victualled by her enemies? The ruin that English and American competition has already brought on Irish industries and agriculture, European and American competition is rapidly bringing on English industries and agriculture. Already many of our smaller industries are dead, and our large ones sorely pressed, whilst our agriculture is rapidly falling away. If, during the next ten years, England does not return to the highway of common sense, and protect her native industries, agricultural and manufacturing, the present condition of Ireland ten times intensified will be hers. The cause of Ireland's ruin is not political, it is not social, it is not religious; it does not proceed from overpopulation, from over-renting, from the indolence of the people, from want of liberty, although in the fixed and unalterable determination of the English Radicals not to face the real cause of the evil, each and every one of these causes have been alleged. It proceeds from the want of manufacturing and productive industries, from impossible economic conditions.

As free trade, British and foreign competition, and unjust economic laws have been and are the bane of Ireland, so a return to protection is the only cure; and this will come-it must come. It is impossible to suppose that in order to bolster up economic theories that have been rejected by every industrial community out of England, as belonging to the 'puerile doctrines and illusions of mankind,' the entire population of one of the most fertile countries in the world shall be condemned to remain in perpetual pauperism. No! it is wrong to say that a return to protection in Ireland and England is probable, because it is certain. As to the period, it is a question of time and mischief. How much time must elapse, and how much more mischief be perpetrated, before the nation not only feels, as it has already felt, but understands and sees that it has been deluded, is another question. Probably the period is not far distant. It is not a class, but the nation, that will insist on this change. When it comes it

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will come naturally, irresistibly, and without danger. What danger may be incurred in the meantime is another thing.' To those who have read the preceding arguments I would submit the following question. Irish industries are ruined because they have been excluded from the English markets, and English manufactures have been forced into the Irish markets. English industries are receiving at the hands of Europe and America exactly the same treatment. English manufactures are excluded from American and European markets, and American and European manufactures forced on the English markets. What reason have we to doubt that under identically similar conditions England will suffer similar disaster?

XXXVIII.

THE CAPITAL OF LABOUR.

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'IN the freest country in the world,' said Monsieur Thiers in his great speech of January 22, 1870, arrangements are made to protect the different branches of native industry.' Neither emperors, nor kings, nor presidents, nor communists, nor wars, nor revolutions have caused the slightest change in this legislation. Why? Because all industrial communities believe they see in it the mainspring of national life. Wherever the voice of universal suffrage obtains authoritative utterance, it proclaims, as the first law of national existence, protection to native industry.' It is in England alone that this instinctive requirement of all industrial communities has been ignored. Varying the usual formula that 'property has its duties as well as its rights,' it may be maintained that 'labour has its rights as well as its duties.' Its duties are that man must toil and moil and fulfil God's third curse on our unfortunate progenitor, that in the sweat of his face he shall eat bread;' its rights are that it

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shall, to use Mr. Bright's words, be protected from 'unwise and unjust legislation.' When a man learns a trade he invests his capital, the only capital he has, the capital of labour, in that trade as distinctly as if he invested so much cash in it. He invests this capital on the security of, as he believes, wise and just laws that will protect him from unjust and unwise legislation' from any quarter, and will safeguard his capital as a factor of the national wealth; and he believes it is his national right that if in any dealings with foreigners there is a doubt as to the true interpetration of the most favoured nation' clause, it is he, and not the foreigner, who shall have the benefit of it.

I believe Englishmen generally are beginning to suspect that they have had enough, and more than enough, of the blatant cosmopolitanism that would teach them that blood is not thicker than water, that charity does not begin at home, that their first duty is to their neighbours, not to themselves; that it is the general happiness of mankind they must work for, not their own; that self-sacrifice, the happy despatch,' is an institution peculiarly suited to British manufacturers and British operatives. The capital of labour' consists in the skill, the practical knowledge, the industry, the strength, the health, &c., that enables a working man to earn his wages, his 20s. or 30s. per week. Now this capital of labour does not appear in balances at the bankers, in buildings and machinery, in plant, &c. It is not tangible or convertible, but nevertheless it exists, and under certain untoward circumstances can occasionally be actually realised. If a mechanic is disabled from earning his wages by the carelessness of a railway company, for instance, he can recover from the company a sum of money that represents the capital of his weekly wage. The law thus recognises the reality of the capital of labour. Figures will illustrate my meaning, but they do not pretend to be accurate; readers may alter and amend them as they choose; they

are simply intended to show that the capital of which we are treating is real, and that it is enormous.

A man who earns 25s. per week, or 65l. a year, possesses in the skill, or knowledge, or experience, or strength, &c., that enables him to earn that income a capital that yields that amount of weekly interest. A man may have 30 years' work in him, or he may have 15. Suppose 15, the income of the operative earning 25s. a week, capitalised at 15 years, represents a sum of 9751. (for the sake of convenience say 1,000l.). Now there are in this country six and a half millions of operatives engaged in manufacturing and similar industries, earning in fair times on an average 25s. per week. This represents an annual income of 422 millions (it is usually put at 400 millions); capitalised at 15 years' purchase, this income, or interest, represents a capital of 6,337 millions.

This is the capital of labour, and a pretty considerable capital it is, and the object of the wise legislator is to encourage and protect it, and make it fructify and accumulate, not to drive it out of the country. Every skilled operative, every producer, who leaves the country takes with him his handicraft, his skill, his energy-that capital of labour that in every country but ours is encouraged as the chief source of national wealth. With every thousand skilled labourers that leave this country at least a million of the capital of labour leaves also. To that extent is goodness gone out of us and the wealthproducing power of the country diminished. Let us see how Mr. Chamberlain's reply to the sugar-refiners affects this question of the capital of labour. He says :— "There are only 5,000 of you who have acquired a knowledge of the methods of sugar-refining, and who have no equal knowledge of any other industry (in other words, who have invested your capital of labour in sugar-refining). It is quite possible the bounty system may make your capital unremunerative in this country, and that you may have to take it to America; but what of that? There

are only 5,000 of you and your families who will be ruined, whilst all the rest of the community will gain.' Mr. Chamberlain weighs the profit of the community against the loss of the 5,000, and decides that the latter must go to the wall. He assumes a profit of a million sterling a year from the diminished price of sugar. Let us see what the loss will be. The profit is a pure assumption. There is no guarantee whatever that when foreigners have a monopoly of our sugar market they will continue to supply us at the lowest price. On the contrary, they are very likely to raise it considerably higher than it is at present. The loss, on the other hand, is real, positive, and capable of demonstration. We will suppose that the 5,000 workmen who have invested their capital of labour in sugar-refining earn 25s. a week, or 651. a year; that on an average each has 15 years' work in him: the capital of each would be 975l., say 1,000l. As there are 5,000 of them, it appears that the amount of the capital of labour invested in sugar-refining is 5,000,000l., and that that is the loss the foreign bounty system inflicts on this capital in England. But this is only the capital loss that would fall on the 5,000 operatives and their families. It does not include the national loss of sending money abroad to buy 180,000 tons of loaf sugar formerly refined at home. It does not include the loss of the capitalists who have erected plant; of the 20 or 30 different industries directly or indirectly connected with sugar-refining; of the manufacturers, and farmers, and tradesmen, and publicans, and carriers who would have profited by the 350,000l. spent in wages.

Mr. Lubbock stated in his evidence before the select committee (question 3,190) that 180,000 men would have been employed in our colonies to produce the abovementioned 180,000 tons of sugar, in addition to 26,000 sailors, dock porters, coopers, &c., who would have been employed in handling and transporting 410,000 tons of sugar cane. It was stated before the same committee