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    aUoTreeTto continue working until Saturday , rendering that 'week three days longer than usual . On these two accounts should "be deducted 5 s . 6 d ., and 5 s . 2 d ., in all 10 s . 8 d . ; and this would reduce the average to about 11 s . 6 d . a week . Now that is just the sum "which Mr . Hollins pledged himself that bis hands could earn upon two looms in his mill . The power-loom , weavers observe , that they have been challenged to prove that the masters are in a position to pay the October prices , on which they say : ,

    "We art not in a position , nor are wo allowed tUe opportunity to open our employer's ledgers , and enter into all the minute details necessary , to prore it , and we presume it would be out of our province to do so ; but we have this proof—that other employers working the same fabric , placed l in a similar position " as regards locality-, state of their machinery , and the markets both for baying and selling the manufactured materials , are paying not only the October prices , but in many instances tar superior prices . *'

    Tn a subsequent speech we observe Mr . Cowell saying , that , by deducting a farthing per u cut" in the dresser ' s room , a manufacturer has been known in one day to produce a collossal fortune hy-the end of fehe year ; and we see him scouting tntose whx > : recommend working people to study the doctrine of political economy . He says , " the sooner we ean- ' rout political economy from tKe w <* rld , the better it will be for the workingclasses ;' for /• political economy is buying cheap and selling dear ; . a * doctrine irreconcileable with the divine precept , ' Do unto others as you would that others should do unto you . '" Now even in

    that definition , political economy is not irreconcileable with the divine precept . To buy in a cheap market and sell in a dear market , as the precept is meant by political economists , is to seek ^ what you want in places where it is abundant , and therefore cheap ; and to offer what you have in places where it is much in request , and therefore -d 6 ar ;—a process which makes the merchant help toT benefit mankind by more equally diffusing the--advantages peculiar to different places over the whole . Political economy , however , does , not mean that single precept ; it means a knowledge

    of the natural laws by which labour works out the produce of the land , and by which commerce effects such exchanges . Political economy is no artificial code of statutes to compel people to do anything , but it is a scientific inquiry into the laws under ^ wbich inevitably they must work ; such as the law , that the labourer cannot produce without he be kept in health by food , clothing ,

    and shelter . The working -classes will not improve their condition by " routing political economy , " but they will by understanding it . They are not , it is true , bound to show that their employers could afford to pay the October prices ; but unless they could succeed in doing so tbey do not make out a cage . At all events , they confess that they have b > een submitting to prices 10 or 20 per cent . under those which have been obtained for the

    same work ; their acquiesence , of course , dependent upon their ignorance ; although it is probable that the master also calculated those various rates under some ignorance of their own . Upon the whole , - the state of the cotton , trade suggests a remarkable confirmation of the advice vfhich we recently ventured to throw out—that emigration is the best form of strike . We arc inclined to take the allegations of both sides as being in the main true ; aad putting the facts together , we find that even an honest and generally successful manufacturer like Mr . Edward Hollins

    cannot undertake to secure for the general run of hia working ^ hands more than 11 s . 6 d . a week at weaving . Now this is unquestionably a low rate of wages . Weaving is generally considered a light work , and so it is ; but there is yet a great deal of bodily fatigue in being on the feet for ten hours a day In one spot , rarely still for many seconds together ; and what is the chief strain upon the faculties—in being constantly on the ¦ watch to prevent the breaking of a thread , or to cbviate the fine for " ends out . " The hours used

    to be . much longer , but there are few men capable of following the dogs with the gun for hours together , or of long continued intellectual labour , who would not find that restless confinement to one spot , and that ten hours' watch over the individual threads in two sheets of cloth , a very trying exertion . Now , a stonemason can make more wages than a weaver ; ciirpenters and paintora have been earning 5 s . or 5 s . 6 < 1 . a day ; yet weaving ixsed to be one of the best paid occupations in the country . The condition of the working people in the cotton trade , therefore , i . s dee limn " -. Thu

