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higher during that time that during any three years during the last twenty years? Yes. Yet during those three years the wages of labour in every branch of industry have suffered a greater decline than in any three years before. (Hear, hear.) Then I am told that the price of labour in this country is so much higher than the wages abroad, that the Corn Law must be kept up in order to keep up labour to the proper level. Sir, I deny that labour is higher paid in this country than on the continent. (Hear, hear.) On the contrary I am prepared to prove, from documents on the table of your own house, that the price of labour is cheaper here than in any part of the globe. (Oh, and hear.) I hear an expression of dissent from the other side, but I say to honourable gentlemen, when they measure the labour of an Englishman against the labour of the foreigner, they measure a day's labour indeed with a day's labour, but they forget the relative quality of the labour. (Hear.) I maintain, if quality is to be the test, the labour of England is the cheapest in the world. (Hear, hear.) Go into any city from Calais to Vienna, containing a population of more than 10,000 inhabitants, and will you not find numbers of English artizans working side by side with the natives of the place, and earning twice as much as they do, or even more? Yet the masters who employ them declare, notwithstanding the pay is higher, that the English labour is cheaper to them than native labour. Yet we are told that the object of the manufacturers in repealing the Corn Laws is to lower wages to the level of the continent! It was justly said by the honourable member for Kilinarnock, that the manufacturers did not require to lower the rate of wages in order to gain higher profits. If you you want proof of the prosperity of manufactures, will find it when wages are high, but when wages drop the profits of the manufacturer drop also. Sir, by deteriorating such a vast population as that employed in manufactures, you run the risk of spoiling not the animal man only, but the intellectual creature also. It is not from the wretched that great things can emanate—it is not a potato-fed population that ever led the world in arts or arms, in manufactures or commerce.(Ironical cheers from the ministerial side.) If you want your people be virtuous and happy, you must take care that they are well fed. Upon this assumption, then, that the manufacturers want to reduce wages, and upon the assumption that the Corn Law keeps up the price of labour, we are going to pass a law to tax the food of the hard-working, deserving population.( Hear, hear.)What must be the result? You have heard from the right honourable baronet's answer, the fallacy about our competing with foreign manufacturers. He has told you we export forty or fifty millions. You tax the bones and muscles of your people. You put a double weight upon their shoulders, and then you turn round upon them and tell them to run a race with Ger-
