Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol. 67, No. 416, June 1850Various
General
Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol. 67, No. 416, June 1850
Various
England -- Periodicals; Scotland -- Periodicals
He confessed he only wondered that the "Times
Commissioner" had not been down there (hear, and laughter,) to tell
the tenantry how much of the physical force of the labourer was lost
by living so far from his work. But he had found worse than that.
He had found that English labourers were being gradually displaced
by low-priced Irish labourers. He had found that the tenants of Sir
Robert Peel had been employing during the winter, is well as during
the summer, six or eight Irish labourers each, to whom they paid
little or no money wages. (Cries of "shame.") Now he should not have
thought much about that if he had found that the Irish labourers were
prospering, as they are British subjects; but he had seen them in a
very wretched condition, to which the English labourers also were
being rapidly reduced. The Irish there have no house to live in, no
bed to lie on, or fire to go to, but lay on straw in an outhouse;
therefore this system has this tendency,--to depress the English
labourer to the Irish or Continental level, without elevating the
other. He would pass, however, from the parish of Kingsbury to a
district represented by another lion of the day. (A laugh.) They
would recollect that Mr C. Villiers, the member for Wolverhampton,
had stated at the commencement of the session that there had been
L.91,000,000 a-year saved to the country by the fall in prices
which had followed the adoption of the free-trade policy. Now it
had occurred to him that the constituents of Mr Villiers must have
obtained a pretty good share of that sum. But he had found that in
Wolverhampton the poor-rates had been gradually increasing during the
last eight or ten years. It appeared that, during the twelve months
ending in March 1842, the poor-rates in the union of Wolverhampton
had not amounted to half the sum which they had reached during the
twelve months ending in March 1850. It further appeared that in the
year ending March 25, 1849, they had amounted to only L.10,007, while
in the year ending March 25, 1850, they had amounted to L.11,625. He
had mentioned these facts for the purpose of showing that the people
of Wolverhampton had derived no advantage from the supposed saving of
L.91,000,000 a-year effected by the adoption of a free-trade policy.
But he said, without fear of contradiction, that no such saving had
been made. He admitted that that sum had been lost to one class in
this country (hear, hear,) but he denied that it had been gained by
any other. (Cheers and laughter.) Lord John Russell said last Friday
night week, that if Mr Henley brought forward a direct motion in
favour of protection, he should be prepared to show that the great
mass of the people were in possession of as great comforts as they
ever had been. Now this was three months after the country had been
said to have been the gainer of L.91,000,000 a-year, and yet all that
Lord John Russell could say was that the people were in "as good"
a position as ever they were.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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