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    masters allege that their own condition is declining ; and we believe it . Although the exports have increased in gross quantity , the price is not proportionately increased ; and as the numbers of masters have considerably increased , profits have proportionately diminished . This would imply that the trade is overdoing itself ; and so it appears from , the facts , since no exertion at home or abroad produce any corresponding increase of advantages to masters or men . The prosperity of last summer , which gave such an immense increase to the wealth of

    the country at large , did little for the cotton trade . This is a great fact . There appears to us , then , to be but one course of improvement which can materially benefit the trade . It lies in reducing the cost of production , by further improvements in the method of production . One kind of improvement , evident enough in its general nature , would greatly increase the power and efficiency of production by using a better kind of labour . But tie same process—as we are presuming that no very striking increase can be made to the quantity of goods sold—would involve a diminution in the number of labourers . Now this

    would throw great numbers out of work ; and they would have " to trandier themselves to some other krnd of employmem ; . " . Xet there is no kind of employment so' generally accessible to the labourers in any trade as colonial employment ; because while trades at home are settled down to peculiar methods not always easy for adults to learn , and while they are all sufficiently manned , the peculiarity of colonial employment is to be less hardened into an ancient system , and to be undermanned . Perhaps if the true circumstances of the cotton trade were thoroughly explained and

    laid bare to perfect knowledge , it would be found that the machinery of the trade might be considerably improved ; that a higher and better paid class of labour could be cultivated out of the present corps of workpeople ; but that the same process would cause tne trade to require a smaller number of hands . The facts already known indicate such conclusion ; aad it follows that emigration is not only the most effectual of strikes for the purpose oi enabling masters to know that their hands are in earnest , and for the purpose of raising the value of labour , but also that it is the true auxiliary to any effectual reform of the stagnant condition of the cotton trade in Lancashire .

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    who had misled Mm into politics , declaring that his punishment did him good , and praisin g the officer who punished and disparaged him—as if he rather kissed the cat-o ' -nine-tails . By this manner of treating the subject , Mr . Somerville stultifies any attempt to rescue him from the degradation of the punishment , by representing him as a sufferer . On more than one occasion he

    actually turned accuser against the Liberals who had engaged him . He repudiates the character of a martyr , and goes back , by preference to that of the degraded soldier . Kindly ideas would have induced us not to assist Mr . Somerville in exposing himself along with Mr . Cobden , but we have no right sa far to judge for our readers , and to withhold from them a subject of the day .

    Mr . Cobden will always be remembered as one who held the most conspicuous post as spokesman for the Anti-Corn-law League . The public history of the League is tolerably well known ; the object of this pamphlet is to snow that in the conduct of that agitation the leaders habitually resorted to false appearances , and that they took unfair advantages , —Mr . Cobden especially being the chief in these as he was in the more public operations of the League . With Mr . Cobden ' s advocacy of Russia , which the writer drags out of

    , jthe pamphlets by " The Manchester Manufacturer , " we need not meddle much . Mr . Cobden praises that country for " love of improvement , " for security given by law to life and property , " and , " above all , " for " encouragement of commerce , " speaking thus of a country where he confesses that merchants , save those of the first class , are liable to corporal punishment , where the bulk of the population may be sold with the land , and where to this day the tariff is all but prohibitory ! Mr . Somerville also draws out from these

    pamphlets constant attacks by Mr . Cobden on " orators , journalists , reviewers , and authors , " " writers and speakers , " " Turkish and Kusso-maniac writers , " whom he accuses of ignorance ,, prejudice , dishonesty , bigotry , and cant ^ as king more than once " how long will such political quacks be permitted , without punishment ^ and with no better distinction than the plea of ignorance , to inflame the minds and disorder the understandings of a whole nation ?" Mr . Somerville insinuates that this language is

