We will suppose, then, that the farmer has yielded to this violence; that the violence has had the effect which it was meant to have upon him; and that he takes on all the hands which were out of employ, to thrash and winnow, to cut chaff, to plant with a dibber instead of with a drill, to do all the work, in fact, by the dearest mode instead of the cheapest. But he employs _just as many people as are absolutely necessary_, and no more, for getting his corn ready for market, and for preparing, in a slovenly way, for the seed-time. In a month or two the victorious destroyers find that not a single hand the more of them is really employed. And why not? There are no drainings going forward, the hedges and ditches are neglected, the dung-heap is not turned over, the chalk is not fetched from the pit; in fact, all those labours are neglected which belong to a state of agricultural industry which is brought to perfection. _The farmer has no funds to employ in such labours_; he is paying a great deal more than he paid before for the same, or a less, amount of work, because his labourers choose to do certain labours with rude tools instead of perfect ones.
We will imagine that this state of things continues till the next spring. All this while the price of grain has been rising. Many farmers have ceased to employ capital at all upon the land. The neat inventions, which enabled them to make a living out of their business, being destroyed, they have abandoned the business altogether. A day's work will now no longer purchase as much bread as before. The horse, it might be probably found out, was as great an enemy as the drill-plough; for, as a horse will do the field-work of six men, there must be six men employed, without doubt, instead of one horse. But how would the fact turn out? If the farmer still went on, in spite of all these losses and crosses, he might employ men in the place of horses, but not a single man more than the number that would work at the price of the keep of one horse. To do the work of each horse turned adrift, he would require six men; but he would only have about a shilling a-day to divide between these six--the amount which the horse consumed.
As the year advanced, and the harvest approached, it would be discovered that not one-tenth of the land was sown: for although the ploughs were gone, because the horses were turned off, and there was plenty of _labour_ for those who chose to labour for its own sake, or at the price of horse-labour, this amazing employment for human hands, somehow or other, would not quite answer the purpose. It has been calculated that the power of horses, oxen, &c., employed in husbandry in Great Britain is ten times the amount of human power. If the human power insisted upon doing all the work with the worst tools, the certainty is that not even one-tenth of the land could be cultivated. Where, then, would all this madness end? In the starvation of the labourers themselves, even if they were allowed to eat up all they had produced by such imperfect means. They would be just in the condition of any other barbarous people, that were ignorant of the inventions that constitute the power of civilization. They would eat up the little corn which they raised themselves, and have nothing to give in exchange for clothes, and coals, and candles, and soap, and tea, and sugar, and all the many comforts which those who are even the worst off are not wholly deprived of.
