luxuries, in the selection of which they were so fastidious that the usual market of the place was not good enough for them, and supplies were regularly sent down from London.

We will not go on to say that these improvident beings do not deserve compassion, and are not to be visited by the hand of charity any human creature who is starving must be relieved while the Christian has any thing to give, and we know that in this country such assistance as no other country ever yet be stowed is awarded them by law. But this we do positively say, that as long as such habits continue, they must bring their consequence, which is as much the established course of nature as any of the ordinary processes by which the constitution of things is maintained. Neither can the country for ever support these consequences;-already do we hear loud, though, as we trust, fruitless demands for subjecting new property to the operation of the poor-rate, i. e. for employing in the eleemosynary relief of imprudence or idleness those funds which ought to be setting effectual labour in activity.

When the present cloud is dissipated, which we doubt not it will be, by the skill and enterprise and capital which abound amongst us, we shall go on again for a while as we have gone on before; wages will again rise beyond the immediate necessities of the manufacturer; he will again be idle and dissolute; his expenditure will swell the excise and other taxes; and we shall be congratulated on all hands upon the renewed prosperity of our flourishing country. "But soon there comes a frost, a killing frost." On the first revulsion, whether from cessation of demand, or scarcity of the necesssaries of life, we may expect to have distress like the present to encounter afresh, with diminished means to meet it, and with increased population to aggravate the embarrassment. For it is particularly in the nature of that fluctuation which attends extensive manufactures to increase the population beyond the regular or average demand: a sudden rise in the price of labour encourages marriage, even independently of the value of the children's industry; then before the fruit of that marriage is mature, the wages sink in proportion to their former rise, but the children remain to be supported, when they can no longer be employed.

This redundance is certainly felt with peculiar force at the present time. The recruiting service had been actively at work for twenty years, a season sufficiently long to render its demand uniform; suddenly it stops, and the superfluous hands which had been accustomed to flow into this channel, are returned on the main stream, which is also increased by the discharge of seamen and soldiers, who flow in of course in the greatest numbers towards those districts which had furnished them most copi

ously. Besides which, the improved healthiness of large towns, which has happily attended the introduction of poor-houses, fumigation, and vaccination, begins now to discover its effects; and thus even such great public blessings as health and peace may add to the temporary pressure, till the progress of population adjusts itself to the altered state of the community; which is a natural process, but, like the other processes of nature, is not the work of a moment.

Nothing, we firmly believe, can prevent these oscillations; nothing can prevent their becoming more and more violent, and endangering the balance of government itself, (an evil which only the foresight and vigour of administration has even now preserved us from) except that event so anxiously anticipated and so loudly demanded, a radical reform. But it must be that reform which all reformers are the last to propose or adopt; it must be a reform in the individual; a change in the general habits of the manufacturing body: a change from that degrading recklessness which they have so long indulged, to something more characteristic of the intellectual being: to something more conformable to that description which endows him with the enviable power of 'looking before and after:' to something beyond the animal, which blindly follows instinct, or above the Indian, who as blindly follows appetite.

Only let our readers mark the difference we might be at this moment witnessing, had a more moral or a more rational system been hitherto pursued. There is no need to go beyond the same documents which acquaint us with the distress, in order to learn how completely the same manufacturing system which generates the calamity furnishes also the preventive against its effects.

Treating of the iron trade, Mr. Brougham stated, in his speech, that the class of miners whose wages are now from 10s. to 18s. had been used to earn from one to two guineas a week: and that those engaged in the military part of the manufacture were reduced from three guineas a week to 17s. 6d. Was it not fairly to be expected that men thus receiving a revenue so far above the wants of their station, should lay by some portion of those earnings; the first class their 5s. or 10s. weekly, the second class their 17. thus rendering themselves, at the close of the year, 10l. or 251. or 50l. richer than they began it?

In the cotton trade there have been the same opportunities. In 1811 and 1812 when wheat was about 6/. the quarter, the average price of weaving a specific fabric of cloth (as before mentioned) was 6s.: in 1813 it rose to 8s. wheat remaining the same: in 1814 to 10s. and at the same time wheat declined to 3l. 10s. In the first period the manufacturer was distressed; in the second, wages and subsistence had reached their level; in the last period the

workman became opulent: he was in the receipt of wages which, compared with the price of corn, were three times the amount of what he had received two years before. Are we not entitled to demand that those who had suffered such recent experience of the fluctuation of wages and the pressure of distress, should save against the future at least a third of this overplus, say 5s. a week, against a similar recurrence of difficulty? This they might have done, and still have lived, themselves and their families, at least twice as well as in 1812.

Now mark the different effect, both on the workmen and on society. When wages sink, as they have now sunk, to a third, or a half, or even two-thirds below their usual average, the distress is not confined to the operative manufacturers alone, but extends in natural course to all those who are accustomed to depend upon their expenditure; and the sudden deficiency creates that individual ruin and general stagnation which is felt through all the departments of finance. But supposing that these persons had saved a little fund, and were now in the season of distress withdrawing from it their weekly portions, 2s. or 4s. or 6s. not only would they themselves be in the enjoyment of comparative comfort and independence, but the whole country would be sympathizing with their improved condition, instead of being appalled by the embarrassments which, for the present, impede our financial operations. Nor would this require any fund which it is unreasonable to expect the manufacturer to have provided: 2s. a week would raise him at least to the situation of 1811 and 1812, would be furnished in the way of interest by a capital of 100l. or withdrawn as principal, would only make a deduction of 5l. per ann. from any sum that had been laid by.