    dictated by self-interest , Mr . Cobden having , as a calico-printer , business connections with Kussia . But for our own part , we do not believe that simple self-interest can beget enthusiasm and eloquence , which Mr . Cobden undoubtedly enjoys . We ascribe the prejudice rather to honest delusion . It is evident , from the whole tenor of his language , that those who have different views and objects from his own he regards with contempt . Men who think that there may be worse things than war , who desire to arrest 'Russia in her advance to

    universal dominion in Europe , who cannot regard peace andcotton manufactures asthechiefest objects of mankind , who pursue other sciences and arts with more devotion than political economy and commerce , seem to be regarded by Mr . Cobden with a contempt which is too consistent not to be genuine . The repeated headlong zeal with which he has staked his reputation on a proposal to cut down the expenditure to the model of 1837 , without reference to events abroad , and notwithstanding his repented failures in that path , shows that his deficiency in this matter at least is less in the heart than in the head . We do not believe that

    he could mislead his country into disarming itself , simply with the intention of carrying on his trade in peace ; but we believe that his desire to do so is purely * honest , and that , incredible as it may seem , he is not so much the agent of Russia as the victim of hallucination . For it must be remembered that Mr . Cobden ' rf works do not include treatises which imply the possession of intellectual powers beyond the one power of exposition on a comparatively limited range in matters of fact . The nearest approach to intellectual subjects which he has yet made has consisted in his speeches on the subject of education .

    ALEXANDER SOMERYILLE'S CHARGES AGAINST MR . COBDEN . It is with the greatest reluctance that we at last resolve not to set aside the pamphlet recently published by Mr . Alexander Somerville , entitled *• ' Cobdenic Policy the Internal Enemy of England . " We have in . many respects an imperfect sympathy with Mr . Cobden ; but we cannot forget the service which he did for the country as an expositor of the doctrine sustained by the Anti-cornlaw League , and as one of the agents most successful in promoting the Free-trade , which was so admirably propounded by Perron net Thompson

    years betore , and so eftectually consummated by Sir Robert Peel . Nor is that gratitude for the past without the "lively sense of future favours'" which Mr . Cobden may confer upon his countiy , as one of the promoters of public Education , or of Parliamentary Reform . There are , however , some subjects more important than Reform , and the peculiar course taken by Mr . Cobden in tlic most urgent of all subjects at present , makes us feel that we should fail in our duty if we were to neglect any means by which , as a public man , ho can be rendered more intelligible and appreciable . Hence our dislike to meddle with a pamphlet which casts so deplorable a slur upon his reputation , —a dislike increased rather than diminished

    by the remembrance of our own strong opposition to him , —gives way to a sense of duty . Wo will confess also another reason why we desire to avoid this pamphlet . We remember Mr . Somerville as an injured man , a victim under the tyrannical application of degrading punishment . We had read with pleasure some of his writings , especially those signed "Qno who hn . s Whistled

    at the Plough , " in which he showed how protection , by its mischievous operation upon working agriculturists , marred the opportunities of tins ' beautiful country , and prostrated the industry of the Englishman . But in this volume , while he . appears as tne servant turned informer against his employer , ha speaks of life own punishment us a soldier m n manner the moat revolting—whinim / about those

    J he most telling part of Mr . Somerville ' s pamplilet is that which exposes , not Mr . Cobden ' s mistaken views about Kussia , which could now do comparatively- little harm , nor his supercilious contempt for " writers and speakers" in general , with his naive hint at punishment for writers and speakers who dHIered from him ; but certain facts , certain matters of conduct-in the management of tlic Anti-Cora-law agitation . We take some instances a . s they occur in the book .- A paper of Conservative , and Protectionist politics appeared to be rather taking the sidi : of the farmers , as dis-

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    84 THE LEADER . [ Saturday ,

• Citation
  • Leader (1850-1860), Jan. 28, 1854, page 84, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse-os.kdl.kcl.ac.uk/periodicals/l/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2023/page/12/