See Agrarian Crisis in India by Rajani Palme Dutt 1934 here.


The Slave Trade, Domestic and Foreign: Why it exists, and how it may be extinguished

By Henry C. Carey, 1853

 

Preface

 

The subject discussed in the following pages is one of great

importance, and especially so to the people of this country. The views

presented for consideration differ widely from those generally

entertained, both as regards the cause of evil and the mode of cure;

but it does not follow necessarily that they are not correct,--as the

reader may readily satisfy himself by reflecting upon the fact, that

there is scarcely an opinion he now holds, that has not, and at no

very distant period, been deemed quite as heretical as any here

advanced. In reflecting upon them, and upon the facts by which they

are supported, he is requested to bear in mind that the latter are,

with very few exceptions, drawn from writers holding views directly

opposed to those of the author of this volume; and not therefore to be

suspected of any exaggeration of the injurious effects of the system

here treated as leading to slavery, or the beneficial ones resulting

from that here described as tending to establish perfect and universal

freedom of thought, speech, action, and trade.

 

Philadelphia, March, 1853.

 

Contents

 

Chapter 1. The wide extent of slavery

Chapter 2. Of slavery in the British colonies

Chapter 3. Of slavery in the United States

Chapter 4. Of emancipation in the British colonies

Chapter 5. How man passes from poverty and slavery toward wealth and freedom

Chapter 6. How wealth tends to increase

Chapter 7. How labour acquires value and man becomes free

Chapter 8. How man passes from wealth and freedom toward poverty and slavery

Chapter 9. How slavery grew, and how it is now maintained, in the West Indies

Chapter 10. How slavery grew and is maintained in the United States

Chapter 11. How slavery grows in Portugal and Turkey

Chapter 12. How slavery grows in India

Chapter 13. How slavery grows in Ireland and Scotland

Chapter 14. How slavery grows in England

Chapter 15. How can slavery be extinguished?

Chapter 16. How freedom grows in northern Germany

Chapter 17. How freedom grows in Russia

Chapter 18. How freedom grows in Denmark

Chapter 19. How freedom grows in Spain and Belgium

Chapter 20. Of the duty of the people of the United States

Chapter 21. Of the duty of the people of England

 

Chapter 1. The wide extent of slavery

 

Slavery still exists throughout a large portion of what we are

accustomed to regard as the civilized world. In some countries, men

are forced to take the chance of a lottery for the determination of

the question whether they shall or shall not be transported to distant

and unhealthy countries, there most probably to perish, leaving behind

them impoverished mothers and sisters to lament their fate. In others,

they are seized on the highway and sent to sea for long terms of

years, while parents, wives, and sisters, who had been dependent on

their exertions, are left to perish of starvation, or driven to vice

or crime to procure the means of support. In a third class, men, their

wives, and children, are driven from their homes to perish in the

road, or to endure the slavery of dependence on public charity until

pestilence shall Send them to their graves, and thus clear the way for

a fresh supply of others like themselves. In a fourth, we see men

driven to selling themselves for long periods at hard labour in

distant countries, deprived of the society of parents, relatives, or

friends. In a fifth, men, women, and children are exposed to sale, and

wives are separated from husbands, while children are separated from

parents. In some, white men, and, in others, black men, are subjected

to the lash, and to other of the severest and most degrading

punishments. In some places men are deemed valuable, and they are well

fed and clothed. In others, man is regarded as “a drug” and population

as “a nuisance;” and Christian men are warned that their duty to God

and to society requires that they should permit their fellow-creatures

to suffer every privation and distress, short of “absolute death,”

with a view to prevent the increase of numbers.

 

Among these various classes of slaves, none have recently attracted so

much attention as those of the negro race; and it is in reference to

that race in this country that the following paper has recently been

circulated throughout England:--

 

 _”The affectionate and Christian Address of many thousands of the

 Women of England to their Sisters, the Women of the United States of

 America:_

 

 “A common origin, a common faith, and, we sincerely believe, a common

 cause, urge us at the present moment to address you on the subject of

 that system of negro slavery which still prevails so extensively,

 and, even under kindly-disposed masters, with such frightful results,

 in many of the vast regions of the Western World.

 

 “We will not dwell on the ordinary topics--on the progress of

 civilization; on the advance of freedom everywhere; on the rights and

 requirements of the nineteenth century;--but we appeal to you very

 seriously to reflect, and to ask counsel of God, how far such a state

 of things is in accordance with His holy word, the inalienable rights

 of immortal souls, and the pure and merciful spirit of the Christian

 religion.

 

 “We do not shut our eyes to the difficulties, nay, the dangers, that

 might beset the immediate abolition of that long-established system:

 we see and admit the necessity of preparation for so great an event.

 But, in speaking of indispensable preliminaries, we cannot be silent

 on those laws of your country which (in direct contravention of God’s

 own law, instituted in the time of man’s innocency) deny, in effect,

 to the slave, the sanctity of marriage, with all its joys, rights,

 and obligations; which separates, at the will of the master, the wife

 from the husband and the children from the parents. Nor can we be

 silent on that awful system which, either by statute or by custom,

 interdicts to any race of man, or any portion of the human family,

 education in the truths of the gospel and the ordinances of

 Christianity.

 

 “A remedy applied to these two evils alone would commence the

 amelioration of their sad condition. We appeal, then, to you as

 sisters, as wives, and as mothers, to raise your voices to your

 fellow-citizens and your prayers to God, for the removal of this

 affliction from the Christian world. We do not say these things in a

 spirit of self-complacency, as though our nation were free from the

 guilt it perceives in others. We acknowledge with grief and shame our

 heavy share in this great sin. We acknowledge that our forefathers

 introduced, nay, compelled the adoption of slavery in those mighty

 colonies. We humbly confess it before Almighty God. And it is because

 we so deeply feel, and so unfeignedly avow our own complicity, that

 we now venture to implore your aid to wipe away our common crime and

 our common dishonour.”

 

We have here a movement that cannot fail to be productive of much

good. It was time that the various nations of the world should have

their attention called to the existence of slavery within their

borders, and to the manifold evils of which it was the parent; and it

was in the highest degree proper that woman should take the lead in

doing it, as it is her sex that always suffers most in that condition

of things wherein might triumphs over right, and which we are

accustomed to define as a state of slavery.

 

How shall slavery be abolished? This is the great question of our day.

But a few years since it was answered in England by an order for the

immediate emancipation of the black people held to slavery in her

colonies; and it is often urged that we should follow her example.

Before doing this, however, it would appear to be proper to examine

into the past history and present situation of the negro race in the

two countries, with a view to determine how far experience would

warrant the belief that the course thus urged upon us would be likely

to produce improvement in the condition of the objects of our

sympathy. Should the result of such an examination be to prove that

the cause of freedom has been advanced by the measures there pursued,

our duty to our fellow-men would require that we should follow in the

same direction, at whatever loss or inconvenience to ourselves. Should

it, however, prove that the condition of the poor negro has been

impaired and not improved, it will then become proper to enquire what

have been in past times the circumstances under which men have become

more free, with a view to ascertain wherein lies the deficiency, and

why it is that freedom now so obviously declines in various and

important portions of the earth. These things ascertained, it may be

that there will be little difficulty in determining what are the

measures now needed for enabling all men, black, white, and brown, to

obtain for themselves, and profitably to all, the exercise of the

rights of freemen. To adopt this course will be to follow in that of

the skilful physician, who always determines within himself the cause

of fever before he prescribes the remedy.

 

Chapter 2. Of slavery in the British colonies

 

At the date of the surrender of Jamaica to the British arms, in 1655,

the slaves, who were few in number, generally escaped to the

mountains, whence they kept up a war of depredation, until at length

an accommodation was effected in 1734, the terms of which were not,

however, complied with by the whites--the consequences of which will

be shown hereafter. Throughout the whole period their numbers were

kept up by the desertion of other slaves, and to this cause must, no

doubt, be attributed much of the bitterness with which the subsequent

war was waged.

 

In 1658, the slave population of the island was 1400. By 1670 it had

reached 8000, and in 1673, 9504.[1] From that date we have no account

until 1734, when it was 86,546, giving an increase in sixty-one years

of 77,000. It was in 1673 that the sugar-culture was commenced; and as

profitable employment was thus found for labour, there can be little

doubt that the number had increased regularly and steadily, and that

the following estimate must approach tolerably near the truth:--

 

 

    Say 1702, 36,000; increase in 29 years, 26,500

        1734, 77,000;          “ 32       41,000

 

  In 1775, the total number of slaves and other

  coloured persons on the island, was................. 194,614

  And if we now deduct from this the number

  in 1702, say........................................  36,000

                                                       -------

    We obtain, as the increase of 73 years............ 158,614

                                                       =======

 

  In that period the importations amounted to......... 497,736

  And the exportations to............................. 137,114

                                                       -------

    Leaving, as retained in the island................ 360,622  [2]

 

  or about two and two-fifths persons for one that then

  remained alive.

 

  From 1783 to 1787, the number imported was 47,485, and

  the number exported 14,541;[3] showing an increase

  in five years of nearly 33,000, or 6,600 per annum;

  and by a report of the Inspector-General, it was

  shown that the number retained from 1778 to 1787,

  averaged 5345 per annum. Taking the thirteen years,

  1775-1787, at that rate, we obtain nearly ........... 70,000

 

  From 1789 to 1791, the excess of import was 32,289,

  or 10,763 per annum; and if we take the four years,

  1788-1791, at the same rate, we obtain, as the

  total number retained in that period................. 43,000

                                                       -------

                                                       113,000

                                                       =======

 

In 1791, a committee of the House of Assembly made a report on the

number of the slaves, by which it was made to be 250,000; and if to

this be added the free negroes, amounting to 10,000, we obtain, as the

total number, 260,000,--showing an increase, in fifteen years, of

65,386--or nearly 48,000 less than the number that had been imported.

 

We have now ascertained an import, in 89 years, of 473,000, with an

increase of numbers amounting to only 224,000; thus establishing the

fact that more than half of the whole import had perished under the

treatment to which they had been subjected. Why it had been so may be

gathered from the following extract, by which it is shown that the

system there and then pursued corresponds nearly with that of Cuba at

the present time.

 

 “The advocates of the slave trade insisted that it was impossible to

 keep up the stock of negroes, without continual importations from

 Africa. It is, indeed, very evident, that as long as importation is

 continued, and two-thirds of the slaves imported are men, the

 succeeding generation, in the most favourable circumstances, cannot

 be more numerous than if there had been only half as many men; or, in

 other words, at least half the men may be said, with respect to

 population, to die without posterity.”--_Macpherson_, vol. iv. 148.

 

In 1792, a committee of the Jamaica House of Assembly reported that

“the abolition of the slave trade” must be followed by the “total ruin

and depopulation of the island.” “Suppose,” said they,

 

 “A planter settling with a gang of 100 African slaves, all bought in

 the prime of life. Out of this gang he will be able at first to put

 to work, on an average, from 80 to 90 labourers. The committee will

 further suppose that they increase in number; yet, in the course of

 twenty years, this gang will be so far reduced, in point of strength,

 that he will not be able to work more than 30 to 40. It will

 therefore require a supply of 50 new negroes to keep up his estate,

 and that not owing to cruelty, or want of good management on his

 part; on the contrary, the more humane he is, the greater the number

 of old people and young he will have on his estate.”--_Macpherson_,

 iv. 256.

 

In reference to this extraordinary reasoning, Macpherson says, very

correctly--

 

 “With submission, it may be asked if people become superannuated in

 twenty years after being in _the prime of life_; and if the children

 of all these superannuated people are in a state of infancy? If

 one-half of these slaves are women, (as they ought to be, if the

 planter looks to futurity,) will not those fifty women, in twenty

 years, have, besides younger children, at least one hundred grown up

 to young men and women, capable of partaking the labour of their

 parents, and replacing the loss by superannuation or death,-- as has

 been the case with the working people in all other parts of the

 world, from the creation to this day?”

 

To this question there can be but one reply: Man has always increased

in numbers where he has been well fed, well clothed, and reasonably

worked; and wherever his numbers have decreased, it has been because

of a deficiency of food and clothing and an excess of work.

 

It was at this period that the Maroon war was again in full activity,

and so continued until 1796, when it was terminated by the employment

of bloodhounds to track the fugitives, who finally surrendered, and

were transported to Lower Canada, whence they were soon after sent to

Sierra Leone.

 

From 1792 to 1799, the _net_ import was 74,741; and if it continued at

the same rate to 1808, the date of the abolition of the trade, the

number imported in eighteen years would be nearly 150,000; and yet the

number of slaves increased, in that period, from 250,000 to only

323,827--being an annual average increase of about 4500, and

exhibiting a loss of fifty per cent.

 

In the thirty-four years, 1775-1808, the number of negroes added to

the population of the island, by importation, would seem to have been

more than 260,000, and within about 50,000 of the number that, a

quarter of a century later, was emancipated.

 

In 1817, nine years after importation had been declared illegal, the

number is stated [4] at 346,150; from which it would appear that the

trade must have been in some measure continued up to that date, as

there is no instance on record of any natural increase in any of the

islands, under any circumstances. It is, indeed, quite clear that no

such increase has taken place; for had it once commenced, it would

have continued, which was not the case, as will be seen by the

following figures:--

 

In 1817, the number was, as we see 346,150. In 1820, it was only

342,382; and if to this we add the manumissions for the same period,

(1016,) we have a net loss of 2752.

 

In 1826, they had declined in numbers to 331,119, to which must be

added 1848 manumissions--showing a loss, in six years, of 9415, or

nearly three per cent.

 

The number shown by the last registration, 1833, was only 311,692; and

if to this we add 2000 that had been manumitted, we shall have a loss,

in seven years, of 19,275, or more than five per cent. In sixteen

years, there had been a diminution of ten per cent., one-fifth of

which may be attributed to manumission; and thus is it clearly

established that in 1830, as in 1792, a large annual importation would

have been required, merely to maintain the number of the population.

 

That the condition of the negroes was in a course of deterioration in

this period, is clearly shown by the fact that the proportion of

births to deaths was in a steady course of diminution, as is here

shown:--

 

    Registered:

    -----------

    1817 to 1820............. 25,104 deaths, 24,348 births.

    1823 to 1826............. 25,171      , 23,026  

    1826 to 1829............. 25,137      , 21,728  

 

The destruction of life was thus proceeding with constantly

accelerating rapidity; and a continuance of the system, as it then

existed, must have witnessed the total annihilation of the negro race

within half a century.

 

Viewing these facts, not a doubt can, I think, be entertained that the

number of negroes imported into the island and retained for its

_consumption_ was more than double the number that existed there in

1817, and could scarcely have been less than 750,000, and certainly,

at the most moderate estimate, not less than 700,000. If to these we

were to add the children that must have been born on the island in the

long period of 178 years, and then to reflect that all who remained

for emancipation amounted to only 311,000, we should find ourselves

forced to the conclusion that slavery was here attended with a

destruction of life almost without a parallel in the history of any

civilized nation.

 

With a view to show that Jamaica cannot be regarded as an unfavourable

specimen of the system, the movement of population in other colonies

will now be given.

 

In 1764, the slave population of ST. VINCENT’S was 7414. In 1787,

twenty-three years after, it was 11,853, having increased 4439;

whereas, _in four only_ of those years, 1784-87, the _net_ import of

negroes had been no less than 6100.[5] In 1805, the number was 16,500,

the increase having been 4647; whereas the _net_ import in _three

only_, out of _eighteen_ years, had been 1937. What was the cause of

this, may be seen by the comparative view of deaths, and their

compensation by births, at a later period:--

 

    Year 1822.................... 4205 deaths, 2656 births.

        1825.................... 2106        1852  

        1828.................... 2020        1829  

        1831.................... 2266        1781  

 

The births, it will be observed, steadily diminished in number.

 

At the peace of 1763, DOMINICA contained 6000 slaves. The net amount

of importation, _in four years_, 1784 to 1787, was 23,221;[6] and yet

the total population in 1788 was but 14,967! Here we have a waste of

life so far exceeding that of Jamaica that we might almost feel

ourselves called upon to allow five imported for every one remaining

on the island. Forty-four years afterwards, in 1832, the slave

emancipation returns gave 14,834 as remaining out of the vast number

that had been imported. The losses by death and the gains by births,

for a part of the period preceding emancipation, are thus given:--

 

    1817 to 1820................. 1748 deaths, 1433 births.

    1820 to 1823................. 1527        1491  

    1823 to 1826................. 1493        1309  

 

If we look to BRITISH GUIANA, we find the same results.[7]

 

  In 1820, Demerara and Essequebo had a

  slave population of............................... 77,376

  By 1826, it had fallen to......................... 71,382

  And by 1832, it had still further fallen to....... 65,517

 

The deaths and births of this colony exhibit a waste of life that

would be deemed almost incredible, had not the facts been carefully

registered at the moment:--

 

    1817 to 1820................. 7140 deaths, 4868 births.

    1820 to 1823................. 7188        4512   

    1823 to 1826................. 7634        4494   

    1826 to 1829................. 5731        4684   

    1829 to 1832................. 7016        4086   

 

We have here a decrease, in fifteen years, of fifteen per cent., or

12,000 out of 77,000. Each successive period, with a single exception,

presents a diminished number of births, while the average of deaths in

the last three periods is almost the same as in the first one.

 

BARBADOES had, in 1753, a slave population of 69,870. In 1817,

sixty-four years after, although importation appears to have been

regularly continued on a small scale, it amounted to only 77,493. In

this case, the slaves appear to have been better treated than

elsewhere, as here we find, in the later years, the births to have

exceeded the deaths--the former having been, from 1826 to 1829, 9250,

while the latter were 6814. There were here, also, in the same period,

670 manumissions.

 

In TRINIDAD, out of a total slave population of 23,537, the deaths, in

twelve years, were no less than 8774, while the births were only 6001.

 

GRENADA surrendered to the British forces in 1762. Seven years after,

in 1769, there were 35,000 negroes on the island. In 1778,

notwithstanding the importation, they appear to have been reduced to

25,021.

 

In the four years from 1784 to 1787, and the three from 1789 to 1791,

(the only ones for which I can find an account,) the number imported

and retained for consumption on the island amounted to no less than

16,228;[8] and yet the total number finally emancipated was but

23,471. The destruction of life appears here to have been enormous;

and that it continued long after the abolition of the slave trade, is

shown by the following comparison of births and deaths:--

 

    1817.......................... 451 births,  902 deaths.

    1818.......................... 657        1070  

 

The total births from 1817 to 1831, were 10,144 in number, while the

deaths were 12,764--showing a loss of about ten per cent.

 

The number of slaves emancipated in 1834, in all the British

possessions, was 780,993; and the net loss in the previous five years

had been 38,811, or _almost one per cent. per annum_.

 

The number emancipated in the West Indies was 660,000; and viewing the

facts that have been placed before the reader, we can scarcely err

much in assuming that the number imported and retained for consumption

in those colonies had amounted to 1,700,000. This would give about two

and a half imported for one that was emancipated; and there is some

reason to think that it might be placed as high as three for one,

which would give a total import of almost two millions.

 

While thus exhibiting the terrific waste of life in the British

colonies, it is not intended either, to assert or to deny any

voluntary severity on the part of the landholders. They were,

themselves, as will hereafter be shown, to a great extent, the slaves

of circumstances over which they had no control; and it cannot be

doubted that much, very much, of the responsibility, must rest on

other shoulders.

 

Chapter 3. Of slavery in the United States

 

In the North American provinces, now the United States, negro slavery

existed from a very early period, but on a very limited scale, as the

demand for slaves was mainly supplied from England. The exports of the

colonies were bulky, and the whites could be imported as return cargo;

whereas the blacks would have required a voyage to the coast of

Africa, with which little trade was maintained. The export from

England ceased after the revolution of 1688, and thenceforward negro

slaves were somewhat more freely imported; yet the trade appears to

have been so small as scarcely to have attracted notice. The only

information on the subject furnished by Macpherson in his Annals of

Commerce is that, in the eight months ending July 12, 1753, the

negroes imported into Charleston, S. C., were 511 in number; and that

in the year 1765-66, the value of negroes imported from Africa into

Georgia was £14,820--and this, if they be valued at only £10 each,

would give only 1482. From 1783 to 1787, the number exported from all

the West India Islands to this country was 1392 [9] --being an average

of less than 300 per annum; and there is little reason for believing

that this number was increased by any import direct from Africa. The

British West Indies were then the entrepôt of the trade,[10] and

thence they were supplied to the other islands and the settlements on

the Main; and had the demand for this country been considerable, it

cannot be doubted that a larger portion of the thousands then annually

exported would have been sent in this direction.

 

Under these circumstances, the only mode of arriving at the history of

slavery prior to the first census, in 1790, appears to be to commence

at that date and go forward, and afterwards employ the information so

obtained in endeavouring to elucidate the operations of the previous

period.

 

  The number of negroes, free and enslaved, at

  that date, was....................................   757,263

  And at the second census, in 1801, it was......... 1,001,436

 

  showing an increase of almost thirty-three per cent.

  How much of this, however, was due to importation,

  we have now to inquire. The only two States that

  then tolerated the import of slaves were South

  Carolina and Georgia, the joint black population

  of which, in 1790, was.............................  136,358

  whereas, in 1800, it had risen to..................  205,555

                                                       -------

                                   Increase..........   69,197

                                                       =======

 

  In the same period the white population increased

  104,762, requiring an immigration from the Northern

  slave States to the extent of not less than 45,000,

  even allowing more than thirty per cent. for the

  natural increase by births. Admitting, now, that for

  every family of five free persons there came one

  slave, this, would account for.......................  9,000

  And if we take the natural increase of the slave

  population at only twenty-five per cent., we have

  further.............................................. 34,000

                                                        ------

    Making a total from domestic sources of............ 43,000

    And leaving, for the import from abroad............ 26,197

 

Deducting these from the total number added, we obtain, for the

natural increase, about 29-1/2 per cent.

 

Macpherson, treating of this period, says--

 

 “That importation is not necessary for keeping up the stock is proved

 by the example of North America--a country less congenial to the

 constitution of the negro than the West Indies--where,

 notwithstanding the destruction and desertion of the slaves

 occasioned by the war, the number of negroes, though perhaps not of

 slaves, has greatly increased--because, _since the war they have

 imported very few_, and of late years none at all, except in the

 Southern States.”--_Annals_, vol. iv. 150.

 

The number of vessels employed in the slave trade, in 1795, is stated

to have been twenty, all of them small; and the number of slaves to be

carried was limited to one for each ton of their capacity.

 

From 1800 to 1810, the increase was 378,374, of which nearly 30,000

were found in Louisiana at her incorporation into the Union, leaving

about 350,000 to come from other sources; being an increase of 35 per

cent. In this period the increase of Georgia and South Carolina, the

two importing States, was only 96,000, while that, of the white

population was 129,073, carrying with them perhaps 25,000. If to this

be added the natural increase at the rate of 25 per cent., we obtain

about 75,000, leaving only 21,000 for importation. It is probable,

however, that it was somewhat larger, and that it might be safe to

estimate it at the same amount as in the previous period, making a

total of about 52,000 in the twenty years. Deducting 26,000 from the

350,000, we obtain 324,000 as the addition from domestic sources,

which would be about 32 per cent. on the population of 1800. This may

be too high; and yet the growth of the following decennial period--one

of war and great commercial and agricultural distress--was almost

thirty per cent. In 1810, the number had been 1,379,800.

 

    In 1820 it was 1,779,885; increase 30   per cent.

     “ 1830       2,328,642;         30.8     

     “ 1840       2,873,703;         24       

     “ 1850       3,591,000;         25        “ [11]

 

Having thus ascertained, as far as possible, the ratio of increase

subsequent to the first census, we may now proceed to an examination

of the course of affairs in the period which had preceded it.

 

In 1714, the number of blacks was 58,850, and they were dispersed

throughout the provinces from New Hampshire to Carolina, engaged, to a

large extent, in labours similar to those in which were engaged the

whites by whom they were owned. One-half of them may have been

imported. Starting from this point, and taking the natural increase of

each decennial period at 25 per cent., as shown to have since been the

case, we should obtain, for 1750, about 130,000. The actual quantity

was 220,000; and the difference, 90,000, may be set down to

importation. Adding, now, 25 percent, to 220,000, we obtain, for 1760,

275,000; whereas the actual number was 310,000, which Would give

35,000 for importation. Pursuing the same course with the following

periods, we obtain the following results:--

 

               Actual      Natural      Actual

    Years      Number.    Increase.    Increase.  Importation.

    -----      -------    ---------    ---------  ------------

    1760..... 310,000.....  77,500..... 152,000.....    74,500

    1770..... 462,000..... 115,500..... 120,000..... }

    1780..... 582,000..... 140,500..... 170,000..... }  34,000

    1790..... 752,000, number given by first census.

 

For a large portion of the period from 1770 to 1790, there must have

been a very small importation; for during nearly half the time the

trade with foreign countries was almost altogether suspended by the

war of the revolution.

 

If we add together the quantities thus obtained, we shall obtain a

tolerable approximation to the number of slaves imported into the

territory now constituting the Union, as follows:--

 

    Prior to 1714.....................................  30,000

    1715 to 1750......................................  90,000

    1751 to 1760......................................  35,000

    1761 to 1770......................................  74,500

    1771 to 1790......................................  34,000

    And if we now estimate the import

    subsequent to 1790 at even........................  70,000

                                                       -------

      We obtain as the total number................... 333,500

                                                       =======

 

The number now in the Union exceeds 3,800,000; and even if we estimate

the import as high as 380,000, we then have more than ten for one;

whereas in the British Islands we can find not more than two for five,

and perhaps even not more than one for three. Had the slaves of the

latter been as well fed, clothed, lodged, and otherwise cared for, as

were those of these provinces and States, their numbers would have

reached seventeen or twenty millions. Had the blacks among the people

of these States experienced the same treatment as did their fellows of

the islands, we should now have among us less than one hundred and

fifty thousand slaves.

 

  The prices paid by the British Government averaged

  £25 per head. Had the number in the colonies been

  allowed to increase as they increased here, it

  would have required, even at that price, the

  enormous sum of................................ £500,000,000

 

  Had the numbers in this country been reduced

  by the same process there practised, emancipation

  could now be carried out at cost of less than..   £4,000,000

 

  To emancipate them now, paying for them at the

  same rate, would require nearly................ £100,000,000

 

or almost five hundred millions of dollars. The same course, however,

that has increased their numbers, has largely increased their value to

the owners and to themselves. Men, when well fed, well clothed, well

lodged, and otherwise well cared for, always increase rapidly in

numbers, and in such cases labour always increases rapidly in value;

and hence it is that the average price of the negro slave of this

country is probably four times greater than that which the planters of

the West Indies were compelled to receive. Such being the case, it

would follow that to pay for their full value would require probably

four hundred millions of pounds sterling, or nearly two thousand

millions of dollars.

 

It will now be seen that the course of things in the two countries has

been entirely different. In the islands the slave trade had been

cherished as a source of profit. Here, it had been made the subject of

repeated protests on the part of several of the provinces, and had

been by all but two prohibited at the earliest moment at which they

possessed the power so to do. In the islands it was held to be cheaper

to buy slaves than to raise them, and the sexes were out of all

proportion to each other. Here, importation was small, and almost the

whole increase, large as it has been, has resulted from the excess of

births over deaths. In the islands, the slave was generally a

barbarian, speaking an unknown tongue, and working with men like

himself, in gangs, with scarcely a chance for improvement. Here, he

was generally a being born on the soil, speaking the same language

with his owner; and often working in the field with him, with many

advantages for the development of his faculties. In the islands, the

land-owners clung to slavery as the sheet-anchor of their hopes. Here,

on the contrary, slavery had gradually been abolished in all the

States north of Mason & Dixon’s line, and Delaware, Maryland,

Virginia, and Kentucky were all, at the date of emancipation in the

islands, preparing for the early adoption of measures looking to its

entire abolition. In the islands, the connection with Africa had been

cherished as a means of obtaining cheap labour, to be obtained by

fomenting discord among the natives. Here, on the contrary, had

originated a grand scheme for carrying civilization into the heart of

Africa by means of the gradual transplantation of some of the already

civilized blacks. In the islands, it has been deemed desirable to

carry out “the European policy,” of preventing the Africans “from

arriving at perfection” in the art of preparing their cotton, sugar,

indigo, or other articles, “from a fear of interfering with

established branches of commerce elsewhere.”[12] Here, on the

contrary, efforts had been made for disseminating among them the

knowledge required for perfecting themselves in the modes of

preparation and manufacture. In the islands, every thing looked toward

the permanency of slavery. Here, every thing looked toward the gradual

and gentle civilization and emancipation of the negro throughout the

world. In the islands, however, by a prompt measure forced on the

people by a distant government, slavery was abolished, and the

planters, or their representatives in England, received twenty

millions of pounds sterling as compensation in full for the services

of the few who remained in existence out of the large number that had

been imported. Here, the planters are now urged to adopt for

themselves measures of a similar kind. The whole course of proceeding

in the two countries in reference to the negro having been so widely

different, there are, however, difficulties in the way that seem to be

almost insuperable. The power to purchase the slaves of the British

colonies was a consequence of the fact that their numbers had not been

permitted to increase. The difficulty of purchasing them here is

great, because of their having been well fed, well clothed, and

otherwise well provided for, and having therefore increased so

rapidly. If, nevertheless, it can be shown that by abandoning the

system under which the negro race has steadily increased in numbers

and advanced towards civilization, and adopting that of a nation under

whose rule there has been a steady decline of numbers, and but little,

if any, tendency toward civilization, we shall benefit the race, it

will become our duty to make the effort, however great may be the

cost. With a view to ascertain how far duty may be regarded as calling

upon us now to follow in the footsteps of that nation, it is proposed

to examine into the working of the act by which the whole negro

population of the British colonies was, almost at once and without

preparation, invested with the right to determine for whom they would

work and what should be their wages--or were, in other words, declared

to be free.

 

Chapter 4. Of emancipation in the British colonies

 

The harmony of the universe is the result of a contest between equal

and opposing powers. The earth is attracted to the sun and from the

sun; and were either of these forces to be diminished or destroyed,

chaos would be the inevitable result. So is it everywhere on the

earth. The apple falls toward the centre of the earth, but in its

passage it encounters resistance; and the harmony of every thing we

see around us is dependent on the equal balance of these opposing

forces. So is it among men. The man who has food to sell wishes to

have a high price for it, whereas, he who needs to buy desires to have

it cheaply; and the selling price depends on the relation between the

necessity to buy on one hand, or to sell on the other. Diminish

suddenly and largely the competition for the purchase of food, and the

farmer becomes the prey of the mechanic. Increase it suddenly and

largely, and the mechanic becomes the prey of the farmer; whereas a

gradual and gentle increase in the demand for food is accompanied by a

similar increase in the demand for the products of the loom and the

anvil, and both farmer and mechanic prosper together, because the

competition for purchase and the competition for sale grow together

and balance each other. So, too, with labour. Wages are dependent upon

the relation between the number of those who desire to buy and to sell

labour. Diminish suddenly the number of those who desire to sell it,

and the farmer may be ruined. Diminish suddenly the number of those

who desire to buy it, and the labourer may become the slave of the

farmer.

 

For almost two centuries, men possessed of capital and desirous to

purchase labour had been induced to transfer it to the colonies, and

the government secured to them the right to obtain labourers on

certain specified terms--such terms as made the labourer a mere

instrument in the hands of the capitalist, and prevented him from

obtaining any of those habits or feelings calculated to inspire him

with a love for labour. At once, all control over him was withdrawn,

and the seller of labour was converted into the master of him who was

thus, by the action of the government, placed in such a situation that

he _must_ buy it or be ruined. Here was a disturbance of the order of

things that had existed, almost as great as that which occurs when the

powerful steam, bursting the boiler in which it is enclosed, ceases to

be the servant and becomes the master of man; and it would have

required but little foresight to enable those who had the government

of this machine to see that it must prove almost as ruinous.

 

How it operated in Southern Africa, where the slave was most at home,

is shown by the following extracts from the work of a recent traveller

and settler in that colony:--[13]

 

 “The chain was broken, and the people of England hurraed to their

 heart’s content. And the slave! What, in the meanwhile, became of

 him? If he was young and vicious, away he went--he was his own

 master. He was at liberty to walk to and fro upon the earth, ‘seeking

 whom he might devour.’ He was free: he had the world before him where

 to choose, though, squatted beside the Kaffir’s fire, probably

 thinking his meal of parched corn but poor stuff after the palatable

 dishes he had been permitted to cook for himself in the Boer’s or

 tradesman’s kitchen. But he was fain to like it--he could get nothing

 else--and this was earned at the expense of his own soul; for it was

 given him as an inducement to teach the Kaffir the easiest mode of

 plundering his ancient master. If inclined to work, he had no certain

 prospect of employment; and the Dutch, losing so much by the sudden

 Emancipation Act, resolved on working for themselves. So the

 virtuous, redeemed slave, had too many temptations to remain

 virtuous: he was hungry--so was his wife--so were his children; and

 he must feed them. How? No matter.”

 

These people will work at times, but they must have wages that will

enable them to play much of their time.

 

 “When we read of the distress of our own country, and of the wretched

 earnings of our mechanics, we are disgusted at the idea of these same

 Fingoes striking work (as Coolies) at Waterloo Bay, being

 dissatisfied with the pay of 2s. a day. As their services are

 necessary in landing cargo, their demand of 3s. a day has been

 acceded to, and they have consented to work when it suits them!--for

 they take occasional holidays, for dancing and eating. At Algoa Bay,

 the Fingoes are often paid 6s. a day for working as Coolies.”

 

These men have all the habits of the savage. They leave to the women

the tilling of the ground, the hoeing of the corn, the carrying of

water, and all the heavy work; and to the boys and old men the tending

of the cattle, while they themselves spend the year in hunting,

dancing, eating, and robbing their neighbours--except when

occasionally they deem it expedient to do a few days’ work at such

wages as they may think proper to dictate.

 

How it has operated in the West Indies we may next inquire, and with

that view will take Jamaica, one of the oldest, and, until lately, one

of the most prosperous of the colonies. That island embraces about

four millions of acres of land, “of which,” says Mr. Bigelow,--

 

 “There are not, probably, any ten lying adjacent to each other which

 are not susceptible of the highest cultivation, while not more than

 500,000 acres have ever been reclaimed, or even appropriated.”[14]

 

 “It is traversed by over two hundred streams, forty of which are from

 twenty-five to one hundred feet in breadth; and, it deserves to be

 mentioned, furnish water-power sufficient to manufacture every thing

 produced by the soil, or consumed by the inhabitants. Far less

 expense than is usually incurred on the same surface in the United

 States for manure, would irrigate all the dry lands of the island,

 and enable them to defy the most protracted droughts by which it is

 ever visited.”[15]

 

The productiveness of the soil is immense. Fruits of every variety

abound; vegetables of every kind for the table, and Indian corn, grow

abundantly. The island is rich in dyestuffs, drugs, and spices of the

greatest value; and the forests furnish the most celebrated woods in

the greatest variety. In addition to this, it possesses copper-mines

inferior to none in the world, and coal will probably be mined

extensively before many years. “Such,” says Mr. Bigelow,--

 

 “Are some of the natural resources of this dilapidated and

 poverty-stricken country. Capable as it is of producing almost every

 thing, and actually producing nothing which might not become a staple

 with a proper application of capital and skill, its inhabitants are

 miserably poor, and daily sinking deeper and deeper into the utter

 helplessness of abject want.

