(Cheers.) Ginx's Baby and all other babies would not then wish
to go away. People were always making exaggerated statements
about the condition of the poor. He (Lord Munnibagge) did not
credit them. He believed the country, though temporarily
depressed by financial collapses, to be in a most healthy state.
(Hear, hear.) It was absurd to say otherwise, when it was shown
by the Board of Trade returns that we were growing richer every
day. (Cheers.) Of course Ginx's Baby must be growing richer
with the rest. Was not that a complete answer to the noble
lord's plaintive outcries? (Cheers and laughter.) That the
population of a country was a great fraction of its wealth was an
elementary principle of political economy. He thought, from the
high rates of wages, that there were not too many but too few
laborers in the country. He should oppose the motion. (Cheers.)
Two or three noble lords repeated similar platitudes, guarding
themselves as carefully from any reference to facts, or to the
question whether high rates of wages might not be the
concomitants simply of high prices of necessaries, or to the yet
wider question whether colonial development might not have
something to do with progress at home. The noble lord who had
rushed unprepared into the arena was unequal to the forces
marshalled against him, and withdrew his motion.
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