The effects steam to locomotion. took the supply. were unable for years to adapt themselves to the new system; and machinery, multiplying production, outstripped the deImand for labour. Some of these evils, from their very nature, could only be remedied by time; others of them were largely alleviated by the application of steam to locomotion. The steam-engine, whether working by water or by land, enabled the manufacturer to distribute his goods more efficiently, and therefore more widely. The demand again slowly overBut the application of steam to of applying locomotion effected an even greater improvement in the condition of the labouring classes. Up to 1843, rather more than £65,000,000 had been expended on the railways of the United Kingdom. In 1861 the capital embarked in these enterprises amounted to £360,000,000. £295,000,000, or £16,000,000 a year, had been spent in the intervening eighteen years on these undertakings, and the largest portion of this sum had been used in one way or another as wages for labour. But this does not represent the whole truth. In 1842 the traffic receipts amounted to less than £4,000,000, and, though the working expenses are not known, they may be placed at half this sum, or £2,000,000. In 1861 the traffic receipts had risen to £28,000,000, the working expenses of the lines to nearly £14,000,000. The working expenses of a railway chiefly consist of the wages of labour and of the purchase of commodities raised or produced by labour. The railways in 1861 were, therefore, applying annually £30,000,000-£16,000,000 in the construction of lines and £14,000,000 in the working of them—to the fund which directly or indirectly supports the wage-earning classes of the community. It has been humorously suggested that the industrial classes of this country should annex a planet as an outlet for the commodities which this world is unable to consume. The foregoing figures seem to show that the same results may be obtained by the construction on our own globle of a network of railways. But there is one other way by which the application of machinery to locomotion, and to other industries, has benefited labour. It is a striking fact that the labour which controls a machine is always better paid than other labour. Even in agricultural pursuits the carter commands higher wages than the ordinary farm-labourer; and, though the sempstress who has a sewing-machine may receive less for each shirt she makes, she can easily earn thrice the sum of her sister who is dependent on her unaided needle. This circumstance rests on the economical truth, that the wages of a labourer who works a machine bear a much smaller proportion to the total cost of production than those of his work-fellow who uses his hands alone. Every improvement in machinery enables, or ought to enable, the employer to give the labourer higher wages. The effects tion. Thus, then, the introduction of machinery, which in the first instance dislocated the labour market and degraded the labouring poor, has, in the event, increased the demand for labour and raised the wage-rate. Machinery, which at one time seemed likely to prove the labourer's chief enemy, has become his best friend. But the introduction of machinery alone would not have accounted for the improvement in the condition of the labouring classes. It is the remarkable characteristic of the period under review that, while machinery was improving the condition of large of emigra classes of the poor, other causes were reducing the stock of redundant labourers. The first of these causes was the modification of the law of settlement. The old law had practically forced the labourer to remain in his birthplace; the new law enabled him to seek work where work was forthcoming. The second of these causes was the depletion of Ireland after the famine of 1848, and the consequent diminution of a vast flood of needy immigrants from Ireland every season. So long as Ireland threw annually her hundreds of thousands of labourers on the soil of England, there was no chance of an improvement in the wage-rate. The third and greatest of these causes was the emigration from the United Kingdom, which, in the eight years ending 1854, removed on an average more than 300,000 persons from the country every year. These circumstances reduced the stock of redundant labour, and allowed the labourers of Britain again to claim a fair day's wage for a fair day's work. The effect of Peel's commercial policy. But even these causes, if they had stood alone, would not have accounted for the whole of the improvement which took place in the condition of the people. The reform of the fiscal system under Peel did almost as much for the working classes of this country as the spread of emigration or the introduction of machinery. This is not the place for considering the rival merits of free trade and the commercial system. But it is not inappropriate in this chapter to point out that the commercial system imposed on the producing classes of this country a weight of taxation which was absolutely intolerable. This taxation was not entirely due to the Corn Laws. These laws, on the contrary, had a double effect. By fixing, in the first instance, a minimum price at which corn could be imported, and by subsequently imposing prohibitive duties on corn when its price was