Another fruitful source of the discontents now agitating all Europe, is the state of the labouring classes, not only manufacturing but agricultural. The means of producing the necessaries and luxuries of life have been multiplied by the increase of paper capital and artificial expedients, until the supply exceeds the demand, and the price of labour, even where labour can be procured, bears no proportion to the price of bread. During fifteen years of peace, America and Europe have augmented their powers of supplying their own wants and those of the rest of the world, by means of improvements in arts, sciences, machinery, &c., to an extent which cannot be estimated. The whole world is glutted with the products of machinery, and exactly in the proportion that these increase upon us, is the increase of the poverty of the labouring classes. Millions of people in Europe, the largest proportion of whom are inhabitants of the richest country in the world, and one producing the greatest quantity of the results of industry, want bread, because they either have no employment, or their wages will not obtain it for them. Let political economists reason as they will, this is the state of the labouring classes of Europe, and this state is aggravated precisely in the proportion that the facility of supplying the necessities and luxuries of life by artificial means is increased. The cause of this singular state of things to us is sufficiently obvious. The powers of wealth, the force of example, opinion, authority, laws, of every concentrated influence that can be brought to bear upon human affairs, have, all combined, been directed to a reduction of the price of labour, and consequently to diminishing the consumption of the products of human industry; for the great mass of mankind have nothing but the fruits of their labour to offer in exchange for those products which are necessary to their subsistence and comfort. In vain may it be urged, as we have seen it done repeatedly, and most especially in an address of a clergyman of England to the labouring classes of that country--in vain may it be urged, that the decrease of the price of labour has been met by a corresponding decrease in the price of the necessaries of life, and that, therefore, the labouring classes are no worse off, nay better off, than before the vast increase of machinery either threw them out of employment, or forced them to labour for almost nothing. This comfortable gentleman, who, we understand, has a good fat living, and will probably be made a bishop if he can only stop the mouths of the sufferers with reasons instead of bread, asks these poor people if they don't get their hats, shoes, &c. one half cheaper in consequence of the perfection of machinery, the improvements of the arts, &c. But he takes care not to ask them if the difficulty of earning this half price is not increased in a much greater proportion, in consequence of the diminution of their wages, and whether bread, meat,