The Sun.
London, England, 1842-09-07 00:00:00

Ott .111,114

LONDON:
WEDNESDAY MORNING, SEPTEMBER 7, 1842,

The distress of the industrious classes is be-
ginning to exercise the ingenuity of the leisure
classes, and prizes are offered for the best ex-
planation of its cause. A correct notion of what
is meant by public distress, and a clear descrip-
tion of what is to be inquired into will much
help the investigation.
It is necessary to bear in mind that poverty is
the general lot of the bulk of the community.
Inquirers into the rates of wages at different
periods, have shown that throughout the long
period which written history records of England,
the wages of the working classes, when fully
employed, have been barely sufficient to enable
them to subsist and rear a family. So com-
pletely was this the case, that the careful Mr.
RICARDO, deducing his definition from actual
fact, said that " the natural price of labour is
that price which is necessary to enable the
labourers, one with another, to subsist and per-
petuate their race, without either increase or
diminution." By natural price Mr. RICARDO did
not mean the natural rewards of labour, but the
sum which other men than the labourers must
pay to have their services, and that he believed,
from the facts of our history, was just sufficient
to enable them to subsist and perpetuate their
race; and no more. Now when such is the
condition of the bulk of the community,
a large number must always be on the verge
of distress, or deeply immersed in it. In
truth a prosperity in which all classes feel at
their ease must be the exception, not the rule,
for society.
A very little reflection and experience must
convince every person that such is the case.
We scarcely remember a year in which com-
plaints of disease and distress have not been
rite amongst us. No longer ago than 1830
there were great riots from distress in the
south of England, and the New Poor-law
was passed, because the poor-rates were eat-
ing up the estates of the landowners. Before
then, not less than one-ninth of the people were
actual paupers. But at that period the distress
was more prominent in the agricultural than in
the manufacturing districts, and the poor-rates
were much higher in the former than in the lat-
ter. At that period, too, and down to 1836
the distressed people were drafted in con-
siderable numbers, or rather emigrated, from
the agricultural to the manufacturing dis-
tricts, and there found employment, wages,
and subsistence. Since 1838, the manufactur-
ing districts have no longer been ab'e to
employ the spare hands of the agricultural dis-
tricts; there has not been full employment for
those persons already there, and the want of
employment for persons there, as contrasted
with the quantity of employment in 1832-1838,
and the consequent decline in wages below the
level of subsistence is the distress to be inquired
into. It is of equal i
mportauce to ascertain the
cause of the prosperity between 1832 and 1838,
which is the exception to the general rule of
prevalent distress.

Now it needs no proof that the harvests were
abundant from 1832 to 1837, and were
scanty from that period to the present. No
other cause, either of the prosperity of the
former or the distress of the latter period, is one
tithe so important as the variations in Alia
harvest. But that cause of prosperity and ad-
versity has existed from all time, and why our
extensive commerce, of which the object is to

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