The Sun.
London, England, 1826-09-06 00:00:00

of labour is regulated by the price of corn.—

To such a length is this principle carried, that

it is now indeed generally supposed that daily labourers
are paid their wages in proportion to the price of food

in this country ; and then inferences are built upon

it, tending to show that so far as the poor are con-
cerned, the repeal or continuance of the present Corn
Laws can be a subject of no manner of moment. The

deduction is dee; before us. The landholders call

for protection, and the protection already thrown around
their interests cannot affect the peasantry and poor.
There is something extremely specious in this argu-
ment, and the advocate of a free corn trade finds him-

self so pressed by it, that but one alternative is left him,
viz. to impeach the very ground-work of the assumption ;
to deny that labourers are paid in proportion to the
price of grain. But he confines his impeachment to
bare denial, and is at a loss for argument or fact by
which to support this broad and overbearing position.
This defect it shall be our present object to supply,

because we think tie consideration, how far wages are

likely to be affected by a free trade in corn, is one of
the very first importance to the country, and which
is intimately connected with the corn law question.
The Act, 51 Hen. 3, stat. 6, after regulating the

method of inquiry into the price of bread, wheat, bar-

ley, and oats, concludes by regulating the price
of ale, increasing or decreasing it as the price
of barley rises or falls. This Act establishes the
following scale :

to s. d . d. s. d.
F. 2 0 .c. 4 4 „, 0 1
13
.T 2 6 e° .
7 0 2
r:74 3 0 $ 37 0 1
3 6 E, e 6 '1 0 2
Ota 4 o 2 o 1
And so onward, the
.prices shall increase and
decrease after the rate of sixpence. Now, it is not a
little remarkable, that had this statute been at this time
in force and acted upon, the legal price of a quart of ale,
taking the price of a quarter of Barley at thirty-six
shillings, would be exactly equal to the price now paid
for it, viz. fourpence halfpenny ; but neither Beer nor
Malt was then subject to Excise duty as now. If,
therefore, the brewer of 1266 could not afford to sell
a quart of Beer for less than fourpence halfpenny, if
Barley had then been 365. the quarter, and the brewer
of 1826 can do so, and even pay the Excise duty on his
Malt and Beer besides ; it seems to follow, that the
price of ale in 1266 was proportionally clearer than
the price of beer in 1826. Hence then, if there is
any truth in the principle that labourers are anVvill be
paid in prpportion to the price of the first necessaries
of life, the wages of the labourer of 1266 must have
been higher than those of the labourer of 1826. This
was not the case, and thus it is indisputably clear that
the wages of the labourer in the earliest of these two
periods bore no proportion to the price of food. For
be it remarked that of the 36 shillings paid now for a
quarter of barley, not a farthing goes to the Govern-
ment in the way of direct taxation. This suin may
then be said to be the exact cost of production. Of
the fourpence halfpenny, however, paid now for a
quart of beer, one halfpenny may be estimated as the
amount of Excise duty payable upon it, and thus
fourpence is left as the positive cost of produc-
tion. What proportion is there then between
fourpence for a quart of beer and thirty-six shil-
lings for a quarter of barley, and one halfpenny for
a quart of ale, and four shillings for a quarter of
barley ? If, in 1266, a penny a day (being the forty-
eighth part of the price of a quarter of barley), was
high wages for a daily labourer, which it certainly was
(for the 25 Edw. 3, sec. 1, expressly exacts that one
penny shall be a day's wages for a hay-maker), 9d. a
day, or the forty-eighth part of the price of a quarter
of barley, ought to be high wages now. The outra-
geous diesproportion between the price of ale, and the
price of labour, both in 1266, and (only in favor of the
labourer) in 1826, at once convinces us that the price
of labour has, in point of fact, but very little connection
with the price of food ; and thus the principles in
which the landholders make their firmest stand, is
equally harmless, either as an argument for or against
the Corn Laws of 1826. The truth indeed is, that
the value ofiabour is at first like any other commodity,
regulated by the supply and demand ; but unlike other
merchandizes, it admits of controul from extraneous
circumstances, viz. the positive • wants of that body
of society, the price of whose labour We are
desirous to fix; and it will be found invariably to rise
as their wants increase and these articles become in-
dispensable, which in earlier times were considered
luxuries, and therefore never thought of. Could a
labourer of 1826 live as a labourer of 1266 did ? cer-
tainly not; for it is clear from the comparative price of
wages. and ale in 1266, that ale was then (except as a gift)
a great a stranger to the belly of an English labourer
a:
wine is
are twenno,,v. y Besides, the wants of the peasant of
t---
1826 fold more than those of the peasant
of 1266, and the wants of both are only to be supplied
from the same source, viz., the labour of each party.
It is not by any means intended to say that the neces-
sary comforts of an English labourer should be in the
slightest degree
abridged, or that he ought to be con-
tented with the scanty fare that fell to the lot of his
ancestors. The respective condition of the two will
bear no comparison and we are ready to admit that
this -redundancy (if the expression is allowable) of
wants, ought, nay must,
attl all events, be supplied, for
they are indispensable to
uppad the
fomarhourer s existence. But
as they can only be s
the profits of his la-
bour, the price of that labour
truother)st
asb e augmented, must
be made to bear (in one way
or
measured tie
eopproirtceioonf
to the cost of them, and not be m
food alone, although it will enter into the calculation.
ce,
Cheap food then is of the first-rate
imp
be-
cause it enables the labourer to supply all pia s wants,
and yet conic nearer to the price that his
employer is
willing to pay for his labour.

His Majesty's ship Diamond, which sailed from
Lisbon so long back as the 9th August, with his Ex-
cellency Sir CHARLES STUART on board, has not
yet arrived. No apprehensions, however, are felt for
her safety, as it is considered probable that Lord
NAPIER may have proceeded to the Western Islands
in search of some officers and men whom he put on
hoard the water-logged vessel, which had been pre-
viously fallen in with by Lord BYRON, of his Majesty's
ship Blonde.

Papers have been received from the city of Mexico
to the Ist July, but their contents are unimportant.

Mr. Dykes, the King's Messenger, arrived at the
Secretary of State's Office for Foreign Affairs, on Sun-
day evening, with despatches for Mr. Canning, which
it was understood were from the Right Hon. Henry
Wellesley, our Ambassador at the Court of Vienna,