hey would then be able to live comfortably and have a
piece of meat every day for their dinners. But this would be a very
false conclusion. The transfer of three shillings and sixpence a day to
every labourer would not increase the quantity of meat in the country.
There is not at present enough for all to have a decent share. What
would then be the consequence? The competition among the buyers in the
market of meat would rapidly raise the price from sixpence or
sevenpence, to two or three shillings in the pound, and the commodity
would not be divided among many more than it is at present. When an
article is scarce, and cannot be distributed to all, he that can shew
the most valid patent, that is, he that offers most money, becomes the
possessor. If we can suppose the competition among the buyers of meat
to continue long enough for a greater number of cattle to be reared
annually, this could only be done at the expense of the corn, which
would be a very disadvantagous exchange, for it is well known that the
country could not then support the same population, and when
subsistence is scarce in proportion to the number of people, it is of
little consequence whether the lowest members of the society possess
eighteen pence or five shillings. They must at all events be reduced to
live upon the hardest fare and in the smallest quantity.
It will be said, perhaps, that the increased number of purchasers in
every article would give a spur to productive industry and that the
whole produce of the island would be increased. This might in some
degree be the case. But the spur that these fancied riches would give
to population would more than counterbalance it, and the increased
produce would be to be divided among a more than proportionably
increased number of people. All this time I am supposing that the same
quantity of work would be done as before. But this would not really
take place. The receipt of five shillings a day, instead of eighteen
pence, would make every man fancy himself comparatively rich and able
to indulge himself in many hours or days of leisure. This would give a
strong and immediate check to productive industry, and, in a short
time, not only the nation would be poorer, but the lower classes
themselves would be much more distressed than when they received only
eighteen pence a day.
A collection from the rich of eighteen shillings in the pound, even if
distributed in the most judicious manner, would have a littl
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