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a small portion indeed of the component parts of the numbers, the capital, the wealth, the strength, and the producing powers of this great country; and that the greatest misfortune which could befal the manufacturers would be the consummation of their wish to reduce the British agricultural tenantry and peasantry to the level of the Russian or Polish serf, whose wages, according to answers sent to Lord Palmerston's queries in November 1833, amount to about 1s. 8d. per week.—at Dantzig, amounting yearly from 52s. to 64s.,—and at Holstein, 73s. to 100s.? Saxony is likewise constantly mentioned as a country rivalling England in the cheapness of her manufactures,—would our mill owners like to reduce wages to the level of Saxony? Why, it is stated on the best authority, that in October 1837, "a man employed on his loom, working very diligently from Monday morning to Saturday night, from five o'clock in the morning until dusk, and at times with a lamp, his wife assisting him, could not possibly earn more than 20 groschen (2s. 6d. Sterling) per week."
There is likewise no doubt that the Prusso-Bavarian commercial league, or Zoll verein of 1834, has done much to foster trade in foreign states—but what has done much more, is the opening of the great rivers of the continent of Europe to steam power, thus carrying the raw material into countries formerly impracticable to carriage, but at a most expensive rate. Hence, the success of manufactures in Saxony, Switzerland, and Germany—aided by the application of the great extent of water power, to manufactures in those countries, the difference of this power to steam being reckoned, (see Kempton's Evidence, Committee on Commerce, 1833), being as L.2. 10s. to L.12. 10s. by steam.
The agriculture of this country has now reached a pitch unexampled in history, whether considered for the enormous
