go to this extent, yet if the larger earnings are obtained by sacrificing the ease and happiness of the people, such exertions will be wholly nugatory; for they will be made at the sacrifice of the only objects for which wealth is really valuable. These exertions, however, are really nothing but the primary and temporary effect of the change of circumstances; whence no conclusion can be drawn as to permanent consequences. The gradual deprivation of accustomed enjoyments which must follow from an increased difficulty in their retention, must cause them to be accounted less indispensable than before. The poor will become habituated to do without them, and eventually sink back into discomfort and lethargy. If we take from the labourer a large portion of the produce of his industry, the permanent effect must be to lessen the motive to exertion; from which a falling off in national production must ensue. Whence it follows, that heavy taxation, so far from promoting industry and public wealth, except as regards procuring the absolute necessaries of life, or as a first and temporary effect, must check exertion, and diminish public opulence. If a statesman could ever so far outrage the common rules of justice and humanity, as to place an unnecessary and unfair burthen of taxes on the industrious classes from this motive, such a wanton trampling on human endurance would be adding insult to injury, and treating them as beings destitute of reasoning faculties, and incapable of perceiving the plainest dictates of common sense ;—an outrage which could hardly fail sooner or later to draw down its just retribution on the head of the offender.

While a scanty and inadequate reward of labour takes away the zest for exertion, and imbitters the toil, an ample reward, on the other hand, removes its irksomeness, and proves a powerful stimulus to assiduous and unremitting exertion. A plentiful subsistence not only in itself promotes the health and vigour of the workman, but, by giving cheerfulness of spirits, contributes to his mental activity. If the prospect be seen not only of bettering his own condition, and procuring the means of ending his days in ease and comfort, but of advancing the fortunes of his children, an alacrity of mind is acquired thereby, which animates a man to exert his strength to the utmost. We always find

that class of persons the most active and enterprising which has this pleasing prospect in view, and which is able by its industry to procure some of the comforts and luxuries of life.

But the effects of a liberal reward of labour are not confined solely to augmenting the quantity of work performed. It has a tendency, besides, to raise the quality and value of the work. A workman who is well paid is thereby enabled to procure the best of tools, to furnish himself with every kind of capital, and acquire every information, necessary to the perfection of his art. In a debate in the House of Commons, on the silk trade, in the session of 1826,* the member for Coventry stated, “that there were in that city 9700 looms, 7500 of which were in the hands of operative weavers, who applied their manual labour, as well as their machinery, to the manufacture of ribands. These looms were for the most part of the worst possible construction; and it would scarcely be believed that the improved loom in France would, in a given time, produce five times as much riband as the common loom in England, with the same degree of manual labour. He could also state that there existed an improved manufacture in Germany, by which one man could make forty-eight times as much velvet as could be made in an equal time by an English machine." Yet the English weaver of riband was too poor to buy an improved loom, and was consequently compelled to struggle in want against all the disadvantages to which the imperfection of his machinery subjected him. But a liberal reward of labour is of not less importance in another point of view. The workman thereby acquires the means of giving his children a better education; of putting them out apprentices; and thus of rendering their labour, as well as his own, more valuable. This superior education, finished with an apprenticeship, operates beneficially in a twofold manner: first, by increasing the quality and value of the future labour of the child; and, consequently, by placing him in circumstances to procure a comfortable subsistence for himself, and to become a useful and reputable member of society; a strength, and perhaps an ornament, to the state; and to continue the same advantages to his posterity. Secondly, by lessening the number * 1 Parl. Hist. 1826, p. 389.

of the lowest class of labourers, (always superabundant,) it prevents a stagnation of employment amongst them, and by a better distribution of labour in the various occupations, contributes to raise the reward of their labour.

Again, there are moral consequences connected with a liberal reward of labour, that ought not to be overlooked, and which tend greatly to the public welfare and happiness. The influence both of virtue and of vice is not confined exclusively to the individuals themselves; these qualities extend their happy or baneful consequences, in a greater or less degree, to all who are within the circle to which their action reaches. Thus all men are interested in the morality of their neighbours. The great source of vice, and of its consequence, suffering, is to be found in that ignorance, and the strength of those temptations, which are induced through poverty and want. It cannot be expected that knowledge should be acquired unless there be the pecuniary means necessary to the acquisition. The man who feels himself properly remunerated for his labour, is likely to be a contented, a peaceful, and useful subject of the state; while the man who believes that he is not so remunerated, must be expected to be discontented, and to show himself an enemy to social order, when an opportunity may offer of acting on his feelings with impunity.

