A Letter to Robert Peel on the Pernicious Effects of a Variable Standard of Value, by One of His Constituents [E. Copleston]. (Paperback)

This historic book may have numerous typos, missing text, images, or index. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. 1819. Not illustrated. Excerpt: ... -tend to prove yet more forcibly the connexion that subsists between it and the depreciation of money. It was before observed, that the wages of labour always follow at a very unequal pace the advancement of prices. Pure theory inculcates the natural and necessary tendency towards an equitable adjustment; it leaves the intermediate difficulties and delays out of the question, as frictions in a mechanical problem; arid justly condemns the folly of attempting to rectify the inequality by law. But laws, though they cannot rectify, yet may aggravate what is amiss, and retard the cure: and those very frictions and disturbing forces may possibly by care avid skill be diminished; at any rate they deserve attentive study, as tending to illustrate the principles on which the several phenomena depends . . . '. .'. _ . Thus the labour of the manufacturer is a transferable stock compared with that of the husbandman. Occasional competition instructs the owner in its value, and it circulates with freedom through those districts where it is most wanted. In other words, the manufacturing labourer has his choice of a market, and of course he obtains his price sooner, than the husbandman who is practically .confined to a single spot, and for whose labour there cannot be that free competition which the commercial theory supposes. The local influence too under which he acts, removes him still farther from the condition of the vender of a cdmmodity, Under which relation that theory regards him. The consequence is (what experience abundantly testifies) that every expedient is resorted to by his employer before that of a permanent' rise of wages: and as the labourer cannot defer the bargain, he submits to conditions really more and more rigorous, passing indeed under the sam...