House of Commons, Great Britain

“ If Steam Carriages could ultimately be brought to such perfection as entirely to supersede draught horses on the common roads, there would be food and demand for eight millions of persons. But when we take further into consideration, that lowering the expence of carriage would enable us to extend cultivation over soils which cannot now be profitably tilled, and would have the further effect of enabling us to apply, with a profit, additional portions of labour and capital to the soils already under tillage. ”

“ As the demand for agricultural produce was diminished, the price of such produce would fall, food would become cheaper, and the cheapening of food would benefit partly the labouring class and partly the capitalists, the one obtaining higher real wages, and the other higher profits; this increase in real wages and in profits, would effect a great encouragement to manufacturing industry, and would necessarily lead to an increase in the manufacturing population, and to the amount of capital employed in manufactures. ”

“ If Steam Carriages be employed instead of Carriages drawn by horses, it will be because that mode of conveyance is found the cheapest. Cheapening the carriage of the produce of the soil must necessarily diminish the quantity of produce expended in bringing a given quantity to market, and will therefore increase the net surplus, which net surplus constitutes the encouragement to agriculture. ”

“ This cheaper mode of internal carriage will not only lower the price of light and refined manufactures to the Home consumer, but will lower their price also to the Foreign consumer. This will increase the advantages which we at present possess in the Foreign market, and tend to increase our Foreign commerce. So that here again there will be an increased demand for manufactures and for a manufacturing population, and here again will be another beneficial re-action upon the soil. ”

“ For example, if it requires the expenditure of two hundred quarters of corn to raise four hundred, and the expenditure of one hundred more on carriage, to bring the four hundred to market, then the net surplus will be one hundred.—If, by the substitution of Steam Carriages, you can bring the same quantity to market, with an expenditure of fifty quarters, then your net surplus is increased from one hundred to one hundred and fifty quarters ”

“ There are soils which are stated to be so poor, that oats alone can be raised upon them, would not the substitution of Steam for horse power have the effect, of throwing out of employment the labour required for the cultivation of such lands?—If there are soils of such a peculiar quality that oats is the only marketable product which they will yield, the persons employed in cultivating those lands would certainly be thrown out of that particular occupation ”

“ In point of fact, superseding horses by mechanical power, would have precisely the same effect in increasing the population and wealth of England, as would be produced were we to increase the extent of the country by adding thereto a new and fertile territory, equal in extent to all the land which now breeds and feeds all the horses employed upon common roads. ”

“ But I doubt of there being any land which it is profitable to cultivate, which would not raise some other agricultural produce than oats either for man or cattle, for which the increasing population would create a demand. ”

“ There are many tracts of land which cannot now be cultivated, because the quantity of produce expended in cultivation and in carriage exceeds the quantity which that expenditure would bring to market. ”

“ If horses were displaced from common roads, would not the demand for oats, beans, and for pasture, be diminished, and land thereby be thrown out of cultivation, and labour out of employment?—If Steam Carriages were very suddenly brought into use, and horses thereby displaced. ”

“ Such addition to the extent of fertile territory in England suddenly effected, would in the first instance lower the value of agricultural produce, and be injurious to the proprietors of the old portion of the territory, but no person would therefore contend that if we could enlarge the Island of Great Britain by additional tracts of fertile land, the public interests would be injured by such enlargement ”

“ The consequence would be, that after some degree of pressure upon agriculture, the increased number of human beings would create the same demand for agricultural produce which the employment of horses formerly created. ”