The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1852-08-03 00:00:00

countries.

vated by expensive artificial processes, are to be
made to produce as cheaply as the virgin soils of
the United States, and of the Steppes of Russia
and Poland. So " popular opinion," and the sel-
fishness of the manufacturing and trading masses,
have, for the present, decided. But, if we mistake
not, there is already impending over those classes a
day of dire retribution for this virtual confiscation
of the capital and labour employed in agricultural
pursuits

Avarice, like ambition, may " overleap
itself ;" and we should not wonder if, in the course
of a few years, the very parties who have clamoured
most loudly for a cheap loaf were to be found the
foremost to call out for a reversal of the policy,
which has given them that loaf at the cost of the

native agriculturist.
The avowed object of the parties who first
mooted the question of Free Trade, was a reduction
of the wages of the operative classes to enable the
manufacturer to compete more advantageously with
the foreigner. We had constantly paraded before
our eyes in the League pamphlets and speeches the
low rates of wages paid in the mills and workshope
of the Continent, with a view to show the impos-
sibility of meeting the foreign manufacturer on
fair terms. It was said to the farmer—" Turn
your arable lands into pasturage; send your sur-
plus labourers and their families into the manu-
facturing towns ; and we will employ them all !"
Most persons will remember the drafting of a
number of Dorsetshire paupers into the manu-
facturing districts, at the instance of certain mill-
owners in Stockport and its neighbourhood, and
the fate which befel most of these deluded people.
The object of the manufacturing body has not,
however, been achieved ; and it is found convenient
to deny that it was ever entertained. Wages in the
manufacturing districts have not declined to any
thing like the extent anticipated; and it is import-
ant, as bearing noon the future prospects of the
country, to inquire whether this result can be
satisfactorily accounted for.
To every one who has been accustomed to mingle
with manufacturing populations, it must be well
known that they have been from time to time largely
reinforced by immigrants from the sister Isle.
Nearly half of the spinners and weavers of Lan-
cashire, Cheshire, and 'Yorkshire are either Irish or
of Irish extraction. The supply of labour, how-
ever, from this source, which for some years had
been declining, has almost entirely ceased since the
famine years of 1846 and 1847. Emigration from
Ireland to this country has, of late years, been only
the preliminary step in search of a home amongst
the prairies and back-woods of the United States
and Canada. As stated in the Emigration Report
published last month, " the decrease of the Irish
population from 1841 to 1851, was 1,659,330, of
whom 1.,289,133 emigrated." The mortality during
the famine will account for the balance. From
Great Britain and Ireland in the six years from
1840 to 1845, the number of persons who emi-
grated was 559,078. In the six years from 1846
to 1851, the number had been increased to
1,552,570., or an average of 258,761 persons yearly.
Here, then, we have, in part at least, the cause
of the maintenance of that rate of wages in the
manufacturing districts, which is so often urged
by the Free Trade party as a proof of the success
of their policy. The labour market has not de-
clined, because emigration to countries where their
industry is protected has been preferred by the
dispossessed peasantry of Great Britain and Ire-
land to the tender mercies of the manufacturing
system. To enable us to trace more accurately
the future operation of this state of things, we
avail ourselves of an extract from an able article
in this month's number of Blackwood's Magazine :
" The emigration for the first four months of 1852,
from the twelve principal harbours of Great Britain. was
103,316; nearly the same as in the corresponding period
of last year, when it was 103,280. Since that, in May
and June, the emigration, especially to the gold regions
of Australia, has greatly increased, and it is now going on
at the rate of about 5000 a-week. In all probability the
emigration this year will reach 350,000, of which at least
50,000 will be to our distant settlements on the shores of
Australia.
" There is enough here to make the most inconsiderate
pause, and to fill with the most serious reflections every
thoughtful mind. From three hundred to three hundred
and fifty thousand persons emigrating from a single coun-
try in a single year, and this at the close of a period of
six years, during which the average exodus has exceeded
two hundred and fifty thousand a-year ! Such a fact as
this would, at any former period of English history, have
excited the utmost alarm in the nation ; but so habi-
tuated have the people become to disaster since the free-
trade policy began, and so entirely have they got into the
habit of looking only to the moment, and disregarding
altogether all remote consequences, that it excites no sort
of sensation. The annual increase of the population prior
to 1845 was usually considered to be 1000 a-day, or
365,000 a-year ; and this was for long a subject of con-
gratulation and boast. The population returns of 1851,
however. showed that, down to the end of 1846, it was
only 230,000 a-year. But now, as 330,000 emigrants
leave the British shores every year. there is AN ANNUAL
DECREASE UPON THE WHOLE OF 100,000 SOULS, and that
not of infants, or worn-out persons, but chiefly young
men and women in the prime of life."
It is perfectly obvious that the manufacturing
body have before them the prospect of a gradually
contracting supply of labour, which must seriously
interfere with all their attempts to economise pro-
duction ; and this, too, is occurring at a time when
the foreigner is eagerly prosecuting manufacturing
pursuits, We have not, however, as yet arrived at
the full extent of the evil. The decrease of our
population is only commencing ; and, to enable us
to estimate the effects which a few years will pro-
duce, we must bear in mind that the loss of every
young male and female through emigration involves
the loss also of a future family. Bye and bye, if
this Exodus continues even at its present rate,—
and it is more likely to increase than to remain
stationary—we may find our population diminishing
at the rate of a million, instead of a hundred thou-
sand souls, annually ; and not only the supply of
labour seriously contracted, but the consuming
power of the country diminished to a very con-
siderable extent.
It is this phase in our condition which we regard
as pregnant with the most dire calamity both to the
manufacturing and commercial interests. If the
home market ceases to take otf its usual supplies of
manufactured goods and produce whilst the manu-
facturer has to compete with the foreigner, with
dearer labour,wo Way very safely predict that our