The abuse which workmen sometimes make of high wages, by indulging in idleness and dissipation, is perhaps to be ascribed in part, not so much to the liberal reward of labour generally throughout all the departments of industry, as to an inequality in wages, and to their own being higher than the generality of others. Or, possibly, it may be the first and temporary effect of a sudden advance from low to high wages. It is impossible not to deprecate an artificial depression of wages, or to be insensible to the advantages of a more generous system. But if, when wages in general are low, those of some few workmen are disproportionably high, a depression of these last, so far as to reduce them to the average of other wages, is commonly only another name for raising those other wages. high wages which are paid in some trades, are most frequently paid out of the pockets of other trades, in the shape of high

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prices of the articles consumed. As much as the rewards of one class of labour are thus higher than others, so much must the real rewards of those other classes of labour, which have to pay them, be relatively lower. A reduction of wages to the extent of equalizing them, when no natural reason exists for an inequality, cannot but promote the public good; while perhaps even the workmen whose pay is reduced may not be really injured thereby. But when the pecuniary circumstances of some workmen are much above those of other workmen occupying the same rank in life, and much more than enough to purchase all those things which the habits and style of living of such persons call for, the men are sometimes induced to go to excess, or become idle, from the want of relish for a higher kind of expenditure. The habits which a superabundance of means above their station thus induces, are injurious not only to the workmen themselves, but to their fellow-workmen, by communicating a desire to join in similar excesses, though their circumstances are unable to bear the expense.

High wages generally, however, after they have continued some time, have no effect of this kind. In support of this fact, we need only contrast the condition and habits of our present workmen with those of their forefathers. The command which their wages afford them over the necessaries and luxuries of life, is much greater than that of similar workmen of one or two centuries back. Yet they are not more given to excess: if there be a difference, it is the reverse. The articles on which their ampler wages are expended are all of superior kinds; and in this way their earnings are wholly absorbed, without leaving much to spend in excesses. Thus, though a rise of wages should lead at first to intemperance and idleness, this is the effect merely of the charge. In the end, the habits of expense of the workmen, and the kind of articles they consume, rise in a measure commensurate with their enlarged means.

The manner in which taxes are imposed, whether directly on the earnings of industry, or indirectly on the commodities on which those earnings are expended, is, as regards the stimulus to industry, matter of no importance. They have the same effect in one way as in the other. It is the quantity and quality

of the articles which the earnings of industry place within the command of the labourer, that form the incentive to labour.

Similarly detrimental to the exertion of industry with taxation are taxes on luxuries, and sumptuary laws, as well as those restrictions on commerce which prohibit the importation of the desired productions of foreign countries, or burthen them with heavy duties, that raise their prices to an exorbitant height. By such means, the rewards of labour are deteriorated in quality, which is the same as though they were in part taken away; and, in consequence, the people are likely to work less than they would do, if these desired productions could be obtained at easier rates. There is no ground to apprehend, from lessening the labour which must now be exerted to procure these desired productions, that those luxurious habits should be diffused amongst the people which in other countries and times have been thought to have brought on the decay and ruin of states. A general prevalence of luxurious habits has a tendency, it is true, to retard the progress of population. But the decline of empires has been occasioned, not so much by this circumstance, resulting from the facility of acquiring articles of luxury, as from the vices of every kind which have accompanied excessive wealth and indolence, with excessive inequality of circumstances. When a general demoralization of the people has taken place, when violence and wrong have usurped the place of security and justice, and oppression has set men at variance with each other, the bonds which held society together have become loosened, the nation has been rendered powerless, and has fallen an easy prey to the first invader. But in the present state of society, the easy acquisition of articles of luxury, while it adds greatly to the enjoyments of the people, can scarcely weaken, much less destroy, the state, because it has no tendency to introduce vice, oppression, and demoralization amongst its members.

There are some political reasoners who would keep down the wages of labour by every possible means, for the purpose of keeping up a foreign trade, and of preventing our merchants from being undersold by those of other countries in foreign markets. Such men look at nothing but the gains of the mer