 

          “‘Magnas inter opes inops.’

 

 “Shipping has deserted her ports; her magnificent plantations of

 sugar and coffee are running to weeds; her private dwellings are

 falling to decay; the comforts and luxuries which belong to

 industrial prosperity have been cut off, one by one, from her

 inhabitants; and the day, I think, is at hand when there will be none

 left to represent the wealth, intelligence, and hospitality for which

 the Jamaica planter was once so distinguished.”

 

The cause of all this, say the planters, is that wages are too high

for the price of sugar. This Mr. Bigelow denies--not conceding that a

shilling a day is high wages; but all the facts he adduces tend to

show that the labourer gives very little labour for the money he

receives; and that, as compared with the work done, wages are really

far higher than in any part of the Union. Like the Fingo of Southern

Africa, he can obtain from a little patch of land all that is

indispensably necessary for his subsistence, and he will do little

more work than is needed for accomplishing that object. The

consequence of this is that potatoes sell for six cents a pound, eggs

from three to five cents each, milk at eighteen cents a quart, and

corn-meal at twelve or fourteen dollars a barrel; and yet there are

now more than a hundred thousand of these small proprietors, being

almost one for every three people on the island. All cultivators, they

yet produce little to sell, and the consequence of this is seen in the

fact that the mass of the flour, rice, corn, peas, butter, lard,

herrings, &c. needed for consumption requires to be imported, as well

as all the lumber, although millions of acres of timber are to be

found among the unappropriated lands of the island.

 

It is impossible to read Mr. Bigelow’s volume, without arriving at the

conclusion that the freedom granted to the negro has had little effect

except that of enabling him to live at the expense of the planter so

long as any thing remained. Sixteen years of freedom did not appear to

its author to have “advanced the dignity of labour or of the labouring

classes one particle,” while it had ruined the proprietors of the

land; and thus great damage had been done to the one class without

benefit of any kind to the other. From a statistical table published

in August last, it appears, says the _New York Herald_, that since

1846--

 

 “The number of sugar-estates on the island that have been totally

 abandoned amounts to one hundred and sixty-eight, and the number

 partially abandoned to sixty-three; the value of which two hundred

 and thirty-one estates was assessed, in 1841, at £1,655,140, or

 nearly eight millions and a half of dollars. Within the same period,

 two hundred and twenty-three coffee-plantations have been totally,

 and twenty partially abandoned, the assessed value of which was, in

 1841, £500,000, or two millions and a half of dollars; and of

 cattle-pens, (grazing-farms,) one hundred and twenty-two have been

 totally, and ten partially abandoned, the value of which was a

 million and a half of dollars. The aggregate value of these six

 hundred and six estates, which have been thus ruined and abandoned in

 the island of Jamaica, within the last seven or eight years, amounted

 by the regular assessments, ten years since, to the sum of nearly two

 and a half millions of pounds sterling, or twelve and a half million

 of dollars.”

 

As a necessary consequence of this, “there is little heard of,” says

Dr. King, “but ruin.”[16] “In many districts,” he adds--

 

 “The marks of decay abound. Neglected fields, crumbling houses,

 fragmentary fences, noiseless machinery--these are common sights, and

 soon become familiar to observation. I sometimes rode for miles in

 succession over fertile ground which used to be cultivated, and which

 is now lying waste. So rapidly has cultivation retrograded, and the

 wild luxuriance of nature replaced the conveniences of art, that

 parties still inhabiting these desolated districts, have sometimes,

 in the strong language of a speaker at Kingston, ‘to seek about the

 bush to find the entrance into their houses.’

 

 “The towns present a spectacle not less gloomy. A great part of

 Kingston was destroyed, some years ago, by an extensive

 conflagration: yet multitudes of the houses which escaped that

 visitation are standing empty, though the population is little, if at

 all diminished. The explanation is obvious. Persons who have nothing,

 and can no longer keep up their domestic establishments, take refuge

 in the abodes of others, where some means of subsistence are still

 left: and in the absence of any discernible trade or occupation, the

 lives of crowded thousands appear to be preserved from day to day by

 a species of miracle. The most busy thoroughfares of former times

 have now almost the quietude of a Sabbath.”

 

“The finest land in the world,” says Mr. Bigelow, “may be had at any

price, and almost for the asking.” Labour, he adds, “receives no

compensation, and the product of labour does not seem to know how to

find the way to market.” Properties which were formerly valued at

£40,000 would not now command £4000, and others, after having been

sold at six, eight, or ten per cent. of their former value, have been

finally abandoned.

 

The following is from a report made in 1849 and signed by various

missionaries:--

 

 “Missionary efforts in Jamaica are beset at the present time with

 many and great discouragements. Societies at home have withdrawn or

 diminished the amount of assistance afforded by them to chapels and

 schools throughout this island. The prostrate condition of its

 agriculture and commerce disables its own population from doing as

 much as formerly for maintaining the worship of God and the tuition

 of the young, and induces numbers of negro labourers to retire from

 estates which have been thrown up, to seek the means of subsistence

 in the mountains, where they are removed in general from moral

 training and superintendence. The consequences of this state of

 matters are very disastrous. Not a few missionaries and teachers,

 often struggling with difficulties which they could not overcome,

 have returned to Europe, and others are preparing to follow them.

 Chapels and schools are abandoned, or they have passed into the

 charge of very incompetent instructors.”--_Quoted in King’s Jamaica_,

 p. 111.

 

Population gradually diminishes, furnishing another evidence that the

tendency of every thing is adverse to the progress of civilization. In

1841, the island contained a little short of 400,000 persons. In 1844,

the census returns gave about 380,000; and a recent journal states

that of those no less than forty thousand have in the last two years

been carried off by cholera, and that small-pox, which has succeeded

that disease, is now sweeping away thousands whom that disease had

spared. Increase of crime, it adds, keeps pace with the spread of

misery throughout the island.

 

The following extracts from a Report of a Commission appointed in 1850

to inquire into the state and prosperity of Guiana, are furnished by

Lord Stanley in his second letter to Mr. Gladstone, [London, 1851.]

 

Of Guiana generally they say--

 

 “‘It would be but a melancholy task to dwell upon the misery and ruin

 which so alarming a change must have occasioned to the proprietary

 body; but your Commissioners feel themselves called upon to notice

 the effects which this wholesale abandonment of property has produced

 upon the colony at large. Where whole districts are fast relapsing

 into bush, and occasional patches of provisions around the huts of

 village settlers are all that remain to tell of once flourishing

 estates, it is not to be wondered at that the most ordinary marks of

 civilization are rapidly disappearing, and that in many districts of

 the colony all travelling communication by land will soon become

 utterly impracticable.’

 

 “Of the Abary district--

 

 “‘Your Commissioners find that the line of road is nearly impassable,

 and that a long succession of formerly cultivated estates presents

 now a series of pestilent swamps, overrun with bush, and productive

 of malignant fevers.’

 

 “Nor are matters,” says Lord Stanley, “much better farther south--

 

 “‘Proceeding still lower down, your Commissioners find that the

 public roads and bridges are in such a condition, that the few

 estates still remaining on the upper west bank of Mahaica Creek are

 completely cut off, save in the very dry season; and that with regard

 to the whole district, unless something be done very shortly,

 travelling by land will entirely cease. In such a state of things it

 cannot be wondered at that the herdsman has a formidable enemy to

 encounter in the jaguar and other beasts of prey, and that the

 keeping of cattle is attended with considerable loss, from the

 depredations committed by these animals.

 

 “It may be worth noticing,” continues Lord Stanley, “that this

 district, now overrun with wild beasts of the forest; was formerly

 the very garden of the colony. The estates touched one another along

 the whole line of the road, leaving no interval of uncleared land.

 

 “The east coast, which is next mentioned by the Commissioners, is

 better off. Properties once of immense value had there been bought at

 nominal prices, and the one railroad of Guiana passing through that

 tract, a comparatively industrious population, composed of former

 labourers on the line, enabled the planters still to work these to

 some profit. Even of this favoured spot, however, they report that it

 ‘feels most severely the want of continuous labour.’ The

 Commissioners next visit the east bank of the Demerara river, thus

 described:--

 

 “‘Proceeding up the east bank of the river Demerary, the generally

 prevailing features of ruin and distress are everywhere perceptible.

 Roads and bridges almost impassable are fearfully significant

 exponents of the condition of the plantations which they traverse;

 and Canal No. 3, once covered with plantains and coffee, presents now

 a scene of almost total desolation.’

 

 “Crossing to the west side, they find prospects somewhat brighter: ‘a

 few estates’ are still ‘keeping up a cultivation worthy of better

 times.’ But this prosperous neighbourhood is not extensive, and the

 next picture presented to our notice is less agreeable:--

 

 “‘Ascending the river still higher, your Commissioners learn that the

 district between Hobaboe Creek and ‘Stricken Heuvel’ contained, in

 1829, eight sugar and five coffee and plantain estates, and now there

 remain but three in sugar and four partially cultivated with

 plantains by petty settlers: while the roads, with one or two

 exceptions, are in a state of utter abandonment. Here, as on the

 opposite bank of the river, hordes of squatters have located

 themselves, who avoid all communication with Europeans, and have

 seemingly given themselves up altogether to the rude pleasures of a

 completely savage life.’

 

 “The west coast of Demerara--the only part of that country which

 still remains unvisited--is described as showing _only_ a diminution

 of fifty per cent. upon its produce of sugar: and with this fact the

 evidence concludes as to one of the three sections into which the

 colony is divided. Does Demerara stand alone in its misfortune? Again

 hear the report:--

 

 “‘If the present state of the county of Demerara affords cause for

 deep apprehension, your Commissioners find that Essequebo has

 retrograded to a still more alarming extent. In fact, unless a large

 and speedy supply of labour be obtained to cultivate the deserted

 fields of this once-flourishing district, there is great reason to

 fear that it will relapse into total abandonment.’”

 

Describing another portion of the colony--

 

 “They say of one district, ‘unless a fresh supply of labour be very

 soon obtained, there is every reason to fear that it will become

 completely abandoned.’ Of a second, ‘speedy immigration alone can

 save this island from total ruin.’ ‘The prostrate condition of this

 once beautiful part of the coast,’ are the words which begin another

 paragraph, describing another tract of country. Of a fourth, ‘the

 proprietors on this coast seem to be keeping up a hopeless struggle

 against approaching ruin. Again, ‘the once famous Arabian coast, so

 long the boast of the colony, presents now but a mournful picture of

 departed prosperity. Here were formerly situated some of the finest

 estates in the country, and a large resident body of proprietors

 lived in the district, and freely expended their incomes on the spot

 whence they derived them.’ Once more, the lower part of the coast,

 after passing Devonshire Castle to the river Pomeroon, presents a

 scene of almost total desolation.’ Such is Essequebo!”

 

 “Berbice,” says Lord Stanley, “has fared no better: its rural

 population amounts to 18,000. Of these, 12,000 have withdrawn from

 the estates, and mostly from the neighbourhood of the white man, to

 enjoy a savage freedom of ignorance and idleness, beyond the reach of

 example and sometimes of control. But, on the condition of the negro

 I shall dwell more at length hereafter; at present it is the state of

 property with which I have to do. What are the districts which

 together form the county of Berbice? The Corentyne coast--the Canje

 Creek--East and West banks of the Berbice River--and the West coast,

 where, however, cotton was formerly the chief article produced. To

 each of these respectively the following passages, quoted in order,

 apply:--

 

 “‘The abandoned plantations on this coast,[17] which if capital and

 labour could be procured, might easily be made very productive, are

 either wholly deserted or else appropriated by hordes of squatters,

 who of course are unable to keep up at their own expense the public

 roads and bridges, and consequently all communication by land between

 the Corentyne and New Amsterdam is nearly at an end. The roads are

 impassable for horses or carriages, while for foot-passengers they

 are extremely dangerous. The number of villagers in this deserted

 region must be upward of 2500, and as the country abounds with fish

 and game, they have no difficulty in making a subsistence; in fact,

 the Corentyne coast is fast relapsing into a state of nature.’

 

 “‘Canje Creek was formerly considered a flourishing district of the

 county, and numbered on its east bank seven sugar and three coffee

 estates, and on its west bank eight estates, of which two were in

 sugar and six in coffee, making a total of eighteen plantations. The

 coffee cultivation has long since been entirely abandoned, and of the

 sugar estates but eight still now remain. They are suffering severely

 for want of labour, and being supported principally by African and

 Coolie immigrants, it is much to be feared that if the latter leave

 and claim their return passages to India, a great part of the

 district will become abandoned.’

 

 “‘Under present circumstances, so gloomy is the condition of affairs

 here,[18] that the two gentlemen whom your Commissioners have

 examined with respect to this district, both concur in predicting

 “its slow but sure approximation to the condition in which civilized

 man first found it.’”

 

 “‘A district [19] that in 1829, gave employment to 3635 registered

 slaves, but at the present moment there are not more than 600

 labourers at work on the few estates still in cultivation, although

 it is estimated there are upwards of 2000 people idling in villages

 of their own. The roads are in many parts several feet under water,

 and perfect swamps; while in some places the bridges are wanting

 altogether. In fact, the whole district is fast becoming a total

 wilderness, with the exception of the one or two estates which yet

 continue to struggle on, and which are hardly accessible now but by

 water.’

 

 “‘Except in some of the best villages,[20] they care not for back or

 front dams to keep off the water; their side-lines are disregarded,

 and consequently the drainage is gone; while in many instances the

 public road is so completely flooded that canoes have to be used as a

 means of transit. The Africans are unhappily following the example of

 the Creoles in this district, and buying land, on which they settle

 in contented idleness; and your Commissioners cannot view instances

 like these without the deepest alarm, for if this pernicious habit of

 squatting is allowed to extend to the immigrants also, there is no

 hope for the colony.’”

 

Under these circumstances it is that the London _Times_ furnishes its

readers with the following paragraph,--and as that journal cannot be

regarded as the opponent of the classes which have lately controlled

the legislation of England, we may feel assured that its information

is to be relied upon:--

 

 “Our legislation has been dictated by the presumed necessities of the

 African slave. After the Emancipation Act, a large charge was

 assessed upon the colony in aid of civil and religious institutions

 for the benefit of the enfranchised negro, and it was hoped that

 those coloured subjects of the British Crown would soon be

 assimilated to their fellow-citizens. From all the information which

 has reached us, no less than from the visible probabilities of the

 case, _we are constrained to believe that these hopes have been

 falsified. The negro has not obtained with his freedom any habits of

 industry or morality. His independence is little better than that of

 an uncaptured brute_. Having accepted none of the restraints of

 civilization, he is amenable to few of its necessities, and the wants

 of his nature are so easily satisfied, that at the present rate of

 wages he is called upon for nothing but fitful or desultory exertion.

 _The blacks_, therefore, _instead of becoming intelligent husbandmen,

 have become vagrants and squatters, and it is now apprehended that

 with the failure of cultivation in the island will come the failure

 of its resources for instructing or controlling its population_. So

 imminent does this consummation appear, that memorials have been

 signed by classes of colonial society, hitherto standing aloof from

 politics, _and not only the bench and the bar, but the bishop,

 clergy, and the ministers of all denominations in the island, without

 exception, have recorded their conviction that in the absence of

 timely relief, the religious and educational institutions of the

 island must be abandoned, and the masses of the population retrograde

 to barbarism_.”

 

The _Prospective Review_, (Nov. 1852,) seeing what has happened in the

British colonies, and speaking of the possibility of a similar course

of action on this side of the Atlantic, says--

 

 “We have had experience enough in our own colonies, not to wish to

 see the experiment tried elsewhere on a larger scale. It is true that

 from some of the smaller islands, where there is a superabundance of

 negro population and no room for squatters, the export of sugar has

 not been diminished: it is true that in Jamaica and Demerara, the

 commercial distress is largely attributable to the folly of the

 planters--who doggedly refuse to accommodate themselves to the new

 state of things, and to entice the negroes from the back settlements

 by a promise of fair wages. But we have no reason to suppose that the

 whole tragi-comedy would not be re-enacted in the Slave States of

 America, if slavery were summarily abolished by act of Congress

 to-morrow. Property among the plantations consists only of land and

 negroes: emancipate the negroes--and the planters have no longer any

 capital for the cultivation of the land. Put the case of

 compensation: though it be difficult to see whence it could come:

 there is every probability that the planters of Alabama, accustomed

 all their lives to get black labour for nothing, would be as

 unwilling to pay for it as their compeers in Jamaica: and there is

 plenty of unowned land on which the disbanded gangs might settle and

 no one question their right. It is allowed on all hands that the

 negroes as a race will not work longer than is necessary to supply

 the simplest comforts of life. It would be wonderful were it

 otherwise. A people have been degraded and ground down for a century

 and a half: systematically kept in ignorance for five generations of

 any needs and enjoyments beyond those of the savage: and then it is

 made matter of complaint that they will not apply themselves to

 labour for their higher comforts and more refined luxuries, of which

 they cannot know the value!”

 

The systematic degradation here referred to is probably quite true as

regards the British Islands, where 660,000 were all that remained of

almost two millions that had been imported; but it is quite a mistake

to suppose it so in regard to this country, in which there are now

found ten persons for every one ever imported, and all advancing by

gradual steps toward civilization and freedom; and yet were the

reviewer discoursing of the conduct of the Spanish settlers of

Hispaniola, he could scarcely speak more disparagingly of them than he

does in regard to a people that alone has so treated the negro race as

to enable it to increase in numbers, and improve in its physical,

moral, and intellectual condition. Had he been more fully informed in

relation to the proceedings in the British colonies, and in these

colonies and states, he could scarcely have ventured to assert that

“the responsibility of having degraded the African race rests upon the

American people,”--the only people among whom they have been improved.

Nevertheless, it is right and proper to give due weight to all

opinions in regard to the existence of an evil, and to all

recommendations in regard to the mode of removal, let them come from

what source they may; and the writer of the article from which this

passage is taken is certainly animated by a somewhat more liberal and

catholic spirit than is found animating many of his countrymen.

 

That the English system in regard to the emancipation of the negro has

proved a failure is now admitted even by those who most warmly

advocated the measures that have been pursued. “There are many,” says

the London _Times_, “who think that, with proper regulations, and

particularly with a system for the self-enfranchisement of slaves, we

might have brought about the entire emancipation of the British West

Indies, with much less injury to the property of the planter and to

the character of the negro than have resulted from the Abolition Act.

Perhaps,” it continues, “the warning will not be lost on the

Americans, who may see the necessity of putting things in train for

the ultimate abolition of slavery, and thereby save the sudden shock

which the abolitionists may one day bring on all the institutions of

the Union and the whole fabric of American society.”

 

The Falmouth [Jamaica] _Post_, of December 12, 1852, informs us that,

even now, “in every parish of the island preparations are being made

for the abandonment of properties that were once valuable, but on

which cultivation can no longer be continued.” “In Trelawny,” it

continues, “many estates have been thrown up during the last two

years, and the exportation to the United States of America, within a

few months, of upward of 80,000 tons of copper, which was used for the

manufacture of sugar and rum, is one of the ‘signs of the times,’ to

which the attention of the legislature should be seriously directed,

in providing for the future maintenance of our various institutions,

both public and parochial. Unless the salaries of all official

characters are reduced, it will be utterly impossible to carry on the

government of the colony.”

 

Eighty thousand tons of machinery heretofore used in aid of labour, or

nearly one ton for every four persons on the island, exported within a

few months! The _Bande Noire_ of France pulled down dwelling-houses

and sold the materials, but as they left the machinery used by the

labourers, their operations were less injurious than have been those

of the negroes of Jamaica, the demand for whose labour must diminish

with every step in the progress of the abandonment of land and the

destruction of machinery. Under such circumstances we can feel little

surprise at learning that every thing tends towards barbarism; nor is

it extraordinary that a writer already quoted, and who is not to be

suspected of any pro-slavery tendencies, puts the question, “Is it

enough that they [the Americans] simply loose their chain and turn

them adrift lower,” as he is pleased to say, “than they found

them?”[21] It is not enough. They need to be prepared for freedom.

“Immediate emancipation,” as he says, “solves only the simplest forms

of the problem.”

 

The land-owner has been ruined and the labourer is fast relapsing into

barbarism, and yet in face of this fact the land-owners of the

Southern States are branded throughout the world as “tyrants” and

“slave-breeders,” because they will not follow in the same direction.

It is in face of this great fact that the people of the North are

invited to join in a crusade against their brethren of the South

because they still continue to hold slaves, and that the men of the

South are themselves so frequently urged to assent to immediate and

unconditional emancipation.

 

In all this there may be much philanthropy, but there is certainly

much error,--and with a view to determine where it lies, as well as to

show what is the true road to emancipation, it is proposed to inquire

what has been, in the various countries of the world, the course by

which men have passed from poverty to wealth, from ignorance and

barbarism to civilization, and from slavery to freedom. That done, we

may next inquire for the causes now operating to prevent the

emancipation of the negro of America and the occupant of “the

sweater’s den” in London; and if they can once be ascertained, it will

be then easy to determine what are the measures needful to be adopted

with a view to the establishment of freedom throughout the world.

 

Chapter 5. How man passes from poverty and slavery toward wealth and freedom

 

The first poor cultivator is surrounded by land unoccupied. _The more

of it at his command the poorer he is._ Compelled to work alone, he is

a slave to his necessities, and he can neither roll nor raise a log

with which to build himself a house. He makes himself a hole in the

ground, which serves in place of one. He cultivates the poor soil of

the hills to obtain a little corn, with which to eke out the supply of

food derived from snaring the game in his neighbourhood. His winter’s

supply is deposited in another hole, liable to injury from the water

which filters through the light soil into which alone he can

penetrate. He is in hourly danger of starvation. At length, however,

his sons grow up. They combine their exertions with his, and now

obtain something like an axe and a spade. They can sink deeper into

the soil; and can cut logs, and build something like a house. They

obtain more corn and more game, and they can preserve it better. The

danger of starvation is diminished. Being no longer forced to depend

for fuel upon the decayed wood which was all their father could

command, they are in less danger of perishing from cold in the

elevated ground which, from necessity, they occupy. With the growth of

the family new soils are cultivated, each in succession yielding a

larger return to labour, and they obtain a constantly increasing

supply of the necessaries of life from a surface diminishing in its

ratio to the number to be fed; and thus with every increase in the

return to labour the power of combining their exertions is increased.

 

If we look now to the solitary settler of the West, even where

provided with both axe and spade, we shall see him obtaining, with

extreme difficulty, the commonest log hut. A neighbour arrives, and

their combined efforts produce a new house with less than half the

labour required for the first. That neighbour brings a horse, and he

makes something like a cart. The product of their labour is now ten

times greater than was that of the first man working by himself. More

neighbours come, and new houses are needed. A “bee” is made, and by

the combined effort of the neighbourhood the third house is completed

in a day; whereas the first cost months, and the second weeks, of far

more severe exertion. These new neighbours have brought ploughs and

horses, and now better soils are cultivated, and the product of labour

is again increased, as is the power to preserve the surplus for

winter’s use. The path becomes a road. Exchanges increase. The store

makes its appearance. Labour is rewarded by larger returns, because

aided by better machinery applied to better soils. The town grows up.

Each successive addition to the population brings a consumer and a

producer. The shoemaker desires leather and corn in exchange for his

shoes. The blacksmith requires fuel and food, and the farmer wants

shoes for his horses; and with the increasing facility of exchange

more labour is applied to production, and the reward of labour rises,

producing new desires, and requiring more and larger exchanges. The

road becomes a turnpike, and the wagon and horses are seen upon it.

The town becomes a city, and better soils are cultivated for the

supply of its markets, while the railroad facilitates exchanges with

towns and cities yet more distant. The tendency to union and to

combination of exertion thus grows with the growth of wealth. In a

state of extreme poverty it cannot be developed. The insignificant

tribe of savages that starves on the product of the superficial soil

of hundreds of thousands of acres of land, looks with jealous eye on

every intruder, knowing that each new mouth requiring to be fed tends

to increase the difficulty of obtaining subsistence; whereas the

farmer rejoices in the arrival of the blacksmith and the shoemaker,

because they come to eat on the spot the corn which heretofore he has

carried ten, twenty, or thirty miles to market, to exchange for shoes

for himself and his horses. With each new consumer of his products

that arrives he is enabled more and more to concentrate his action and

his thoughts upon his home, while each new arrival tends to increase

his _power_ of consuming commodities brought from a distance, because

it tends to diminish his _necessity_ for seeking at a distance a

market for the produce of his farm. Give to the poor tribe spades, and

the knowledge how to use them, and the power of association will

begin. The supply of food becoming more abundant, they hail the

arrival of the stranger who brings them knives and clothing to be

exchanged for skins and corn; wealth grows, and the habit of

association--the first step toward civilization--arises.

 

The little tribe is, however, compelled to occupy the higher lands.

The lower ones are a mass of dense forests and dreary swamps, while at

the foot of the hill runs a river, fordable but for a certain period

of the year. On the hillside, distant a few miles, is another tribe;

but communication between them is difficult, because, the river bottom

being yet uncleared, roads cannot be made, and bridges are as yet

unthought of. Population and wealth, however, continue to increase,

and the lower lands come gradually into cultivation, yielding larger

returns to labour, and enabling the tribe to obtain larger supplies of

food with less exertion, and to spare labour to be employed for other

purposes. Roads are made in the direction of the river bank.

Population increases more rapidly because of the increased supplies of

food and the increased power of preserving it, and wealth grows still

more rapidly. The river bank at length is reached, and some of the

best lands are now cleared. Population grows again, and a new element

of wealth is seen in the form of a bridge; and now the two little

communities are enabled to communicate more freely with each other.

One rejoices in the possession of a wheelwright, while the other has a

windmill. One wants carts, and the other has corn to grind. One has

cloth to spare, while the other has more leather than is needed for

its purpose. Exchanges increase, and the little town grows because of

the increased amount of trade. Wealth grows still more rapidly,

because of new modes of combining labour, by which that of all is

rendered more productive. Roads are now made in the direction of other

communities, and the work is performed rapidly, because the exertions

of the two are now combined, and because the machinery used is more

efficient. One after another disappear forests and swamps that have

occupied the fertile lands, separating ten, twenty, fifty, or five

hundred communities, which now are brought into connection with each

other; and with each step labour becomes more and more productive, and

is rewarded with better food, clothing, and shelter. Famine and

disease disappear, life is prolonged, population is increased, and

therewith the tendency to that combination of exertion among the

individuals composing these communities, which is the distinguishing

characteristic of civilization in all nations and in all periods of

the world. With further increase of population and wealth, the desires

of man, and his ability to gratify them, both increase. The nation,

thus formed, has more corn than it needs; but it has no cotton, and

its supply of wool is insufficient. The neighbouring nation has cotton

and wool, and needs corn. They are still divided, however, by broad

forests, deep swamps, and rapid rivers. Population increases, and the

great forests and swamps disappear, giving place to rich farms,

through which broad roads are made, with immense bridges, enabling the

merchant to transport his wool and his cotton to exchange with his

now-rich neighbours for their surplus corn or sugar. Nations now

combine their exertions, and wealth grows with still increased

rapidity, facilitating the drainage of marshes, and thus bringing into

activity the richest soils; while coal-mines cheaply furnish the fuel

for converting limestone into lime, and iron ore into axes and spades,

and into rails for the new roads needed for transporting to market the

vast products of the fertile soils now in use, and to bring back the

large supplies of sugar, tea, coffee, and the thousand other products

of distant lands with which intercourse now exists. At each step

population and wealth and happiness and prosperity take a new bound;

and men realize with difficulty the fact that the country, which now

affords to tens of millions all the necessaries, comforts,

conveniences, and luxuries of life, is the same that, when the

superabundant land was occupied by tens of thousands only, gave to

that limited number scanty supplies of the worst food; so scanty that

famines were frequent and sometimes so severe that starvation was

followed in its wake by pestilence, which, at brief intervals, swept

from the earth the population of the little and scattered settlements,

among which the people were forced to divide themselves when they

cultivated only the poor soils of the hills.

 

The course of events here described is in strict accordance with the

facts observed in every country as it has grown in wealth and

population. The early settlers of all the countries of the world are

seen to have been slaves to their necessities--and often slaves to

their neighbours; whereas, with the increase of numbers and the

increased power of cultivation, they are seen passing from the poorer

soils of the hills to the fertile soils of the river bottoms and the

marshes, with constant increase in the return to labour, and

constantly increasing power to determine for themselves for whom they

will work, and what shall be their reward. This view is, however, in

direct opposition to the theory of the occupation of land taught in

the politico-economical school of which Malthus and Ricardo were the

founders. By them we are assured that the settler commences always on

the low and rich lands, and that, as population increases, men are

required to pass toward the higher and poorer lands--and of course up

the hill--with constantly diminishing return to labour, and thus that,

as population grows, man becomes more and more a slave to his

necessities, and to those who have power to administer to his wants,

involving a necessity for dispersion throughout the world in quest of

the rich lands upon which the early settler is supposed to commence

his operations. It is in reference to this theory that Mr. J. S. Mill

says--

 

 “This general law of agricultural industry is the most important

 proposition in political economy. If the law were different, almost

 all the phenomena of the production and distribution of wealth would

 be other than they are.”

 

In the view thus presented by Mr. Mill there is no exaggeration. The

law of the occupation of the land by man lies at the foundation of all

political economy; and if we desire to know what it is that tends to

the emancipation of the people of the earth from slavery, we must

first satisfy ourselves that the theory of Messrs. Malthus and Ricardo

has not only no foundation in fact, but that the law is directly the

reverse, and tends, therefore, toward the adoption of measures

directly opposed to those that would he needed were that theory true.

The great importance of the question will excuse the occupation of a

few minutes of the reader’s attention in placing before him some facts

tending to enable him to satisfy himself in regard to the universality

of the law now offered for his consideration. Let him inquire where he

may, he will find that the early occupant _did not_ commence in the

flats, or on the heavily timbered-land, but that he _did_ commence on

the higher land, where the timber was lighter, and the place for his

house was dry. With increasing ability, he is found draining the

swamps, clearing the heavy timber, turning up the marl, or burning the

lime, and thus acquiring control over more fertile soils, yielding a

constant increase in the return to labour. Let him then trace the

course of early settlement, and he will find that while it has often

followed the course of the streams, it has always avoided the swamps

and river bottoms. The earliest settlements of this country were on

the poorest lands of the Union--those of New England. So was it in New

York, where we find the railroads running through the lower and

richer, and yet uncultivated, lands, while the higher lands right and

left have long been cultivated. So is it now in Pennsylvania,

Virginia, and Ohio. In South Carolina it has been made the subject of

remark, in a recent discourse, that their predecessors did not select

the rich lands, and that millions of acres of the finest meadow-land

in that State still remain untouched. The settler in the prairies

commences on the higher and drier land, leaving the wet prairie and

the _slough_--the richest soil--for his successors. The lands below

the mouth of the Ohio are among the richest in the world; yet they are

unoccupied, and will continue so to be until wealth and population

shall have greatly increased. So is it now with the low and rich lands

of Mexico. So was it in South America, the early cultivation of which

was upon the poor lands of the western slope, Peru and Chili, while

the rich lands of the Amazon and the La Plata remained, as most of

them still remain, a wilderness. In the West Indies, the small dry

islands were early occupied, while Porto Rico and Trinidad, abounding

in rich soils, remained untouched. The early occupants of England were

found on the poorer lands of the centre and south of the kingdom, as

were those of Scotland in the Highlands, or on the little rocky

islands of the Channel. Mona’s Isle was celebrated while the rich soil

of the Lothians remained an almost unbroken mass of forest, and the

morasses of Lancashire were the terror of travellers long after

Hampshire had been cleared and cultivated. If the reader desire to

find the birthplace of King Arthur and the earliest seat of English

power, he must look to the vicinity of the royal castle of Tintagel,

in the high and dry Cornwall. Should he desire other evidence of the

character of the soil cultivated at the period when land abounded and

men were few in number, he may find it in the fact that in some parts

of England there is scarcely a hill top that does not bear evidence of

early occupation,[22] and in the further fact that the mounds, or

barrows, are almost uniformly composed of stone, because those

memorials “are found most frequently where stone was more readily

obtained than earth.”[23] Caesar found the Gauls occupying the high

lands surrounding the Alps, while the rich Venetia remained a marsh.

The occupation of the Campagna followed long after that of the Samnite

hills, and the earliest settlers of the Peloponnesus cultivated the

high and dry Arcadia, while the cities of the Argive kings of the days

of Homer, Mycenae and Tiryns, are found in eastern Argolis, a country

so poor as to have been abandoned prior to the days of the earliest

authentic history. The occupation of the country around Meroë, and of

the Thebaid, long preceded that of the lower lands surrounding

Memphis, or the still lower and richer ones near Alexandria. The negro

is found in the higher portions of Africa, while the rich lands along

the river courses are uninhabited. The little islands of Australia,

poor and dry, are occupied by a race far surpassing in civilization

those of the neighbouring continent, who have rich soils at command.

The poor Persia is cultivated, while the rich soils of the ancient

Babylonia are only ridden over by straggling hordes of robbers.[24]

Layard had to seek the hills when he desired to find a people at home.

Affghanistan and Cashmere were early occupied, and thence were

supplied the people who moved toward the deltas of the Ganges and the

Indus, much of both of which still remains, after so many thousands of

years, in a state of wilderness. Look where we may, it is the same.

The land obeys the same great and universal law that governs light,

power, and heat. The man who works alone and has poor machinery must

cultivate poor land, and content himself with little light, little

power, and little heat, and those, like his food, obtained in exchange

for much labour; while he who works in combination with his fellow-men

may have good machinery, enabling him to clear and cultivate rich

land, giving him much food, and enabling him to obtain much light,

much heat, and much power, in exchange for little labour. The first is

_a creature of necessity_--a slave--and as such is man universally

regarded by Mr. Ricardo and his followers. The second is _a being of

power_--a freeman--and as such was man regarded by Adam Smith, who

taught that the more men worked in combination with each other, the

greater would be the facility of obtaining food and all other of the

necessaries and comforts of life--and the more widely they were

separated, the less would be the return to labour and capital, and the

smaller the power of production, as common sense teaches every man

must necessarily be the case.

