We pretend not to perfect accuracy in these figures: we profess to deal only with round numbers. An approximation to the actual state of things is all we aim at; for that is all we require to elucidate our position. But if we deviate from arithmetical exactness (as must needs be in such calculations), the deviation will be found to be rather _in favour_ of the producer than against him; and therefore our argument must be held so much the stronger, the less exact we are in figures. That the producer does not, upon the average, receive a fourth of his produce is a certain fact. If the producers got back £125,000,000 out of a gross annual produce of £600,000,000 and odd, it is the very extreme of their good fortune. Some of them, we know, get far more than in this proportion--more than a fourth or than a third,--nay, mayhap one-half. But the majority, on the other hand, get less than a fourth; and millions of them less than a sixth or even an eighth of their produce. An Irish labourer or a London needlewoman does not, probably, receive a tithe of the value of their labour. Estimating in this way--striking a balance between all the various descriptions of producers--we do not understate their income when we average it at 10s. per week for each family, or at from £125,000,000 to £130,000,000 for the whole, out of a gross annual production of, say, from £600,000,000 to £630,000,000 sterling. Small as is this proportion allotted to the producer out of his own earnings, it is becoming smaller and smaller every year, as prices and wages decline under the operation of Peel’s monetary and free-trade measures. The reason is obvious. To make money scarce, on the one hand, and to invite foreign competition on the other, must of necessity lower prices. Whatever lowers prices swells the burden of debts, taxes, and of all other fixed money obligations. In the same ratio it must reduce the aggregate of profits and wages; for the more the producers (employers and employed) have to give out of the common stock to pay taxes and the interest of public and private debts, the less there must be left for themselves.