation occasion a fall in the prices of their produce. But the system of supply by colonization, on the contrary, offers a direct addition to the means of employing our agricultural, as well as manufacturing population, the skill and capital of our farmers, as well as of our manufacturers; and thus gives a double stimulus to the national industry; at the same time that, instead of causing us to depend for our increased supply of food on the slow increase of the capital and population and inventive ingenuity of foreign nations, and on their arbitrary commercial regulations, we at once employ our own people, with all their known and tried resources of skill, genius, and enterprise, in its provision, whilst we ourselves regulate the terms of its admission.

If we would but consider a fertile and favourably situated colony, like the Canadas for example, in the light of an accession to the territory of Great Britain, which is, in truth, its real character, we should recognize at once its prodigious value as a field for the utilization of British agricultural labour and capital, and a

market