304
FARMERS AND LABOURERS.
gentleman the President of the Board of Trade. He talked about throwing poor lands out of cultivation, and converting arable lands into pasture. I hope that we men of the Anti-Corn-Law League may not be. reproached again with seeking to cause any such disasters. My belief is —and the conviction is founded upon a most extensive inquiry among the most intelligent farmers, without stint of trouble and—pains that the course you are pursuing tends every hour to throw land out of cultivation, and make poor lands unproductive. (Hear.) Do not let us be told again that we desire to draw the labourers from the land in order that we may reduce the wages of the workpeople employed in factories. I tell you that, if you bestow capital on the soil, and cultivate it with the same skill as manufacturers bestow upon their business, you have not population enough in the rural districts for the purpose. (Hear.) I yesterday received a letter from Lord Ducie, in which he gives precisely the same opinion. He says, if we had the land properly cultivated there are not sufficient labourers to till it. What is the fact? You are chasing your labourers from village to village, passing laws to compel people to support paupers, devising every means to smuggle them abroad to the antipodes if you can get them there; why, you would have to chase after them, and bring them back again, if you had your land properly cultivated. I tell you honestly my conviction, that it is by these means, and these only, that you can avert very great and serious troubles and disasters in your agricultural districts. Sir, I remember on the last occasion when this subject was discussed, there was a great deal said about disturbing an interest. It was said that this inquiry could not be gone into because we were disturbing and unsettling a great interest. I have no desire to undervalue the agricultural interest. I have heard it said that they are the greatest consumers of manufactured goods in this country; that they are such large consumers of our goods that we had better look after the home trade and not think of destroying it. But what sort of consumers of manufactures think you the labourers can be with the wages they are now getting in agricultural districts? Understand me:I am arguing for a principle that I solemnly believe would raise the wages of the labourers in the agricultural districts. I believe you would have no men starving upon 7s. a week if you had abundant capital and competent skill employed upon the soil; but I ask what is this consumption of manufactured goods that we have heard so much about? I have taken some pains, and made large inquiries as to the amount laid out in the average of cases by agricultural labourers and their families for clothing; I probably may startle you by telling you that we have exported in one year more goods of our manufactures to Brazil than have been consumed in a similar period by the whole of your agricultural peasantry and their families. You have
