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.1 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 Parliamentapplied 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 carry the contagion and causes of pauperism

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 apparent 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

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

to tell upon the labor market. But the fourth element, the daily cost of necessaries, alters sometimes largely in one day; and upon this, therefore, must be charged the main solution of those vicissitudes in wages which are likely to occur within one man's life. The other forces vary, by degrees fine and imperceptible, so as to affect the condition of working men deeply and radically from century to century. But such an effect, though sure, and important to the historical grandeur of nations, is not rapid enough to be concurrent with the corresponding changes upon other functions of productive power. We look for an agency upon wages able to keep abreast of these other agencies, fitted by its easy motion for receiving their effects, and for returning to them a continual modification from itself.

Here, therefore, it is, upon this one force out of four which control the price of labor; viz. upon the poor man's household consumption for the diet of his family, for their clothing, their lodging, for the annual dividend upon the cost and maintenance of his furniture, (amongst which only the beds and bedding are expensive,) for his fuel, (sometimes, from land-carriage, costly,) for his candles and his soap, with a small allowance for medicine and medical attendance, and too often (though most naturally) a large one for strong liquors,- upon these items in a poor man's expenditure it is, that the main agency of change settles,schooling for his children he generally obtains gratis.

Now the reader is aware, that, according to Ricardo's view, an expenditure on this humble scale is chiefly determined by the costs of production upon the land. Yet why? The furniture and the clothes (with the exception of the woollen or iron parts amongst them) do not arise from the domestic soil, though much of the food does; yet, even amongst that, the tea and the sugar (two very important articles) are wholly foreign; and all the other articles,