mentally,) the degree in which wages (known already as an average rate) are modified for the present by the balance resulting from PC, and secondly, by the balance resulting from N+s. Population as working against capital; price of necessaries as working against the old traditionary standard of comfort, these, in effect, are the ordinary forces operating in the same direction, or in different directions, upon wages.

In illustration of this principle, we have had of late years a memorable case in our slave colonies. We all know at present, if we did not know at the time, that no legislative experiment was ever conducted with so much sentimental folly, and mischievous disregard of reversionary interests as the sudden emancipation of our West India slaves, - that is, the sudden admission to the rank of men, of those who, intellectually and in selfrestraint, were below the condition of children. Our own levity in granting was dramatically mimicked by their levity in using. They were as ready to abuse ungratefully as we to concede absurdly. At present we are suffering the penalties of our folly; and amongst them the mortification of seeing that ancient enemy of ours, always so full of light-minded precipitancy, and once in this very field of slavery manifesting that precipitancy in results so bloody, (causing, in fact, a general massacre of her own children by the legislation of fifteen minutes,) now, alas! building wisdom upon our irretrievable madness, and putting forth a statesmanlike providence such as used to be characteristic of our English senate, while that English senate has trifled sentimentally in the way once characteristic of Paris. The French scheme now in preparation is as thoughtful and cautious as the English scheme, unhappily irrevocable, was pitiably frantic. More truly and comprehensively than ever

that word was applied to such a case, it may be said that the British Parliament ruined the West Indies. For if Spain by her narrow policy ruined both herself and her magnificent colonies, it cost her three centuries to do so; but we "did the trick" in about as many years, a consummation that could not have been possible except in the case of sugar-colonies, which were in reality mere factories. All human follies, however, whether tragic or comic, must have their better and worse scenes.31 And this was the more to be expected in the West Indies, as circumstances forbade any free circulation of labor between the several islands. Accordingly, in some islands, where the balance upon P+c was particularly favorable to the laborer, (as, for instance, in Jamaica and Trinidad,) there the derangement of all social interests upon this harlequin experiment was total. The slaves, by relation to the funds for employing them regularly, were in defect, whilst the funds for employing them irregularly, i. e. so as to set their natural superiors at defiance, were vast. For, amongst other follies, our senate at home had quite forgotten to make any regulations against their throwing themselves for luxurious indolence (the besetting vice of negroes and lazzaroni) upon the ample waste lands. The same state of things amongst the negroes the same capital oversights in Parliament applied also to part of our continental colonies, as British Guiana. But, on the other hand, in islands like Antigua and Barbadoes, where the natural circumstances were different, P in relation to c being much nearer on a level, and no such plentiful resources for idleness to fall back upon, the blow fell more lightly. N+s, as being probably near to the same level in all these islands, might be safely neglected in a question of wages. Now, from this West Indian condition of the laboring class,

suddenly summoned to a mighty revolution by a legislature which took no thought of this condition, nor for this condition, turn to a laboring class ranking in the opposite extreme amongst European nations. The Swiss population are not, per se, (that is, by any superiority of nature, intellectual or moral,) an interesting race. But by their social economy, they are amongst the most respectable working orders on the Continent. Their population advances, in some places, in the healthiest way, not by excessive births counterworking excessive deaths, but by few deaths (locally not more than one annually upon seventy-five) compensating their few births, (sometimes one annually upon forty-five.) The rate of increase is therefore generally moderate. On the other hand, capital is nearly stationary. Thus far, therefore, as concerns PC, the situation of Switzerland is not hopeful; and but for emigration, (which in Switzerland does not act as it will do generally, to defeat itself by extra stimulation to the rate of population,) the distress would be much greater than as yet it appears to be. But why is this? By what privilege in her institutions or usages, does Switzerland escape the curse which has so continually besieged the Scottish Highlands, and other regions of a redundant population? There is nothing romantically fine in the present condition of the Swiss. On the contrary, they are a nation of low-toned sensibility; and, from the languor amongst them of all religious principle, they are in danger of great eventual demoralization. But, in the mean time, they struggle with some success against the downward tendencies of their situation; and they do not yet exhibit a squalid Irish surplus upon their population, one out of four, fierce, famishing, and without prospect of regular employment. Still less do the Swiss the contagion and causes of pauperism carry

N

amongst their next neighbors, as do the Irish. Their own cup of woe has long been full for the Irish; and through the last score of years, or since the improvement of steam navigation, its overflowings have been settling ruinously upon England 2 and on Scotland. Now, Switzerland at least evades these evils: she neither exhibits misery in her own bosom, as the Scottish Highlands often, and Ireland for ever; nor is she the rank cause of misery to neighboring nations, as is Ireland. But again I ask, through what advantage or privilege of her situation? The answer is undeniable: it is simply through her high patriarchal standard of comfort and respectability. In some countries, merely through the one habit of living too much abroad and in the open air, it has happened that a very low standard of comfort or pleasure is connected with the domestic hearth. Home is not there a word of sanctity or endearment. This is the case pretty widely upon Italian ground, and not solely amongst the lazzaroni of Naples. This is the case in Peru, in Mexico, and indeed more or less everywhere in South America. The genial climate has defeated itself as a blessing. Co-operating by its own temptations with the constitutional luxurious languor in the natives, the climate has become a withering curse to the better instincts of the people. But Ireland, but Switzerland, have not been subject to that mode of temptation. Welcome the ent curses, which (like labor itself) finally become blessings, of stern northern climates! Yet the same temptation, in effect, has operated upon both, through a different channel. The luxury of excessive indolence had, from the earliest period, fascinated Ireland into a savage life. A scale almost brutal of diet and of lodging had already long reconciled itself to the Irish feelings in the laboring class, when the fatal gift of the potato stepped in to

appar

make the improgressive state compatible with a vast expansion of the population. To Switzerland, agitated nobly by the storms of the Reformation, and starting from a much higher point of self-valuation, such a temptation proved none at all. To this day she adheres indomitably to the ancient habits of her fathers. Other nations preserve their economy through their morals; Switzerland preserves her morals through her economy; and even yet her children will not marry without guarantees for the continued prospect, in the coming generation, of what they witnessed in the last. And thus two nations, not originally standing upon a very different basis of landed wealth, are now seen in the most absolute repulsion to each other, upon the two polar extremities as to comfort and self-respect.

SECTION II.

HITHERTO we find nothing peculiar to Ricardo in the forces acting upon labor. It was necessary to notice these four elements in that complex machinery which finally moulds the vicissitudes of wages; but, after all, it is only one of the four, viz. the current price of the articles essential to a poor man's household, which can, by any sudden change, produce a correspondingly sudden change upon wages. The rate of increase upon population, the changes incident to capital, the national traditionary standard of domestic life, all these are slow to move, and, when they have moved, slow to embody themselves in corresponding effects. Population, for instance, perseveres often through generations in the same prevailing rate; and if this rate should, from any cause, sustain the most abrupt change, it would take a score of years before that change could begin