ation
to them to say that an equal amount of foreign grain has been brought
into the commercial emporiums of the empire--that if they will leave
Skibbereen or Skye, and come to Liverpool or Glasgow, they will find
warehouses amply stored with grain, which at the highest current prices
they will obtain to any extent they desire. The plain answer is, that
they are starving; that their employment as well as subsistence is gone;
that they have neither the means of transport, nor any money to buy
grain when they reach the neighbourhood of the bursting warehouses. But
then they will be absorbed in the great manufacturing districts, where
their labour will be more profitable to themselves and others, than in
their native wilds! Yes, there is a process of absorption goes on, on
the occurrence of such a crisis; but it is not the absorption of labour
by capital, but of capital by pauperism. Floods of starving destitutes
inundate every steam-boat, harbour, and road, on the route to the scene
of wo; and while the interior of the warehouses in the great commercial
cities are groaning beneath the weight of foreign grain, the streets in
their vicinity are thronged by starving multitudes, who spread typhus
fever wherever they go, and fall as a permanent burden on the poor-rates
of the yet solvent portions of the community.

And the effect of this importation of foreign grain, from whatever cause
it arises, necessarily is to _prevent_ this absorption of rural
pauperism by manufacturing capital, to which the Free-traders so
confidently look for the adjustment of society after the change has been
made. The nations who supply us with grain _do not want our
manufactures_. They will not buy them. What they want, is our money.
They have not, and will not have, the artificial wants requisite for the
general purchase of manufactures for a century to come. Generations must
go to their graves during the transition from rustic content to
civilised wants. America has sent us some millions of quarters of grain
this year, but there _is no increase in her orders for our
manufactures_. On the contrary, they are diminishing. Even the Free
Trade Journals now admit this; constrained by the evidence of their
senses to admit the entire failure of all their predictions.[12] The
reason is evident. They want our money, and our money they will have;
and if they find our manufactures are beginning to flow in, in enlarged
quantities, in consequence of our purchas