LETTER OF AN OPERATIVE. TO THE EDITOR. medicinable eye Corrects the ill aspects of planets evil then frights-FIRES-and horrors Sir, I have devoted three letters, principally to unfold and illustrate the important fact, that the agricultural and manufactur- If we view the conduct and measures ing interests exist in proportions incompa- adopted and pursued by the leading charactible with the well being of society. It is ters in the two great interests of this counnow several years since I arrived at this con- try, we shall find a striking parallelism of clusion. It was from our overgrown manu- design, but a widely different result; for factures, as indicated by stagnations in trade, these respective interests have something glutted markets, &c. which led me to infer contrary and antagonising in their immeconversely that agriculture must be in a diate economy, and of course the parties state of decay, or at least greatly wanting in subject to mutual jealousies, and even recrirelative improvement. The first document, minations; few seeing the general law which however, which I happened to see, bearing binds altogether; and fewer still, perhaps, out the above conclusion, was a letter which being willing to submit to that law, when it appeared in the Leeds Mercury of Jan. 29, acts as a barrier to their own schemes of 1831, signed “A Farmer;" stating "that it aggrandizement. Indeed the artifical elevawas universally acknowledged that agricul- tion of prices in England have placed every ture was on the decline." Evidence to this class in a novel situation; scarcely any one effect is now so abundant that he "who knowing what course to take; some without runs may read," some of which I shall in- compass-or with needles unmagnetized, cidentally notice in this communication. are "lost in shallows and uncertainties;" Strict method, perhaps, would have pointed while others profiting even by such a state of out the propriety of here following up what things, have opened to them a straightforI consider to be the real cause of the above ward course to opulence. But of all classes derangement, as I treated in my last of the the land-owners seem to be the most beof the proximate cause: but I wish to make wildered. They are directed by a political a practical digression, because I may be in economy which has "knotted and gendererror on that point; or may not be able to ed" in the hot beds of manufacturing towns; render my views of it more than problema- imagining that what is deemed expedient in tical; besides, if fully proved, it may be dif- the one interest, under a forced and unnaficult to get all parties willing that the real tural system, is the same in the other, which cause should be removed, and if we cannot always ought to be a corrective of the evil. do what we ought, we ought to do what we Look at their servile policy. The landlord, in can. In the workings of a complex system order to keep up his rents, throws together it is curious to trace both the phenomena the small farms and makes large farms: and the attempted solutions. The various the millocrat seeks to destroy the little mamotions and motives, thwart and intervolved nufacturer, and erect factories. The land-the contrariety of means and ends-this interest predominant and then the other now all in utmost harmony "working well," anon in "opposition trine and quartile" with aspects evil-this body exorbitating, then that acquiring an undue momentum and velocity, disturbing forces being thus introduced; and if no master-mind be at hand to over-rule; if no lord drives away the population, and clears his estates of the cottages :-the cotton and woollen Lords surround their factories with cottages for their work-people, thus adding rents to profits; both have one end in view. By and bye the millocrats strive to supersede manual labour by machinery; but in stead of the owners of the soil being ready and prepared to welcome back this surplus now seem rather queer for a landlord to adopt, when the principle of consanguinity is nearly destroyed, and capital almost annihilated! Such is the vortex into which people are driven who abandon rectitude and justice! As in the physical, so in the moral world, the equilibrium may be destroyed, but reaction-is inevitable: yes, of all expedients the land-owners could have adopted the worst is the "engrossing of large farms," and the consequent expulsion of the peasant from the soil. These almost solitudes, with which they have surrounded themselves may seem to promise security-like the ostrich who thrusts her head into the be so. If the population be not in the country, it must be in the town-if it be not agricultural it will be manufacturing, and the excess of the one will not be thrown back gratuitously into the lap of the other: population, they indeed view it as a "nuisance," and promote emigration schemes! The millocrat, we see, lays out his profits, as they accumulate, in rental property; but the land-owner spends his rent in the metropolis or on the continent, instead of laying out a good portion thereof in the reproduction of rent, it is flung in the lap of the subaristocracy, redoubling their wealth and power at the expense of the land-owner, who thus burns his candle at both ends; -"dying daily of the most favourable symptoms." There are two grand errors in this conduct of the land-owners, and several minor ones; first, it will be ultimate ruin, and that at no distant period; second, thicket and imagines she is safe; it will not that it is accelerative of that result, whereas prudence would have suggested a counteractive process, even though that catastrophe seemed inevitable itself. It will be ultimate ruin :--for as labour is the source of wealth, so is population the source of labour, and there is no imaginable succedaneum ; a process of depopulation will and must necessarily end in poverty. The increase and distribution of the population of England and Wales, during the last century, is thus exhibited :—Agricultural counties have increased 84 per cent. Manufacturing counties, 295 do. Metropolitan, 147 do. which must be regarded as of a manufacturing a quotation