In the interim, while the workman is partly supported by the superabundance of a former harvest, either the enterprize of the master creates some fresh channel for manufactured produce, or the course of events opens one; or some of the superfluous hands find employ in other branches of industry:-till bad seasons of labour, like bad seasons in agriculture, under the direction of a kind Providence, are followed by comparative plenty. We find, by reference to the tables, that low wages and high prices of corn have never existed together for more than two successive years, viz. 1795 and 1796, 1800 and 1801, 1811 and 1812. We certainly trust that even if wages do not materially improve, the harvest of 1817 will no way resemble the last: and therefore we feel justified in believing that we are at this moment sustaining the full weight of our burthen, which, after the ensuing harvest, will be every way alleviated.

Though the beneficial institution of Saving Banks is of very recent origin, yet we cannot suppose that in such towns as Bir

mingham, Manchester, Stockport, Leeds, &c. there did not exist facilities for securing the overplus of manufacturing wages. know however that a trifling difficulty becomes a complete obstruction, when the inclination is adverse: the road must be rendered plain and smooth, if we wish to allure travellers along it. Now, at all events, the path is straight, the means are at hand. Unfortunately the savings of this class of workmen have hitherto gone entirely into the channel of benefit societies or club contributions, the dangers and possible mischiefs of which have been too recently verified. Besides, these contributions, if ever so harmless, do not exactly meet the case. What is wanted, is to level the inequality of wages; in other words, to render the demand for employ more proportionate to the demand for manufactured produce. It is evident that clubs, which only make provision for the season when the subscriber is entirely out of work, or disabled by illness, cannot answer the most beneficial purpose; which is to prevent any from being entirely without employ by rendering the supply of labourers more steadily equal to the demand, and by making an addition, in hard times, to that scanty pittance which lays the foundation of future disease. But in a decay of any particular branch of trade, all the members of the same club are of course distressed alike and together; and to afford relief in any except the prescribed cases is impossible, and often even in these; the funds being overwhelmed by the extraordinary and immediate demand:---not to mention, that when the saving of the individual is the entire property of the individual, it is easy to see how much stronger is the stimulus to save, and how much greater the frugality with which the saving is expended.

With regard to the principle: some persons perhaps may think it absurd to expect that these labourers for weekly pay should be induced to save any portion of their hard-earned wages. How this may be, we will not inquire; but certainly it is more preposterous to expect that, if they do not save, they should be exempt from those calamities which in all other countries, and in all other conditions of life in this country, overtake the dissolute and improvident. Some of these men, it appears, have been in the habit of receiving two or three guineas per week. How much better have been their circumstances, with not a single direct tax bearing upon them, and with 100%. or 150l. per annum to spend, than those of the annuitant or petty tradesman, who yet are expected to contribute towards the relief of these extravagant paupers, and to ward off the consequences of their dissolute habits how much better than the condition of the younger members of the learned professions, whose education (or apprenticeship) has been at the expense of two or three thousand pounds, and who yet must study hard and labour long, before they clear

1007. per annum? And if these higher classes of labourers did not, by frugal saving, and through the means of assurance societies, secure a provision for declining years and the support of a family, would not they, in the natural course of events, be brought to distress as severe as any the manufacturing body can ever be subject to?

Whether the system of provident funds which we are labouring to recommend, will be generally favoured by the employers, we know not: but we are quite sure that, like all other moral improvements, it would be supported by their aid and influence, if they had a just view of their own interests. The men, no doubt, are very dependent upon their masters, when wages are low and there is a competition for those low wages. But then they are also very discontented, perhaps turbulent; a state of things exceedingly hostile to the comfort of their superiors, and often detrimental to their purses: not to mention its incompatibility with what we are confident is the prevalent feeling among them, the satisfaction of witnessing morality, prudence, and order, with their concomitants, industry, content, and health, around them. The only objection we can foresee, is, that men who have a small fund for the supply of immediate wants, would be more able than others to enforce any demand for increase of wages. But this power they possess at present by means of club contributions; and we know that it has been too often already exercised to a very pernicious extent: the loss is not felt or grudged which falls upon a common fund. On the other hand, an individual who has laid up his twenty pounds by regular industry, has a strong sense of the advantage of that industry and the value of those twenty pounds, and is little inclined to risk or squander them for the distant prospect of gaining a trifling addition, which, if it ought in justice to be paid him, will soon come to him in a quiet way by the competition of the employers. It is well known that a formidable combination among the miners in Somersetshire was checked in the outset, by the prudential distribution of hand-bills containing a calculation of the weekly cost of idleness to each individual, and the sum total lost by the whole body. And it is quite evident that none will so well understand the value of money, or the force of an argument founded upon that value, as those who have been accustomed to save money.

If these remarks are just, they have shown that the remedy for occasional distress among manufacturers is in the hands of the workmen themselves, and in no other. It is not indeed in their power, nor even in that of the legislature, whatever politicians may argue when they sacrifice their philosophy to their party, to open a market or excite a demand. But this is done for them by the nature of trade and commerce and private interest: all that