At the great Anti-Corn-law demonstration in Glasgow, many things were
told which may startle the firmest belief in the wisdom of existing laws. There is a general congestion in the business of life : whole classes are partially or entirely deprived of the means of subsistence ; and relief seems inaccessible. The ma, nufacturers of the great towns are beaten and undersold in the competition of the world : they pinch their own profits and their workmen's food almost or quite to nothing ; yet still they are beaten. It is a striking circumstance, that while this state of matters has been coming on for a series of years, gradually, but with an increasing momentum towards the last, there has in many branches of manufacture been a progressive increase in the erection of machinery, and even in the number of hands employed, up till the very latest crisis. Manufacturers persisted in piling up their own ruin. Whose is the reproach ? What individual trader, able
to push an enterprise and to grasp some slight additional gain, at whatever sacrifice, when his credit tottered, would refrain from motives of general patriotism ? In fact, how could any one tell what would be the effect of the indulgence of his hopes or of his self-denial ? Economists have made it a source of national pride that British commerce should be pushed into all quarters ; and few but the farthest-sighted could pronounce in 1839, that the man who was adding to his machinery then was aggravating the misery of 1842. It is as idle to reproach the millowners of Glasgow with the intolerable evils which they met to disclose on Friday and Sa- turday, as it is to reproach the farmers with the dearth : both are tools at the mercy of the general policy of the nation and the course of events. Blame whom we may, it is a proclaimed fact, that Glasgow, with its enormous wealth at stake, and its vast popula- tion, is threatened with a ruin of which it already feels the nrst ap- proaches; while in its neighbourhood Paisley exhibits a consum- mation of ruin. The question is, what is to be done ? No one, strongly as he may doubt the merits of "the Factory system," can seriously propose that Glasgow should be allowed to die off : no one would venture to declare that these evils must be permitted to work out their own cure, while those who are not immediate suf- ferers stand by in heedless inactivity. Glasgow may be said to be thrown into the hands of the Minister who undertakes to regulate the destinies of the country ; and with it Manchester, and the other great manufacturing-districts, bankrupt in prosperity. What is to be done with them ?