from the then forthcoming complexion; and be it remembered that whatever is thus specifically bad, is naturally aggravated by the condition of Ireland. Again; had the landlords used their rents in the reproduction of rent, by meeting the demands of a growing population, they would have placed the 'governor' upon the manufacturing interest-not by 'corn laws', but by a just policy. Food and raiment agricultural and manufacturing produce would have maintained a closer equivalency who amass princely fortunes by overworking -competition would not have grown so intense-workmen not such absolute slaves -poor rates not, as they are said to be, gaping to "swallow up the estates"-less toil would have been exacted, and enjoyment more universal. This course indeed may heard you not that cry-"No corn laws?" In truth, it is in the proper distribution of the people that gives the "unity and married calm of states," or if either predominate, the lesser evil is, when the agricultural interest is in the ascendant, not by high rents and dear corn, but by seeking to “live closer and cultivate better." I had intended to have introduced and commented upon Westminster Review, which I saw in the True Sun of March 27, 1835, headed “Turn of the Tables;" but this letter is perhaps already over long, so I conclude at present: only I would observe, that though I have no very strong predilections for a land aristocracy, yet I do not wish to see them ousted from their possessions, by an order of millocrats who grind the faces of the poor, who effect everlasting reductions of wages, and little children, even so as to denominate their system a system of infanticide! Not I indeed. Much, however, depends upon themselves. Huddersfield. J. H. THE £3. 178. 10d. CURRENCY GENTLEMEN, you country gentlemen want again to inundate us with a paper currency; you say in "I'd rather be a kitten, and cry mew, than one deed that your tenants are on the brink of of these currency mongers." ruin, but let them not come to Parliament THINKING the discussion likely to prove as interesting, as we knew the subject to be important, we attended the gallery of the House of Commons on the 1st instant, to hear Mr. Cayley's motion upon agricultural distress, and to observe the reception he met with from that honourable assembly. It is unnecessary here to enter into any detailed examination of Mr. Cayley's able speech, for founded as it was upon incontrovertible data, it completely established two points; viz., the existence of an extreme state of agricultural distress, and the necessity for an immediate inquiry into the causes of it. Mr. Cayley further stated it as his firm opinion, after much careful investiga tion, that the present agricultural distress, if it did not altogether originate from, had been wofully increased by the alteration of the currency in 1819; and he proceeded to propose "that the attention of any Committee appointed to inquire into the causes of this distress, should also be directed to the subject of a silver, or conjoint standard of silver and gold." Nothing could be fairer, nothing more straight-forward than this course; it was in perfect unison with the feelings of the honest and high minded yeomanry he represents, who only demand from the Imperial Parliament that "FAIR STAGE" which the constitution and the laws of England grant to all classes and ranks of society. But how was this reasonable request responded to by the Right Hon. the President of the Board of Trade. This gentleman rose to reply (if disproving what was never asserted can be called doing so), and throwing overboard instanter the question of agricultural distress as (εžш тоν πраɣμаTоç) extraneous to the matter in hand. He proceeded gratuitously to assume that the real object of Mr. Cayley's motion was not to relieve the agriculturists, but to depreciate the currency. Oh, cried the Right Hon. Member, commodities, yet the inference the Right The next conclusion the Right. Hon. Gentleman jumped at was equally fallacious. "It is plain," continued he, "that any depreciation of the currency (what! still harping on my daughter!') will only raise the nominal price of wheat; for the price of all other commodities being raised in equal proportion, the adoption of the Hon. Member for Yorkshire's plan would not relieve the agricultural interest from the distress by which they are assailed." Now, although we admit that any change of the currency that raised the price of wheat would also, to a certain extent, raise the price of other Hon. Gentleman has drawn from this cir- currency gentlemen are recruited, we leave cumstance may be easily disproved. He seems to have forgotten that a farmer's annual expenditure (independently of his rent) consists not altogether in the indirect exchange of his produce for articles of husbandry, clothing, &c.; if it did, the assumption might perhaps be correct; but there are, unfortunately, certain annual rent charges upon all land, in the shape of king's taxes, tithes, highway cess, and poor rates (and the two last press most heavily in periods of agricultural distress), which the occupier is obliged to pay in hard cash. Now it requires no demonstration to prove that, when wheat is at 648. per quarter, instead of 44s., the agriculturist has to apply a much smaller portion of the produce of his land to discharge these pecuniary imposts. If, therefore, the adoption of silver, or silver conjointly with gold, as a legal standard, would, by making money more plentiful, and rendering the circulation of the country less liable to sudden contractions, have the effect of moderately raising prices, and since the present low prices have confessedly caused great distress amongst all the productive classes, on what just ground can an impartial enquiry into the probable effects of the alteration Mr. Cayley recommends be so decisively refused. Herodotus puts a speech of the following nature (we quote from memory) into the mouth of a privy counsellor of Xerxes. "There are," says this Persian sage, three classes of people in the world. The first, which is the smallest, but the most excellent, comprises those men of