 

It will now readily be seen how perfectly accurate was Mr. Mill in his

assertion that, “if the law were different, almost all the phenomena

of the production and distribution of wealth would be other than they

are.” The doctrine of Malthus and Ricardo tends to make the labourer a

slave to the owner of landed or other capital; but happily it has no

foundation in fact, and therefore the natural laws of the production

and distribution of wealth tend not to slavery, but to freedom.

 

Chapter 6. How wealth tends to increase

 

The first poor cultivator commences, as we have seen, his operations

on the hillside. Below him are lands upon which have been carried by

force of water the richer portions of those above, as well as the

leaves of trees, and the fallen trees themselves, all of which have

from time immemorial rotted and become incorporated with the earth,

and thus have been produced soils fitted to yield the largest returns

to labour; yet for this reason are they inaccessible. Their character

exhibits itself in the enormous trees with which they are covered, and

in their power of retaining the water necessary to aid the process of

decomposition, but the poor settler wants the power either to clear

them of their timber, or to drain them of the superfluous moisture. He

begins on the hillside, but by degrees he obtains better machinery of

cultivation, and with each step in this direction we find him

descending the hill and obtaining larger return to labour. He has more

food for himself, and he has now the means of feeding a horse or an

ox. Aided by the manure that is thus yielded to him by the better

lands, we see him next retracing his steps, improving the hillside,

and compelling it to yield a return double that which he at first

obtained. With each step down the hill, he obtains still larger reward

for his labour, and at each he returns, with increased power, to the

cultivation of the original poor soil. He has now horses and oxen, and

while by their aid he extracts from the new soils the manure that had

accumulated for ages, he has also carts and wagons to carry it up the

hill; and at each step his reward is increased, while his labours are

lessened. He goes back to the sand and raises the marl, with which he

covers the surface; or he returns to the clay and sinks into the

limestone, by aid of which he doubles its product. He is all the time

making a machine which feeds him while he makes it, and which

increases in its powers the more he takes from it. At first it was

worthless. Having now fed and clothed him for years, it has acquired a

large value, and those who might desire to use it would pay him a

large rent for permission so to do.

 

The earth is a great machine given to man to be fashioned to his

purpose. The more he works it, the better it feeds him, because each

step is but preparatory to a new one more productive than the

last--requiring less labour and yielding larger return. The labour of

clearing is great, yet the return is small. The earth is covered with

stumps, and filled with roots. With each year the roots decay, and the

ground becomes enriched, while the labour of ploughing is diminished.

At length, the stumps disappear, and the return is doubled, while the

labour is less by one-half than at first. To forward this process the

owner has done nothing but crop the ground, nature having done the

rest. The aid he thus obtains from her yields him as much food as in

the outset was obtained by the labour of felling the trees. This,

however, is not all. The surplus thus yielded has given him means of

improving the poorer lands, by furnishing manure with which to enrich

them, and thus has he trebled his original return without further

labour; for that which he saves in working the new soils suffices to

carry the manure to the older ones. He is obtaining a daily increased

power over the various treasures of the earth.

 

With every operation connected with the fashioning of the earth, the

result is the same. The first step is, invariably, the most costly

one, and the least productive. The first drain commences near the

stream, where the labour is heaviest. It frees from water but a few

acres. A little higher, the same quantity of labour, profiting by what

has been already done, frees twice the number. Again the number is

doubled; and now the most perfect system of thorough drainage may be

established with less labour than was at first required for one of the

most imperfect kind. To bring the lime into connection with the clay,

upon fifty acres, is lighter labour than was the clearing of a single

one, yet the process doubles the return for each acre of fifty. The

man who needs a little fuel for his own use, expends much labour in

opening the neighbouring vein of coal; but to enlarge this, so as to

double the product, is a work of comparatively small labour. To sink a

shaft to the first vein below the surface, and erect a steam-engine,

are expensive operations; but these once accomplished, every future

step becomes more productive, while less costly. To sink to the next

vein below, and to tunnel to another, are trifles in comparison with

the first, yet each furnishes a return equally large. The first line

of railroad runs by houses and towns occupied by two or three hundred

thousand persons. Half a dozen little branches, costing together far

less labour than the first, bring into connection with it half a

million, or perhaps a million. The trade increases, and a second

track, a third, or a fourth, may be required. The original one

facilitates the passage of the materials and the removal of the

obstructions, and three new ones may now be made with less labour than

was at first required for a single one.

 

All labour thus expended in fashioning the great machine is but the

prelude to the application of further labour, with still increased

returns. With each such application, wages rise, and hence it is that

portions of the machine, as it exists, invariably exchange, when

brought to market, for far less labour than they have cost. There is

thus a steady decline of the value of capital in labour, and a daily

increase in the power of labour over capital, and with each step in

this direction man becomes more free. The man who cultivated the thin

soils was happy to obtain a hundred bushels for his year’s work. With

the progress of himself and his neighbour down the hill into the more

fertile soils, wages have risen, and two hundred bushels are now

required. His farm will yield a thousand bushels; but it requires the

labour of four men, who must have two hundred bushels each, and the

surplus is but two hundred bushels. At twenty years’ purchase this

gives a capital of four thousand bushels, or the equivalent of twenty

years’ wages; whereas it has cost, in the labour of himself, his sons,

and his assistants, the equivalent of a hundred years of labour, or

perhaps far more. During all this time, however, it has fed and

clothed them all, and the farm has been produced by the insensible

contributions made from year to year, unthought of and unfelt.

 

It has become worth twenty years’ wages, because its owner has for

years taken from it a thousand bushels annually; but when it had lain

for centuries accumulating wealth it was worth nothing. Such is the

case with the earth everywhere. The more that is taken from it the

more there is to be returned, and the greater our power to draw upon

it. When the coal-mines of England were untouched, they were

valueless. Now their value is almost countless; yet the land contains

abundant supplies for thousands of years. Iron ore, a century since,

was a drug, and leases were granted at almost nominal rents. Now, such

leases are deemed equivalent to the possession of large fortunes,

notwithstanding the great quantities that have been removed, although

the amount of ore now known to exist is probably fifty times greater

than it was then.

 

_The earth is the sole producer._ From her man receives the corn and

the cotton-wool, and all that he can do is to change them in their

form, or in their place. The first he may convert into bread, and the

last into cloth, and both maybe transported to distant places, but

there his power ends. He can make no addition to their quantity. A

part of his labour is applied to the preparation and improvement of

the great machine of production, and this produces changes that are

permanent. The drain, once cut, remains a drain; and the limestone,

once reduced to lime, never again becomes limestone. It passes into

the food of man and animals, and ever after takes its part in the same

round with the clay with which it has been incorporated. The iron

rusts and gradually passes into soil, to take its part with the clay

and the lime. That portion of his labour gives him wages while

preparing the machine for greater future production. That other

portion which he expends on fashioning and exchanging _the products_

of the machine, produces temporary results and gives him wages alone.

Whatever tends to diminish the quantity of labour required for the

production of food tends to enable him to give more to the preparation

of machinery required for the fashioning and exchanging of the

products; and that machinery in its turn tends to augment the quantity

that may be given to increasing the amount of products, and to

preparing the great machine; and thus, while increasing the present

return to labour, preparing for a future further increase.

 

The first poor cultivator obtains a hundred bushels for his year’s

wages. To pound this between two stones requires many days of labour,

and the work is not half done. Had he a mill in the neighbourhood he

would have better flour, and he would have almost the whole of those

days to bestow upon his land. He pulls up his grain. Had he a scythe,

he would have more time for the preparation of the machine of

production. He loses his axe, and it requires days of himself and his

horse on the road, to obtain another. His machine loses the time and

the manure, both of which would have been saved had the axe-maker been

at hand. The real advantage derived from the mill and the scythe, and

from the proximity of the axe-maker, consists simply in the power

which they afford him to devote his labour more and more to the

preparation of the great machine of production, and such is the case

with all the machinery of conversion and exchange. The plough enables

him to do as much in one day as with a spade he could do in five. He

saves four days for drainage. The steam-engine drains as much as,

without it, could be drained by thousands of days of labour. He has

more leisure to marl or lime his land. The more he can extract from

his property the greater is its value, because every thing he takes

is, by the very act of taking it, fashioned to aid further production.

The machine, therefore, improves by use, whereas spades, and ploughs,

and steam-engines, and all other of the instruments used by man, are

but the various forms into which he fashions parts of the great

original machine, to disappear in the act of being used; as much so as

food, though not so rapidly. The earth is the great labour-savings’

bank, and the value to man of all other machines is in the direct

ratio of their tendency to aid him in increasing his deposites in that

only bank whose dividends are perpetually increasing, while its

capital is perpetually doubling. That it may continue for ever so to

do, all that it asks is that it shall receive back the refuse of its

produce, the manure; and that it may do so, the consumer and the

producer must take their places by each other. That done, every change

that is effected becomes permanent, and tends to facilitate other and

greater changes. The whole business of the farmer consists in making

and improving soils, and the earth rewards him for his kindness by

giving him more and more food the more attention he bestows upon her.

All that he receives from her must be regarded as a loan, and when he

fails to pay his debts, she starves him out.

 

The absolute necessity for returning to the land the manure yielded by

its products is so generally admitted that it would appear scarcely

necessary to do more than state the fact; for every land-owner knows

that when he grants the lease of a farm, one of the conditions he

desires to insert is, that all the hay that is made shall be fed upon

the land, and that manure shall be purchased to supply the waste

resulting from the sale of corn or flax from off the land. In order,

however, that it may be so supplied, it is indispensable that the

place of consumption shall not be far distant from the place of

production, as otherwise the cost of transportation will be greater

than the value of the manure. In a recent work on the agriculture of

Mecklenburgh, it is stated that a quantity of grain that would be

worth close to market fifteen hundred dollars would be worth nothing

at a distance of fifty German, or about two hundred English miles,

from it, as the whole value would be absorbed in the cost of

transporting the grain to market and the manure from market--and that

the manure which close to the town would be worth five dollars to the

farmer, would be worth nothing at a distance of 4-3/4 German, or 19

English miles from it--and that thus the whole question of the value

of land and the wealth of its owner was dependent upon its distance

from the place at which its products could be exchanged. At a greater

distance than 28 German, or 112 English miles, in Mecklenburgh, the

land ceases to yield rent, because it cannot be cultivated without

loss. As we approach the place of exchange the value of land

increases, from the simultaneous action of two causes: First, a

greater variety of commodities can be cultivated, and the advantage

resulting from a rotation of crops is well known. At a distance, the

farmer can raise only those of which the earth yields but little, and

which are valuable in proportion to their little bulk--as, for

instance, wheat or cotton; but near the place of exchange he may raise

potatoes, turnips, cabbages, and hay, of which the bulk is great in

proportion to the value. Second, the cost of returning the manure to

the land increases as the value of the products of land diminishes

with the increase of distance; and from the combination of these two

causes, land in Mecklenburgh that would be worth, if close to the town

or city, an annual rent of 29,808 dollars, would be worth at a

distance of but 4 German, or 16 English, miles, only 7,467 dollars.

 

We see thus, how great is the tendency to the growth of wealth as men

are enabled more and more to combine their exertions with those of

their fellow-men, consuming on or near the land the products of the

land, and enabling the farmer, not only to repair readily the

exhaustion caused by each successive crop, but also to call to his aid

the services of the chemist in the preparation of artificial manures,

as well as to call into activity the mineral ones by which he is

almost everywhere surrounded. We see, too, how much it must be opposed

to the interests of every community to have its products exported in

their rude state, and thus to have its land exhausted. The same author

from whom the above quotations have been made informs us that when the

manure is not returned to the land the yield must diminish from year

to year, until at length it will not be more than one-fourth of what

it had originally been: and this is in accordance with all

observation.

 

The natural tendency of the loom and the anvil to seek to take their

place by the side of the plough and harrow, is thus exhibited by ADAM

SMITH:--

 

 “An inland country, naturally fertile and easily cultivated, produces

 a great surplus of provisions beyond what is necessary for

 maintaining the cultivators; and on account of the expense of land

 carriage, and inconveniency of river navigation, it may frequently be

 difficult to send this surplus abroad. Abundance, therefore, renders

 provisions cheap, and encourages a great number of workmen to settle

 in the neighbourhood, who find that their industry can there procure

 them more of the necessaries and conveniences of life than in other

 places. They work up the materials of manufacture which the land

 produces, and exchange their finished work, or, what is the same

 thing, the price of it, for more materials and provisions. _They give

 a new value to the surplus part of the rude produce, by saving the

 expense of carrying it to the waterside, or to some distant market_;

 and they furnish the cultivators with something in exchange for it,

 that is either useful or agreeable to them, upon easier terms than

 they could have obtained it before. _The cultivators get a better

 price for their surplus produce, and can purchase cheaper other

 conveniences which they have occasion for._ They are thus both

 encouraged and enabled to increase this surplus produce by a further

 improvement and better cultivation of the land; and _as the fertility

 of the land has given birth to the manufacture, so the progress of

 the manufacture reacts upon the land, and increases still further its

 fertility_. The manufacturers first supply the neighbourhood, and

 afterward, as their work improves and refines, more distant markets.

 _For though neither the rude produce, nor even the coarse

 manufacture, could, without the greatest difficulty, support the

 expense of a considerable land carriage, the refined and improved

 manufacture easily may._ In a small bulk it frequently contains the

 price of a great quantity of the raw produce. A piece of fine cloth,

 for example, which weighs, only eighty pounds, contains in it the

 price, not only of eighty pounds of wool, but sometimes of several

 thousand weight of corn, the maintenance of the different working

 people, and of their immediate employers. _The corn which could with

 difficulty have been carried abroad in its own shape, is in this

 manner virtually exported in that of the complete manufacture, and

 may easily be sent to the remotest corners of the world._”

 

Again:

 

 “The greater the number and revenue of the inhabitants of the town,

 the more extensive is the market which it affords to those of the

 country; and the more extensive that market, it is always the more

 advantageous to a great number. The corn which grows within a mile of

 the town, sells there for the same price with that which comes from

 twenty miles distance. But the price of the latter must, generally,

 not only pay the expense of raising it and bringing it to market, but

 afford, too, the ordinary profits, of agriculture to the farmer. The

 proprietors and cultivators of the country, therefore, which lies in

 the neighbourhood of the town, over and above the ordinary profits of

 agriculture, gain, in the price of what they sell, the whole value of

 the carriage of the like produce that is brought from more distant

 parts; and they save, besides, the whole value of this carriage in

 the price of what they buy. Compare the cultivation of the lands in

 the neighbourhood of any considerable town, with that of those which

 lie at some distance from it, and you will easily satisfy yourself

 how much the country is benefited by the commerce of the town.”

 

These views are in perfect accordance with the facts. The labourer

rejoices when the market for his labour is brought to his door by the

erection of a mill or a furnace, or the construction of a road. The

farmer rejoices in the opening of a market for labour at his door

giving him a market for his food. His land rejoices in the home

consumption of the products it has yielded, for its owner is thereby

enabled to return to it the refuse of its product in the form of

manure. The planter rejoices in the erection of a mill in his

neighbourhood, giving him a market for his cotton and his food. The

parent rejoices when a market for their labour enables his sons and

his daughters to supply themselves with food and clothing. Every one

rejoices in the growth of a home market for labour and its products,

for trade is then increasing daily and rapidly; and every one mourns

the diminution of the home market, for it is one the deficiency of

which cannot be supplied.

 

With each step in this direction man becomes more and more free as

land becomes more valuable and labour becomes more productive, and as

the land becomes more divided. The effect of this upon both the man

and the land is thus exhibited by Dr. Smith:--

 

 “A small proprietor, who knows every part of his little territory,

 views it with all the affection which property, especially small

 property, naturally inspires, and who upon that account takes

 pleasure not only in cultivating, but in adorning it, is generally of

 all improvers the most industrious, the most intelligent, and the

 most successful.”

 

The tendency of the land to become divided as wealth and population

increase will be obvious to the reader on an examination of the facts

of daily occurrence in and near a growing town or city; and the

contrary tendency to the consolidation of land in few hands may be

seen in the neighbourhood of all declining towns or cities, and

throughout all declining states.[25]

 

Chapter 7. How labour acquires value and man becomes free

 

The proximity of the market enables the farmer not only to enrich his

land and to obtain from it far more than he could otherwise do, but it

also produces a demand for many things that would otherwise be wasted.

In the West, men set no value upon straw, and in almost every part of

this country the waste arising out of the absence of a market for any

commodities but those which can be carried to a distance, must strike

every traveller. Close to the town or city, almost every thing has

some value. So too with labour, the value of which, like that of land,

tends to increase with every increase in the facility of exchanging

its products.

 

The solitary settler has to occupy the spots that, with his rude

machinery, he _can_ cultivate. Having neither horse nor cart, he

carries home his crop upon his shoulders, as is now done in many parts

of India. He carries a hide to the place of exchange, distant,

perhaps, fifty miles, to obtain for it leather, or shoes. Population

increases, and roads are made. The fertile soils are cultivated. The

store and the mill come nearer to him, and he obtains shoes and flour

with the use of less machinery of exchange. He has more leisure for

the improvement of his land, and the returns to labour increase. More

people now obtain food from the same surface, and new places of

exchange appear. The wool is, on the spot, converted into cloth, and

he exchanges directly with the clothier. The saw-mill is at hand, and

he exchanges with the sawyer. The tanner gives him leather for his

hides, and the papermaker gives him paper for his rags. With each of

these changes he has more and more of both time and manure to devote

to the preparation of the great food-making machine, and with each

year the returns are larger. His _power to command_ the use of the

machinery of exchange increases, but his _necessity_ therefor

diminishes, for with each there is an increasing tendency toward

having the consumer placed side by side with the producer, and with

each he can devote more and more of his time and mind to the business

of fashioning the great machine to which he is indebted for food and

clothing; and thus the increase of a consuming population is essential

to the progress of production.

 

Diversification of employments, resulting from combination of action,

thus enables men to economize labour and to increase production.

Increased production, on the other hand, makes a demand for labour.

The more wheat raised and the more cloth made, the more there will be

to give in exchange for labour, the greater will be the number of

persons seeking for labourers, and the greater will be the power of

men to determine for themselves the mode in which they will employ

their time or their talents. If, therefore, we desire to see men

advance in freedom, we must endeavour to increase the productive

power; and that, as we see, grows with the growth of the power to

improve the land, while it diminishes with every diminution in the

power to return to the land the manure yielded by its products. In

purely agricultural countries there is little demand for labour, and

it always tends to diminish, as may be proved by any reader of this

volume who may chance to occupy a purely agricultural neighbourhood.

Let him look around him, and he will, without difficulty, find

hundreds of men, and hundreds of women and children, wasting more time

than would, if properly employed, purchase twice the clothing and

twice the machinery of production they are now enabled to obtain. Why,

however, he will probably ask, is it that they do so waste it? Because

there is no demand for it, except in agriculture; and when that is the

case, there must necessarily be great waste of time. At one season of

the year the farm requires much labour, while at another it needs but

little; and if its neighbours are all farmers, they are all in the

same situation. If the weather is fit for ploughing, they and their

horses and men are all employed. If it is not, they are all idle. In

winter they have all of them little to do; in harvest-time they are

all overrun with work; and crops frequently perish on the ground for

want of the aid required for making them. Now, it would seem to be

quite clear that if there existed some other mode of employment that

would find a demand for the surplus labour of the neighbourhood, all

would be benefited. The man who had a day’s labour to sell could sell

it, and, with the proceeds of the labour of a very few days, now

wasted, could purchase clothing for his children, if, indeed, the

labour of those children, now also wasted, did not more than pay for

all the clothing, not only of themselves, but of his wife and himself.

 

In order that the reader may see clearly how this state of things

affects all labourers, even those who are employed, we must now ask

him to examine with us the manner in which the prices of all

commodities are affected by excess of supply over demand, or of demand

over supply. It is well known to every farmer, that when the crop of

peaches, or of potatoes, is, _in even a very small degree_, in excess

of the regular demand, the existence of that small surplus so far

diminishes the price that the larger crop will not yield as much as a

much smaller one would have done. It is also known to them that when

the crop is a little less than is required to supply the demand, the

advance in price is large, and the farmer then grows rich. In this

latter case the purchasers are looking for the sellers, whereas in the

former one the sellers have to seek the buyers. Now, labour is a

commodity that some desire to sell, and that others desire to buy,

precisely as is the case with potatoes; but it has this disadvantage

when compared with any other commodity, that it is less easily

transferred from the place where it exists to that at which it is

needed, and that the loss resulting from _the absence of demand on the

spot_ is greater than in reference to _any other commodity

whatsoever_. The man who raises a hundred bushels of peaches, of which

only seventy are needed at home, can send the remainder to a distance

of a hundred or a thousand miles, and the loss he sustains is only

that which results from the fact that the price of the whole is

determined by what he can obtain for the surplus bushels, burdened as

they are with heavy cost of transportation, that he must lose; for the

man that _must_ go to a distant market must always pay the expense of

getting there. This is a heavy loss certainly, but it is trivial when

compared with that sustained by him who has labour to sell, because

_that_, like other very perishable commodities, cannot be carried to

another market, and _must be wasted_. If he has two spare hours a day

to sell, he finds that they waste themselves in the very act of

seeking a distant market, and his children may go in rags, or even

suffer from hunger, because of his inability to find a purchaser for

the only commodity he has to sell. So, too, with the man who has days,

weeks, or months of labour for which he desires to find a purchaser.

Unwilling to leave his wife and his children, to go to a distance, he

remains to be a constant weight upon the labour market, and must

continue so to remain until there shall arise increased competition

for the purchase of labour. It is within the knowledge of every one

who reads this, whether he be shoemaker, hatter, tailor, printer,

brickmaker, stonemason, or labourer, that a very few unemployed men in

his own pursuit keep down the wages of all shoemakers, all hatters,

all tailors, or printers; whereas, wages rise when there is a demand

for a few more than are at hand. The reason for this is to be found in

the difficulty of transferring labour from the place at which it

exists to that at which it is needed; and it is to that we have to

attribute the fact that the tendency to depression in the wages of all

labour is so very great when there is even a very small excess of

supply, and the tendency to elevation so great when there is even a

very small excess of demand. Men starve in Ireland for want of

employment, and yet the distance between them and the people who here

earn a dollar a day, is one that could be overcome at the expense of

fifteen or twenty dollars. Wages may be high in one part of the Union

and low in another, and yet thousands must remain to work at low ones,

because of the difficulty of transporting themselves, their wives, and

their families, to the places at which their services are needed.

Every such man tends to keep down the wages, of _all other men who

have labour to sell_, and therefore every man is interested in having

all other men fully employed, and to have the demand grow faster than

the supply. This is the best state of things for all, capitalists and

labourers; whereas, to have the supply in excess of the demand is

injurious to all, employers and employed. All profit by increase in

the competition for the purchase of labour, and all suffer from

increased competition for the sale of it.

 

We had occasion, but a little while since, to visit a factory in which

were employed two hundred females of various ages, from fourteen to

twenty, who were earning, on an average, three dollars per week,

making a total of six hundred dollars per week, or thirty thousand

dollars a year; or as much as would, buy five hundred thousand yards

of cotton cloth. Now supposing these two hundred females to represent

one hundred families, it would follow that their labour produced five

thousand yards of cloth per family, being probably three times as much

in value as the total consumption of clothing by all its members,

from, the parent down to the infant child.

 

Let us now suppose this factory closed; what then would be the value

of the labour of these girls, few of whom have strength for field-work

even if our habits of thought permitted that it should be so employed?

It would be almost nothing, for they could do little except

house-work, and the only effect of sending them home would be that,

whereas one person, fully employed, performs now the labour of the

house, it would henceforth be divided between two or three, all of

whom would gradually lose the habit of industry they have been

acquiring. The direct effect of this would be a diminution in the

demand for female labour, and a diminution of its reward. While the

factory continues in operation there is competition for the purchase

of such labour. The parent desires to retain at least one child. A

neighbour desires to hire another, and the factory also desires one.

To supply these demands requires all the females of the neighbourhood

capable of working and not provided with families of their own, and

thus those who are willing to work have the choice of employers and

employment; while the competition for the purchase of their services

tends to raise the rate of wages. If, now, in the existing state of

things, another factory were established in, the same neighbourhood,

requiring a hundred or a hundred and fifty more females, the effect

would be to establish increased competition for the purchase of

labour, attended by increased power of choice on the part of the

labourer, and increased reward of labour--and it is in this increased

power of choice that freedom consists. If, on the contrary, the

factories were closed, the reverse effect would be produced, the

competition for the purchase of labour being diminished, with

corresponding diminution of the power of choice on the part of the

labourer, diminution in his compensation, and diminution of freedom.

 

What is true with regard to the females of this neighbourhood is

equally true with regard to the men, women, and children of the world.

Wherever there exists competition for the purchase of labour, there

the labourer has his choice among employers, and the latter are not

only required to pay higher wages, but they are also required to treat

their workmen and workwomen with the consideration that is due to

fellow-beings equal in rights with themselves: but wherever there is

not competition for the purchase of labour, the labourer is compelled

to work for any who are willing to employ him, and to receive at the

hands of his employer low wages and the treatment of a slave, for

slave he is. Here is a plain and simple proposition, the proof of

which every reader can test for himself. If he lives in a

neighbourhood in which there exists competition for the purchase of

labour, he knows that he can act as becomes a freeman in determining

for whom he will work, and the price he is willing to receive for his

services; but if he lives in one in which there is competition for the

sale of labour, he knows well that it does not rest with him to

determine either where he will work or what shall be his wages.

 

Where all are farmers, there can be no competition for the purchase of

labour, except for a few days in harvest; but there must be

competition for the sale of labour during all the rest of the year. Of

course, where all are farmers or planters, the man who has labour to

sell is at the mercy of the few who desire to buy it, as is seen in

our Southern States, where the labourer is a slave; and in Ireland,

where his condition is far worse than that of the slaves of the South;

and in India, where men sell themselves for long terms of years to

labour in the West Indies; and in Portugal, where competition for the

purchase of labour has no existence. Where, on the contrary, there is

a diversification of employments, there is a steady improvement in the

condition of men, as they more and more acquire the power to determine

for themselves for whom they will work and what shall be their reward,

as is seen in the rapid improvement in the condition of the people of

France, Belgium, and Germany, and especially of those of Russia, where

competition for the purchase of labour is increasing with wonderful

rapidity. Diversification of employment is absolutely necessary to

produce competition for the purchase of labour. The shoemaker does not

need to purchase shoes, nor does the miner need to buy coal, any more

than the farmer needs to buy wheat or potatoes. Bring them together,

and combine with them the hatter, the tanner, the cotton-spinner, the

maker of woollen cloth, and the smelter and roller of iron, and each

of them becomes a competitor for the purchase of the labour, or the

products of the labour, of all the others, and the wages of all rise

with the increase of competition.

 

In order that labour may be productive, it must be aided by machinery.

The farmer could do little with his hands, but when aided by the

plough and the harrow he may raise much wheat and corn. He could carry

little on his shoulders, but he may transport much when aided by a

horse and wagon, and still more when aided by a locomotive engine or a

ship. He could convert little grain into flour when provided only with

a pestle and mortar, but he may do much when provided with a mill. His

wife could convert little cotton into cloth when provided only with a

spinning-wheel and hand-loom, but her labour becomes highly productive

when aided by the spinning-jenny and the power-loom. The more her

labours and those of her husband are thus aided the larger will be the

quantity of grain produced, the more speedily will it be converted

into flour, the more readily will it be carried to market, the larger

will be the quantity of cloth for which it will exchange, the greater

will be the quantity of food and clothing to be divided among the

labourers, and the greater will be the facility on the part of the

labourer to acquire machinery of his own, and to become his own

employer, and thus to increase that diversification in the employment

of labour which tends to increase the competition for its purchase.

 

It will next, we think, be quite clear to the reader that _the nearer_

the grist-mill is to the farm, the less will be the labour required

for converting the wheat into flour, the more will be the labour that

may be given to the improvement of the farm, and the greater will be

the power of the farmer to purchase shoes, hats, coats, ploughs, or

harrows, and thus to create a demand for labour. Equally clear will it

be that _the nearer_ he can bring the hatter, the shoemaker, and the

tailor, the maker of ploughs and harrows, the less will be the loss of

labour in exchanging his wheat for their commodities, and the greater

will be his power to purchase books and newspapers, to educate his

children, and thus to introduce new varieties in the demand for

labour; and each such new variety in the demand for that commodity

tends to raise the wages of those engaged in all other pursuits. If

there be none but farmers, all are seeking employment on a farm. Open

a carpenter’s or a blacksmith’s shop, and the men employed therein

will cease to be competitors for farm labour, and wages will tend to

rise. Open a mine, or quarry stone and build a mill, and here will be

a new competition for labour that will tend to produce a rise in the

wages of all labourers. Build a dozen mills, and men will be required

to get out timber and stone, and to make spindles, looms, and steam-

engines; and when the mills are completed, the demand for labour will

withdraw hundreds of men that would be otherwise competitors for

employment in the ploughing of fields, the making of shoes or coats,

and hundreds of women that would otherwise be seeking to employ

themselves in binding shoes or making shirts. Competition for the

purchase of labour grows, therefore, with every increase in the

diversification of employment, with constant tendency to increase in

the reward of labour. It declines with every diminution in the modes

of employing labour, with steady tendency to decline in wages.

 

If the reader will now trace the course of man toward freedom, in the

various nations of the world, he will see that his progress has been

in the ratio of the growth of towns at which he and his neighbours

could exchange the products of their labour, and that it has declined

as the near towns have given way to the distant cities. The people of

Attica did not need to go abroad to effect their exchanges, and

therefore they became rich and free; whereas the Spartans, who

tolerated nothing but agriculture, remained poor and surrounded by

hosts of slaves. The towns and cities of Italy gave value to the land

by which they were surrounded, and freedom to the people by whom that

land was cultivated. So was it in Holland, and in Belgium, and so

again in England. In each and all of these land increased in value

with every increase in the facility of exchanging its products for

clothing and machinery, and with each step in this direction men were

enabled more readily to maintain and to increase the power of the

land, and to permit larger numbers to obtain increased supplies from

the same surfaces. Association thus increased the power of

accumulating wealth, and wealth thus diminished in its power over

labour, while with augmented numbers the people everywhere found an

increase in their power to assert and to defend their rights. Having

reflected on the facts presented to him in the pages of history, and

having satisfied himself that they are in perfect accordance with the

views here presented, the reader will perhaps find himself disposed to

admit, the correctness of the following propositions:--

 

I. That the nearer the market the less must be the cost to the farmer

for transporting his products to market and for bringing back the

manure to maintain and improve his land.

 

II. That the nearer the market the less must be the loss of labour in

going to market, and the greater the quantity that can be given to the

improvement of the land.

 

III. That the more the labour and manure that can be given to land,

the larger will be the product and the greater its value.

 

IV. That the larger the quantity of commodities produced the greater

will be the demand for labour to be employed in converting them into

forms that fit them for consumption, and the larger the quantity to be

divided among the labourers.

 

V. That the greater the competition for the purchase of labour the

greater must be the tendency toward the freedom of the labourer.

 

VI. That the freedom of man in thought, speech, action, and trade,

tends thus to keep pace with increase in the habit of association

among men, and increase in the value of land;--and

 

VII. That the interests of the labourer and land-owner are thus in

perfect harmony with each other, the one becoming free as the other

becomes rich.

 

Equally correct will be found the following propositions:--

 

I. That the more distant the market the greater must be the cost to

the farmer for transporting his products to market, the greater must

be the difficulty of obtaining manure, and the more must his land be

impoverished.

 

II. That the more distant the market the greater must be the loss of

labour on the road, and the less the quantity that can be given to the

improvement of the land.

 

III. That the less the labour and manure applied to the land the less

must be the product, and the less its value.

 

IV. That the longer this process is continued the poorer must become

the land, until at length it ceases to have value, and must be

abandoned.

 

V. That the smaller the quantity of commodities produced the less must

be the demand for labour to be employed in their conversion, and the

less the quantity to be divided among the labourers.

 

VI. That the less the competition for the purchase of labour the less

must be the power of the labourer to determine for whom he will work,

or what must be his reward, and the greater the tendency toward his

becoming enslaved.

 

VII. That the tendency toward slavery tends thus to keep pace with the

decline in the habit of association among men, and the loss of value

in land;--and

 

VIII. That thus the labourer and land-owner suffer together, the one

becoming enslaved as the other becomes impoverished.

 

If evidence be desired of the correctness of these propositions, it

may found in the history of Egypt, Greece, Rome, Mexico, and of every

other country that has declined in wealth and population.

 

Chapter 8. How man passes from wealth and freedom toward poverty and slavery

 

The views that have thus been presented are entirely in harmony those

of the illustrious author of “The Wealth of Nations.” “In seeking for

employment to a capital,” says Dr. Smith,

 

 “Manufactures are, upon equal or nearly equal profits, naturally

 preferred to foreign commerce, for the same reason that agriculture

 is naturally preferred to manufactures. As the capital of the

 landlord or farmer is more secure than that of the manufacturer, so

 the capital of the manufacturer, being at all times more within his

 view and command, is more secure than that of the foreign merchant.

 In every period, indeed, of every society, the surplus part both of

 the rude and manufactured produce, or that for which there is no

 demand at home, must be sent abroad, in order to be exchanged for

 something for which there is some demand at home. But whether the

 capital which carries this surplus produce abroad be a foreign or

 domestic one, is of little importance.”

 

It is thus, in his estimation, of small importance whether the capital

engaged in the work of transportation be foreign or domestic--the

operations most essential to the comfort and improvement of man being,

first, the production, and next, the conversion of the products of the

land, by men occupying towns and cities placed among the producers.

The nearer the market the less must be, as he clearly saw, the loss of

transportation, and the greater the value of the land. If the number

or the capital of those markets were insufficient for the conversion

of all the rude produce of the earth, there would then be

“considerable advantage” to be derived from the export of the surplus

by the aid of foreign capital, thus leaving “the whole stock of the

society” to be employed at home “to more useful purpose.” These views

are certainly widely different from those of modern economists, who

see in tables of imports and exports the only criterion of the

condition of society. Commerce, by which is meant exchanges with

distant people, is regarded as the sole measure of the prosperity of a

nation; and yet every man is rejoiced when the market for his products

is brought home to him, and he is thereby enabled to economize

transportation and enrich his land by returning to it the elements of

which-those products had been composed.

 

 “According to the natural course of things,” says Dr. Smith, “the

 greater part of the capital of every growing society is, first,

 directed to agriculture, afterward to manufactures, and, last of all,

 to foreign commerce.”

 

This, says he, is in accordance with natural laws. As subsistence

precedes luxuries, so must the production, of commodities precede

their conversion or their exchange.

