PRICES OF FOOD AND LABOUR.
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in the country, but not sufficient clothing for the use of the people, and so the Austrian government was led to encourage commerce, to discourage English manufactures, and to manufacture for themselves. (Hear, hear.) And this is a state of things which Corn-Law legislation is bringing about in all directions. (Hear, hear.) I have heard it said, and it seems to have had some influence upon the labouring people, that the introduction of foreign corn is the inevitable way to lower wages. I say, that, if there be any certain means of raising wages, it is by the admission of foreign corn. (Cheers.) What are the two countries that have had the wisdom to avoid Corn-Law legislation? They are Holland and Switzerland; in which wages are higher than in any country in Europe! (Hear, hear.) And that is invariably the case. Wages are almost always raised where the greatest demand for labour is introduced; and the demand for labour is always introduced with the introduction of a foreign competition in corn. Switzerland, it is true, was, two generations ago, in a state of extreme wretchedness and misery, with emigrations of immense masses of her population taking place every six or eight years, and with the population reduced to the verge of starvation, a great portion of the country being composed of desolate mountains, of uncultivated tracts, and the people in a state of sad ignorance. What has occurred there? The people have attained more political ideas, and have applied them to the attainment of political knowledge; that political knowledge has given them a sound commercial legislation, and now the rate of wages in Switzerland is far higher than the rate in any other country in Europe; and with regard to the price of commodities, between thirty and forty per cent, higher than the rate of wages here. (Hear.) I have seen more than one instance of an artisan in Switzerland—where commodities are universally low, in consequence of free trade which is universally adopted—getting from ten to fourteen shillings per day by hand labour.(Cheers.)Holland—a country if ever there was one which could he, as the Duke of Wellington said in the House of Lords, reduced to the humiliating necessity of depending upon foreign lands for a supply of food, which he made an argument for the Corn Laws—Holland depends upon every country. When was she ever short? I venture to say that no granaries in any country were ever so well filled. Every body there knows the rate of wages, because they know with every slight alteration in price they can estimate what the loaf of bread will cost them and their families. But now, when the Corn Laws are about to be overwhelmed—because I do not believe that, in the state of public opinion, they can stand we shall find that we shall not get one-twentieth of the benefits of national interchange we should have had,if there had been no Corn Law at all. My belief is that if this country imported one or two