great talent who, in all cases of doubt and difficulty, can instinctively, as it were, determine what is best to be done; the second consists of those who have so excellent a judgment as to be able at once to select, from the advice of others, that which is the most advantageous, and these are also very excellent people; the last and most numerous class includes all the rest of mankind, who unfortunately possess neither of these qualifications." From which brigade the £3.17s. 10td. our readers to decide; but we cannot forbear recommending the following lines to the serious study of their present favourite champion. Cur ego laborem, notus esse tam prave Cum stare gratis, cum silentio possim. We now proceed in sober sadness to ask, Is this state of things any longer to be endured? Are these imitators of Nebuchadnessar to set up an image of gold and worship it, not to the sound of the cornet, flutes, harp, sackbut, and all kind of music; but, alas! with a far different accompaniment? They must bow down to their golden idol, amid the tears and amid the groans of thousands of their fellow countrymen, whom their reckless ignorance, and more reckless vanity, have impoverished and ruined. It is not very easy to write in cold blood on this subject, when we see the happiness and the legitimate interests of the most important and valuable class of the producers of national wealth, sacrificed to the vagaries of half-brained politicians, and the selfish schemes of calculating capitalists. The history of all great nations has been the same: they have proceeded from simplicity to refinement, from refinement to ruin. Such has been the fate of Nineveh, of Babylon, and of Rome, and such will probably be the fate of that flag which has already "waved a thousand years" with undimmed glory. But we apprehend there will be this difference in the cause of the ruin, and a marked one it is-that, whilst the former cities fell chiefly through the vices and corruptions of the people themselves, England will become denationalized by the vices and follies of her rulers, who having already by their cold-blooded experiments rendered impoverished, and consequently discontented, a once prosperous yeomanry, and a once happy peasantrythe true indicia of a country's strength-are now aiming to convert this beautiful island into one immense manufactory, possessed by overgrown capitalists, and filled with white slaves and steam engines. When this consummation, so devoutly Builders' Union, as well as all others, have wished for by these wise gentlemen, comes failed to effect the desired end and object. to pass, and alas it is rapidly progressing,- We your Committee calmly, but decidedly, when millions of white bondsmen become musical, and musical they must speedily become under such a system* to the Hudibrastic melody of "Hungry guts, and empty purse, May be better, can't be worse." Then, what class, what middle class will there be which, closely identified both from feeling and interest with the possessors of the soil, and unseduced by false philosophy and false education, will be found ready to step forward into the arena, and stop the contest that must take place between numbers and property, between might and right. That class, we fear, ere the hour of peril ar rives will be extinct, and if so, the contest It can be but the contest of a moment. Δ. TO THE EDITOR OF THE AGRICUL- King's Arms, Little Woodstock-street, MR. EDITOR,-At a meeting of the various trades' societies, who have been em. ploying their unemployed members, a committee was formed for the purpose of inquiring into the distresses of our fellow workmen; and to find out the cause, and to find a remedy for the evil of all classes of society, reported as follows: Your Committee, who you have appointed to report, have drawn up the following such regulations as shall direct in future such societies as are employing their unemployed members in every branch of profession and calling, as a great extent of distress is now among the working classes of society. A radical cure must now be applied. The * A system in which the accumulation of capital is the Alpha and Omega. consider that no permanent benefit can be effected for the working classes but by giving beneficial employ to the unemployed; and as land is essential to the permanent existence of the trades, it is desirable that all should contribute to raise such an establishment, that each member may fall back upon when there is no employ in his own particular trade, and his time be made valuable and beneficial to himself, his family, and society. The evils of society, which are very great and pressing, are too evident to require any comment. As food is the first and principal necessary of life, and the most essential to all our wants, and as so ciety is constituted, all the produce of our labour in wages are taken away in the shape of profit upon all our consumptions daily, hourly, and oftener-even four times a-day. This grievous evil must therefore be avoided by providing a small portion of land as near town as possible, that every unemployed member may be provided with the necessary comforts of life, without any profit whatever upon them. That the society shall replace such again every week, added to that of the loan money from each member in employ. That nothing of such stock shall ever diminish, but continually and for ever go on increasing; many trades will be affected by these arrangements, such as bakers, butchers, grocers, &c. &c. &c. who now live by us : some provision must be hereafter made; it is now more immediately our duty to look after ourselves and families, common sense tells us to seek these necessities for our own safety. The most useful man in society, if society does justice to man, is the most degraded, which is the agricultural labourer, who has scarcely any clothes, house, education, and particularly food, which he produces in such abundance for others. It is our bounden duty to inquire after such brothers, seeking the means of permanently securing these things they are in so much need; by securing it for them, we shall be preparing work for ourselves. |