Why land is cheap and labour badly rewarded may easily be seen on a perusal of the following passages:--
"'Chickuns are about 5d. a couple, dooks 10d. A couple of young gaise 10d; when auld, not less than 1s. or 14d.'
"'I can't say; we haven't many of thim in the counthry, and I don't want to tell yere Arn'r a lie. Fish, little or nothing. A large turbot, of 30 lbs. weight, for 3s. Lobsters, a dozen for 4d. Soles, 2d. or 3d. a piece. T'other day I bought a turbot, of 15 lbs. weight, for a gentleman, and I paid 18d. for ut.'"--P. 178.
"'What do you pay for your tea and sugar here?' I inquired.
"'Very dare, sir,' he replied. 'We pay 5s. for tea, 5d. for brown sugar, and 8d. for white; that is, if we buy a single pound.'"--P.187.
The sugar of the labourer of Jamaica exchanges in Manchester for three shillings, of which he receives perhaps one, and he perishes because of the difficulty of obtaining machinery, or clothing. The Hindoo sells his cotton for a penny a pound, and buys it back in the form of cloth at eighteen or twenty pence. The Virginia negro raises tobacco which exchanges for six shillings' worth of commodities, of which he and his owner obtain three pence. The poor Irishman raises chickens which sell in London for shillings, of which he receives pence, and thus a pound of sugar which had yielded the free negro of Jamaica two pence, exchanges in the West of Ireland for a pair of chickens or a dozen lobsters. The reader who may study these facts will readily understand the destructive effects on the value of land and labour resulting from the absence of markets, such as arise naturally where the plough and the loom are permitted, in accordance with the doctrines of Adam Smith, to take their places by the side of each other. More than seventy years since he denounced the system which looked to compelling the exports of raw produce as one productive of infinite injustice, and certainly the histories of Jamaica and Virginia, Ireland and India, since his time, would afford him, were he now present, little reason for a change of opinion.