Note 166-1 — Chapter III

Senior denies this. Let us suppose that agriculture in Ireland employs on every 200 acres ten working men's families, one-half of whom are used to satisfy the aggregate wants of the working people, and the other half in the production of wheat to be exported to England. If now the English market requires meat and wool instead of wheat, the Irish landowner will, perhaps, find it advantageous, of the ten laboring families, to employ one in stock raising, a second in obtaining food, etc. to support the laborers, and to discharge all the others. If, then, the increased net product is employed in the purchase of other Irish labor, all goes on well enough; but if, instead of this, the landowners should import articles of English manufacture, the demand for labor in Ireland would doubtless decrease, notwithstanding the increase of its income. (Outlines, I, 154.) Senior here overlooks two things: first, that in the supposed case, if eight-ninths of Irish laborers are thrown out of employment, spite of the increased income of the owners of landed estates, Ireland's national income is on the whole probably diminished (§ 146), and secondly, that, possibly, the demand for labor in England experiences a greater increase than the decrease in Ireland; since, with the addition to the world-income, there would be an increase in the world-demand for labor.