MACHINERY NOT DOING THE MISCHIEF.
279
cashire, fight under a disadvantage ; we are told, when we call for a repeal of the corn and provision monopoly, that our distress arises from improvement in machinery. But this does not apply to your case; for I am told that the stocking frame has remained nearly the same as when it issued from the hands of the inventors, two centuries ago: at all events believe that within the last five and twenty years, no material alterations have taken place in the machine; and there are no steam engines with tall chimneys planted here, giving motion to the power loom instead of the stocking frame. Then we are met in Manchester again with the cry that over-production is the cause of all the distress. But I have heard to-day that your production is declining, that the number of frames in motion is diminishing, instead of increasing, especially in Leicestershire. It is, therefore, not over-production, it is not machinery that is doing the mischief for you. But what do you hear also in Lancashire? That joint-stock banks have produced all the distress. But here, I find, that no great mischief has been produced by joint-stock banks. You, therefore, have the case in your own hands. The whole of the fallacies of our opponents, as applied to Manchester, are answered in your case; and I say that with such a case in your hands, and with such claims on the part of your dependants, henceforth it becomes the province of the midland counties to take up the question, to lead onward in the van, and to be the champions for the total and immediate repeal of the Corn Laws. I am glad, gentlemen, that on this occasion you have directed so much of your inquiry to the subject of wages, as affecting the largest and most important part of the population of these counties. I am glad that you have not contented yourselves with a relation of the decrease of the profits of the employer, or the decline of business, but have given us such a clear statement of the fall of wages in your counties; and I take it as the strongest argument which you could furnish for the House of Commons in the coming session; I take it as the most powerful argument which you could put into the hands of members of Parliament, to justify the plea which we have set up, to justify the toast which I am going to read to you:—'The total and immediate repeal of the Corn and Provision Laws;' and I could not help thinking, as I listened to the details of those diminished comforts and exhausted means of the working classes of this district—I could not help thinking, as I heard of the constantly diminishing resources, for the last five and-twenty years, of the industrious frame-work knitters of these counties—that our legislature had indeed departed from the spirit of that book, which was so well alluded to by the gentleman who said grace after dinner—that they had forgotten the poor and needy, had forgotten those who of all others need protection, and were busy protecting those who ought to have been engaged