 

 “Necessity imposes,” he continues, “that order of things” which “is

 in every country promoted by the natural inclinations of man. If

 human institutions had never thwarted those natural inclinations, the

 towns could nowhere have increased beyond what the improvement and

 cultivation of the territory in which they were situated could

 support; till such time, at least, as the whole of that territory was

 completely cultivated and improved. Upon equal, or nearly equal

 profits, most men will choose to employ their capitals rather in the

 improvement and cultivation of land, than either in manufactures or

 in foreign trade. The man who employs his capital in land, has it

 more under his view and command; and his fortune is much less liable

 to accidents than that of the trader, who is obliged frequently to

 commit it, not only to the winds and the waves, but to the more

 uncertain elements of human folly and injustice, by giving great

 credits, in distant countries, to men with whose character and

 situation he can seldom be thoroughly acquainted. The capital of the

 landlord, on the contrary, which is fixed in the improvement of his

 land, seems to be as well secured as the nature of human affairs can

 admit of. The beauty of the country, besides the pleasures of a

 country life, the tranquillity of mind which it promises, and,

 wherever the injustice of human laws does not disturb it, the

 independency which it really affords, have charms that, more or less,

 attract everybody; and as to cultivate the ground was the original

 destination of man, so, in every stage of his existence, he seems to

 retain a predilection for this primitive employment.

 

 “Without the assistance of some artificers, indeed, the cultivation

 of land cannot be carried on, but with great inconveniency and

 continual interruption. Smiths, carpenters, wheelwrights and

 ploughwrights, masons and bricklayers, tanners, shoemakers, and

 tailors, are people whose service the farmer has frequent occasion

 for. Such artificers, too, stand occasionally in need of the

 assistance of one another; and as their residence is not, like that

 of the farmer, necessarily tied down to a precise spot, they

 naturally settle in the neighbourhood of one another, and thus form a

 small town or village. The butcher, the brewer, and the baker soon

 join them, together with many other artificers and retailers,

 necessary or useful for supplying their occasional wants, and who

 contribute still further to augment the town. The inhabitants of the

 town and those of the country are mutually the servants of one

 another. The town is a continual fair or market, to which the

 inhabitants of the country resort, in order to exchange their rude

 for manufactured produce. It is this commerce which supplies the

 inhabitants of the town, both with the materials of their work and

 the means of their subsistence. The quantity of the finished work

 which they sell to the inhabitants of the country, necessarily

 regulates the quantity of the materials and provisions which they

 buy. Neither their employment nor subsistence, therefore, can

 augment, but in proportion to the augmentation of the demand from the

 country for finished work; and this demand can augment only in

 proportion to the extension of improvement and cultivation. Had human

 institutions, therefore, never disturbed the natural course of

 things, the progressive wealth and increase of the towns would, in

 every political society, be consequential, and in proportion to the

 improvement and cultivation of the territory or country.”

 

The demand on the artisan “can augment only in proportion to the

extension of improvement and cultivation.” Nothing can be more true.

The interests of the farmer and the mechanic are in perfect harmony

with each other. The one needs a market for his products, and the

nearer the market the greater must be the produce of his land, because

of his increased power to carry back to it the manure. The other needs

a market for his labour, and the richer the land around him the

greater will be the quantity of products to be offered in exchange for

labour, and the greater his freedom to determine for himself for whom

he will work and what shall be his wages. The combination of effort

between the labourer in the workshop and the labourer on the farm thus

gives value to land, and the more rapid the growth of the value of

land the greater has everywhere been the tendency to the freedom of

man.

 

These views were opposed to those then universally prevalent.

“England’s treasure in foreign trade” had become

 

 “A fundamental maxim in the political economy, not of England only,

 but of all other commercial countries. The inland or home trade, the

 most important of all, the trade in which an equal capital affords

 the greatest revenue, and creates the greatest employment to the

 people of the country, was considered as subsidiary only to foreign

 trade. It neither brought money into the country, it was said, nor

 carried any out of it. The country, therefore, could never become

 richer or poorer by means of it, except as far as its prosperity or

 decay might indirectly influence the state of foreign trade.”

 

It was against this error chiefly that Dr. Smith cautioned his

countrymen. He showed that it had led, and was leading, to measures

tending to disturb the natural course of things in all the countries

connected with England, and to produce among them a necessity, for

trade while diminishing the power to maintain trade. “Whatever tends,”

says he, “to diminish in any country the number of artificers and

manufacturers, tends to diminish the home market, the most important

of all markets, for the rude produce of the land, and thereby still

further to discourage agriculture,” and consequently to diminish the

power of producing things with which to trade. He nowhere refers to

the fact that any system which looks to compelling a nation to export

raw produce, tends necessarily to the impoverishment of the land and

its owner, and to the diminution, of the freedom of the labourer, and

yet that such was the case could scarcely have escaped his

observation. The tendency of the then existing English policy was, as

he showed, to produce in various countries a necessity for exporting

every thing in its rudest form, thus increasing the cost of

transportation, while impoverishing the land and exhausting the

people. The legislature had been, he said, “prevailed upon” to prevent

the establishment of manufactures in the colonies, “sometimes by high

duties, and sometimes by absolute prohibitions.” In Grenada, while a

colony of France, every plantation had its own refinery of sugar, but

on its cession to England they were all abandoned, and thus was the

number of artisans diminished, to “the discouragement of agriculture.”

The course of proceeding relative to these colonies is thus

described:--

 

 “While Great Britain encourages in America the manufacturing of pig

 and bar iron, by exempting them from duties to which the like

 commodities are subject when imported from any other country, she

 imposes an absolute prohibition upon the erection of steel furnaces

 and slit-mills in any of her American plantations: She will not

 suffer her colonies to work in those more refined manufactures, even

 for their own consumption; but insists upon their purchasing of her

 merchants and manufactures all goods of this kind which they have

 occasion for.

 

 “She prohibits the exportation from one province to another by water,

 and even the carriage by land upon horseback, or in a cart, of hats,

 of wools, and woollen goods, of the produce of America; a regulation

 which effectually prevents the establishment of any manufacture of

 such commodities for distant sale, and confines the industry of her

 colonists in this way to such coarse and household manufactures as a

 private family commonly makes for its own use, or for that of some of

 its neighbours in the same province.”

 

His views, in regard to such measures, are thus given:--

 

 “To prohibit a great people from making all they can of every part of

 their own produce, or from employing their stock and industry in a

 way that they judge most advantageous to themselves, is a manifest

 violation of the most sacred rights of mankind.”

 

Further to carry out this view of compelling the people of the

colonies to abstain from manufacturing for themselves, and to carry

their products to distant markets, to the exhaustion of the land and

to the diminution of the value of labour, bounties were paid on the

importation into England of various articles of raw produce, while the

export of various raw materials, of artisans, and of machinery, was

prohibited. The whole object of the system was, he said, to “raise up

colonies of customers, a project,” he added, “fit only for a nation of

shopkeepers.” Indeed, he thought it “unfit even for a nation of

shopkeepers,” although “extremely fit for a nation whose government

was influenced by shopkeepers.” He was therefore entirely opposed to

all such arrangements as the Methuen treaty, by which, in

consideration of obtaining the control of the market of Portugal for

the sale of her manufactures, Great Britain agreed to give to the

wines of that country great advantage over those of France.

 

Against all the errors of the system, Dr. Smith, however, raised in

vain his warning voice. “England’s treasure” was, it was thought, to

be found “in foreign trade,” and every measure adopted by the

government had in view the extension of that trade. With each new

improvement of machinery there was a new law prohibiting its export.

The laws against the export of artisans were enforced, and a further

one prohibited the emigration of colliers. The reader will readily see

that a law prohibiting the export of cotton or woollen machinery was

precisely equivalent to a law to compel all the producers of wool or

cotton to seek the distant market of England if they desired to

convert their products into cloth. The inventors of machinery, and the

artisans who desired to work it, were thus deprived of freedom of

action, in order that foreigners might be made the slaves of those who

controlled the spinning-jenny, the loom, and the steam-engine, in

whose hands it was desired to centralize the control of the farmers

and planters of the world. England was to be made “the workshop of the

world,” although her people had been warned that the system was not

only unnatural, but in the highest degree unjust, and even more

impolitic than unjust, because while tending to expel capital and

labour from the great and profitable home market, it tended greatly to

the “discouragement of agriculture” in the colonies and nations

subjected to the system, and to prevent the natural increase of the

smaller and less profitable distant market upon which she was becoming

more and more dependent.

 

By degrees the tendency of the system became obvious. Bounties on the

import of wood, and wool, and flax, and other raw materials, tended to

“the discouragement of agriculture” at home, and bounties on the

export of manufactures tended to drive into the work of converting,

and exchanging the products of other lands the labour and capital that

would otherwise have been applied to the work of production at home.

The necessary consequence of this was, that the difficulty of

obtaining these raw materials, instead of diminishing with the

progress of population, tended to increase, and then it was, at the

distance of a quarter of a century from the date of the publication of

“_The Wealth of Nations_,” that the foundation of the new school was

laid by Mr. Malthus, who taught that all the distress existing in the

world was the inevitable consequence of a great law of nature, which

provided that food should increase only in arithmetical progression,

while population might increase in geometrical progression. Next came

Mr. Ricardo, who furnished a law of the occupation of the earth,

showing, and conclusively, as he supposed, that the work of

cultivation was always commenced on the rich soils, yielding a large

return to labour, and that as population increased, men were compelled

to resort to others, each in succession less fertile than its

predecessor--the consequence of which was that labour became daily

less productive, the power to obtain food diminished, and the power to

demand rent increased, the poor becoming daily poorer, weaker, and

more enslaved, as the rich became richer and more powerful. Next came

the elder Mill, who showed that, in obedience to the law thus

propounded by Mr. Ricardo, the return to capital and labour applied to

the work of cultivation must be “continually decreasing,” and the

annual fund from which sayings are made, continually diminishing. “The

difficulty of making savings is thus,” he adds, “continually

augmented, and at last they must totally cease.” He regarded it

therefore as certain that “wages would be reduced so low that a

portion of the population would regularly die from the consequences of

want.” In such a state of things, men sell themselves, their wives, or

their children, for mere food. We see, thus, that the modern British

theory looks directly to the enslavement of man.

 

In this manner, step by step, did the British political economists

pass from the school of Adam Smith, in which it was taught that

agriculture preceded manufactures and commerce, the latter of which

were useful to the extent that they aided the former,--to that new one

in which was, and is, taught, that manufactures and commerce were the

great and profitable pursuits of man, and that agriculture, because of

the “constantly increasing sterility of the soil,” was the least

profitable of all. Hence it is that we see England to have been

steadily passing on in the same direction, and devoting all her

energies to the prevention of the establishment, in any country of the

world, of markets in which the raw produce of the land could be

exchanged directly with the artisan for the products of his labour.

 

For a time this prospered, but at length the eyes of the world were

opened to the fact that they and their land were being impoverished as

she was being enriched; and that the effect of the system was that of

constituting herself _sole buyer_ of the raw products of their labour

and their land, and _sole seller_ of the manufactured commodities to

be given in exchange for them, with power to fix the prices of both;

and thus that she was really acting in the capacity of mistress of the

world, with power to impose taxes at discretion. By degrees, machinery

and artisans were smuggled abroad, and new machinery was made, and

other nations turned their attention more and more to manufacturing;

and now it became necessary to make new exertions for the purpose of

securing to England the monopoly she had so long enjoyed. To enable

her to do this we find her at length throwing open her ports for the

free admission of corn and numerous other of the raw products of the

earth, free from the payment of any duty whatever, and thus offering

to the various nations of the world a bounty on the further exhaustion

of their land. The adoption of this measure would, it was supposed,

induce Prussia, Austria, Russia, and Denmark, and all America, to

devote themselves exclusively to the cultivation of the earth,

abandoning all attempts at the creation of nearer places of exchange;

and thus that all the world outside of England would become producers

of raw materials to be carried to that single and distant market,

there to be consumed or converted, and the refuse thereof to be

deposited on the land of England. That such was the object of this

measure was admitted by all. It was announced as a boon to the

agriculturists of the world. How far it was calculated to be so, the

reader may judge, after satisfying himself of the truth of the

following propositions:--

 

I. That if there is to be but one place of exchange or manufacture for

the world, all the rest of the people of the world must limit

themselves to agriculture.

 

II. That this necessarily implies the absence of towns, or local

places of exchange, and a necessity for resorting to a place of

exchange far distant.

 

III. That the distance of the place of consumption from the place of

production forbids the possibility of returning to the land any of the

manure yielded by its products.

 

IV. That this in turn implies the exhaustion of the land and the

impoverishment of its owner.

 

V. That the impoverishment of the land renders necessary a removal to

new and more distant lands.

 

VI. That this renders necessary a larger amount of transportation,

while the impoverishment of the farmer increases the difficulty of

making roads.

 

VII. That the increased distance of the market produces a steadily

increased necessity for limiting the work of cultivation to the

production of those commodities which can be obtained from high and

dry lands, and that the quantity of products tends therefore to

diminish with the increased distance from market.

 

VIII. That with each step in the progress of exhausting the land, men

are compelled to separate more widely from each other, and that there

is therefore a steady diminution in the power of association for the

making of roads, or the establishment of schools, and that the small

towns, or near places of exchange, tend gradually toward depopulation

and ruin.

 

IX. That the more men separate from each other the less is the power

to procure machinery, and the greater the necessity for cultivating

the poorest soils, even though surrounded by lead, iron, and copper

ore, coal, lime, and all other of the elements of which machinery is

composed.

 

X. That with the diminished power of association, children grow up

uneducated, and men and women become rude and barbarous.

 

XI. That the power to apply labour productively tends steadily to

diminish, and that women, in default of other employment, are forced

to resort to the field, and to become slaves to their fathers,

husbands, and brothers.

 

XII. That the power to accumulate capital tends likewise to

diminish--that land becomes from day to day more consolidated--and

that man sinks gradually into the condition of a slave to the landed

or other capitalist.

 

XIII. That with this steady passage of man from the state of a freeman

to that of a slave, he has steadily less to sell, and can therefore

purchase less; and that thus the only effect of a policy which compels

the impoverishment of the land and its owner is to destroy the

customer, who, under a different system of policy, might have become a

larger purchaser from year to year.

 

That the object of the present English policy is that of converting

all the nations of the world into purely agricultural communities will

not be denied; but as it may be doubted if the effects would be such

as are here described, it is proposed now to inquire into the movement

of some of the non-manufacturing communities of the world, with a view

to determine if the facts observed are in correspondence with those

that, reasoning _a priori_, we should be led to expect. Before

entering upon this examination, the reader is, however, requested to

peruse the following extracts from “Gee on Trade,” in which is

described the former colonial system, and afterward the extract from a

recent despatch of Lord Grey, late Colonial Secretary, with a view to

satisfy himself how perfectly identical are the objects now sought to

be attained with those desired by the statesmen of the last century,

and denounced by Adam Smith.

 

 JOSHUA GEE--1750.

 

 First--”Manufactures in American colonies should be discouraged,

 prohibited.”

 

 “Great Britain with its dependencies is doubtless as well able to

 subsist within itself as any nation in Europe. We have an

 enterprising people, fit for all the arts of peace or war. We have

 provisions in abundance, and those of the best sort, and we are able

 to raise sufficient for double the number of inhabitants. We have the

 very best materials for clothing, and want nothing either for use or

 for luxury, but what we have at home, or might have from our

 colonies; so that we might make such an intercourse of trade among

 ourselves, or between us and them, as would maintain a vast

 navigation. But, we ought always to keep a watchful eye over our

 colonies, _to restrain them from setting up any of the manufactures

 which are carried on in Great Britain_; and any such attempts should

 be crushed in the beginning, for if they are suffered to grow up to

 maturity it will be difficult to suppress them.”

 

 “Our colonies are much in the same state as Ireland was in when they

 began the woollen manufactory, _and as their numbers increase, will

 fall upon manufactures for clothing themselves, if due care be not

 taken to find employment_ for them in raising such productions as may

 enable them to furnish themselves with all the necessaries from us.”

 

 “I should, therefore, think it worthy the care of the government to

 endeavour by all possible means to encourage them in the raising of

 silk, hemp, flax, iron, (_only pig, to be hammered in England_,)

 potash, &c., by giving them competent bounties in the beginning, and

 sending over skilful and judicious persons, at the public charge, to

 assist and instruct them in the most proper methods of management,

 which in my apprehension would lay a foundation for establishing the

 most profitable trade of any we have. And considering the commanding

 situation of our colonies along the seacoast, the great convenience

 of navigable rivers in all of them, the cheapness of land, and the

 easiness of raising provisions, great numbers of people would

 transport themselves thither to settle upon such improvements. Now,

 as people have been filled with fears that the colonies, if

 encouraged to raise rough materials, would set up for themselves, a

 little regulation would be necessary; and as they will have the

 providing rough materials for themselves, a _little regulation_ would

 remove all those jealousies out of the way. They have never thrown or

 wove any silk, as yet, that we have heard of,--therefore, if a law

 was made prohibiting the use of any throwing mill, of doubling or

 throstling silk, with any machine whatever, they would then send it

 _to us raw_. And as they will have the providing rough materials to

 themselves, so shall we have the manufacturing of them. If

 encouragement be given for raising hemp, flax, &c., doubtless they

 will soon begin to manufacture, if not prevented. Therefore, to stop

 the progress of any such manufacture, it is proposed that no _weaver_

 have _liberty_ to set up any looms, without first registering at an

 office kept for that purpose, and the name and place of abode of any

 journeyman that shall work for him. But if any _particular

 inhabitant_ shall be inclined to have any linen or woollen made of

 their own spinning, they should not be abridged of the same liberty

 that they now make use of, namely to have a weaver who shall be

 _licensed_ by the Governor, and have it wrought up for the use of the

 family, but not to be sold to any person in a private manner, nor

 exposed to any market or fair, upon pain of forfeiture.” “That all

 slitting mills and engines for drawing wire, or weaving stockings,

 _be put down_.” “That all negroes shall be prohibited from weaving

 either linen or woollen, or spinning or combing of wool, or working

 at any manufacture of iron, further than making it into pig or bar-

 iron. That they also be prohibited from manufacturing _hats,

 stockings, or leather of any kind_. This limitation will not abridge

 the planters of any liberty they now enjoy--on the contrary, it will

 then turn their industry to promoting and raising those rough

 materials.”

 

 Second--”The advantages to Great Britain from keeping the colonies

 dependent on her for their essential supplies.”

 

 “If we examine into the circumstances of the inhabitants of our

 plantations, and our own, it will appear that _not one-fourth part of

 their product redounds to their own profit, for out of all that comes

 here, they only carry back clothing and other accommodations for

 their families_, all of which is of the merchandise and manufacture

 of this kingdom.” “All these advantages we receive by the

 plantations, _besides the mortgages on the planters’ estates and the

 high interest they pay us, which is very considerable_, and,

 therefore, very great care ought to be taken, in regulating all the

 affairs of the colonists, that the planters are not put under too

 many difficulties, but encouraged to go on cheerfully.” “New England

 and the northern colonies have not commodities and products enough to

 send us in return for purchasing their necessary clothing, but are

 under very great difficulties; and, therefore, any ordinary sort sell

 with them,--and when they have _grown out of fashion with us, they

 are new-fashioned enough for them_.”

 

 LORD GREY--1850.

 

 “If, as has been alleged by the complainants, and as in some

 instances would appear to be the case, any of the duties comprised in

 the tariff have been imposed, not for the purpose of revenue, but

 with a view of protecting the interest of the Canadian manufacturer,

 her Majesty’s government are clearly of opinion that such a course is

 injurious alike to the interests of the mother country and to those

 of the colony. Canada possesses natural advantages for the production

 of articles which will always exchange in the markets of this country

 for those manufactured goods of which she stands in need. By such

 exchange she will obtain these goods much more cheaply than she could

 manufacture, them for herself, and she will secure an advantageous

 market for the _raw produce_ which she is best able to raise. On the

 other hand, by closing her markets against British manufactures, or

 _rendering their introduction more costly_, she enhances their price

 to the consumer, and by the imposition of protective duties, for the

 purpose of fostering an unnatural trade, she gives a wrong direction

 to capital, by withdrawing it from more profitable employment, and

 causing it to be invested in the manufacture of articles which might

 be imported at a cost below that of production in the colony, while

 at the same time she inflicts a blow on her export trade by rendering

 her markets less eligible to the British customer.” “If the merchant

 finds that by exporting his goods to Canada, they produce him in

 return a _large quantity of corn_, and thus yield a greater profit

 than they would if exported to any other country, he will of course

 give the preference to Canada. But if by reason of increased import

 duties, those goods produce a diminished return the result will be

 either that the Canadian farmer must submit to a proportionate

 reduction in the price of his produce, or the British manufacturer

 must resort to another market. It is, therefore, obvious, that it is

 not less the interest of Canada herself than of Great Britain, that

 this tariff of import duties should undergo a careful revision.”

 

The phraseology of the two is different, but the object is the

same--that of rendering it necessary to send all the raw products of

the land to a market far distant, and thus depriving the farmer or

planter of the power to return any portion of the loan made to him by

the earth, and which she is always willing to renew, on the simple

condition that when the borrower has used it, he shall return to the

lender the elements of which it had been composed.

 

Chapter 9. How slavery grew, and how it is now maintained, in the West Indies

 

The system described in the last chapter was fully carried out in the

West India colonies. Manufactures were so entirely interdicted from

the date of their coming under the crown of Great Britain, that the

colonists were not permitted even to refine their own sugar, and still

less to convert their cotton into cloth. The necessary consequence was

that women and children could have no employment but that of the

field. This, of course, tended to sink both mother and child far lower

in the scale of civilization than would have been the case had the

lighter labour of conversion been associated with the more severe one

of production. The next effect was, that as all were bound to remain

producers of raw commodities, there could be no markets at hand, and

no exchanges could be made except at a distance of thousands of miles.

Difficulties, too, arose in regard to the diversification of labour,

even in agriculture itself. Indigo was tried, but of the price for

which it sold in England so large a portion was absorbed by

ship-owners, commission merchants, and the government, that its

culture was abandoned. Coffee, was extensively introduced, and as it

grows on higher and more salubrious lands its cultivation would have

been of great advantage to the community; but here, as in the case of

indigo, so small a portion of the price for which it sold was received

by the producer that its production was about being abandoned, and was

saved only by the government agreeing to reduce its claim to a

shilling, or twenty-four cents, a pound. This amounted to about a

hundred and eighty dollars per acre, the estimated produce being about

750 pounds of merchantable coffee;[26] and very much of it came out of

the producer--the poor negro. How enormously burdensome such a tax

must have been may be judged by the farmers who feel now so heavily

the pressure of the malt duties; and it must always be borne in mind

that the West India labourers were aided by the most indifferent

machinery of production. By degrees these various taxes rendered

necessary the abandonment of all cultivation but that of the

sugar-cane, being of all others the most destructive of health, and as

the whole population, men, women, and children, were limited to that

single pursuit, we shall scarcely err in attributing to this fact the

great waste of life recorded in a former chapter.

 

Commerce, too, was interdicted, except with Great Britain and her

colonies; and this led to efforts at a smuggling trade with the

Spanish possessions on the continent; but this was brought to a close

by the watchfulness of the ships of war.[27] Slaves, however, might be

imported and exported, and this traffic was carried on a most

extensive scale, most of the demand for the Spanish colonies being

supplied from the British Islands. In 1775, however, the colonial

legislature, desirous to prevent the excessive importation of negroes,

imposed a duty of £2 per head, but this was petitioned against by the

merchants of England, and the home government directed the

discontinuance of the tax.[28] At this period the annual export of

sugar is stated,[29] to have been 980,346 cwt., the gross sales of

which, duty free, averaged £1 14s. 8d. per cwt., making a total of

£1,699,421,--so large a portion of which, however, was absorbed by

freight, commissions, insurance, &e., that the net proceeds, of 775

sugar estates are stated to have been only £726,992, or less than

£1000 each. If to the £973,000 thus deducted be added the share of the

government, (12s. 3d. per cwt.,) and the further charges before the

sugar reached the consumer, it will be seen that its grower could not

have received more than one-fourth of the price at which it sold. The

planter thus appears to have been little more than a superintendent of

slaves, who were worked for the benefit of the merchants and the

government of Great Britain, by whom was absorbed the lion’s share of

the produce of their labour. He was placed between the slave, whom he

was obliged to support, on the one hand, and the mortgagee, the

merchants, and the government, whom he was also obliged to support, on

the other, and he could take for himself only what was left--and if

the crop proved large, and prices fell, he was ruined. The

consequences of this are seen in the fact that in twenty years

following this period, there were sold for debt no less than 177

estates, while 92 remained unsold in the hands of creditors, and 55

were wholly abandoned. Seeing these things, it will not be difficult

to understand the cause of the extraordinary waste of life exhibited

in the British Islands. The planter could exist, himself, only by

overworking his people; and notwithstanding all his efforts, no less

than 324 out of 775 estates changed hands by reason of failure in the

short space of twenty years. Whatever might be his disposition to

improve the condition of the labourer, to do so was quite impossible

while receiving for himself and them so small a portion of the price

of his commodity.

 

In the early years of the present century, land had become more

valuable. The price of sugar had risen about 80 per cent., and the

planters were gradually extricating themselves from their

difficulties; and a consequence of this was seen in a considerable

amelioration of the condition of the slave, who was now much better

fed, clothed, and otherwise provided for.[30] Slaves that had been as

low as £34, average price, had risen to £50, at which the 250,000 in

the island amounted to £12,500,000, and the real and personal

property, exclusive of the slaves, was estimated at £25,000,000.[31]

How great, however, were the difficulties under which the planters

still laboured, may be seen from the following extract, which, long as

it is, is given because it illustrates so forcibly the destructive

effects of the policy that looks to the prevention of that association

which results from bringing the loom and the anvil to the side of

plough and the harrow.

 

 “I have now to enter upon a painful part of my task, a part in which

 I am under the necessity of stating such circumstances as cannot but

 reflect disgrace on those who give rise to them, and from which the

 weakness, I will not use a harsher term, of the legislature, is but

 too apparent. These circumstances arise from the various modes of

 agency, such as that of the attorney of estates, mortgagee in

 possession, receiver in chancery, &c. The first of these characters

 requires a definition. By the word attorney, in this sense, is meant

 agent; and the duties annexed to his office are so similar to those

 of a steward in England, that were it not for the dissimilarity of

 executing them, and the dignity attendant upon the former, I should

 pronounce them one and the same, But _as this colonial stewardship is

 the surest road to imperial fortune_, men of property and

 distinguished situation push eagerly for it. Attorneys are of two

 sorts; six per cent. attorneys, and salaried attorneys; the profits

 of the former arise from commissions of six per cent. on all the

 produce of an estate, and various interior resources; the latter are

 paid a certain stipend by some unincumbered proprietors, who have

 lately discovered that a steward in Jamaica may be hired like a

 steward in England, by which several thousand pounds a year are

 saved, and instead of enriching their agents, are poured into their

 own coffers. The office of both is to attend to the estates of their

 employers, and to all their interests in the island, deputed to them

 that the proprietors themselves may live at home, that is to say, in

 Europe.

 

 “Of all the evils in the island of Jamaica, which call for a remedy,

 and by means of which the most unjustifiable practices are continued,

 the first and most crying is that of the business of a certain

 description of attorneys of orphans, mortgagees in possession,

 trustees, executors, guardians, and receivers under the court of

 chancery; and these evils arise in a great measure from the unjust

 and impolitic law which allows six per cent. commission on the gross

 produce of the estates under their charge and direction. The

 iniquitous practices, screened, if not authorized by that law have

 long been too glaring to be unnoticed; and attempts have been made to

 reduce the commission, and to fix it on some more equitable

 principle; but unfortunately there have always been in the House of

 Assembly too many of its members interested in benefits resulting

 from the present law to admit the adoption of the measure. That the

 interest of attorneys is not always the interest of those whose

 estates they hold is an undeniable fact, of which I think you will be

 convinced by the time you arrive at the conclusion of this letter. In

 many instances, too, this superior collateral interest militates

 against the happiness and amelioration of the state and condition of

 the slaves, which is now professed by the colonists to be an object

 of their most serious attention; and it proves not unfrequently the

 total ruin of the unfortunate planter, whose involved situation

 compels him to submit to the condition of consigning his estate to

 the management of an attorney appointed by his creditor, who is

 generally his merchant, and who throws the full legal advantages of

 his debtor’s estate into the hands of his own agent in the island, to

 compensate for the economical bargain he makes for the management of

 his own concerns; a practice common also to trustees, guardians, &c.

 The law allowing such enormous commissions for services so

 inadequate, is also very defective in an important point; for it

 establishes no data for fixing the charge of this commission, which

 is never made according to the sales of sugar, for that is not soon,

 if ever known to the attorney. Hence, in the different accounts, the

 charges are estimated on sugar at several prices, from 20s. per cwt.

 to 45s., and even 50s.; and in the same books of one and the same

 attorney, these charges are found to differ according to his

 connection with his employer, generally increasing in proportion to

 the distress of the property and of the proprietor. To form some

 notion of the advantages attending these appointments, and of their

 injurious tendency to involved proprietors, and even to their

 creditors, let us see what a receiver under the court of chancery can

 do. In the first place, it has not always been the practice to select

 him from among the inhabitants in the vicinity of the unfortunate

 estates, or from among the friends of the proprietor; he is

 frequently a resident in one of the towns, _with perhaps as little

 knowledge of the management of an estate as is possessed by the

 sweeper of the chancery office_; and indeed it would not be

 inapplicable to distinguish such receivers by the appellation of

 chancery-sweepers. These gentlemen seldom if ever see the estates

 which they are to direct, and have no other directions to give than,

 in a lumping way, to make as much sugar as possible, and to ship it,

 most likely to their own correspondents. _Whatever the estates clear

 is so much in their hands, and of course the more money the better

 for them_; money takes root in every soil, and propagates itself a

 thousand ways; not a dollar of it therefore finds its way into the

 chancery chest, for the receiver having given security, the treasure

 is, by a common fiction in use, held to be fully as safe in his

 hands. While the different creditors of the estate are fighting the

 battle of priority, the receiver continues to direct the management

 of it, to ship the crop, and to take care of the money. At length a

 prior debt is established, and the creditor having gained the point,

 remains for a time satisfied; but finding, though his principal

 accumulates, that he receives nothing, he becomes clamorous for a

 sale. This may take place in five or six years time, when all

 pretexts for delay are worn out, and in the mean time the receiver

 takes care to have money, adequate to the simple sums received,

 turned over by his consignee or merchant to another hand, his

 banker’s, to be ready to answer bills to be drawn _on his own

 account_, for which he must have a premium of from twelve to

 seventeen and a half per cent. The estate at last is advertised for

 sale by a master in chancery, in consequence of an order from the

 chancellor. The sale, however, is spun out, a year or two longer,

 till the creditor or his attorney begins to remonstrate with the

 master: stipulations for an amicable settlement ensue, that is, for

 an admission of the receiver’s accounts such as they may be, and for

 time allowed him for payment of the mesne profits or balance in his

 hands; which agreed to, the sale is positively to take place _when

 the next crop is over_. The sale then is actually concluded, the

 accumulations of these annual funds go unperceived to the further

 propagation of wealth for the receiver; and the purchaser, who is no

 other than the prior creditor, is put in possession of _an estate in

 ruin, with a gang of negroes dispirited and miserable, who had been

 long sensible of their situation, conceiving themselves belonging to

 nobody_, and almost despairing of ever falling into the hands of a

 kind master, interested in their welfare and happiness. Let us now

 turn to the attorney of a mortgagee in possession, and see what

 better he offers. The debt of the involved estate is due to a man of

 large property, or to a merchant; if to the former, he has a merchant

 to whom the consignment is of considerable value. It is immaterial

 what the debt is, an estate in possession of a mortgagee is generally

 made to pay full commissions to the attorney employed for it. In

 justice to all parties the most is to be made of the property, and it

 is soon found that the negroes upon it are not equal to the returns

 it is capable of making, consequently hired negroes are added to the

 plantation-gangs, to plant, weed, and take off the crop; the works

 are extended, to be adequate to the proposed increase; more stock,

 more carts are bought, more white people employed. To keep pace with

 these grand designs, _the poor plantation negroes are of course

 overworked_. What is the result? A great deal of sugar and rum is

 made, to the credit as well as profit of the attorney, and by which

 the merchant is benefited, as the consignments are augmented; but six

 per cent. interest on the principal, six per cent. on that interest

 by compound arithmetic become principal, six per cent. commissions,

 with the contingent charges for labour, improvements, stores, etc.,

 absorb the whole produce, and the planter daily sinks under an

 accumulating debt, till he is completely ruined. _The greater the

 distress, the more the attorney fattens_; in a war, for instance, a

 considerable additional benefit occurs; he becomes lumber-merchant,

 and having the rum of the estate at his command, and perhaps a little

 sugar, though in the latter article he is usually restricted, as the

 disposal of it in the island would interfere with the loading of

 ships and consignments, he purchases wholesale cargoes, and retails

 them out to the estate at a large profit. Staves bought by the

 attorney at £18 per thousand, have been known to be sold to the

 estate for £45 per thousand; and the cart belonging to the property

 has carried the rum to pay for them. _It is well known that the rum

 made upon an estate will seldom pay its contingent expenses, and that

 frequently bills are drawn on Great Britain to the amount of one

 thousand pounds, and sometimes two thousand pounds, for the excess of

 the contingencies over and above the amount of the sale of the rum_:

 here the attorney finds another avenue of amassing for himself.

 Settling the excess from his own means, he appropriates the bills

 which it enabled him to draw to the purchase of the remainder of a

 cargo of negroes, after the best have been culled at the rate of from

 ninety to ninety-five pounds per head: these inferior negroes he

 disposes of to his dependent overseers, jobbers, doctors, tradesmen,

 distillers, and book-keepers, at forty or fifty pounds a head profit;

 nor is it without example, that the very estates on the credit of

 which some of the bills are drawn, have been supplied with negroes in

 the same manner, and at the same rate. This manoeuvre indeed is

 ventured only on estates of minors, whose trustees are merchants in

 Great Britain, ignorant of such practices; or may be, when they have

 committed the estates to the attorney, liable to the full advantages

 to be made of them, to compensate for the moderate allowance they

 give for the management of their own concerns. An island merchant, or

 according to the West India appellation, storekeeper, in great

 business, told a friend of mine, that he had sold a cargo of mules at

 eighteen pounds per head to an attorney, which were dispersed in

 separate spells of eight each to several estates, but that at the

 special instance of the purchaser, he had made out the bills of

 parcels at thirty pounds per head. This does not speak much in favour

 of the virtue of the storekeeper, but it must be observed that he

 would have lost his customer had he demurred, and would probably have

 been considered as righteous overmuch. There is a variety of smaller

 advantages enjoyed by the attorney, such as forming connections with

 butchers who may purchase the fatted cattle, with jobbers of negroes

 for the purpose of intermingling negroes at a proportionable profit,

 fattening horses, and a long _et cetera_. To the attorney the

 commanders of the ships in the trade look up with due respect, and as

 they are proper persons to speak of him to the merchant, their

 good-will is not neglected. To the involved planter their language

 often is, ‘Sir, I must have your sugars down at the wharf directly;’

 that is, your sugars are to make the lowest tier, to stand the chance

 of being washed out should the ship leak or make much water in a bad

 passage. When they address an attorney, they do not ask for sugars,

 but his favours, as to quantity and time; and his hogsheads form the

 upper tier.”[32]

 

An examination made about this period proved that these persons, 193

in number, held in charge 606 sugar-works, producing about 80,000

hhds. of sugar, and 36,000 puncheons of rum, which at the selling

prices of that day in England yielded about £4,000,000, upon which

they were entitled to six per cent., or £240,000. We have here a most

extensive system of absenteeism, and absentees _must_ be represented

by middlemen, having no interest in the slave or in the plantation,

except to take from both all that can be taken, giving as little as

possible back to either.

