relation between the cause and the effect; but they replied in these remarkable words :

The weavers, in general, of Glasgow and its vicinity, do not consider that machinery can, or ought to be stopped or put down; they know perfectly well that machinery must go on, that it will go on, and that it is impossible to stop it. They are · aware that every implement of agriculture and manufacture is a portion of machinery; and, indeed, every thing that goes beyond the teeth and nails ' (if I may use the expression) is a machine. I am ' authorised by the majority of our society to say, that I speak their minds, as well as my own, in * stating this *?

The whole evidence, which these persons gave before the committee, is characterized by the same good sense † and good feeling, which are apparent in this declaration. Nor, when they alluded to those moral causes, which had rendered that power, whereof they acknowledged the utility and the necessity, thus injurious, and even ruinous to themselves, did they evince the slightest impatience or resentment; but spoke with the same calmness *Second Report, p. 12.

One gentleman, indeed, who appeared on the part of certain emigration societies in Scotland, had no hesitation in saying, that the 6 poor people themselves have sufficient mind not to ascribe the evils they have endured to machinery, but to taxation weighing upon 'labour, and restrictions preventing markets.' This gentleman has no hesitation' on many other points, upon which it might be better if he would hesitate; but he belongs to a profession (that of the newspaper press) in which hesitation seems to be seldom allowed. He thinks that if taxation were abated, and restrictions abolished, there would not be a redundant population in any part of Great Britain, 'not even with all the Irish that come over!'

Second Report, pp. 10-13,

3

of that over-production which had glutted all their markets, and of that competition among the master manufacturers which had been the immediate cause of the evil; for the merchants selling lower, who could bring their goods lower to market, the manufacturers, when they wished to have a large profit, reduced the wages, and so brought them down to 'the present price.'

It is gratifying to observe, that the English weavers also, upon whom the late pressure bore with equal weight, manifested the same good feeling, and the same spirit of patient endurance under privations of the severest kind. The Bishop of Chester, whose exertions for relieving the manufacturing districts cannot be more justly represented, nor more highly praised than by saying, that they were such as might be expected from the energy of his character, his sense of duty, and his goodness of heart, went through those parts of his diocese, in which the greatest distress prevailed, and the quietness, and good order, and resigned contentedness which he found among the people, under circumstances so trying, excited, he says*, his admiration.

'The moral condition of the people,' said he, 'I confess, appeared to me to be considerably better ' than I had always been told that it was. The 'hand-loom weavers are a very orderly, and, generally 'speaking, a well-disposed body of men: they mani'fest a great readiness to listen to good advice; and, 'from personal inquiries amongst the poor, I am 'led to hope, that a considerable moral improvement has taken place in many of them, in consequence of their sufferings.'

Such a disposition, on the part of this large body Second Report, pp. 203, 209.

of people, is the more meritorious, because they clearly perceived what were the causes of the distress which they were then enduring, and were, at the same time, fully aware, that although intervals of comparative prosperity might be expected, the same causes would continue to act, and the same consequences must, of necessity, be again brought on. They knew that, however low the price of labour might be, and however deplorable, on that account, the condition of the labouring artisans, machinery would not be withholden for any such considerations. Some persons,' says Major Thomas Moody*, may withhold it, but others said, they never deferred, for one moment, any improvement that * they could make in their machinery; the desire of competing with others induced them instantly to use it.' The manufacturers of machinery deliver an opinion, that it will still be increased, to the "substitution of human labour.' That system, like the car of Jaggernaut, will move on, and be thrust forward, whatever may be crushed in its course! And as to any benefit which the manufacturing workmen might expect from a reduction in the price of food, (in other words, from the ruin of the landed interest,) the Glasgow deputies plainly stated, that if the coarse food, whereon they then subsisted, (the coarsest that is used by human

beings, and of which the wages that they at that ' time received were not sufficient to procure a suffi'cient quantity,') should become cheaper, they should be compelled to take a lower rate of wages, in proportion to the reduction; and, therefore, it would be no relief to them t.' There are certain writers, who will not believe that cannibalism is, at this time, or Second Report, p. 33: † Ibid. p. 13.

ever has been practised, by any savages, however ferocious; and yet they live in a country where man thus preys upon man! But this opinion was calmly stated before the committee, and with a just conviction, that the inhumanity belonged to the system, not to the individuals who are engaged in it.

These evils have no tendency to bring about their own cure. Formerly, when commercial speculation and competition were kept within the bounds of prudence and probity, our merchants contented themselves with the certain profits of a settled trade, and took care never to glut the foreign markets *. A market is now no sooner opened, in any part of the world, than adventurers pour in their goods in such profusion, that it is instantly over-stocked. They run a race of ruin with each other, such as we sometimes see stagecoach proprietors engage in..to the benefit of a traveller's pocket, and the risk of his limbs and life. For a season, the manufacturers are in full employ, the sum of exports mounts up, there is a great increase in the customs for the quarter, trade is alive everywhere, and we congratulate ourselves upon the state of the country. Then comes the cold fit returns are looked for in vain; bills are dishonoured; the goods are unpaid for.. sold at a loss, damaged, wasted, spoiled, or, perhaps, reshipped for England, like property snatched from the ravages of fire or flood: week after week the list

* Yet, even then, more goods were produced than there was vent for; 'most commodities and manufactories, it was complained, were 'brought to so low an ebb, that slow workmen could not get their living. 'Many such were become the poor of the parishes wherein they dwelt; and poor tradesmen, with their families, had grown to be a far greater tax to the nation than all that the king's customs amounted to.”➡ Harl, Misc., 8vo. edit, xii. 250,

of bankrupts lengthens, and lofty fabrics of credit fall like a child's house of cards. After a while, what with waste, loss, and rapid wear, (the goods, like the razors in the story, being made for sale and not for service,) the foreign warehouses begin to be cleared; there is an opening; trade revives; the pulse of our prosperity quickens; a new race of merchant-adventurers (in the modern acceptation of that word) comes forward to speculate, or, rather, to gamble with the capital of others; the same desperate game is again played with the same ruinous, but certain consequences, and thus the burning and the shivering fits alternate. Meantime, the population, which has been produced by the manufacturing system, has increased, is increasing, and will continue to increase. The check of prudence, which operates so powerfully (sometimes even with more than its due weight) in the middle class, has, upon this, no effect; and, as for misery, miserable experience has manifestly shewn, that here, as well as in Ireland, it acts as an incentive. One of the witnesses before the committee, who said, that he never could have imagined the possibility of such distress as he had beheld, unless he had seen it, added, that amidst the distress population went on increasing, inasmuch as the unfortunate beings become reckless, and desperate, and marry without thought."' • In pro

portion,' says this witnesst, as people become more wretched, the population increases. I mean

to say, that where men are reckless and des· perate in their character, they do not look for improvement in their social condition, and they take the only enjoyment they have in their power * Second Report, p. 54. + Ibid. p. 61.