cturing population better
than that of the agriculturists. Artisans were at work for threepence
or fourpence per day; and of those who received employment, a great
proportion worked for wages which, when compared with the value of the
article on which they were employed, were altogether deceptive. Then,
he asked, what was the state of the shipping interest? To realize profit
was out of the question; and many of the ship-owners had preferred
parting with their ships at a certain loss of forty per cent., to
continuing to hold them at the risk of a loss still greater. All these
interests were, therefore, at present in a state of apparently hopless
distress. As for the symptoms to which ministers pointed as those of
returning health, they were utterly fallacious. It had been said that
the traffic on railways and canals had been increased; the same effect
would be produced if the goods had been transported on speculation, and
hawked about from one part of the country to another for sale, either
in vain or at ruinous prices. With an increasing population consumption
must increase to some extent, because the addition to the population
would not absolutely famish; but the evil was, that it was consumption
which still furnished to those employed in creating the articles
consumed the means, not of living with any reasonable comfort, but of
mere squalid starvation. Ministers had told them, likewise, to look at
the number of new houses which were springing up, and had asked if this
was an indication of distress. No one had ever said that every man in
the country was distressed. Who had ever said, for instance, that
the fund-holders and annuitants felt the general pressure? They might
continue to flourish like rank and noxious weeds among surrounding
ruins; they still drew their fixed incomes, but their security was
diminishing; for that security depended on the productiveness of the
revenue; and the revenue, as the natural result of the misery of all
the productive classes of society, was fall ing off. Lord Goderich, in
reply, said that he had expected the motion would have been supported
by something better than the two undeniable propositions that there was
great distress in the country, and that it was the duty of ministers to
relieve it to the utmost of their power. He should have thought that the
noble mover would have stated the causes which had produced the distress
of the country, and have given some notion of the remedies wh