 

Why, however, did this absenteeism exist? Why did not the owners of

property reside on their estates? Because the policy which looked to

limiting the whole population, male and female, old and young, to the

culture of sugar, and forbade even that the sugar itself should be

refined on the island, effectually prevented the growth of any middle

class that should form the population of towns at which the planter

might find society that could induce him to regard the island as his

home. Such was not the case in the French Islands, because the French

government had not desired to prevent the weaker class of the

population from engaging in the work of manufacture, as has been seen

in the case of Grenada, in which sugar was refined until the period of

its surrender to the British arms.[33] Towns therefore grew up, and

men of all descriptions came from France to make the islands _their

home_; whereas the English colonists looked only to realizing a

fortune and returning home to spend it. All this is fully shown in the

following extract, in which is given a comparative view of the British

and French Islands immediately before the emancipation act of 1832.

 

 “The houses have more of a European air than in our English colonies,

 and I must notice with praise the existence of four booksellers’

 shops, as large and well furnished as any second-rate ones in Paris.

 The sight of books to sell in the West Indies is like water in the

 desert, for books are not yet included in plantation stores for our

 islands. The cause is this. The French colonists, whether Creoles or

 Europeans, consider the West Indies as their country; they cast no

 wistful looks toward France; they have not even a packet of their

 own; they marry, educate, and build in and for the West Indies and

 the West Indies alone. In our colonies it is quite different; except

 a few regular Creoles to whom gratis rum and gratis coloured mothers

 for their children have become quite indispensable, every one regards

 the colony as a temporary lodging-place, where they must sojourn in

 sugar and molasses till their mortgage’s will let them live

 elsewhere. They call England their home, though many of them have

 never been there; they talk of writing home and going home, and pique

 themselves more on knowing the probable result of a contested

 election in England than on mending their roads, establishing a

 police, or purifying a prison. The French colonist deliberately

 expatriates himself; the Englishman never. If our colonies were to

 throw themselves into the hands of the North Americans, as their

 enemies say that some of them wish to do, the planters would make

 their little triennial trips to New York as they now do to London.

 The consequence of this feeling is that every one, who can do so,

 maintains some correspondence with England, and when any article is

 wanted, he sends to England for it. Hence, except in the case of

 chemical drugs, there is an inconsiderable market for an imported

 store of miscellaneous goods, much less for an assortment of articles

 of the same kind. A different feeling in Martinique produces an

 opposite effect; in that island very little individual correspondence

 exists with France, and consequently there is that effectual demand

 for books, wines, jewelry, haberdashery, &c., in the colony itself,

 which enables labour to be divided almost as far as in the mother

 country. In St. Pierre there are many shops which contain nothing but

 bonnets, ribbons, and silks, others nothing but trinkets and toys,

 others hats only, and so on, and there are rich tradesmen in St.

 Pierre on this account. Bridge Town would rapidly become a wealthy

 place, if another system were adopted; for not only would the public

 convenience be much promoted by a steady, safe, and abundant

 importation, and separate preservation of each article in common

 request, but the demand for those articles would be one hundred-fold

 greater in Bridge Town itself than it now is on the same account in

 London, Liverpool, or Bristol, when impeded or divided and frittered

 away by a system of parcel-sending across the Atlantic. Supply will,

 under particular circumstances, create demand. If a post were

 established at Barbadoes, or a steamboat started between the islands,

 a thousand letters would be written where there are one hundred now,

 and a hundred persons would interchange visits where ten hardly do at

 present. I want a book and cannot borrow it; I would purchase it

 instantly from my bookseller in my neighbourhood, but I may not think

 it worth my while to send for it over the ocean, when, with every

 risk, I must wait at the least three months for it. The moral

 consequences of this system are even more to be lamented than the

 economical, but I will say more about that at some other time.”[34]

 

In another part of the same work, the writer says--

 

 “Schools for the children of the slaves are the first and chief step

 toward amelioration of condition and morals in every class of people

 in the West Indies.”

 

Here, however, the same difficulty had existed. For the same reason

that no towns could arise there could be no schools, and the planter

found himself forced to send his children to England to be educated;

the consequence of which was that at his death his property passed

into the hands of agents, and his successors having contracted a

fondness for European and a dislike for colonial life, remained

abroad, leaving their estates to go to ruin, while their people

perished under the lash of men who had no other interest than to ship

the largest quantity of sugar, molasses, and rum. All this was a

natural result of the system that denied to the women and children the

privilege of converting cotton into cloth, or of giving themselves to

other in-door pursuits. The mechanic was not needed where machinery

could not be used, and without him there could grow up neither towns

nor schools.

 

The reader will have remarked, in the first extract above given, that

the export of rum generally brought the planter in debt, and yet the

price paid for it by the consumers appears to have been nearly a

million of pounds sterling--that is, the people of England gave of

labour and its products that large sum in exchange for a certain

product of the labouring people of Jamaica, not a shilling of which

ever reached the planter to be applied to the amelioration of the

condition of his estate, or of the people upon it. The crop sold on

its arrival at 3s. or 3s. 6d. a gallon, but the consumer paid for it

probably 17s., which were thus divided:--

 

  Government, representing the British people at large... 11.3

  Ship-owners, wholesale and retail dealers, &c..........  5.9

  Land-owner and labourer................................  0.0

                                                          ----

                                                          17.2

 

If we look to sugar, we find a result somewhat better, but of similar

character. The English consumer gave for it 80s. worth of labour, and

those shillings were nearly thus divided:--

 

  Government............................................. 27

  Ship-owner, merchant, mortgagee, &c.................... 33

  Land-owner and labourer................................ 20

                                                          ----

                                                          80

 

The reader will now see that Mr. _Joshua Gee_ was not exaggerating

when he gave it as one of the recommendations of the colonial system

that the colonists left in England three-fourths of all their

products,[35] the difference being swallowed up by those who made or

superintended the exchanges. Such was the result desired by those who

compelled the planter to depend on a distant market in which to sell

all he raised, and to buy all he and his people needed to consume. The

more he took out of his land the more he exhausted it and the less he

obtained for its products, for large crops made large freights, large

charges for storage, and enormous collections by the government, while

prices fell because of the size of the crop, and thus was he ruined

while all others were being enriched. Under such circumstances he

could not purchase machinery for the improvement of his cultivation,

and thus was he deprived of the power to render available the services

of the people whom he was bound to support. Master of slaves, he was

himself a slave to those by whom the labours of himself and his

workmen were directed, and it would be unfair to attribute to him the

extraordinary waste of life resulting necessarily from the fact that

the whole people were limited to the labours of the field.

 

With inexhaustible supplies of timber, the island contained, even in

1850, not a single sawmill, although it afforded an extensive market

for lumber from abroad. Yielding in the greatest abundance the finest

fruits, there were yet no town’s-people with their little vessels to

carry them to the larger markets of this country, and for want of

market they rotted under the trees. “The manufacturing resources of

this island,” says Mr. Bigelow, “are inexhaustible;” and so have they

always been, but the people have been deprived of all power to profit

by them, and for want of that power there was lost annually a greater

amount of labour than would have paid, five times over, for the

commodities for which they were compelled to look to the distant

market. Of those who did not perish, because of the necessity for an

universal dependence on field employments, a large portion of the

labour was then, as it now must be, utterly wasted. “For six or eight

months of the year, nothing,” says Mr. Bigelow, (Notes, p. 54,) “is

done on the sugar or coffee plantations.” “Agriculture,” he continues,

“as at present conducted, does not occupy more than half their time.”

So was it fifty years ago, and it was because of the compulsory waste

of labour and consequent small amount of productive power that there

existed little opportunity for accumulating capital. Population

diminished because there could be no improvement of the condition of

the labourer who, while thus limited in the employment of his time,

was compelled to support not only himself and his master, but the

agent, the commission-merchant, the ship-owner, the mortgagee, the

retail trader, and the government, and this under a system that looked

to taking every thing from the land and returning nothing to it. Of

the amount paid in 1831 by the British people for the products of the

320,000 black labourers of this island, the home government took no

less than £3,736,113 10s. 6d.,[36] or about eighteen millions of

dollars, being almost sixty dollars per head, and this for merely

superintending the exchanges. Had no such claim been made on the

product of the labour of those poor people, the consumer would have

had his sugar cheaper, and this would have made a large consumption,

and these eighteen millions would have been divided between the black

labourer on the one hand and the white one on the other. It would be

quite safe to assert that in that year each negro, old and young, male

and female, contributed five pounds--$24--to the maintenance of the

British government, and this was a heavy amount of taxation to be

borne by a people limited entirely to agriculture and destitute of the

machinery necessary for making even that productive. If now to this

heavy burden be added the commissions, freights, insurance, interest,

and other charges, it will readily be seen that a system of taxation

so grinding could end no otherwise than in ruin; and that such was the

tendency of things, was seen in the steady diminution of production.

 

                        Sugar,        Rum,        Coffee,

                        hhds.       puncheons.     lbs.

                        ------      ----------    -------

  In the three years

  ending with 1802,

  the average exports

  were, of             113,000       44,000      14,000,000

 

  Whereas those of the

  three years ending

  with 1829 were only   92,000       34,000      17,000,000

 

The system which looked to depriving the cultivator of the advantage

of a market near at hand, to which he could carry his products, and

from which he could carry home the manure and thus maintain the powers

of his land, was thus producing its natural results. It was causing

the slave to became from day to day more enslaved; and that such was

the case is shown by the excess of deaths over births, as given in a

former chapter. Evidence of exhaustion was seen in every thing

connected with the island. Labour and land were declining in value,

and the security for the payment of the large debt due to mortgagees

in England was becoming less from year to year, as more and more the

people of other countries were being driven to the work of cultivation

because of the impossibility of competing with England in

manufactures. Sugar had declined to little more than a guinea a

hundred-weight, and rum had fallen to little more than two shillings a

gallon;[37] and nearly the whole of this must have been swallowed up

in commissions and interest. Under such circumstances a great waste of

life was inevitable; and therefore it is that we have seen

importations of hundreds of thousands of black men, who have perished,

leaving behind them no trace of their having ever existed. But on whom

must rest the responsibility for a state of things so hideous as that

here exhibited? Not, surely, upon the planter, for he exercised no

volition whatsoever. He was not permitted to employ his surplus power

in refining his own sugar. He could not legally introduce a spindle or

a loom into the island. He could neither mine coal nor smelt iron ore.

He could not in any manner repay his borrowings from the land, and, as

a matter of course, the loans he could obtain diminished in quantity;

and then, small as they were, the chief part of what his commodities

exchanged for was swallowed up by the exchangers and those who

superintend the exchanges, exercising the duties of government. He was

a mere instrument in their hands for the destruction of negro morals,

intellect, and life; and upon them, and not upon him, must rest the

responsibility for the fact that, of all the slaves imported into the

island, not more than two-fifths were represented on the day of

emancipation.

 

Nevertheless, he it was that was branded as the tyrant and the

destroyer of morals and of life; and public opinion--the public

opinion of the same people who had absorbed so large a portion of the

product of negro labour--drove the government to the measure of

releasing the slave from compulsory service, and appropriating a

certain amount to the payment, first, of the mortgage debts due in

England, and, second, of the owner, who, even if he found his land

delivered to him free of incumbrance, was in most cases left without a

shilling to enable him to carry on the work of his plantation. The

slaves were set free, but there existed no capital to find them

employment, and from the moment of emancipation it became almost

impossible to borrow money on mortgage security. The consequences are

seen in the extensive abandonment of land and the decline of its

value. Any quantity of it may be purchased, prepared for cultivation,

and as fine as any in the island, for five dollars an acre, while

other land, far more productive than any in New England, may be had at

from fifty cents to one dollar. With the decline in the value of land

the labourer tends toward barbarism, and the reason of this may be

found on a perusal of the following paragraph:--

 

 “They have no new manufactories to resort to when they are in want of

 work; no unaccustomed departments of mechanical or agricultural

 labour are open to receive them, to stimulate their ingenuity and

 reward their industry. When they know how to ply the hoe, pick the

 coffee-berry, and tend the sugar-mills, they have learned almost all

 the industry of the island can teach them. If, in the sixteen years

 during which the negroes have enjoyed their freedom, they have made

 less progress in civilization than their philanthropic champions have

 promised or anticipated, let the want I have suggested receive some

 consideration. It may be that even a white peasantry would degenerate

 under such influences. Reverse this, and when the negro has cropped

 his sugar or his coffee, create a demand for his labour in the mills

 and manufactories of which nature has invited the establishment on

 this island, and before another sixteen years would elapse the world

 would probably have some new facts to assist them in estimating the

 natural capabilities of the negro race, of more efficiency in the

 hands of the philanthropist than all the appeals which he has ever

 been able to address to the hearts or the consciences of men.”

 _Bigelow’s Jamaica_, p. 156.

 

The artisan has always been the ally of the agriculturist in his

contest with the trader and the government, as is shown in the whole

history of the world. The first desires to tax him by buying cheaply

and selling dearly. The second desires to tax him for permitting him

to make his exchanges, and the more distant the place of exchange, the

greater the power of taxation. The artisan comes near to him, and

enables him to have the raw materials combined on the spot, the

producer of them exchanging directly with the consumer, paying no tax

for the maintenance of ship-owners, commission merchants, or

shopkeepers.

 

In a piece of cloth, says Adam Smith, weighing eighty pounds, there

are not only more than eighty pounds of wool, but also “several

thousand weight of corn, the maintenance of the working people,” and

it is the wool and the corn that travel cheaply in the form of cloth.

What, however, finally becomes of the corn? Although eaten, it is not

destroyed. It goes back again on the land, which becomes enriched; and

the more that is taken from it; the more there is to be returned, the

more it is enriched, the larger are the crops, and the greater is the

ability of the farmer to make demands on the artisan. The reward of

the latter increases with the growth in the value of the land and with

the increase in the wealth of the land-owners by whom he is

surrounded; and thus it is that all grow rich and free together, and

that the community acquires from year to year power to resist attempts

at taxation beyond that really needed for the maintenance of the

rights of person and property. The greater the power to make exchanges

at home, the greater will always be found the freedom of man in

relation to thought, speech, action, and trade, and the greater the

value of land.

 

The object of the policy pursued toward the colonies was directly the

reverse of all this, tending to prevent any diversification whatsoever

of employments, and thus not only to prevent increase in the value of

land, but to diminish its value, because it forbade the return to the

earth of any portion of its products. It forbade association, because

it limited the whole people to a single pursuit. It forbade the

immigration of artisans, the growth of towns, the establishment of

schools, and consequently forbade the growth of intellect among the

labourers or their owners. It forbade the growth of population,

because it drove the women and the children to the culture of sugar

among the richest and most unhealthy soils of the islands. It thus

impoverished the land and its owners, exterminated the slave, and

weakened the community, thus making it a mere instrument in the hands

of the people who effected and superintended the exchanges--the

merchants and the government--the class of persons that, in all ages,

has thriven at the cost of the cultivator of the earth. By separating

the consumer from the producer, they were enabled, as has been shown,

to take to themselves three-fourths of the whole sales of the

commodities consumed, leaving but one-fourth to be divided between the

land and labour that had produced it. They, of course, grew strong,

while the sugar-producing land and labour grew weak, and the weaker

they became, the less was the need for regarding the rights of either.

In this state of things it was that the landholder was required to

accept a fixed sum of money as compensation for relinquishing his

claim to demand of the labourer the performance of the work to which

he had been accustomed. Unfortunately, however, the system pursued has

effectually prevented that improvement of feeling and taste needed to

produce in the latter desires for any thing beyond a sufficiency of

food and a shirt. Towns and shops not having grown, he had not been

accustomed even to see the commodities that tempted his

fellow-labourers in the French Islands. Schools not having existed,

even for the whites, he had acquired no desire for books for himself,

or for instruction for his children. His wife had acquired no taste

for dress, because she had been limited to field labour. Suddenly

emancipated from control, they gratified the only desire that had been

permitted to grow up in them--the love of perfect idleness, to be

indulged to such extent as was consistent with obtaining the little

food and clothing needed for the maintenance of existence.

 

Widely different would have been the state of affairs had they been

permitted to make their exchanges at home, giving the cotton and the

sugar for the cloth and the iron produced by the labour and from the

soil of the island. The producer of the sugar would then have had all

the cloth given for it by the consumer, instead of obtaining

one-fourth of it, and then the land would have increased in value, the

planter would have grown rich, and the labourer would have become

free, by virtue of a great natural law which provides that the more

rapid the augmentation of wealth, the greater must be the demand for

labour, the greater must be the _quantity_ of commodities produced by

the labourer, the larger must be his _proportion_ of the product, and

the greater must be the tendency toward his becoming a free man and

himself a capitalist.[38]

 

As a consideration for abstaining from converting their own sugar and

cotton into cloth, it had been provided that their products should

enjoy certain advantages in the ports of the mother country; and the

understanding at the date of emancipation was that the free negro

should continue in the enjoyment of the same privileges that had been

allowed to the slave and his master. It was soon, however, discovered

that the negro, having scarcely any desire beyond the food that could

be obtained from a little patch of land, would not work, and that,

consequently, the supply of sugar was reduced, with a large increase

of price, and that thus the ship-owner suffered because of diminished

freights, the merchant because of reduced consumption, and the

government because of reduced revenue. Instead of obtaining, as

before, one-fourth of the product, the cultivator had now perhaps

one-half, because the taxes did not rise with the rise of price.

Nevertheless, the land-owners and labourers of the island were weaker

than before, for all power of association had disappeared; and now it

was that the trader and the government discovered that if they would

continue to draw from the sugar producers of the world their usual

supplies of public and private revenue, they must resort again to

slave labour, putting the poor free negro of Jamaica, with his

exhausted soil, on the same footing with the slave of Brazil and Cuba,

on a virgin soil; and this, too, at a moment when the science of

Europe had triumphed over the difficulty of making sugar cheaply from

the beet-root, and Germany, France, and Belgium were threatening to

furnish supplies so abundant as almost to exclude the produce of the

cane. They, too, had the sugar-refinery close at hand, whereas the

poor free negro was not permitted to refine his product, _nor is he so

even now_, although it is claimed that sugar might still be grown with

advantage, were he permitted to exercise even that small amount of

control over his labour and its products.

 

What was the character of the machinery with which they were to enter

on this competition will be seen by the following extract:--

 

 “I could not learn that there were any estates on the island decently

 stocked with implements of husbandry. Even the modern axe is not in

 general use; for felling the larger class of trees the negroes

 commonly use what they call an axe, which is shaped much like a

 wedge, except that it is a little wider at the edge than at the

 opposite end, at the very extremity of which a perfectly straight

 handle is inserted. A more awkward thing for chopping could not be

 well conceived--at least, so I thought until I saw the instrument in

 yet more general use about the houses in the country, for cutting

 firewood. It was, in shape, size, and appearance, more like the outer

 half of the blade of a scythe, stuck into a small wooden handle, than

 any thing else I can compare it to: with this long knife, for it is

 nothing else, I have seen negroes hacking at branches of palm for

 several minutes, to accomplish what a good wood-chopper, with an

 American axe, would finish at a single stroke. I am not now speaking

 of the poorer class of negro proprietors, whose poverty or ignorance

 might excuse this, but of the proprietors of large estates, which

 have cost their thousands of pounds.”[39]

 

Cuba, too, had its cities and its shops, and these it had because the

Spanish government had not desired to compel the people of the island

to limit themselves to cultivation alone. Manufactures were small in

extent, but they existed; and the power to make exchanges on the spot

had tended to prevent the growth of absenteeism. The land-owners were

present to look after their estates, and every thing therefore tended

toward improvement and civilization, with constantly increasing

attraction of both capital and labour. Jamaica, on the contrary, had

but a seaport so poor as not to have a single foot of sidewalk paved,

and of which three-fourths of the inhabitants were of the black race;

and among them all, blacks and whites, there were no mechanics. In the

capital of the island, Spanishtown, with a population of 5000, there

was not to be found, in 1850, a single shop, nor a respectable hotel,

nor even a dray-cart;[40] and in the whole island there was not a

stage, nor any other mode of regular conveyance, by land or water,

except on the little railroad of fifteen miles from Kingston to the

capital.[41]

 

Such was the machinery of production, transportation, and exchange, by

aid of which the free people of Jamaica were to maintain “unlimited

competition” with Cuba, and its cities, railroads, and virgin soil,

and with Europe and its science. What is to be the ultimate result may

be inferred from the following comparative view of the first four

years of the century, and the last four for which we have returns:--

 

                       Sugar,        Rum,        Coffee,

                        hhds.       puncheons.     lbs.

                       ------       ----------   -------

  1800 to 1803,

  average export,     124,000        44,000      14,600,000

  1845 to 1848,

  average export       44,000        17,000       6,000,000

 

The consequence of this is seen in the fact that it requires the wages

of two men, for a day, to pay for a pound of butter, and of two women

to pay for a pound of ham, while it would need the labour of eighty or

a hundred men, for a day, to pay for a barrel of flour.[42] The London

_Times_ has recently stated that the free labourer now obtains less

food than he did in the days of slavery, and there appears no reason

to doubt the accuracy of its information. This view would, indeed,

seem to be fully confirmed by the admission, in the House of Commons,

that the cost of sugar “in labour and food” is less now than it was

six years since.[43]

 

How indeed can it be otherwise? The object sought for is cheap sugar,

and with a view to its attainment the production of sugar is

stimulated in every quarter; and we all know that the more that is

produced the larger will be the quantity poured into the market of

England, and the greater will be the power of the people of that

country to dictate the terms upon which they will consent to consume

it. Extensive cultivation and good crops produce low prices, high

freights, large commissions, and large revenue; and when such crops

are made the people of England enjoy “cheap sugar” and are

“prosperous,” but the slave is rendered thereby more a slave,

obtaining less and less food in return for his labour. Nevertheless,

it is in that direction that the whole of the present policy of

England points. The “prosperity” of her people is to be secured by aid

of cheap sugar and high-priced cloth and iron; and the more

exclusively the people of India and of Brazil can be forced to devote

themselves to the labours of the field, the cheaper will be sugar and

the greater will be the tendency of cloth and iron to be dear. What,

however, becomes of the poor free negro? The more sugar he sends the

more the stocks accumulate, and the lower are the prices, and the

smaller is his power to purchase clothing or machinery, as will now be

shown.

 

The London _Economist_, of November 13, furnishes the following

statement of stocks and prices of sugar in the principal markets of

Europe:--

 

                     1849.      1850.      1851.      1852.

                     -----      -----      -----      -----

  Stocks.... cwt.. 3,563,000  2,895,000  3,810,000  3,216,000

 

  Prices--duty free.

  Havana Brown...  17 to 24s. 20 to 27s. 16 to 22s. 19 to 26s.

  Brazil Brown...  16 to 20s. 18 to 22s. 12 to 17s. 16 to 20s.

 

The stocks of 1849 and 1852 were, as we see, nearly alike, and the

prices did not greatly differ. Taking them, therefore, as the

standard, we see that a _diminution_ of supply so small as to cause a

diminution of stock to the extent of about 400,000 cwts., or only

_about three per cent. of the import_, added about _fifteen per cent._

to the prices of the whole crop in 1850; whereas a similar _excess_ of

supply in 1851 caused a reduction of prices almost as great. The

actual quantity received in Europe in the first ten months of the last

year had been 509,000 cwts. less than in the corresponding months of

the previous one. The average monthly receipts are about a million of

cwts. per month, and if we take the prices of those two years as a

standard, the following will be the result:--

 

  1851...... 12,000,000 cwts.  Average 16s. 9d.... £10,050,000

  1852...... 11,500,000              20s. 3d....  11,643,750

                                                    ----------

  Gain on short crop .............................   1,593,750

  If now we compare 1850 with 1851,

  the following is the result:--

  1851 as above ..................................  10,050,000

  1850...... 11,000,000 cwts.  Average 21s. 9d....  11,971,250

                                                    ----------

                                                     1,921,250

  Now if this reduction of export had been

  a consequence of increased domestic

  consumption, we should have to add the

  value of that million to the product,

  and this would give.............................   1,187,500

                                                    ----------

                                                    £3,108,750

                                                    ==========

 

We have here a difference of thirty per cent., resulting from a

diminution of export to the amount of one-twelfth of the export to

Europe, and not more than a twenty-fourth of the whole crop. Admitting

the crop to have been 24,000,000 of cwts., and it must have been more,

the total difference produced by this abstraction of four per cent.

from the markets of Europe would be more than six millions of pounds,

or thirty millions of dollars. Such being the result of a difference

of four per cent., if the people of Cuba, Brazil, India, and other

countries were to turn some of their labour to the production of

cloth, iron, and other commodities for which they are now wholly

dependent on Europe, and thus diminish their necessity for export to

the further extent of two per cent., is it not quite certain that the

effect would be almost to double the value of the sugar crop of the

world, to the great advantage of the free cultivator of Jamaica, who

would realize more for his sugar, while obtaining his cloth and his

iron cheaper? If he could do this would he not become a freer man? Is

not this, however, directly the reverse of what is sought by those who

believe the prosperity of England to be connected with cheap sugar,

and who therefore desire that competition for the sale of sugar should

be _unlimited_, while competition, for the sale of cloth is to be

_limited_?

 

“Unlimited competition” looks to competition for the sale of raw

produce in the markets of England, and to the destruction of any

competition with England for the sale of manufactured goods; and it is

under this system that the poor labourer of Jamaica is being

destroyed. He is now more a slave than ever, because his labour yields

him less of the necessaries and comforts of life than when a master

was bound to provide for him.

 

Such is a brief history of West India slavery, from its commencement

to the present day, and from it the reader will be enabled to form an

estimate of the judgment which dictated immediate and unconditional

emancipation, and of the humanity that subsequently dictated unlimited

freedom of competition for the sale of sugar. That of those who

advocated emancipation vast numbers were actuated by the most praise

worthy motives, there can be no doubt; but unenlightened enthusiasm

has often before led almost to crime, and it remains to be seen if the

impartial historian, will not, at a future day, say that such has been

here the case. As regards the course which has been since pursued

toward these impoverished, ignorant, and, defenceless people, he will

perhaps have less difficulty; and it is possible that in recording it,

the motives which led to it, and the results, he may find himself

forced to place it among crimes of the deepest dye.

 

Chapter 10. How slavery grew and is maintained in the United States

 

The first attempt at manufacturing any species of cloth in the North

American provinces produced a resolution on the part of the House of

Commons, [1710,] that “the erecting of manufactories in the colonies

had a tendency to lessen their dependence on Great Britain.” Soon

afterward complaints were made to Parliament that the colonists were

establishing manufactories for themselves, and the House of Commons

ordered the Board of Trade to report on the subject, which was done at

great length. In 1732, the exportation of hats from province to

province was prohibited, and the number of apprentices to be taken by

hatters was limited. In 1750 the erection of any mill or other engine

for splitting or rolling iron was prohibited; but pig iron was allowed

to be imported into England duty free, that it might there be

manufactured and sent back again. At a later period, Lord Chatham

declared that he would not permit the colonists to make even a hobnail

for themselves--and his views were then and subsequently carried into

effect by the absolute prohibition in 1765 of the export of artisans,

in 1781 of woollen machinery, in 1782 of cotton machinery and

artificers in cotton, in 1785 of iron and steel-making machinery and

workmen in those departments of trade, and in 1799 by the prohibition

of the export of colliers, lest other countries should acquire the art

of mining coal.

 

The tendency of the system has thus uniformly been--

 

I. To prevent the application of labour elsewhere than in England to

any pursuit but that of agriculture, and thus to deprive the weaker

portion of society--the women and children--of any employment but in

the field.

 

II. To compel whole populations to produce the same commodities, and

thus to deprive them of the power to make exchanges among themselves.

 

III. To compel them, therefore, to export to England all their produce

in its rudest forms, at great cost of transportation.

 

IV. To deprive them of all power of returning to the land the manure

yielded by its products, and thus to compel them to exhaust their

land.

 

V. To deprive them of the power of associating together for the

building of towns, the establishment of schools, the making of roads,

or the defence of their rights.

 

VI. To compel them, with every step in the process of exhausting the

land, to increase their distances from each other and from market.

 

VII. To compel the waste of all labour that could not be employed in

the field.

 

VIII. To compel the waste of all the vast variety of things almost

valueless in themselves, but which acquire value as men are enabled to

work in combination with each other.[44]

 

IX. To prevent increase in the value of land and in the demand for the

labour of man; and,

 

X. To prevent advance toward civilization and freedom.

 

That such were the tendencies of the system was seen by the people of

the colonies. “It is well known and understood,” said Franklin, in

1771, “that whenever a manufacture is established which employs a

number of hands, it raises the value of lands in the neighbouring

country all around it, partly by the greater demand near at hand for

the produce of the land, and partly from the plenty of money drawn by

the manufactures to that part of the country. It seems, therefore,” he

continued, “the interest of all our farmers and owners of lands, to

encourage our young manufactures in preference to foreign ones

imported among us from distant countries.” Such was the almost

universal feeling of the country, and to the restriction on the power

to apply labour was due, in a great degree, the Revolution.

 

The power to compel the colonists to make all their exchanges abroad

gave to the merchants of England, and to the government, the same

power of taxation that we see to have been so freely exercised in

regard to sugar. In a paper published in 1750, in the London General

Advertiser, it was stated that Virginia then exported 50,000 hhds. of

tobacco, producing £550,000, of which the ship-owner, the underwriter,

the commission merchant, and the government took £450,000, leaving to

be divided between the land-owner and labourer only £100,000, or

about eighteen per cent., which is less even than the proportion

stated by _Gee_, in his work of that date. Under such circumstances

the planter could accumulate little capital to aid him in the

improvement of his cultivation.

 

The Revolution came, and thenceforward there existed no legal

impediments to the establishment of home markets by aid of which the

farmer might be enabled to lessen the cost of transporting his produce

to market, and his manure from market, thus giving to his land some of

those advantages of situation which elsewhere add so largely to its

value. The prohibitory laws had, however, had the effect of preventing

the gradual growth of the mechanic arts, and Virginia had no towns of

any note, while to the same circumstances was due the fact that

England was prepared to put down all attempts at competition with her

in the manufacture of cloth, or of iron. The territory of the former

embraced forty millions of acres, and her widely scattered population

amounted to little more than 600,000. At the North, some descriptions

of manufacture had grown slowly up, and the mechanics were much more

numerous, and towns had gradually grown to be very small cities; the

consequence of which was that the farmer there, backed by the artisan,

always his ally, was more able to protect himself against the trader,

who represented the foreign manufacturer. Everywhere, however, the

growth of manufactures was slow, and everywhere, consequently, the

farmer was seen exhausting his land in growing wheat, tobacco, and

other commodities, to be sent to distant markets, from which no manure

could be returned. With the exhaustion of the land its owners became,

of course, impoverished, and there arose a necessity for the removal

of the people who cultivated it, to new lands, to be in turn

exhausted. In the North, the labourer thus circumstanced, _removed

himself_. In the South, he had _to be removed_. Sometimes the planter

abandoned his land and travelled forth with all his people, but more

frequently he found himself compelled to part with some of his slaves

to others; and thus has the domestic slave trade grown by aid of the

exhaustive process to which the land and its owner have been

subjected.

 

The reader may obtain some idea of the extent of the exhaustion that

has taken place, by a perusal of the following extracts from an

address to the Agricultural Society of Albemarle County, Virginia, by

one of the best authorities of the State, the Hon. Andrew Stevenson,

late Speaker of the House of Representatives, and Minister to England.

 

Looking to what is the “real situation” of things, the speaker asks--

 

 “Is there an intelligent and impartial man who can cast his eyes over

 the State and not be impressed with the truth, deplorable as it is

 afflicting, that the produce of most of our lands is not only small

 in proportion to the extent in cultivation, but that the lands

 themselves have been gradually sinking and becoming worse, under a

 most defective and ruinous system of cultivation?” “The truth is,” he

 continues, “we must all feel and know that the spirit of agricultural

 improvement has been suffered to languish too long in Virginia, and

 that it is now reaching a point, in the descending scale, from which,

 if it is not revived, and that very speedily, our State must continue

 not only third or fourth in population, as she now is, but consent to

 take her station among her smaller sisters of the Union.”

 

The cause of this unhappy state of things he regards as being to be

found in “a disregard of scientific knowledge” and “a deep-rooted

attachment to old habits of cultivation,” together with the “practice

of hard cropping and injudicious rotation of crops, leading them to

cultivate more land than they can manure, or than they have means of

improving;” and the consequences are found in the fact that in all the

country east of the Blue Ridge, the average product of wheat “does not

come up to seven bushels to the acre,” four of which are required to

restore the seed and defray the cost of cultivation, leaving to the

land-owner for his own services and those of a hundred acres of land,

three hundred bushels, worth, at present prices, probably two hundred

and seventy dollars! Even this, however, is not as bad an exhibit as

is produced in reference to another populous district of more than a

hundred miles in length--that between Lynchburg and Richmond--in which

the product is estimated at _not exceeding six bushels to the acre_!

Under such circumstances, we can scarcely be surprised to learn from

the speaker that the people of his great State, where meadows abound

and marl exists in unlimited quantity, import potatoes from the poor

States of the North, and are compelled to be dependent upon them for

hay and butter, the importers of which realize fortunes, while the

farmers around them are everywhere exhausting their land and obtaining

smaller crops in each successive year.

 

Why is this so? Why should Virginia import potatoes and hay, cheese

and butter? An acre of potatoes may be made to yield four hundred

bushels, and meadows yield hay by tons, and yet her people raise

wheat, of which they obtain six or seven bushels to the acre, and

corn, of which they obtain fifteen or twenty, and with the produce of

these they buy butter and cheese, pork and potatoes, which yield to

the producer five dollars where they get one--and import many of these

things too, from States in which manufacturing populations abound, and

in which all these commodities should, in the natural course of

things, be higher in price than in Virginia, where all, even when

employed, are engaged in the cultivation of the soil. The answer to

these questions is to be found in the fact that the farmers and

planters of the State can make no manure. They raise wheat and corn,

which they send elsewhere to be consumed; and the people among whom it

is consumed put the refuse on their own lands, and thus are enabled to

raise crops that count by tons, which they then exchange with the

producers of the wheat produced on land that yields six bushels to the

acre.

