consumpt

If the home market, which depends upon the consumpt of the many, be injured by a deficiency of the means among the many to buy and consume, and a reduction of the wages of labour by a reduction of the cost of subsistence is clearly a reduction of the means to expend in the home market, it is killing the goose that laid the golden eggs to reduce the wages of labour for the sake of the foreign market for our manufactures. Political economists tell us that the export of our industrial products, including even the consumpt of our colonies, is by no means of that magnitude that any real interests of our labouring class should be sacrificed for the foreign market; and that is not the basis of our manufacturing prosperity.

If a weaver makes a thousand yards of cloth, and finds a ready and profitable sale for it, at ahigh price, he will of course continue, and others of the same profession, seing him grow rich, will take his workmen at higher wages, and increase the prices of materials, so long as they can get a consumpt for their cloth with profit ; and so of every other manufacture.