low, they encouraged a belief among agriculturists that an adequate price would be always attainable. They consequently induced the farmer to give a preference to corn crops, and to grow corn on land which could be more profitably applied to other uses. In consequence, in favourable years the markets were glutted with corn, and the price was unduly depreciated; while in unfavourable years the price of corn was at once forced up to the minimum price at which it could be imported at all, or to the minimum price at which it could be imported at a moderate rate of duty. The chief sufferers from the Corn Laws, therefore, on a long series of years, were not the labourers but the farmers. Their whole operations were unsettled by the sharp fluctuations in prices; and a good year, in which the valleys were thick with corn, made bread so cheap that it brought ruin to the agriculturist. To the labourer the Corn Laws brought suffering of another kind. The labourer could never foresee whether he would have to pay 50s. or 70s. a quarter for his wheat, and the difference between wheat at 50s. and 70s. means to a family of five persons a difference of £5 a year, and is equivalent in the case of a labourer earning 20s. a week to an income-tax of 10 per cent. The repeal of the Corn Laws has benefited the working classes by cheapening food, but it has benefited them even more greatly by steadying the price of food. But the Corn Laws were only a part of the system which was destroyed under Peel and Russell. From a working man's point of view, the differential duties intended to encourage colonial enterprise were almost as injurious. Take the case of two articles alone-timber and sugar. It has been stated in the previous volume that if these duties had been swept away the people would have been able to have provided themselves with foreign sugar and foreign timber for £6,000,000 less than they were forced to pay for colonial timber and sugar.1 The existence of these duties did not, it must be recollected, add to the revenue of the country. On the contrary, it actually diminished the customs' receipts. If, in other words, the duties had been made equal and those on foreign commodities had been largely decreased, while those on colonial commodities had been slightly raised, there is no doubt that an immense addition would have been made to the national income. The duties were, therefore, merely maintained for protection, and it would have been better for the taxpayers of the kingdom to have voted the whole £6,000,000 as an annual subsidy to the colonies, than to have maintained the injurious system under which the country was labouring. The moral Thus, then, the existence of the commercial system and the introduction of machinery account for the growing misery of the people from 1815 to 1842, while the application of machinery to locomotion, the destruction of the commercial system, and other circumstances, of which the increase of emigration is the chief, are amply sufficient to explain the material improvement in their condition from 1842 to 1861. provement is not the same thing as moral progress. On the 1 Ante, vol. v. p. 16. progress of the people after 1842. Material im contrary, it is unhappily true that material improvement, by increasing the consumption of alcohol, occasionally interferes with moral progress. But it may at any rate be admitted that moral progress was impossible while the people remained in the condition in which they existed in 1842, and that in this sense a material improvement in their means was an indispensable preliminary to the reform of manners. It would be a mistake to ascribe the remarkable diminution in crime which has taken place since 1842 to any one cause; on the contrary, it is due to many causes. But I believe that these causes may be conveniently grouped under four heads, and I shall proceed to deal with them accordingly. The causes to which it may be traced. The first cause which has promoted the reform of manners, and has consequently led to a decrease of crime, is the material improvement in the people's lot to which I have already referred. Thus the extension of machinery, its application to locomotion, the increase of emigration, the abolition of the law of settlement, the depletion of Ireland, the repeal of the Corn Laws, and the destruction of the commercial system have indirectly had the effect of emptying our gaols and diminishing the number of our criminals. The second cause, which has tended to the same result, is the institution of an efficient police and the introduction of a Police and rational penal system. Crime has been prevented prisons. by the existence of a force charged with the preservation of order and the protection of property, and the criminal classes have been improved by well-regulated discipline instead of being debased by the awful arrangements under which they were previously held in check. of 1834. The third cause which has helped to produce the result is the Poor Law of 1834. Neither material nor moral progress Poor Law was possible so long as the poor were degraded into dependence by the universal system of outdoor relief, which at once deprived the industrious of the fruits of their industry, removed from the idle the natural consequences of idleness, and threw an intolerable burden on the community |