 

 “How many of our people,” continues the speaker, “do we see disposing

 of their lands at ruinous prices, and relinquishing their birthplaces

 and friends, to settle themselves in the West; and many not so much

 from choice as from actual inability to support their families and

 rear and educate their children out of the produce of their exhausted

 lands--once fertile, but rendered barren and unproductive by a

 ruinous system of cultivation.

 

 “And how greatly is this distress heightened, in witnessing, as we

 often do, the successions and reverses of this struggle between going

 and staying, on the part of many emigrants. And how many are there,

 who after removing, remain only a few years and then return to seize

 again upon a portion of their native land, and die where they were

 born. How strangely does it remind us of the poor shipwrecked

 mariner, who, touching in the midst of the storm the shore, lays hold

 of it, but is borne seaward by the receding wave; but struggling

 back, torn and lacerate, he grasps again the rock, with bleeding

 hands, and still clings to it, as a last and forlorn hope. Nor is

 this to be wondered at. Perhaps it was the home of his childhood--the

 habitation of his fathers for past generations--the soil upon which

 had been expended the savings and nourishment, the energies and

 virtues of a long life--’the sweat of the living, and the ashes of

 the dead.’

 

 “Oh! how hard to break such ties as these.

 

 “This is no gloomy picture of the imagination; but a faithful

 representation of what most of us know and feel to be true. Who is it

 that has not had some acquaintance or neighbour--some friend,

 perhaps some relative, forced into this current of emigration, and

 obliged from necessity, in the evening, probably, of a long life, to

 abandon his State and friends, and the home of his fathers and

 childhood, to seek a precarious subsistence in the supposed El

 Dorados of the West?”

 

This is a terrible picture, and yet it is but the index to one still

worse that must follow in its train. Well does the hon. speaker say

that--

 

 “There is another evil attending this continual drain of our

 population to the West, next in importance to the actual loss of the

 population itself, and that is, its tendency to continue and enlarge

 our wretched system of cultivation.

 

 “The moment some persons feel assured that for present gain they can

 exhaust the fertility of their lands in the old States, and then

 abandon them for those in the West, which, being rich, require

 neither the aid of science nor art, the natural tendency is at once

 to give over all efforts at improvement themselves, and kill their

 land as quickly as possible--then sell it for what it will bring or

 abandon it as a waste. And such will be found to be the case with too

 many of the emigrants from the lowlands of Virginia.”

 

Another distinguished Virginian, Mr. Ruffin, in urging an effort to

restore the lands that have been exhausted, and to bring into activity

the rich ones that have never been drained, estimates the advantages

to be derived by Lower Virginia alone at $500,000,000. “The strength,

physical, intellectual, and moral, as well as the revenue of the

commonwealth, will,” he says,

 

 “Soon derive new and great increase from the growing improvements of

 that one and the smallest of the great divisions of her territory,

 which was the poorest by natural constitution--still more, the

 poorest by long exhausting tillage--its best population gone or going

 away, and the remaining portion sinking into apathy and degradation,

 and having no hope left except that which was almost universally

 entertained of fleeing from the ruined country and renewing the like

 work of destruction on the fertile lands of the far West.”

 

If we look farther South, we find the same state of affairs. North

Carolina abounds in rich lands, undrained and uncultivated, and coal

and iron ore abound. Her area is greater than that of Ireland, and yet

her population is but 868,000; and it has increased only 130,000 in

twenty years, and, from 1830 to 1840; the increase was only 16,000. In

South Carolina, men have been everywhere doing precisely what has been

described in reference to Virginia; and yet the State has, says

Governor Seabrook, in his address to the State Agricultural Society,

“millions of uncleared acres of unsurpassed fertility, which seem to

solicit a trial of their powers from the people of the plantation

States.” * * “In her borders,” he continues, “there is scarcely a

vegetable product essential to the human race that cannot be

furnished.” Marl and lime abound, millions of acres of rich

meadow-land remain in a state of nature, and “the seashore parishes,”

he adds, “possess unfailing supplies of salt mud, salt grass, and

shell-lime.” So great, nevertheless, was the tendency to the

abandonment of the land, that in the ten years from 1830 to 1840 the

white population increased but 1000 and the black but 12,000, whereas

the natural increase would have given 150,000!

 

Allowing Virginia, at the close of the Revolution, 600,000 people, she

should now have, at the usual rate of increase, and excluding all

allowance for immigration, 4,000,000, or one to every ten acres; and

no one at all familiar with the vast advantages of the state can doubt

her capability of supporting more than thrice that number.[45]

Nevertheless, the total number in 1850 was but 1,424,000, and the

increase in twenty years had been but 200,000, when it should have

been 1,200,000. If the reader desire to know what has become of all

these people, he may find most of them among the millions now

inhabiting Alabama and Mississippi, Louisiana, Texas, and Arkansas;

and if he would know why they are now there to be found, the answer to

the question may be given in the words--”They borrowed from the earth,

and they did not repay, and therefore she expelled them.” It has been

said, and truly said, that “the nation which commences by exporting

food will end by exporting men.”

 

When men come together and combine their efforts, they are enabled to

bring into activity all the vast and various powers of the earth; and

the more they come together, the greater is the value of land, the

greater the demand, for labour, the higher its price, and the greater

the freedom of man. When, on the contrary, they separate from each

other, the greater is the tendency to a decline in the value of land,

the less is the value of labour, and the less the freedom of man. Such

being the case, if we desire to ascertain the ultimate cause of the

existence of the domestic slave trade, it would seem to be necessary

only to ascertain the cause of the exhaustion of the land. The reason

usually assigned for this will be found in the following passage,

extracted from one of the English journals of the day;--

 

 “The mode of agriculture usually coincident with the employment of

 slave labour is essentially exhaustive, and adapted therefore only to

 the virgin-richness of a newly-colonized soil. The slave can plant,

 and dig, and hoe: he works rudely and lazily with rude tools: and his

 unwilling feet tread the same path of enforced labour day after day.

 But slave labour is not adapted to the operations of scientific

 agriculture, which restores its richness to a wornout soil; and it is

 found to be a fact that the planters of the Northern slave States,

 as, _e.g._, Virginia, gradually desert the old seats of civilization,

 and advance further and further into the yet untilled country.

 Tobacco was the great staple of Virginian produce for many years

 after that beautiful province was colonized by Englishmen. It has

 exhausted the soil; grain crops have succeeded, and been found hardly

 less exhaustive; and emigration of both white and coloured population

 to the West and South has taken place to a very large extent, The

 result may be told in the words of an American witness:--’That part

 of Virginia which lies upon tide waters presents an aspect of

 universal decay. Its population diminishes, and it sinks day by day

 into a lower depth of exhaustion and poverty. The country between

 tide waters and the Blue Ridge is fast passing into the same

 condition. Mount Vernon is a desert waste; Monticello is little

 better, and the same circumstances which have desolated the lands of

 Washington and Jefferson have impoverished every planter in the

 State. Hardly any have escaped, save the owners of the rich bottom

 lands along James River, the fertility of which it seems difficult

 utterly to destroy.’[46] Now a Virginia planter stands in much the

 same relation to his plantation as an absentee Irish landlord to his

 estate; the care of the land is in each case handed over to a

 middleman, who is anxious to screw out of it as large a return of

 produce or rent as possible; and pecuniary embarrassment is in both

 cases the result. But as long as every pound of cotton grown on the

 Mississippi and the Red River finds eager customers in Liverpool, the

 price of slaves in those districts cannot fail to keep up. In many

 cases the planter of the Northern slave States emigrates to a region

 where he can employ his capital of thews and sinews more profitably

 than at home. In many others, he turns his plantation into an

 establishment for slave breeding, and sells his rising stock for

 labour in the cottonfield.”--_Prospective Review_ Nov. 1852.

 

Unhappily, however, for this reasoning precisely the same exhaustion

is visible in the Northern States, as the reader may see by a perusal

of the statements on this subject given by Professor Johnson, in his

“Notes on North America,” of which the following is a specimen:--

 

 “Exhaustion has diminished the produce of the land, formerly the

 great staple of the country. When the wheat fell off, barley, which

 at first yielded fifty or sixty bushels, was raised year after year,

 till the land fell away from this, and became full of weeds.”--Vol.

 i. 259.

 

Rotation of crops cannot take place at a distance from market The

exhaustive character of the system is well shown in the following

extract:--

 

 “In the State of New York there are some twelve million acres of

 improved land, which includes all meadows and enclosed pastures. This

 area employs about five hundred thousand labourers, being an average

 of twenty-four acres to the hand. At this ratio, the number of acres

 of improved land in the United States is one hundred, and twenty

 millions. But New York is an old and more densely populated State

 than an average in the Union; and probably twenty-five acres per head

 is a juster estimate for the whole country. At this rate, the

 aggregate is one hundred and twenty-five millions. Of these improved

 lands, it is confidently believed that at least four-fifths are now

 suffering deterioration in a greater or less degree.

 

 “The fertility of some, particularly in the planting States, is

 passing rapidly away; in others, the progress of exhaustion is so

 slow as hardly to be observed by the cultivators themselves. To keep

 within the truth, the annual income from the soil may be said to be

 diminished ten cents an acre on one hundred million acres, or

 four-fifths of the whole.

 

 “This loss of income is ten millions of dollars, and equal to sinking

 a capital of one hundred and sixty-six million six hundred and

 sixty-six thousand dollars a year, paying six per cent. annual

 interest. That improved farming lands may justly be regarded as

 capital, and a fair investment when paying six per cent. interest,

 and perfectly safe, no one will deny. This deterioration is not

 unavoidable, for thousands of skilful farmers have taken fields, poor

 in point of natural productiveness, and, instead of diminishing their

 fertility, have added ten cents an acre to their annual income, over

 and above all expenses. If this wise and improving system of rotation

 tillage and husbandry were universally adopted, or applied to the one

 hundred million acres now being exhausted, it would be equivalent to

 creating each year an additional capital of one hundred and sixty-six

 millions six hundred and sixty-six thousand dollars, and placing it

 in permanent real estate, where it would pay six per cent. annual

 interest. For all practical purposes, the difference between the two

 systems is three hundred, and thirty-three millions three hundred and

 thirty-three thousand dollars a year to the country.

 

 “Eight million acres [in the State of New York] are in the hands of

 three hundred thousand persons, who still adhere to the colonial

 practice of extracting from the virgin soil all it will yield, so

 long as it will pay expenses to crop it, and then leave it in a thin,

 poor pasture for a term of years. Some of these impoverished farms,

 which seventy-five years ago produced from twenty to thirty bushels

 of wheat, on an average, per acre, now yield only from five to eight

 bushels. In an exceedingly interesting work entitled ‘American

 Husbandry,’ published in London in 1775, and written by an American,

 the following remarks may be found on page 98, vol. i.:--’Wheat, in

 many parts of the province, (New York,) yields a larger produce than

 is common in England. Upon good lands about Albany, where the climate

 is the coldest in the country, they sow two bushels and better upon

 an acre, and reap from _twenty_ to _forty_; the latter quantity,

 however, is not often had, but from twenty to _thirty_ are common;

 and with such bad husbandry as would not yield the like in England,

 and much less in Scotland. This is owing to the _richness_ and

 _freshness_ of the land.’

 

 “According to the State census of 1845, Albany county now produces

 only seven and a half bushels of wheat per acre, although its farmers

 are on tide water and near the capital of the State, with a good home

 market, and possess every facility for procuring the most valuable

 fertilizers. Dutchess county, also on the Hudson River, produces an

 average of only five bushels per acre; Columbia, six bushels;

 Rensselaer, eight; Westchester, seven; which is higher than the

 average of soils that once gave a return larger than the wheat lands

 of England even with ‘bad husbandry.’

 

 “Fully to renovate the eight million acres of partially exhausted

 lands in the State of New York, will cost at least an average of

 twelve dollars and a half per acre, or an aggregate of one hundred

 millions of dollars. It is not an easy task to replace all the

 bone-earth, potash, sulphur, magnesia, and organized nitrogen in

 mould consumed in a field which has been unwisely cultivated fifty or

 seventy-five years. Phosphorus is not an abundant mineral anywhere,

 and his _sub-soil_ is about the only resource of the husbandman after

 his surface-soil has lost most of its phosphates. The three hundred

 thousand persons that cultivate these eight million acres of

 impoverished soils annually produce less by twenty-five dollars each

 than they would if the land had not been injured.

 

 “The aggregate of this loss to the State and the world is seven

 million five hundred thousand dollars per annum, or more than seven

 per cent. interest on what it would cost to renovate the deteriorated

 soils. There is no possible escape from this oppressive tax on labour

 of seven million five hundred thousand dollars, but to improve the

 land, or run off and leave it.”--_Patent Office Report_, 1849

 

It is not slavery that produces exhaustion of the soil, but exhaustion

of the soil that causes slavery to continue. The people of England

rose from slavery to freedom as the land was improved and rendered

productive, and as larger numbers of men were enabled to obtain

subsistence from the same surface; and it was precisely as the land

thus acquired value that they became free. Such, too, has been the

case with every people that has been enabled to return to the land the

manure yielded by its products, because of their having a market at

home. On the contrary, there is no country in the world, in which men

have been deprived, of the power to improve their land, in which

slavery has not been maintained, to be aggravated in intensity as the

land became more and more exhausted, as we see to have been the case

in the West Indies. It is to this perpetual separation from each other

that is due the poverty and weakness of the South. At the close of the

Revolution, the now slave States contained probably 1,600,000 people,

and those States contained about 120,000,000 of acres, giving an

average of about eighty acres to each. In 1850, the population had

grown to 8,500,000, scattered over more than 300,000,000 of acres,

giving about forty acres to each. The consequence of this dispersion

is that the productive power is very small, as is here seen in an

estimate for 1850, taken from a Southern journal of high

reputation:--[47]

 

  Cotton............................. 105,600,000

  Tobacco............................  15,000,000

  Rice...............................   3,000,000

  Naval stores.......................   2,000,000

  Sugar..............................  12,396,150

  Hemp...............................     695,840  138,691,990

                                      -----------

 

  If we now add for food an equal amount, and this

   is certainly much in excess of the truth......  138,691,990

  And for all other products.....................   22,616,020

                                                  ------------

     We obtain................................... $300,000,000

 

as the total production of eight millions and a half of people, or

about $35 per head. The total production of the Union in 1850 cannot

have been short of 2500 millions; and if we deduct from that sum the

above quantity, we shall have remaining 2150 millions as the product

of fourteen millions and a half of Northern people, or more than four

times as much per head. The difference is caused by the fact that at

the North artisans have placed themselves near to the farmer, and

towns and cities have grown up, and exchanges are made more readily,

and the farmer is not to the same extent obliged to exhaust his land,

and dispersion therefore goes on more slowly; and there is, in many of

the States, an extensive demand for those commodities of which the

earth yields largely, such as potatoes, cabbages, turnips, &c. &c.

With each step in the process of coming together at the North, men

tend to become more free; whereas the dispersion of the South produces

everywhere the trade in slaves of which the world complains, and which

would soon cease to exist if the artisan could be brought to take his

place by the side of the producer of food and cotton. Why he cannot do

so may he found in the words of a recent speech of Mr. Cardwell,

member of Parliament from Liverpool, congratulating the people of

England on the fact that free trade had so greatly damaged the cotton

manufacture of this country, that the domestic consumption was

declining from year to year. In this is to be found the secret of the

domestic slave trade of the South, and its weakness, now so manifest.

The artisan has been everywhere the ally of the farmer, and the South

has been unable to form that alliance, the consequences of which are

seen in the fact that it is always exporting men and raw materials,

and exhausting its soil and itself: and the greater the tendency to

exhaustion, the greater is the pro-slavery feeling. That such should

be the case is most natural. The man who exhausts his land attaches to

it but little value, and he abandons it, but he attaches much value to

the slave whom he can carry away with him. The pro-slavery feeling

made its appearance first in the period between 1830 and 1840. Up to

1832, there had existed a great tendency in Maryland, Virginia, and

Kentucky toward freedom, but that disappeared; and the reason why it

did so may be seen in the greatly increased tendency to the

abandonment of the older tobacco and cotton growing States, as here

shown:--

 

                       1820.      1830.      1840.      1850.

                       -----      -----      -----      -----

  Total population:

  Virginia......... 1,065,379  1,211,405  1,239,797  1,424,863

  South Carolina..... 502,741    581,185    594,398    668,247

 

  Ratio of increase:

  Virginia.....................   13.6        2.3       15.2

  South Carolina...............   15.6        2.3       12.4

 

With the increase in the export of slaves to the South, the negro

population declined in its ratio of increase, whereas it has grown

with the growth of the power of the slave to remain at home, as is

here shown:--

 

                       1820.      1830.      1840.      1850.

                       -----      -----      -----      -----

  Total black

  population:      1,779,885   2,328,642  2,873,703  3,591,000

  Ratio of

  increase........... 30          30.8       24         25

 

We see thus that the more the black population can remain at home, the

more rapidly they increase; and the reason why such is the case is,

that at home they are among their own people, by whom they have been

known from infancy, and are of course better fed and clothed, more

tenderly treated, and more lightly worked, with far greater tendency

toward freedom. It would thence appear that if we desire to bring

about the freedom of the negro, we must endeavour to arrest the

domestic slave trade, and enable the slave and his master to remain at

home; and to do this we must look to the causes of the difference in

the extent of the trade in the periods above referred to. Doing this,

we shall find that from 1820 to 1830 there was a decided tendency

toward bringing the artisan to the side of the ploughman; whereas from

1833 to 1840 the tendency was very strong in the opposite direction,

and so continued until 1842, at which time a change took place, and

continued until near the close of the decennial period, when our

present revenue system came fully into operation. The artisan has now

ceased to come to the side of the planter. Throughout the country

cotton and woollen mills and furnaces and foundries have been closed,

and women and children who were engaged in performing the lighter

labour of converting cotton into cloth are now being sold for the

heavier labour of the cotton-field, as is shown by the following

advertisement, now but a few weeks old:--

 

 SALE OF NEGROES.--The negroes belonging to the Saluda Manufacturing

 Company were sold yesterday for one-fourth cash, the balance in one

 and two years, with interest, and averaged $599. Boys from 16 to 25

 brought $900 to $1000.--_Columbia, (S. C.) Banner_, Dec. 31, 1852.

 

As a necessary consequence of this, the domestic slave trade is now

largely increasing, as is shown by the following extract from a recent

journal:--

 

 “The emigration to the southern portion of Arkansas, Louisiana, and

 Texas, during the past fall, has been unusually large, and the tide

 which flows daily through our streets indicates that the volume

 abates but little, if any. On the opposite bank of the river are

 encamped nearly fifty wagons, with probably not less than two hundred

 and fifty souls. Each night, for a fortnight, there have been, on an

 average, not less than twenty-five wagons encamped there; and

 notwithstanding two hand ferry-boats have been constantly plying

 between the shores, the hourly accession to the number makes the

 diminution scarcely perceptible.”--_Little Rock. (Ark.) Gazette_,

 Dec. 3, 1852.

 

Had the member for Liverpool been aware that a decline in the tendency

toward bringing the cotton-mill to the cotton-field was accompanied by

increased exhaustion of the land, increased impoverishment, and

increased inability to bring into action the rich soils of the older

States, and that with each such step there arose an increased

_necessity_ for the expulsion of the people of those States,

accompanied by an increased sacrifice of life resulting from the

domestic slave trade, he would certainly have hesitated before

congratulating Parliament on an occurrence so hostile to the progress

of freedom.

 

That the export of negroes, with its accompanying violation of the

rights of parents and children, and with its natural tendency toward a

total forgetfulness of the sanctity of the marriage tie, has its

origin in the exhaustion of the land, there can be no doubt--and that

that, in its turn, has its origin in the necessity for a dependence on

distant markets, is quite as free from doubt. The man who must go to a

distance with his products cannot raise potatoes, turnips, or hay. He

must raise the less bulky articles, wheat or cotton and he must take

from his land all the elements of which wheat or cotton is composed,

and then abandon it. In addition to this, he must stake all his

chances of success in his year’s cultivation on a single crop; and

what are the effects of this is seen in the following paragraph in

relation to the wheat cultivation of Virginia in the last season:--

 

 “Never did I know in this State such a destruction of the wheat crop;

 I have just returned from Albemarle, one of the best counties. The

 joint-worm, a new enemy of three year’s known existence there, has

 injured every crop, and destroyed many in that and other counties

 both sides and along the Blue Ridge. I saw many fields that would not

 yield more than seed, and not a few from which not one peck per acre

 could be calculated upon. I saw more than one field without a head.

 The most fortunate calculate upon a half crop only. Corn is backward

 on the lower James River, embracing my own farm. I have heard to-day

 from my manager that the caterpillar has made its appearance, and

 must in the late wheat do serious damage.”

 

That State is not permitted to do any thing but grow wheat and

tobacco, both of which she must export, and the larger the export the

smaller are the returns, under the system of “unlimited competition”

for the sale of raw products, and limited competition for the purchase

of manufactured ones, which it is the object of British policy to

establish. Not only is Virginia limited in the application of her

labour, but she is also greatly limited in the extent of her market,

because of the unequal distribution of the proceeds of the sales of

her products. The pound of tobacco for which the consumer pays 6s.

($1.44,) yields him less than six cents, the whole difference being

absorbed by the people who stand between him and the consumer, and who

contribute nothing toward the production of his commodity.[48]

 

Now, it is quite clear that if the consumer and he stood face to face

with each other, he would receive all that was paid, and that while

the one bought at lower prices, the other would sell at higher ones,

and both would grow rich. The difficulty with him is that not only is

his land exhausted, but he receives but a very small portion of the

price paid for its products, and thus is he, like the labourer of

Jamaica, exhausted by reason of the heavy taxation to which he is

subjected for the support of foreign merchants and foreign

governments. As a consequence of all this his land has little value,

and he finds himself becoming poorer from year to year, and each year

he has to sell a negro for the payment of the tax on his tobacco and

his wheat to which he is thus subjected, until he has at length to go

himself. If the reader desire to study the working of this system of

taxation, he cannot do better than read the first chapter of “Uncle

Tom’s Cabin,” containing the negotiation between Haley and Mr. Shelby

for the transfer of Uncle Tom, resulting in the loss of his life in

the wilds of Arkansas.

 

The more the necessity for exhausting land and for selling negroes,

the cheaper, however, will be wheat and cotton. Uncle Tom might have

remained at home had the powers of the land been maintained and had

Virginia been enabled to avail herself of her vast resources in coal,

iron ore, water-power, &c.; but as she could not do this, he had to go

to Arkansas to raise cotton: and the larger the domestic slave trade,

the greater must be the decline in the price of that great staple of

the South. At no period was that trade so large as in that from 1830

to 1840, and the effects are seen in the following comparative prices

of cotton:--

 

    Crops, 1831 and 1832, average 10-1/2.

           1841 and 1842, average 7.

 

The export of negroes declined between 1842 and 1850, and the

consequence is that cotton has since maintained its price. With the

closing of Southern mills the slave trade, is now again growing

rapidly, and the consequences will be seen in a large decline in the

price of that important product of Southern labour and land.

 

The reader will now observe that it was in the period from 1830 to

1840 that the tendency to emancipation disappeared--that it was in

that period were passed various laws adverse to the education of

negroes--that it was in that period there was the greatest enlargement

of the domestic slave trade--and the greatest decline in the price of

cotton. Having remarked these things, and having satisfied himself

that they, each and all, have their origin in the fact that the

planter is compelled to depend on foreign markets and therefore to

exhaust his land, he will be enabled to judge of the accuracy of the

view contained in the following sentence :--

 

 “The price of a negro on Red River varies with the price of cotton in

 Liverpool, and whatever tends to lower the value of the staple here,

 not only confers an inestimable advantage on our own manufacturing

 population, but renders slave labour less profitable, and therefore

 less permanent in Alabama.”--_Prospective Review_, No. xxxii. 512.

 

It would be fortunate if philanthropy and pecuniary profit could thus

be made to work together, but such unhappily is not the case. When men

are enabled to come nearer to each other and combine their efforts,

and towns arise, land acquires great value and gradually becomes

divided, and with each step in this direction the negro loses his

importance in the eye of his owner. When, however, men are forced to

abandon the land they have exhausted, it becomes consolidated, and the

moveable chattel acquires importance in the eyes of his emigrant

owner. At death, the land cannot, under these circumstances, be

divided, and therefore the negroes must; and hence it is that such

advertisements as the following are a necessary consequence of the

system that looks to cheap wheat, cheap sugar, and cheap cotton.

 

 HIGH PRICE OF NEGROES.--We extract the following from the Lancaster

 (S. C.) _Ledger_ of the 5th January last:--

 

 We attended the sale of negroes belonging to the estate of the late

 S. Beekman, on the 22d of last month, and were somewhat astonished at

 the high price paid for negroes.

 

 Negro men brought from $800 to $1000, the greater number at or near

 the latter price. One (a blacksmith) brought $1425.

 

 We learn from the Winsboro _Register_, that on Monday, the 3d inst.,

 a large sale of negroes was made by the Commissioner in Equity for

 Fairfleld district, principally the property of James Gibson,

 deceased. The negroes were only tolerably likely, and averaged about

 $620 each. The sales were made on a credit of twelve

 months.--_Charleston (S. C.) Courier_.

 

The more the planter is forced to depend upon tobacco the lower will

be its price abroad, and the more he must exhaust his land. The more

rapid the exhaustion the more must be the tendency to emigrate. The

more the necessity for depending exclusively on wheat, the greater the

necessity for making a market for it by raising slaves for sale: and

in several of the older Southern States the planter now makes nothing

but what results from the increase of “stock.”

 

Of all the exporters of food England is the largest, said a

distinguished English merchant, in a speech delivered some years

since. In some parts of that country it is manufactured into iron, and

in others into cloth, in order that it may travel cheaply, and this is

quite in accordance with the advice of Adam Smith. With a view,

however, to prevent other nations from following in the course so

strongly urged upon them by that great man, labour has been cheapened,

and men and women, boys and girls, have been accustomed to work

together in the same mine, and often in a state of _entire nudity_;

while other, women and children have been compelled to work for

fourteen or sixteen hours a day for six days in the week, and for

small wages, in the mill or workshop--and this has been done in

accordance with the advice of Mr. Huskisson, who, from his place in

Parliament, told his countrymen that in order “to give capital a fair

remuneration, _labour must be kept down_”--that is, the labourer must

be deprived of the power to determine for himself for whom he would

work, or what should be his reward. It was needed, as was then

declared by another of the most eminent statesmen of Britain, “that

the manufactures of all other nations should be strangled in their

infancy,” and such has from that day to the present been the object of

British policy. Hence it is that England is now so great an exporter

of food manufactured into cloth and iron. The people of Massachusetts

manufacture their grain into fish, cloth, and various other

commodities, with a view to enable it cheaply to travel to market.

Those of Illinois, unable to convert their corn into coal or iron,

find themselves obliged to manufacture it into pork. The Virginian

would manufacture his corn and his wheat into cloth, or into coal and

iron, if he could; but this he cannot do, although close to the

producer of cotton, and occupying a land abounding in all the raw

materials of which machinery is composed; and having, too, abundant

labour power that runs to waste. Why he cannot do it is that England

follows the advice of Mr. Huskisson, and cheapens labour with a view

to prevent other nations from following the advice of Adam Smith. The

whole energies of the State are therefore given to the raising of

tobacco and corn, both of which must go abroad, and as the latter

cannot travel profitably in its rude state, it requires to be

manufactured, and the only branch of manufacture permitted to the

Virginian is that of negroes, and hence it is that their export is so

large, and that cotton is so cheap.

 

Widely different would be the course of things could he be permitted

to employ a reasonable portion of his people in the development of the

vast resources of the State--opening mines, erecting furnaces,

smelting iron, making machinery, and building mills. Fewer persons

would then raise corn and more would be employed in consuming it, and

the price at home would then rise to a level with that in the distant

market, and thus would the land acquire value, while the cost of

raising negroes would be increased. Towns would then grow up, and

exchanges would be made on the spot, and thus would the planter be

enabled to manure his land. Labour would become more productive, and

there would be more commodities to be given in exchange for labour;

and the more rapid the increase in the amount of production the

greater would be the tendency toward enabling the labourer to

determine for whom he would work and what should be his reward.

Population would then rapidly increase, and land would become divided,

and the little black cultivator of cabbages and potatoes would be seen

taking the place of the poor white owner of large bodies of exhausted

land, and thus would the negro tend toward freedom as his master

became enriched. Nothing of this kind is, however, likely to take

place so long as the Virginian shall continue of the opinion that the

way to wealth lies in the direction of taking every thing from the

land and returning nothing to it--nor, perhaps, so long as the people

of England shall continue in the determination that there shall be but

one workshop in the world, and carry that determination into effect by

“keeping labour down,” in accordance with the advice of Mr. Huskisson.

 

The tendency to the abandonment of the older States is now probably

greater than it has ever been, because their people have ceased to

build mills or furnaces, and every thing looks to a yet more perfect

exhaustion of the soil. The more they abandon the land the greater is

the anxiety to make loans in England for the purpose of building

roads; and the more numerous the loans the more rapid is the flight,

and the greater the number of negroes brought to market.

 

A North Carolina paper informs its readers that--

 

 “The trading spirit is fully up. A few days since Mr. D. W. Bullock

 sold to Messrs. Wm. Norfleet, Robert Norfleet, and John S. Dancy,

 plantation and 18 negroes for $30,000. Mr. R. R. Bridges to Wm. F.

 Dancy, 6 acres near town for $600. At a sale in Wilson, we also

 understand, negro men with no extra qualifications sold as high as

 $1225.”--_Tarborough Southerner_.

 

A South Carolina editor informs his readers that

 

 “At public auction on Thursday, Thomas Ryan & Son sold fifteen likely

 negroes for $10,365, or an average of $691. Three boys, aged about

 seventeen, brought the following sums, viz. $1065, $1035, $1010, and

 two at $1000--making an average of $1022. Capers Heyward sold a gang

 of 109 negroes in families. Two or three families averaged from $1000

 to $1100 for each individual; and the entire sale averaged $550. C.

 G. Whitney sold two likely female house servants--one at $1000, the

 other at $1190.”--_Charleston Courier_.

 

Limited, as the people of the old States are more and more becoming,

to the raising of “stock” as the sole source of profit, need we be

surprised to see the pro-slavery feeling gaining ground from day to

day, as is here shown to be the case?

 

 REMOVAL OF FREE PERSONS OF COLOUR FROM VIRGINIA.--A bill has been

 reported in the Virginia House of Delegates which provides for the

 appointment of overseers, who are to be required to hire out, at

 public auction, all free persons of colour, to the highest bidder,

 and to pay into the State Treasury the sums accruing from such hire.

 The sums are to be devoted in future to sending free persons of

 colour beyond the limits of the State. At the expiration of five

 years, all free persons of colour remaining in the State are to be

 sold into slavery to the highest bidder, at public auction, the

 proceeds of such sales to be paid into the public treasury, provided

 that said free persons of colour shall be allowed the privilege of

 becoming the slaves of any free white person whom they may select, on

 the payment by such person of a fair price.

 

Twenty years since, Virginia was preparing for the emancipation of the

slave. Now, she is preparing for the enslavement of the free. If the

reader would know the cause of this great change, he may find it in

the fact that man has everywhere become less free as land has become

less valuable.

 

Upon whom, now, must rest the responsibility for such a state of

things as is here exhibited? Upon the planter? He exercises no

volition. He is surrounded by coal and iron ore, but the attempt to

convert them into iron has almost invariably been followed by ruin. He

has vast powers of nature ready to obey his will, yet dare he not

purchase a spindle or a loom to enable him to bring into use his now

waste labour power, for such attempts at bringing the consumer to the

side of the producer have almost invariably ended in the

impoverishment of the projector, and the sale and dispersion of his

labourers. He is compelled to conform his operations to the policy

which looks to having but one workshop for the world; and instead of

civilizing his negroes by bringing them to work in combination, he

must barbarize them by dispersion. A creature of necessity, he cannot

be held responsible; but the responsibility must, and will, rest on

those who produce that necessity.

 

The less the power of association in the Northern slave States, the

more rapid must be the growth of the domestic slave trade, the greater

must be the decline in the price of wheat, cotton, and sugar, the

greater must be the tendency to the passage of men like Uncle Tom, and

of women and children too, from the light labour of the North to the

severe labour of the South and South-west--but, the greater, as we

are told, must be the prosperity of the people of England. It is

unfortunate for the world that a country exercising so much influence

should have adopted a policy so adverse to the civilization and the

freedom not only of the negro race, but of mankind at large. There

seems, however, little probability of a change. Seeking to make of

herself a great workshop, she necessarily desires that all the rest of

the world should be one great farm, to be cultivated by men, women,

and children, denied all other means of employment. This, of course,

forbids association, which diminishes as land becomes exhausted. The

absence of association forbids the existence of schools or workshops,

books or instruction, and men become barbarized, when, under a

different system, they might and would become civilized. The tendency

to freedom passes away, as we see to have been the case in the last

twenty years--but in place of freedom, and as a compensation for the

horrors of Jamaica and of the domestic slave trade, the great workshop

of the world is supplied with cheap grain, cheap tobacco, cheap sugar,

and cheap cotton.

 

Were Adam Smith alive, he might, and probably would, take some trouble

to inform his countrymen that a system which looked to the exhaustion

of the land of other countries, and the enslavement of their

population, was “a manifest violation of the most sacred rights of

mankind;” but since his day the doctrines of the “Wealth of Nations”

have been discarded, and its author would find himself now addressing

hearers more unwilling than were even the men for whom he wrote eighty

years since. At that time the imaginary discovery had not been made

that men always commenced on the rich soils, and passed, as population

and wealth increased, to poorer ones; and the Malthusian law of

population was yet unthought of. Now, however, whatever tends to limit

the growth of population is, we are told, to be regarded as a great

good; and as the domestic slave trade accomplishes that object at the

same time that it furnishes cheap cotton, it can scarcely be expected

that there will be any change; and yet, unless a change be somewhere

made, abroad or at home, we must perforce submit to the continuance of

the existing system, which precludes education, almost eschews

matrimony, separates husbands and wives, parents and children, and

sends the women to the labours of the field.

 

Chapter 11. How slavery grows in Portugal and Turkey

 

In point of natural advantages, PORTUGAL is equal with any country in

Western Europe. Her soil is capable of yielding largely of every

description of grain, and her climate enables her to cultivate the

vine and the olive. Mineral riches abound, and her rivers give to a

large portion, of the country every facility for cheap intercourse;

and yet her people are among the most enslaved, while her government

is the weakest and most contemptible of Europe.

 

It is now a century and a half since England granted her what were

deemed highly important advantages in regard to wine, on condition

that she should discard the artisans who had been brought to the side

of her farmers, and permit the people of England to supply her people

with certain descriptions of manufactures. What were the duties then

agreed on are not given in any of the books now at hand, but by the

provisions of a treaty made in 1810, cloths of all descriptions were

to be admitted at a merely revenue duty, varying from ten to fifteen

per cent. A natural consequence of this system has been that the

manufactures which up to the date of the Methuen treaty had risen in

that country, perished under foreign competition, and the people found

themselves by degrees limited exclusively to agricultural employments.

Mechanics found there no place for the exercise of their talents,

towns could not grow, schools could not arise, and the result is seen

in the following paragraph:--

 

 “It is surprising how ignorant, or at least superficially acquainted,

 the Portuguese are with every kind of handicraft; a carpenter is

 awkward and clumsy, spoiling every work he attempts, and the way in

 which the doors and woodwork even of good houses are finished would

 have suited the rudest ages. Their carriages of all kinds, from the

 fidalgo’s family coach to the peasant’s market cart, their

 agricultural implements, locks and keys, &c. are ludicrously bad.

 They seem to disdain improvement, and are so infinitely below par, so

 strikingly inferior to the rest of Europe, as to form a sort of

 disgraceful wonder in the middle of the nineteenth

 century.”--_Baillie_.

 

The population, which, half a century since was 3,683,000, is now

reduced to little more than 3,000,000; and we need no better evidence

of the enslaving and exhausting tendency of a policy that limits a

whole people, men, women, and children, to the labours of the field.

At the close almost of a century and a half of this system, the

following is given in a work of high reputation, as a correct picture

of the state of the country and the strength of the government:--

 

 “The finances of Portugal are in the most deplorable condition, the

 treasury is dry, and all branches of the public service suffer. A

 carelessness and a mutual apathy reign not only throughout the

 government, but also throughout the nation. While improvement is

 sought everywhere else throughout Europe, Portugal remains

 stationary. The postal service of the country offers a curious

 example of this, nineteen to twenty-one days being still required for

 a letter to go and come between Lisbon and Braganza, a distance of

 423-1/2 kilometres, (or little over 300 miles.) All the resources of

 the state are exhausted, and it is probable that the receipts will

 not give one-third of the amount for which they figure in the

 budget.”--_Annuaire de l’Economie Politique_, 1849, 322.

 

Some years since an effort was made to bring the artisan to the side

of the farmer and vine-grower, but a century and a half of exclusive

devotion to agriculture had placed the people so far in the rear of

those of other nations, that the attempt was hopeless, the country

having long since become a mere colony of Great Britain.

 

If we turn to Madeira, we find there further evidence of the

exhausting consequences of the separation of the farmer and the

artisan. From 1886 to 1842, the only period for which returns are

before me, there was a steady decline in the amount of agricultural

production, until the diminution had reached about thirty per cent.,

as follows:--

 

                       Wine.           Wheat.        Barley.

                       -----           ------        -------

    1836............. 27,270 pipes     8472 qrs.      3510

    1842............. 16,131          6863          2777

 

At this moment the public papers furnish an “Appeal to America,”

commencing as follows:--

 

 “A calamity has fallen on Madeira unparalleled in its history. The

 vintage, the revenue of which furnished the chief means for providing

 subsistence for its inhabitants, has been a total failure, and the

 potato crop, formerly another important article of their food, is

 still extensively diseased. All classes, therefore, are suffering,

 and as there are few sources in the island to which they can look for

 food, clothing, and other necessaries of life, their distress must

 increase during the winter, and the future is contemplated with

 painful anxiety and apprehension. Under such appalling prospects, the

 zealous and excellent civil Governor, Snr. José Silvestre Ribeiro,

 addressed a circular letter to the merchants of Madeira on the 24th

 of August last, for the purpose of bringing the unfortunate and

 critical position of the population under his government to the

 notice of the benevolent and charitable classes in foreign countries,

 and in the hope of exciting their sympathy with, and assistance to,

 so many of their fellow creatures threatened with famine.”

 

Such are the necessary consequences of a system which looks to

compelling the whole population of a country to employ themselves in a

single pursuit--all cultivating the land and all producing the same

commodity; and which thus effectually prevents the growth of that

natural association so much admired by Adam Smith. It is one that can

end only in the exhaustion of the land and its owner. When population

increases and men come together, even the poor land is made rich, and

thus it is, says M. de Jonnes, that “the powers of manure causes the

poor lands of the department of the Seine to yield thrice as much as

those of the Loire.”[49] When population diminishes, and men are thus

forced to live at greater distances from each other, even the rich

lands become impoverished; and of this no better evidence need be

sought than that furnished by Portugal. In the one case, each day

brings men nearer to perfect freedom of thought, speech, action, and

trade. In the other they become from day to day more barbarized and

enslaved, and the women are more and more driven to the field, there

to become the slaves of fathers, husbands, brothers, and even of sons.

 

Of all the countries of Europe there is none possessed of natural

advantages to enable it to compare with those constituting the TURKISH

EMPIRE in Europe and Asia. Wool and silk, corn, oil, and tobacco,

might, with proper cultivation, be produced in almost unlimited

quantity, while Thessaly and Macedonia, long celebrated for the

production of cotton, abound in lands uncultivated, from which it

might be obtained in sufficient extent to clothe a large portion of

Europe. Iron ore abounds, and in quality equal to any in the world,

while in another part of the empire “the hills seem a mass of

carbonate of copper.”[50] Nature has done every thing for the people

of that country, and yet of all those of Europe, the Turkish rayah

approaches in condition nearest to a slave; and of all the governments

of Europe, that of Portugal even not excepted, that of Turkey is the

most a slave to the dictation, not only of nations, but even of

bankers and traders. Why it is so, we may now inquire.

 

By the terms of the treaty with England in 1675, the Turkish

government bound itself to charge no more than three per cent. duty on

imports,[51] and as this could contribute little to the revenue, that

required to be sought elsewhere. A poll-tax, house-tax, land-tax, and

many other direct taxes, furnished a part of it, and the balance was

obtained by an indirect tax in the form of export duties; and as the

corn, tobacco, and cotton of its people were obliged to compete in the

general markets of the world with the produce of other lands, it is

clear that these duties constituted a further contribution from the

cultivators of the empire in aid of the various direct taxes that have

been mentioned. So far as foreigners were interested, the system was

one of perfect free trade and direct taxation.

 

For many years, Turkey manufactured much of her cotton, and she

exported cotton-yarn. Such was the case so recently as 1798, as will

be seen by the following very interesting account of one of the seats

of the manufacture:--

 

 “‘Ambelakia, by its activity, appears rather a borough of Holland

 than a village of Turkey. This village spreads, by its industry,

 movement, and life, over the surrounding country, and gives birth to

 an immense commerce which unites Germany to Greece by a thousand

 threads. Its population has trebled in fifteen years, and amounts at

 present (1798) to four thousand, who live in their manufactories like

 swarms of bees in their hives. In this village are unknown both the

 vices and cares engendered by idleness; the hearts of the Ambelakiots

 are pure and their faces serene; the slavery which blasts the plains

 watered by the Peneus, and stretching at their feet, has never

 ascended the sides of Pelion (Ossa;) and they govern themselves, like

 their ancestors, by their protoyeros, (primates, elders,) and their

 own magistrates. Twice the Mussulmen of Larissa attempted to scale

 their rocks, and twice were they repulsed by hands which dropped the

 shuttle to seize the musket.

 

 “‘Every arm, even those of the children, is employed in the

 factories; while the men dye the cotton, the women prepare and spin

 it. There are twenty-four factories, in which yearly two thousand

 five hundred bales of cotton yarn, of one hundred cotton okes each,

 were dyed (6138 cwts.) This yarn found its way into Germany, and was

 disposed of at Buda, Vienna, Leipsic, Dresden, Anspach, and Bareuth.

 The Ambelakiot merchants had houses of their own in all these places.

 These houses belonged to distinct associations at Ambelakia. The

 competition thus established reduced very considerably the common

 profits; they proposed therefore to unite themselves under one

 central commercial administration. Twenty years ago this plan was

 suggested, and in a year afterward it was carried into execution. The

 lowest shares in this joint-stock company were five thousand

 piastres, (between £600 and £700,) and the highest were restricted to

 twenty thousand, that the capitalists might not swallow up all the

 profits. The workmen subscribed their little profits, and uniting in

 societies, purchased single shares; and besides their capital, their

 labour was reckoned in the general amount; they received their share

 of the profits accordingly, and abundance was soon spread through the

 whole community. The dividends were at first restricted to ten per

 cent., and the surplus profit was applied to the augmenting of the

 capital; which in two years was raised from 600,000 to 1,000,000

 piastres, (£120,000.)’

 

 “It supplied industrious Germany, not by the perfection of its

 jennies, but by the industry of its spindle and distaff. It taught

 Montpellier the art of dyeing, not from experimental chairs, but

 because dyeing was with it a domestic and culinary operation, subject

 to daily observation in every kitchen; and by the simplicity and

 honesty, not the science of its system, it reads a lesson to

 commercial associations, and holds up an example unparalleled in the

 commercial history of Europe, of a joint-stock and labour company;

 ably and economically and successfully administered, in which the

 interests of industry and capital were, long equally represented. Yet

 the system of administration with which all this is connected, is

 common to the thousand hamlets of Thessaly that have not emerged from

 their insignificance; but Ambelakia for twenty years was left

 alone.”[52]

 

At that time, however, England had invented new machinery for spinning

cotton, and, by prohibiting its export, had provided that all the

cotton of the world should be brought to Manchester before it could be

cheaply converted into cloth.

 

The cotton manufacturers at Ambelakia had their difficulties to

encounter, but all those might have been overcome had they not, says

Mr. Urquhart, “been outstripped by Manchester.” They _were_

outstripped, and twenty years afterward, not only had that place been

deserted, but others in its neighbourhood were reduced to complete

desolation. Native manufactories for the production of cotton goods

had, indeed, almost ceased to work. Of 600 looms at Sentari in 1812,

but 40 remained in 1821; and of the 2000 weaving establishments at

Tournovo in 1812, but 200 remained in 1830.[53] For a time, cotton

went abroad to be returned in the form of twist, thus making a voyage

of thousands of miles in search of a spindle; but even this trade has

in a great degree passed away. As a consequence of these things there

had been a ruinous fall of wages, affecting all classes of labourers.

“The profits,” says Mr. Urquhart--

 

 “Have been reduced to one-half, and sometimes to one-third, by the

 introduction of English cottons, which, though they have reduced the

 home price, and arrested the export of cotton-yarn from Turkey, have

 not yet supplanted the home manufacture in any visible degree; for,

 until tranquillity has allowed agriculture to revive, the people must

 go on working merely for bread, and reducing their price, in a

 struggle of hopeless competition. The industry, however, of the women

 and children is most remarkable; in every interval of labour, tending

 the cattle, carrying water, the spindle and distaff, as in the days

 of Xerxes, is never out of their hands. The children are as

 assiduously at work, from the moment their little fingers, can turn

 the spindle. About Ambelakia, the former focus of the cotton-yarn

 trade, the peasantry has suffered dreadfully from this, though

 formerly the women could earn as much in-doors, as their husbands in

 the field; at present, their daily profit (1881) does not exceed

 twenty paras, if realized, for often they cannot dispose of the yarn

 when spun.

 

                                             Piastres.  Paras.

                                             ---------  ------

  Five okes of uncleaned cotton,

    at seventeen paras..........................   2       5

  Labour of a woman for two days,

    (seven farthings per day)...................   0      35

  Carding, by vibrations of a cat-gut...........   0      10

  Spinning, a woman’s unremitting labour

    for a week..................................   5      30

  Loss of cotton, exceeding an oke

    of uncleaned cotton.........................   0      20

                                              --------  ------

    Value of one oke of uncleaned cotton....  Prs. 9      00

 

   “Here a woman’s labour makes but 2d. per day, while field-

   labour, according to the season of the year, ranges from 4d.

   to 6d. and at this rate, the pound of coarse cotton-yarn cost

   in spinning 5d.”--P. 147.

 

The labour of a woman is estimated at less than four cents per day,

and “the unremitting labour of a week” will command but twenty-five

cents. The wages of men employed in gathering leaves and attending

silkworms are stated at one piastre (five cents) per day. At Salonica,

the shipping port of Thessaly, they were ten cents. (Urquhart, 268.)

 

As a necessary consequence of this, population diminishes, and

everywhere are seen the ruins of once prosperous villages. Agriculture

declines from day to day. The once productive cotton-fields of

Thessaly lie untilled, and even around Constantinople itself--

 

 “There are no cultivated lands to speak of within twenty miles, in

 some directions within fifty miles. The commonest necessaries of life

 come from distant parts: the corn for daily bread from Odessa; the

 cattle and sheep from beyond Adrianople, or from Asia Minor; the

 rice, of which such a vast consumption is made, from the

 neighbourhood of Phillippopolis; the poultry chiefly from Bulgaria;

 the fruit and vegetables from Nicomedia and Mondania. Thus a constant

 drain of money is occasioned, without any visible return except to

 the treasury or from the property of the Ulema.”--_Slade’s Travels in

 Turkey_, vol. ii. 143.

 

The silk that is made is badly prepared, because the distance of the

artisan prevents the poor people from obtaining good machinery; and as

a consequence of this, the former direct trade with Persia has been

superseded by an indirect one through England, to which the raw silk

has now to be sent. In every department of industry we see the same

result. Birmingham has superseded Damascus, whose blades are now no

longer made.

 

Not only is the foreigner free to introduce his wares, but he may, on

payment of a trifling duty of two per cent., carry them throughout the

empire until finally disposed of. He travels by caravans, and is

lodged without expense. He brings his goods to be exchanged for money,

or what else he needs, and the exchange effected, he disappears as

suddenly as he came.

 

 “It is impossible,” says Mr. Urquhart, “to witness the arrival of the

 many-tongued caravan at its resting-place for the night, and see,

 unladen and piled up together, the bales from such distant places--to

 glance over their very wrappers, and the strange marks and characters

 which they bear--without being amazed at so eloquent a contradiction

 of our preconceived notions of indiscriminate despotism and universal

 insecurity of the East. But while we observe the avidity with which

 our goods are sought, the preference now transferred from Indian to

 Birmingham muslins, from Golconda to Glasgow chintzes, from Damascus

 to Sheffield steel, from Cashmere shawls to English broadcloth; and

 while, at the same time, the energies of their commercial spirit are

 brought thus substantially before us; it is indeed impossible not to

 regret that a gulf of separation should have so long divided the East

 and the West, and equally impossible not to indulge in the hope and

 anticipation of a vastly extended traffic with the East, and of all

 the blessings which follow fast and welling in the wake of

 commerce.”--P. 133.

 

Among the “blessings” of the system is the fact that local places of

exchange no longer exist. The storekeeper who pays rent and taxes has

found himself unable to compete with the pedler who pays neither; and

the consequence is that the poor cultivator finds it impossible to

exchange his products, small as they are, for the commodities he

needs, except, on the occasional arrival of a caravan, and that has

generally proved far more likely to absorb the little money in

circulation, than any of the more bulky and less valuable products of

the earth.

 

As usual in purely agricultural countries, the whole body of

cultivators is hopelessly in debt, and the money-lender fleeces all.

If he aids the peasant before harvest, he must have an enormous

interest, and be paid in produce at a large discount from the market

price; The village communities are almost universally in debt, but to

them, as the security is good, the banker charges _only_ twenty per

cent. per annum. Turkey is the very paradise of middlemen--a

consequence of the absence of any mode of employment except in

cultivation or in trade; and the moral effect of this may be seen in

the following passage:--

 

 “If you see,” says Urquhart, “a Turk meditating in a corner, it is on

 some speculation--the purchase of a revenue farm, or the propriety of

 a loan at sixty per cent.; if you see pen or paper in his hand, it is

 making or checking an account; if there is a disturbance in the

 street, it is a disputed barter; whether in the streets or in-doors,

 whether in a coffeehouse, a serai, or a bazaar, whatever the rank,

 nation, language of the persons around you, traffic, barter, gain are

 the prevailing impulses; grusch, para, florin, lira, asper, amid the

 Babel of tongues, are the universally intelligible sounds.”--P. 138.

 

We have thus a whole people divided into two classes--the plunderers

and the plundered; and the cause of this may be found in the fact that

the owners and occupants of land have never been permitted to

strengthen themselves by the formation of that natural alliance

between the plough and the loom, the hammer and the harrow, so much

admired by Adam Smith. The government is as weak as the people, for it

is so entirely dependent on the bankers, that they may be regarded as

the real owners of the land and the people, taxing them at discretion;

and to them certainly enure all the profits of cultivation. As a

consequence of this, the land is almost valueless. A recent traveller

states that good land maybe purchased in the immediate vicinity of

Smyrna at six cents an acre, and at a little distance vast quantities

may be had for nothing. Throughout the world, the freedom of man has

grown in the ratio of the increase in the value of land, and that has

always grown in the ratio of the tendency to have the artisan take his

place by the side of the cultivator of the earth. Whatever tends to

prevent this natural association tends, therefore, to the debasement

and enslavement of man.

 

The weakness of Turkey, as regards foreign nations, is great, and it

increases every day.[54] Not only ambassadors, but consuls, beard it

in its own cities; and it is now even denied that she has _any right_

to adopt a system of trade different from that under which she has

become thus weakened. Perfect freedom of commerce is declared to be

“one of those immunities which we can resign on no account or pretext

whatever; it is a golden privilege, which we can never abandon.”[55]

 

Internal trade scarcely exists; and, as a natural consequence, the

foreign one is insignificant, the whole value of the exports being but

about thirty-three millions of dollars, or less than two dollars per

head. The total exports from Great Britain in the last year amounted

to but £2,221,000, ($11,500,000,) much of which was simply _en route_

for Persia; and this constitutes the great trade that has been built

up at so much cost to the people of Turkey, and that is to be

maintained as “a golden privilege” not to be abandoned! Not

discouraged by the result of past efforts, the same author looks

forward anxiously for the time when there shall be in Turkey no

employment in manufactures of any kind, and when the people shall be

exclusively employed in agriculture; and that time cannot, he thinks,

be far distant, as “a few pence more or less in the price of a

commodity will make the difference of purchasing or manufacturing at

home.”[56]

 

Throughout his book he shows that the rudeness of the machinery of

cultivation is in the direct ratio of the distance of the cultivator

from market; and yet he would desire that all the produce of the

country should go to a distant market to be exchanged, although the

whole import of iron at the present moment for the supply of a

population of almost twenty millions of people, possessing iron ore,

fuel, and unemployed labour in unlimited quantity, is but £2500 per

annum, or about a penny’s worth for every thirty persons! Need we

wonder at the character of the machinery, the poverty and slavery of

the people, the trivial amount of commerce, or at the weakness of a

government whose whole system looks to the exhaustion of the land, and

to the exclusion of that great middle class of working-men, to whom

the agriculturist has everywhere been indebted for his freedom?

 

The facts thus far given have been taken, as the reader will have

observed, from Mr. Urquhart’s work; and as that gentleman is a warm

admirer of the system denounced by Adam Smith, he cannot be suspected

of any exaggeration when presenting any of its unfavourable results.

Later travellers exhibit the nation as passing steadily onward toward

ruin, and the people toward a state of slavery the most, complete--the

necessary consequence of a policy that excludes the mechanic and

prevents the formation of a town population. Among the latest of those

travellers is Mr. Mac Farlane,[57] at the date of whose visit the silk

manufacture had entirely disappeared, and even the filatures for

preparing the raw silk were closed, weavers having become ploughmen,

and women and children having been totally deprived of employment. The

cultivators of silk had become entirely dependent on foreign markets

in which there existed no demand for the products of their land and

labour. England was then passing through one of her periodical crises,

and it had been deemed necessary to put down the prices of all

agricultural products, with a view to stop importation. On one

occasion, during Mr. Mac Farlane’s travels, there came a report that

silk had risen in England, and it produced a momentary stir and

animation, that, as he says, “flattered his national vanity to think

that an electric touch parting from London, the mighty heart of

commerce, should thus be felt in a few days at a place like Biljek.”

Such is commercial centralization! It renders the agriculturists of

the world mere slaves, dependent for food and clothing upon the will

of a few people, proprietors of a small amount of machinery, at “the

mighty heart of commerce.” At one moment speculation is rife, and silk

goes up in price, and then every effort is made to induce large

shipments of the raw produce of the world. At the next, money is said

to be scarce, and the shippers are ruined, as was, to so great an

extent, experienced by those who exported corn from this country in

1847.

 

At the date of the traveller’s first visit to Broussa, the villages

were numerous, and the silk manufacture was prosperous. At the second,

the silk works were stopped and their owners bankrupt, the villages

were gradually disappearing, and in the town itself scarcely a chimney

was left, while the country around presented to view nothing but

poverty and wretchedness. Everywhere, throughout the empire, the roads

are bad, and becoming worse, and the condition of the cultivator

deteriorates; for if he has a surplus to sell, most of its value at

market is absorbed by the cost of transportation, and if his crop is

short, prices rise so high that he cannot purchase. Famines are

therefore frequent, and child-murder prevails throughout all classes

of society. Population therefore diminishes, and the best lands are

abandoned, “nine-tenths” of them remaining untilled;[58] the natural

consequence of which is, that malaria prevails in many of those parts

of the country that once were most productive, and pestilence comes in

aid of famine for the extermination of this unfortunate people. Native

mechanics are nowhere to be found, there being no demand for them, and

the plough, the wine-press, and the oil-mill are equally rude and

barbarous. The product of labour is, consequently, most diminutive,

and its wages twopence a day, with a little food. The interest of

money varies from 25 to 50 per cent. per annum, and this rate is

frequently paid for the loan of bad seed that yields but little to

either land or labour.

 

With the decline of population and the disappearance of all the local

places of exchange, the pressure of the conscription becomes from year

to year more severe, and droves of men may be seen “chained like wild

beasts--free Osmanlees driven along the road like slaves to a

market”--free men, separated from wives and children, who are left to

perish of starvation amid the richest lands, that remain untilled

because of the separation of the artisan from the producer of food,

silk, and cotton. Internal commerce is trifling in amount, and the

power to pay for foreign merchandise has almost passed away. Land is

nearly valueless; and in this we find the most convincing proof of the

daily increasing tendency toward slavery, man having always become

enslaved as land has lost its value. In the great valley of

Buyuk-derè, once known as _the fair land_, a property of twenty miles

in circumference had shortly before his visit been purchased for less

than £1000, or $4800.[59] In another part of the country, one of

twelve miles in circumference had been purchased for a considerably

smaller sum.[60] The slave trade, black and white, had never been more

active;[61] and this was a necessary consequence of the decline in the

value of labour and land.

 

In this country, negro men are well fed, clothed, and lodged, and are

gradually advancing toward freedom. Population therefore increases,

although more slowly than would be the case were they enabled more to

combine their efforts for the improvement of their condition. In the

West Indies, Portugal, and Turkey, being neither well fed, clothed,

nor lodged, their condition declines; and as they can neither be

bought nor sold, they are allowed to die off, and population

diminishes as the tendency toward the subjugation of the labourer

becomes more and more complete. Which of these conditions tends most

to favour advance in civilization the reader may decide.

 

Chapter 12. How slavery grows in India

 

In no part of the world has there existed the same tendency to

voluntary association, the distinguishing mark of freedom, as in

India. In none have the smaller communities been to the same extent

permitted the exercise of self-government. Each Hindoo village had its

distinct organization, and under its simple and “almost patriarchal

arrangements,” says Mr. Greig,[62]--

 

 “The natives of Hindoostan seem to have lived from the earliest,

 down, comparatively speaking, to late times--if not free from the

 troubles and annoyances to which men in all conditions of society are

 more or less subject, still in the full enjoyment, each individual,

 of his property, and of a very considerable share of personal

 liberty. * * * Leave him in possession of the farm which his

 forefathers owned, and preserve entire the institutions to which he

 had from infancy been accustomed, and the simple Hindoo would give

 himself no concern whatever as to the intrigues and cabals which took

 place at the capital. Dynasties might displace one another;

 revolutions might recur; and the persons of his sovereigns might

 change every day; but so long as his own little society remained

 undisturbed, all other contingencies were to him subjects scarcely of

 speculation. To this, indeed, more than to any other cause, is to be

 ascribed the facility with which one conqueror after another has

 overrun different parts of India; which submitted, not so much

 because its inhabitants were wanting in courage, as because to the

 great majority among them it signified nothing by whom the reins of

 the supreme government were held. A third consequence of the village

 system has been one which men will naturally regard as advantageous

 or the reverse, according to the opinions which they hold, touching

 certain abstract points into which it is not necessary to enter here.

 Perhaps there are not to be found on the face of the earth, a race of

 human beings whose attachment to their native place will bear a

 comparison with that of the Hindoos. There are no privations which

 the Hindoo will hesitate to bear, rather than voluntarily abandon the

 spot where he was born; and if continued oppression drive him forth,

 he will return to it again after long years of exile with fresh

 fondness.”

 

The Mohammedan conquest left these simple and beautiful institutions

untouched. “Each Hindoo village,” says Col. Briggs, in his work on the

land tax--

 

 “Had its distinct municipality, and over a certain number of

 villages, or district, was an hereditary chief and accountant, both

 possessing great local influence and authority, and certain

 territorial domains or estates. The Mohammedans early saw the policy

 of not disturbing an institution so complete, and they availed

 themselves of the local influence of these officers to reconcile

 their subjects to their rule. * * * From the existence of these local

 Hindoo chiefs at the end of six centuries in all countries conquered

 by the Mohammedans, it is fair to conclude that they were cherished

 and maintained with great attention as the key-stone of their civil

 government. While the administration of the police, and the

 collection of the revenues, were left in the hands of these local

 chiefs, every part of the new territory was retained under military

 occupation by an officer of rank; and a considerable body of

 Mohammedan soldiers.* * * In examining the details of Mohammedan

 history, which has been minute in recording the rise and progress of

 all these kingdoms, we nowhere discover any attempt to alter the

 system originally adopted. The ministers, the nobles, and the

 military chiefs, all bear Mohammedan names and titles, but no account

 is given of the Hindoo institutions, being subverted, or Mohammedan

 officers, being employed in the minor, details, of the civil

 administration.

 

 “It would appear from this that the Moslems, so far from imposing

 their own laws upon their subjects, treated the customs of the latter

 with the utmost respect; and that they did so because experience

 taught them that their own interests were advanced by a line of

 policy so prudent.”

 

Local action and local combination are everywhere conspicuous in the

history of this country. With numerous rulers, some of whom to a

greater or less extent acknowledged the superiority of the Sovereign

of Delhi, the taxes required for their support were heavy, but they

were locally expended, and if the cultivator contributed too large a

portion of his grain, it was at least consumed in a neighbouring

market, and nothing went from off the land. Manufactures, too, were

widely spread, and thus was made a demand for the labour not required

in agriculture. “On the coast of Coromandel,” says Orme,[63] “and in

the province of Bengal, when at some distance from a high road or

principal town, it is difficult to find a village in which every man,

woman, and child is not employed in making a piece of cloth. At

present,” he continues, “much the greatest part of whole provinces are

employed in this single manufacture.” Its progress, as he says,

“includes no less than a description of the lives of half the

inhabitants of Indostan.” While employment was thus locally

subdivided, tending to enable neighbour to exchange with neighbour,

the exchanges between the producers of food, or of salt, in one part

of the country and the producers of cotton and manufacturers of cloth

in another, tended to the production of commerce with more distant

men, and this tendency was much increased by the subdivision of the

cotton manufacture itself. Bengal was celebrated for the finest

muslins, the consumption of which at Delhi, and in Northern India

generally, was large, while the Coromandel coast was equally

celebrated for the best chintzes and calicoes, leaving to Western

India the manufacture of strong and inferior goods of every kind.

Under these circumstances it is no matter of surprise that the country

was rich, and that its people, although often overtaxed, and sometimes

plundered by invading armies, were prosperous in a high degree.

 

Nearly a century has now elapsed since, by the battle of Plassey,

British power was established in India, and from that day local action

has tended to disappear, and centralization to take its place. From

its date to the close of the century there was a rapidly increasing

tendency toward having all the affairs of the princes and the people

settled by the representatives of the Company established in Calcutta,

and as usual in such cases, the country was filled with adventurers,

very many of whom were wholly without principle, men whose sole object

was that of the accumulation of fortune by any means, however foul, as

is well known by all who are familiar with the indignant denunciations

of Burke.[64]

 

England was thus enriched as India was impoverished, and as

centralization was more and more established.

 

Step by step the power of the Company was extended, and everywhere was

adopted the Hindoo principle that the sovereign was proprietor of the

soil, and sole landlord, and as such the government claimed to be

entitled to one-half of the gross produce of the land. “Wherever,”

says Mr. Rickards, long an eminent servant of the Company,

 

 “The British power supplanted that of the Mohammedans in Bengal, we

 did not, it is true, adopt the sanguinary part of their creed; but

 from the impure fountain of their financial system, did we, to our

 shame, claim the inheritance to a right to seize upon half the gross

 produce of the land as a tax; and wherever our arms have triumphed,

 we have invariably proclaimed this savage right: coupling it at the

 same time with the senseless doctrine of the proprietary right to

 these lands being also vested in the sovereign, in virtue of the

 right of conquest.”--_Rickards’s India_, vol. i, 275.

 

 Under the earlier Mohammedan sovereigns, this land-tax, now

 designated as rent, had been limited to a thirteenth, and from that

 to a sixth of the produce of the land; but in the reign of Akber

 (16th century) it was fixed at one-third, numerous other taxes being

 at the same time abolished. With the decline and gradual dissolution

 of the empire, the local sovereigns not only increased it, but

 revived the taxes that had been discontinued, and instituted others

 of a most oppressive kind; all of which were continued by the

 Company, while the land-tax was maintained at its largest amount.

 While thus imposing taxes at discretion, the Company had also a

 monopoly of trade, and it could dictate the prices of all it had to

 sell, as well as of all that it needed to buy; and here was a further

 and most oppressive tax, all of which was for the benefit of absentee

 landlords.

 

 With the further extension of power, the demands on the Company’s

 treasury increased without an increase of the power to meet them; for

 exhaustion is a natural consequence of absenteeism, or

 centralization, as has so well been proved in Ireland. The people

 became less able to pay the taxes, and as the government could not be

 carried on without revenue, a permanent settlement was made by Lord

 Cornwallis, by means of which all the rights of village proprietors,

 over a large portion of Bengal, were sacrificed in favour of the

 Zemindars, who were thus at once constituted great landed proprietors

 and absolute masters of a host of poor tenants, with power to punish

 at discretion those who were so unfortunate as not to be able to pay

 a rent the amount of which had no limit but that of the power to

 extort it. It was the middleman system of Ireland transplanted to

 India; but the results were at first unfavourable to the Zemindars,

 as the rents, for which they themselves were responsible to the

 government, were so enormous that all the rack-renting and all the

 flogging inflicted upon the poor cultivators could not enable them to

 pay; and but few years elapsed before the Zemindars themselves were

 sold out to make way for another set as keen and as hard-hearted as

 themselves. That system having failed to answer the purpose, it was

 next determined to arrest the extension of the permanent settlement,

 and to settle with each little ryot, or cultivator, to the entire

 exclusion of the village authorities, by whom, under the native

 governments, the taxes had uniformly been so equitably and

 satisfactorily distributed. The Ryotwar system was thus established,

 and how it has operated may be judged from the following sketch,

 presented by Mr. Fullerton, a member of the Council at Madras:--

 

 “Imagine the revenue leviable through the agency of one hundred

 thousand revenue officers, collected or remitted at their discretion,

 according to the occupant’s means of paying, whether from the produce

 of his land or his separate property; and in order to encourage every

 man to act as a spy on his neighbour, and report his means of paying,

 that he may eventually save himself from extra demand, imagine all

 the cultivators of a village liable at all times to a separate demand

 in order to make up for the failure of one or more individuals of the

 parish. Imagine collectors to every county, acting under the orders

 of a board, on the avowed principle of destroying all competition for

 labour by a general equalization of assessment, seizing and sending

 back runaways to each other. And, lastly, imagine the collector the

 sole magistrate or justice of the peace of the county, through the

 medium and instrumentality of whom alone any criminal complaint of

 personal grievance suffered by the subject can reach the superior

 courts. Imagine, at the same time, every subordinate officer employed

 in the collection of the land revenue to be a police officer, vested

 with the power to fine, confine, put in the stocks, and flog any

 inhabitant within his range, on any charge, without oath of the

 accuser, or sworn recorded evidence of the case.”[65]

 

Any improvement in cultivation produced an immediate increase of

taxation, so that any exertion on the part of the cultivator would

benefit the Company, and not himself. One-half of the gross produce

[66] may be assumed to have been the average annual rent, although, in

many cases it greatly exceeded that proportion. The Madras Revenue

Board, May 17th, 1817, stated that the “conversion of the government

share of the produce (of lands) is in some districts, as high as 60 or

70 per cent. of the whole.”[67]

 

It might be supposed that, having taken so large a share of the gross

produce, the cultivator would be permitted to exist on the remainder,

but such is not the case. Mr. Rickards gives [68] a list of sixty

other taxes, invented by the sovereigns, or their agents, many of

which he states to exist at the present day. Those who have any other

mode of employing either capital or labour, in addition to the

cultivation of their patches of land, as is very frequently the case,

are subject to the following taxes, the principle of which is

described as _excellent_ by one of the collectors, December 1st,

1812:--

 

 “The Veesabuddy, or tax on merchants, traders, and shopkeepers;

 Mohturfa, or tax on weavers, cotton cleaners, shepherds, goldsmiths,

 braziers, ironsmiths, carpenters, stone-cutters, &c.; and Bazeebab,

 consisting of smaller taxes annually rented out to the

 highest-bidder. The renter was thus constituted a petty chieftain,

 with power to exact fees at marriages, religious ceremonies; to

 inquire into and fine the misconduct of females in families, and

 other misdemeanours; and in the exercise of their privileges would

 often urge the plea of engagements to the Cirkar (government) to

 justify extortion. The details of these taxes are too long to be

 given in this place. The reader, however, may judge of the operation

 and character of all by the following selection of one, as described

 in the collector’s report:--’The mode of settling the Mohturfa on

 looms hitherto has been very minute; every circumstance of the

 weaver’s family is considered, the number of days which he devotes to

 his loom, the number of his children, the assistance which he

 receives from them, and the number and quality of the pieces which he

 can turn out in a month or year; so that, let him exert himself as he

 will, his industry will always be taxed to the highest degree.’ This

 mode always leads to such details that the government servants cannot

 enter into it, and the assessment of the tax is, in consequence, left

 a great deal too much to the Curnums of the villages. No weaver can

 possibly know what he is to pay to the Cirkar, till the demand come

 to be made for his having exerted himself through the year; and

 having turned out one or two pieces of cloth more than he did the

 year before, though his family and looms have been the same, is made

 the ground for his being charged a higher Mohturfa, and at last,

 instead of a professional, it becomes a real income tax.”[69]

 

The following will show that no mode of employing capital is allowed

to escape the notice of the tax-gatherer:--

 

 “The reader will, perhaps, better judge of the inquisitorial nature

 of one of these surveys, or pymashees, as they are termed in Malabar,

 by knowing that upward of seventy different kinds of buildings--the

 houses, shops, or warehouses of different castes and

 professions--were ordered to be entered in the survey accounts;

 besides the following ‘implements of professions’ which were usually

 assessed to the public revenue, viz.:

 

 “Oil-mills, iron manufactory, toddy-drawer’s stills, potter’s kiln,

 washerman’s stone, goldsmith’s tools, sawyer’s saw, toddy-drawer’s

 knives, fishing-nets, barber’s hones, blacksmith’s anvils, pack

 bullocks, cocoa-nut safe, small fishing-boats, cotton-beater’s bow,

 carpenter’s tools, large fishing-boats, looms, salt storehouse.”[70]

 

 “If the landlord objected to the assessment on trees as old and past

 bearing, they were, one and all, ordered to be cut down, nothing

 being allowed to stand that did not pay revenue to the state. To

 judge of this order, it should be mentioned that the trees are

 valuable, and commonly used for building, in Malabar. To fell all the

 timber on a man’s estate when no demand existed for it in the market,

 and merely because its stream of revenue had been drained, is an odd

 way of conferring benefits and protecting property.”[71]

 

 “Having myself,” says Mr. Rickards, “been principal collector of

 Malabar, and made, during my residence in the province, minute

 inquiries into the produce and assessments of lands, I was enabled to

 ascertain beyond all doubt, and to satisfy the revenue board at

 Madras, that in the former survey of the province, which led to the

 rebellion, lands and produce were inserted in the pretended survey

 account which absolutely did not exist, while other lands were

 assessed to the revenue at more than their actual produce.”[72]

 

 “Fifty per cent. on the assessment is allowed,” says Mr.

 Campbell,[73] “as a reward to any informer of concealed cultivation,

 &c.; and it is stated that there are, ‘in almost every village,

 dismissed accountants desirous of being re-employed, and unemployed

 servants who wish to bring themselves to notice,’ whose services as

 informers can be relied on.”

 

A system like this, involving the most prying supervision of the

affairs of each individual, and in which, in settling the tax to be

paid, “the collector takes into consideration the number of children

[74] to be supported, makes the poor ryot a mere slave to the

collector, and with the disadvantage that the latter has no pecuniary

interest in the preservation of his life, whereas the death of a

slave, who constitutes a part of the capital of his owner, is a severe

loss.”

 

The tendency thus far has been, as we see, to sweep away the rights

not only of kings and princes, but of all the native authorities, and

to centralize in the hands of foreigners in Calcutta the power to

determine for the cultivator, the artisan, or the labourer, what work

he should do, and how much of its products he might retain, thus

placing the latter in precisely the position of a mere slave to people

who could feel no interest in him but simply as a tax-payer, and, who

were represented by strangers in the country, whose authority was

everywhere used by the native officers in their employ, to enable them

to accumulate fortunes for themselves.

 

The poor manufacturer, as heavily taxed as the cultivator of the

earth, found himself compelled to obtain advances from his employers,

who, in their turn, claimed, as interest, a large proportion of the

little profit that was made. The Company’s agents, like the native

merchants, advanced the funds necessary to produce the goods required

for Europe, and the poor workmen are described as having been “in a

state of dependence almost amounting to servitude, enabling the

resident to obtain his labour at his own price.”[75]

 

In addition to the taxes already described, a further one was

collected at local custom-houses, on all exchanges between the several

parts of the country; and to these were again added others imposed by

means of monopolies of tobacco and opium, and of salt, one of the most

important necessaries of life. The manufacture of coarse salt from the

earth was strictly prohibited.[76] The salt lakes of the upper country

furnish a supply so great that it is of little value on the spot;[77]

but these lakes being even yet in the possession of native princes,

the monopoly could then, and can now, be maintained only by aid of

strong bands of revenue officers, whose presence renders that which is

almost worthless on one side of an imaginary line so valuable on the

other side of it that it requires the produce of the sixth part of the

labour of the year to enable the poor Hindoo to purchase salt for his

family. Along the seashore salt is abundantly furnished by nature, the

solar heat causing a constant deposition of it; but the mere fact of

collecting it was constituted an offence punishable by fine and

imprisonment, and the quantity collected by the Company’s officers was

limited to that required for meeting the demand at a monopoly price,

all the remainder being regularly destroyed, lest the poor ryot should

succeed in obtaining for himself, at cost, such a supply as was needed

to render palatable the rice which constituted almost his only food.

The system has since been rendered less oppressive, but even now the

duty is ten times greater than it was under enlightened Mohammedan

sovereigns.[78]

 

Such being the mode of collecting the revenue, we may now look to its

distribution. Under the native princes it was, to a great extent,

locally-expended, whereas, under the new system, all the collections

by government or by individuals tended to Calcutta, to be there

disposed of. Thence no inconsiderable portion of it passed to England,

and thus was established a perpetual drain that certainly could not be

estimated at less than four millions of pounds sterling per annum, and

cannot be placed, in the last century, at less than four hundred

millions of pounds, or two thousand millions of dollars.

 

The difference between an absentee landlord expending at a distance

all his rents, and a resident one distributing it again among his

tenants in exchange for services, and the difference in the value of

the products of the land resulting from proximity to market, are so

well exhibited in the following passage from a recent work on India,

that the reader cannot fail to profit by its perusal:--

 

 “The great part of the wheat, grain, and other exportable land

 produce which the people consume, as far as we have yet come, is

 drawn from our Nerbudda districts, and those of Malwa which border

 upon them; and _par consequent_, the price has been rapidly

 increasing as we recede from them in our advance northward. Were the

 soil of those Nerbudda districts, situated as they are at such a

 distance from any great market for their agricultural products, as

 bad as it is in the parts of Bundelcund that I came over, no net

 surplus revenue could possibly be drawn from them in the present

 state of arts and industry. The high prices paid here for land

 produce, arising from the necessity of drawing a great part of what

 is consumed from such distant lands, enables the Rajahs of these

 Bundelcund states to draw the large revenue they do. These chiefs

 expend the whole of their revenue in the maintenance of public

 establishments of one kind or other; and as the essential articles of

 subsistence, _wheat_ and _grain, &c._, which are produced in their

 own districts, or those immediately around them, are not sufficient

 for the supply of these establishments, they must draw them from

 distant territories. All this produce is brought on the backs of

 bullocks, because there is no road from the districts whence they

 obtain it, over which a wheeled carriage can be drawn with safety;

 and as this mode of transit is very expensive, the price of the

 produce, when it reaches the capitals, around which these local

 establishments are concentrated, becomes very high. They must pay a

 price equal to the collective cost of purchasing and bringing this

 substance from the most distant districts, to which they are at any

 time obliged to have recourse for a supply, or they will not be

 supplied; and as there cannot be two prices for the same thing in the

 same market, the wheat and grain produced in the neighbourhood of one

 of these Bundelcund capitals, fetch as high a price there as that

 brought from the most remote districts on the banks of the Nerbudda

 river; while it costs comparatively nothing to bring it from the

 former lands to the markets. Such lands, in consequence, yield a rate

 of rent much greater compared with their natural powers of fertility

 than those of the remotest districts whence produce is drawn for

 these markets or capitals; and as all the lands are the property of

 the Rajahs, they draw all these rents as revenue.

 

 “Were we to take this revenue, which the Rajahs now enjoy, in tribute

 for the maintenance of public establishments concentrated at distant

 seats, all these local establishments would of course be at once

 disbanded; and all the effectual demand which they afford for the raw

 agricultural produce of distant districts would cease. The price of

 the produce would diminish in proportion; and with it the value of

 the lands of the districts around such capitals. Hence the folly of

 conquerors and paramount powers, from the days of the Greeks and

 Romans down to those of Lord Hastings and Sir John Malcolm, who were

 all bad political economists, supposing that conquered and ceded

 territories could always be made to yield to a foreign state the same

 amount of gross revenue they had paid to their domestic government,

 whatever their situation with reference to the markets for their

 produce--whatever the state of their arts and their industry--and

 whatever the character and extent of the local establishments

 maintained out of it. The settlements of the land revenue in all the

 territories acquired in central India during the Mahratta war, which

 ended, in 1817, were made upon the supposition, that the lands would

 continue to pay the same rate of rent under the new, as they had paid

 under the old government, uninfluenced by the diminution of all local

 establishments, civil and military, to one-tenth of what they had

 been; that, under the new order of things, all the waste lands must

 be brought into tillage; and be able to pay as high a rate of rent as

 before tillage; and, consequently, that the aggregate available net

 revenue must greatly and rapidly increase! Those who had the making

 of the settlements, and the governing of these new territories, did

 not consider that the diminution of every _establishment_ was the

 removal of a _market_--of an effectual demand for land produce; and

 that when all the waste lands should be brought into tillage, the

 whole would deteriorate in fertility, from the want of fallows, under

 the prevailing system of agriculture, which afforded the lands no

 other means of renovation from over cropping. The settlements of the

 land revenue which were made throughout our new acquisitions upon

 these fallacious assumptions, of course failed. During a series of

 quinquennial settlements, the assessment has been everywhere

 gradually reduced to about two-thirds of what it was when our rule

 began; and to less than one-half of what Sir John Malcolm, and all

 the other local authorities, and even the worthy Marquis of Hastings

 himself, under the influence of their opinions, expected it would be.

 The land revenues of the native princes of central India, who reduced

 their public establishments, which the new order of things seemed to

 render useless, and thereby diminished their only markets for the raw

 produce of their lands, have been everywhere falling off in the same

 proportion; and scarcely one of them now draws two-thirds of the

 income he drew from the same lands in 1817.

 

 “There are in the valley of the Nerbudda, districts that yield a

 great deal more produce every year than either Orcha, Jansee, or

 Duteea; and yet, from the want of the same domestic markets, they do

 not yield one-fourth of the amount of land revenue. The lands are,

 however, rated equally high to the assessment, in proportion to their

 value to the farmers and cultivators. To enable them to yield a

 larger revenue to government, they require to have larger

 establishments as markets for land produce. These establishments may

 be either public, and paid by government, or they may be private, as

 manufactories, by which the land produce of these districts would be

 consumed by people employed in investing the value of their labour in

 commodities suited to the demand of distant markets, and more

 valuable than land produce in proportion to their weight and bulk.

 These are the establishments which government should exert itself to

 introduce and foster, since the valley of the Nerbudda, in addition

 to a soil exceedingly fertile, has in its whole line, from its source

 to its embouchure, rich beds of coal reposing for the use of future

 generations, under the sandstone of the Sathpore and Vindhya ranges;

 and beds no less rich of very fine iron. These advantages have not

 yet been justly appreciated; but they will be so by and by.”[79]

 

From the concluding lines of this extract the reader will see that

India is abundantly supplied with fuel and iron ore, and that if she

has not good machinery, the deficiency is not chargeable to nature. At

the close of the last century cotton abounded, and to so great an

extent was the labour of men, women, and children applied to its

conversion into cloth, that, even with their imperfect machinery, they

not only supplied the home demand for the beautiful tissues of Dacca

and the coarse products of Western India, but they exported to other

parts of the world no less than 200,000,000 of pieces per annum.[80]

Exchanges with every part of the world were so greatly in their favour

that a rupee which would now sell for but 1s. 10d. or 44 cents, was

then worth 2s. 8d. or 64 cents. The Company had a monopoly of

collecting taxes in India, but in return it preserved to the people

the control of their domestic market, by aid of which they were

enabled to convert their rice, their salt, and their cotton, into

cloth that could be cheaply carried to the most remote parts of the

world. Such protection was needed, because while England prohibited

the export of even a single collier who might instruct the people of

India in the mode of mining coal--of a steam engine to pump water or

raise coal, or a mechanic who could make one--of a worker in iron who

might smelt the ore--of a spinning-jenny or power-loom, or of an

artisan who could give instruction in the use of such machines--and

thus systematically prevented them from keeping pace with improvement

in the rest of the world,--she at the same time imposed very heavy

duties on the produce of Indian looms received in England. The day was

at hand, however, when that protection was to disappear. The Company

did not, it was said, export sufficiently largely of the produce of

British industry, and in 1813 the trade to India was thrown open--_but

the restriction on the export of machinery and artisans was maintained

in full force_; and thus were the poor and ignorant people of that

country exposed to “unlimited competition,” with a people possessed of

machinery ten times more effective than their own, while not only by

law deprived of the power to purchase machinery, but also of the power

of competing in the British market with the produce of British looms.

Further than this, every loom in India, and every machine calculated

to aid the labourer, was subject to a tax that increased with every

increase in the industry of its owner, and in many cases absorbed the

whole profit derived from its use.[81] Such were the circumstances

under which the poor Hindoo was called upon to encounter, unprotected,

the “unlimited competition” of foreigners in his own market. It was

freedom of trade all on one side. Four years after, the export of

cottons from Bengal still amounted to £1,659,994,[82] but ten years

later it had declined to £285,121; and at the end of twenty years we

find a whole year pass by without the export of a single piece of

cotton cloth from Calcutta, the whole of the immense trade that

existed but half a century since having disappeared. What were the

measures used for the accomplishment of the work of destroying a

manufacture that gave employment and food to so many millions of the

poor people of the country, will be seen on a perusal of the following

memorial, which shows that while India was denied machinery, and also

denied access to the British market, she was forced to receive British

cottons free of all duty:--

 

 _”Petition of Natives of Bengal, relative to Duties on Cotton and

 Silk._

 

 “Calcutta, 1st Sept. 1831.

 

 “To the Right Honourable the Lords of His Majesty’s Privy Council for

 Trade, &c.

 

 “The humble Petition of the undersigned Manufacturers and Dealers in

 Cotton and Silk Piece Goods, the fabrics of Bengal;

 

 “SHOWETH--That of late years your Petitioners have found their

 business nearly superseded by the introduction of the fabrics of

 Great Britain into Bengal, the importation of which augments every

 year, to the great prejudice of the native manufacturers.

 

 “That the fabrics of Great Britain are consumed in Bengal, without

 any duties being levied thereon to protect the native fabrics.

 

 “That the fabrics of Bengal are charged with the following duties

 when they are used in Great Britain--

 

    “On manufactured cottons, 10 per cent. On manufactured silks,

     24 per cent.

 

 “Your Petitioners most humbly implore your Lordships’ consideration

 of these circumstances, and they feel confident that no disposition

 exists in England to shut the door against the industry of any part

 of the inhabitants of this great empire.

 

 “They therefore pray to be admitted to the privilege of British

 subjects, and humbly entreat your Lordships to allow the cotton and

 silk fabrics of Bengal to be used in Great Britain ‘free of duty,’ or

 at the same rate which may be charged on British fabrics consumed in

 Bengal.

 

 “Your Lordships must be aware of the immense advantages the British

 manufacturers derive from their skill in constructing and using

 machinery, which enables them to undersell the unscientific

 manufacturers of Bengal in their own country: and, although your

 Petitioners are not sanguine in expecting to derive any great

 advantage from having their prayer granted, their minds would feel

 gratified by such a manifestation of your Lordships’ good-will toward

 them; and such an instance of justice to the natives of India would

 not fail to endear the British government to them.

 

 “They therefore confidently trust that your Lordships’ righteous

 consideration will be extended to them as British subjects, without

 exception of sect, country, or colour.

 

    “And your Petitioners, as in duty bound, will ever pray.”

    [Signed by 117 natives of high respectability.]

 

The object sought to be accomplished would not have, however, been

attained by granting the prayer of this most reasonable and humble

petition. When the export of cotton, woollen, and steam machinery was

prohibited, it was done with a view of compelling all the wool of the

world to come to England to be spun and woven, thence to be returned

to be worn by those who raised it--thus depriving the people of the

world of all power to apply their labour otherwise than in taking from

the earth cotton, sugar, indigo, and other commodities for the supply

of the great “workshop of the world.” How effectually that object has

been accomplished in India, will be seen from the following facts.

From the date of the opening of the trade in 1813, the domestic

manufacture and the export of cloth have gradually declined until the

latter has finally ceased, and the export of raw cotton to England has

gradually risen until it has attained a height of about sixty millions

of pounds,[83] while the import of twist from England has risen to

twenty-five millions of pounds, and of cloth, to two hundred and sixty

millions of yards; weighing probably fifty millions of pounds, which,

added to the twist, make seventy-five millions, requiring for their

production somewhat more than eighty millions of raw cotton. We see

thus that every pound of the raw material sent to England is returned.

The cultivator receives for it one penny, and when it returns to him

in the form of cloth, he pays for it from one to two shillings, the

whole difference being absorbed in the payment of the numerous

brokers, transporters, manufacturers, and operatives, men, women, and

children, that have thus been interposed between the producer and the

consumer. The necessary consequence of this has been that everywhere

manufactures have disappeared. Dacca, one of the principal seats of

the cotton manufacture, contained 90,000 houses, but its trade had

already greatly fallen off even at the date of the memorial above

given, and its splendid buildings, factories, and churches are now a

mass of ruins and overgrown with jungle. The cotton of the district

found itself compelled to go to England that it might there be twisted

and sent back again, thus performing a voyage of 20,000 miles in

search of the little spindle, because it was a part of the British

policy not to permit the spindle anywhere to take its place by the

side of the cultivator of cotton.

 

The change thus effected has been stated in a recent official report

to have been attended with ruin and distress, to which “no parallel

can be found in the annals of commerce.” What were the means by which

it was effected is shown in the fact that at this period Sir Robert

Peel stated that in Lancashire, _children_ were employed fifteen and

seventeen hours per day during the week, and on Sunday morning, from

six until twelve, cleaning the machinery. In Coventry, ninety-six

hours in the week was the time usually required; and of those

employed, many obtained but 2s. 9d.--66 cents--for a week’s wages. The

object to be accomplished was that of underworking the poor Hindoo,

and driving him from the market of the world, after which he was to be

driven from his own. The mode of accomplishment was that of cheapening

labour and enslaving the labourer at home and abroad.

 

With the decline of manufactures there has ceased to be a demand for

the services of women or children in the work of conversion, and they

are forced either to remain idle, or to seek employment in the field;

and here we have one of the distinguishing marks of a state of

slavery. The men, too, who were accustomed to fill up the intervals of

other employments in pursuits connected with the cotton manufacture,

were also driven to the field--and all demand for labour, physical or

intellectual, was at an end, except so far as was needed for raising

rice, indigo, sugar, or cotton. The rice itself they were not

permitted to clean, being debarred therefrom by a duty double that

which was paid on paddy, or rough rice, on its import into England.

The poor grower of cotton, after paying to the government

seventy-eight per cent.[84] of the product of his labour, found

himself deprived of the power to trade directly with the man of the

loom, and forced into “unlimited competition” with the better

machinery and almost untaxed labour of our Southern States; and

thereby subjected to “the mysterious variations of foreign markets” in

which the fever of speculation was followed by the chill of revulsion

with a rapidity and frequency that set at naught all calculation. If

our crops were small, his English customers would take his cotton; but

when he sent over more next year, there had, perhaps, been a good

season here, and the Indian article became an absolute drug in the

market. It was stated some time since, in the House of Commons, that

one gentleman, Mr. Turner, had thrown £7000 worth of Indian cotton

upon a dunghill, because he could find no market for it.

 

It will now readily be seen that the direct effect of thus

_compelling_ the export of cotton from India was to increase the

quantity pressing on the market of England, and thus to lower the

price of all the cotton of the world, including that required for

domestic consumption. The price of the whole Indian crop being thus

rendered dependent on that which could be realized for a small surplus

that would have no existence but for the fact that the domestic

manufacture had been destroyed, it will readily be seen how enormous

has been the extent of injury inflicted upon the poor cultivator by

the forcible separation of the plough and the loom, and the

destruction of the power of association. Again, while the price of

cotton is fixed in England, there, too, is fixed the price of cloth,

and such is the case with the sugar and the indigo to the production

of which these poor people are forced to devote themselves; and thus

are they rendered the mere slaves of distant men, who determine what

they shall receive for all they have to sell, and what they shall pay

for all they require to purchase. Centralization and slavery go thus

always hand in hand with each other.

 

The ryots are, as we see, obliged to pay sixteen or eighteen pence for

the pound of cotton that has yielded them but one penny; and all this

difference is paid for the labour of other people while idle

themselves.

 

 “A great part of the time of the labouring population in India is,”

 says Mr. Chapman,[85] “spent in idleness. I don’t say this to blame

 them in the smallest degree. Without the means of exporting heavy and

 crude surplus agricultural produce, and with scanty means, whether of

 capital, science, or manual skill, for elaborating on the spot

 articles fitted to induce a higher state of enjoyment and of industry

 in the mass of the people, they have really no inducement to exertion

 beyond that which is necessary to gratify their present and very

 limited wishes; those wishes are unnaturally low, inasmuch as they do

 not afford the needful stimulus to the exercise requisite to

 intellectual and moral improvement; and it is obvious that there is

 no remedy for this but extended intercourse. Meanwhile, probably the

 half of the human time and energy of India runs to mere waste. Surely

 we need not wonder at the poverty of the country.”

 

Assuredly we need not. They are idle perforce. With indifferent means

of communication, their cotton and their food _could readily travel in

the form of cloth_, and they could consume liberally of food and

clothing; but they find themselves now forced to export every thing in

its rudest form, and this they are to do in a country that is almost

without roads. The manner in which these raw products now travel may

be seen on a perusal of the following passage from the London

_Economist_:--

 

 “The cotton is brought on oxen, carrying 160 pounds each, at the

 extreme rate, in fair weather, of seven miles a day for a

 continuance, and at a price of about 5s. for each hundred miles. If

 we take the average distance to Mirzapore at 500 miles, each pound of

 cotton costs in transit alone above 2-1/2 d. It has thence to be

 borne by water-carriage nearly 800 miles farther on to Calcutta. * * *

 The great cotton-growing districts are in the northern portion of

 the Peninsula, embracing Guzerat, and a vast tract called the Deccan,

 lying between the Satpoora range of hills and the course of the

 Kishna River. General Briggs says--’The cotton from the interior of

 the country to the coast at Bombay occupies a continuous journey of

 from one to two months, according to the season of the year; while in

 the rains the route is wholly impassable, and the traffic of the

 country is at a stand.’

 

 “In the absence of a defined road, even the carriers, with their

 pack-cattle, are compelled to travel by daylight, to prevent the loss

 of their bullocks in the jungles they have to pass through, and this

 under a burning sun of from 100 to 140 degrees Fahrenheit. The droves

 of oxen are never so few as one hundred, and sometimes exceed a

 thousand. Every morning after daylight each animal has to be saddled,

 and the load lifted on him by two men, one on each side; and before

 they are all ready to move the sun has attained a height which

 renders the heat to an European oppressive. The whole now proceeds at

 the rate of about two miles an hour, and seldom performs a journey of

 more than eight miles; but, as the horde rests every fourth day, the

 average distance is but six miles a day. If the horde is overtaken by

 rain, the cotton, saturated by moisture, becomes heavy, and the black

 clayey soil, through which the whole line of road lies, sinks under

 the feet of a man above the ankle, and under that of a laden ox to

 the knees.

 

 “In this predicament the cargo of cotton lies sometimes for weeks on

 the ground, and the merchant is ruined.”

 

 “So miserably bad,” says another writer, “are the existing means of

 communication with the interior, that many of the most valuable

 articles of produce are, _for want of carriage and a market, often

 allowed to perish on the farm_, while the cost of that which found

 its way to the port was enormously enhanced; but the quantity did not

 amount to above 20 per cent. of the whole of the produce, the

 remainder of the articles always being greatly deteriorated.”

 

It will scarcely be difficult now to understand why it is that cotton

yields the cultivator but a penny per pound. Neither will it be

difficult, seeing that the local manufacturers have every where been

ruined, to understand why the producer of the more bulky food is in a

condition that is even worse, now that the consumer has disappeared

from his side. If the crop is large, grain is a drug for which

scarcely any price can be obtained;[86] and if it is small, the people

perish, by thousands and ten of thousands, of famine, because, in the

existing state of the roads, there can be little or no exchange of raw

products. In the first case the cultivator is ruined, because it

requires almost the whole crop to pay the taxes. In the other he is

starved; and all this is a necessary consequence of a system that

excludes the great middle class of mechanics and other working-men,

and resolves a great nation into a mass of wretched cultivators,

slaves to a few grasping money lenders. Under such circumstances, the

accumulation of any thing like capital is impossible. “None,” says

Colonel Sleeman,[87] “have stock equal to half their rent.” They are

dependent everywhere, on the produce of the year, and however small

may be its amount, the taxes must be paid, and of all that thus goes

abroad nothing is returned. The soil gets nothing.[88] It is not

manured, nor can it be under a system of absenteeism like this, and

its fertility everywhere declines, as is shown by the following

extracts:--

 

 “Formerly, the governments kept no faith with their land-holders and

 cultivators, exacting ten rupees where they had bargained for five,

 whenever they found the crops good; but, in spite of all this _zolm_,

 (oppression,) there was then more _burkut_ (blessings from above)

 than now. The lands yielded more returns to the cultivator, and he

 could maintain his little family better upon five acres than he can

 now upon ten.[89]

 

 “The land requires rest from labour, as well as men and bullocks; and

 if you go on sowing wheat and other exhausting crops, it will go on

 yielding less and less returns, and at last will not be worth the

 tilling.”[90]

 

 “There has been a manifest falling off in the returns.”[91]

 

The soil is being exhausted, and every thing necessarily goes

backward. Trees are cut down, but none are planted; and the former

sites of vast groves are becoming arid wastes, a consequence of which

is, that droughts become from year to year more frequent.

 

 “The clouds,” says Colonel Sleeman,[92] “brought up from the southern

 ocean by the south-east trade-wind are attracted, as they pass over

 the island, by the forests in the interior, and made to drop their

 stores in daily refreshing showers. In many other parts of the world,

 governments have now become aware of this mysterious provision of

 nature, and have adopted measures to take advantage of it for the

 benefit of the people; and the dreadful sufferings to which the

 people of those of our districts, which have been the most denuded of

 their trees, have been of late years exposed from the want of rain in

 due season, may, perhaps, induce our Indian government, to turn its

 thoughts to the subject.”

 

In former times extensive works were constructed for irrigating the

land, but they are everywhere going to ruin--thus proving that

agriculture cannot flourish in the absence of the mechanic arts:

 

 “In Candeish, very many bunds [river-banks formed for purposes of

 irrigation] which were kept in repair under former governments, have,

 under ours, fallen to decay; nevertheless, not only has the

 population increased considerably under our rule, but in 1846 or

 1847, the collector was obliged to grant remission of land tax,

 ‘because the abundance of former years lay stagnating in the

 province, and the low prices of grain from that cause prevented the

 ryots from being able to pay their fixed land assessment.’”[93]

 

We have here land abandoned and the cultivator ruined for want of a

market for food, and wages falling for want of a market for labour;

and yet these poor people are paying for English food and English

labour employed in converting into cloth the cotton produced alongside

of the food--and they are ruined because they have so many middlemen

to pay that the producer of cotton can obtain little food, and the

producer of food can scarcely pay his taxes, and has nothing to give

for cloth. Every thing tends, therefore, toward barbarism, and, as in

the olden time of England and of Europe generally, famines become

steadily more numerous and more severe, as is here shown:--

 

 “Some of the finest tracts of land have been forsaken, and given up

 to the untamed beasts of the jungle. The motives to industry have

 been destroyed. The soil seems to lie under a curse. Instead of

 yielding abundance for the wants of its own population, and the

 inhabitants of other regions, it does not keep in existence its own

 children. It becomes the burying-place of millions, who die upon its

 bosom crying for bread. In proof of this, turn your eyes backward

 upon the scenes of the past year. Go with me into the north-western

 provinces of the Bengal presidency, and I will show you the bleaching

 skeletons of five hundred thousand human beings, who perished of

 hunger in the space of a few short months. Yes, died of hunger in

 what has been justly called the granary of the world. Bear with me,

 if I speak of the scenes which were exhibited during the prevalence

 of this famine. The air for miles was poisoned by the effluvia

 emitted from the putrefying bodies of the dead. The rivers were

 choked with the corpses thrown into their channels. Mothers cast

 their little ones beneath the rolling waves, because they would not

 see them draw their last gasp and feel them stiffen in their arms.

 The English in the city were prevented from taking their customary

 evening drives. Jackalls and vultures approached, and fastened upon

 the bodies of men, women, and children, before life was extinct.

 Madness, disease, despair stalked abroad, and no human power present

 to arrest their progress. _It was the carnival of death!_ And this

 occurred in British India--in the reign of Victoria the First! Nor

 was the event extraordinary and unforeseen. Far from it: 1835-36

 witnessed a famine in the northern provinces: 1833 beheld one to the

 eastward: 1822-23 saw one in the Deccan. They have continued to

 increase in frequency and extent under our sway for more than half a

 century.”[94]

 

The famine of 1838 is thus described by Mr. George Thompson, late M.

P., on the testimony of a gentleman of high respectability:

 

 “The poorer houses were entirely unroofed, the thatches having been

 given to feed the cattle, which had nevertheless died; so that cattle

 had disappeared altogether from the land. He says that a few

 attenuated beings, more like skeletons than human creatures, were

 seen hovering about among the graves of those who had been snatched

 away by the famine; that desertion was everywhere visible, and that

 the silence of death reigned. In one of the villages, he says, an old

 man from whom they had bought a goat during their former visit, in

 1833, was the only survivor of the whole community except his

 brother’s son, whom he was cherishing and endeavouring to keep alive,

 and these two had subsisted altogether upon the eleemosynary bounty

 of travellers. The courier of Lord Auckland had informed this

 gentleman that when the governor-general passed through that part of

 the country the roads were lined on either side with heaps of dead

 bodies, and that they had not unfrequently to remove those masses of

 unburied human beings, ere the governor-general could proceed onward

 with his suite; and that every day from 2000 to 3000 famishing

 wretches surrounded and followed the carriages, to whom he dealt out

 a scanty meal; and on one occasion the horse of the courier took

 fright, and on the cause being ascertained--what was it? It was found

 to be the lifeless body of a man who had died with his hand in his

 mouth, from which he had already devoured the fingers.”[95]

 

The more severe the pressure on the poor ryot, the greater is the

power of the few who are always ready to profit by the losses of their

neighbours. These poor people are obliged to borrow money on their

growing crops, the prices of which are regulated by the will of the

lender rather than by the standard of the market, and the rate of

interest which the cultivators pay for these loans is often not less

than 40 or 50 per cent.

 

A recent traveller says of the unfortunate cultivator--

 

 “Always oppressed, ever in poverty, the ryot is compelled to seek the

 aid of the mahajun, or native money-lender. This will frequently be

 the talukdhar, or sub-renter, who exacts from the needy borrower

 whatever interest he thinks the unfortunate may he able to pay him,

 often at the rate of one per cent. per week. The accounts of these

 loans are kept by the mahajuns, who, aware of the deep ignorance of

 their clients, falsify their books, without fear of detection. In

 this way, no matter how favourable the season, how large the crop,

 the grasping mahajun is sure to make it appear that the _whole_ is

 due to him; for he takes it at his own value. So far from Mr. Burke

 having overstated the case of the oppression of the ryots, on the

 trial of Warren Hastings, when he said that the tax-gatherer took

 from them eighteen shillings in every pound, he was really within the

 mark. At the conclusion of each crop-time, the grower of rice or

 cotton is made to appear a debtor to his superior, who thereupon

 provided the ryot appears able to toil on for another

 season--advances more seed for sowing, and a little more rice to keep

 the labourer and his family from absolute starvation. But should

 there be any doubt as to the health and strength of the

 tenant-labourer, he is mercilessly turned from his land and his mud

 hut, and left to die on the highway.”

 

This is slavery, and under such a system how could the wretched people

be other than slaves? The men have no market for their labour, and the

women and children must remain idle or work in the field, as did, and

do, the women of Jamaica; and all because they are compelled

everywhere to exhaust the soil in raising crops to be sent to a

distance to be consumed, and finally to abandon the land, even where

they do not perish of famine. Mr. Chapman informs us that--

 

 “Even in the valley of the Ganges, where the population is in some

 districts from 600 to 800 to the square mile, one-third of the

 cultivable lands are not cultivated; and in the Deecan, from which we

 must chiefly look for increased supplies of cotton, the population,

 amounting to about 100 to the square mile, is maintained by light

 crops, grown on little more than half the cultivable land.”[96]

 

Elsewhere he tells us that of _the cultivable surface of all India

one-half is waste_.[97] Bishop Heber informs us of the “impenetrable

jungle” that now surrounds the once great manufacturing city of Dacca;

and the Bombay Times reminds its English readers of the hundreds of

thousands of acres of rich land that are lying waste, and that might

be made to produce cotton.

 

When population and wealth diminish it is always the rich soils that

are first abandoned, as is shown in the Campagna of Rome, in the

valley of Mexico, and in the deltas of the Ganges and the Nile.

Without association they could never have been brought into

cultivation, and with the disappearance of the power to associate they

are of necessity allowed to relapse into their original condition.

Driven back to the poor soils and forced to send abroad the product,

their wretched cultivator becomes poorer from day to day, and the less

he obtains the more he becomes a slave to the caprices of his

landlord, and the more is he thrown upon the mercy of the

money-lender, who lends _on good security_ at three per cent. per

month, but _from him_ must have fifty or a hundred per cent. for a

loan until harvest. That under such circumstances the wages of labour

should be very low, even where the wretched people are employed, must

be a matter of course. In some places the labourer has two and in

others three rupees, or less than a dollar and a half, per month. The

officers employed on the great zemindary estates have from three to

four rupees, and that this is a high salary, is proved by the fact

that the police receive but 48 rupees ($23) per annum, out of which

they feed and clothe themselves! Such are the rewards of labour in a

country possessing every conceivable means of amassing wealth, and

they become less from year to year. “It could not be too universally

known,” said Mr. Bright in the House of Commons, two years since,

 

 “That the cultivators of the soil were in a very unsatisfactory

 condition; that they were, in truth, in a condition of extreme and

 almost universal poverty. All testimony concurred upon that point. He

 would call the attention of the house to the statement of a

 celebrated native of India, the Rajah Rammohun Roy, who about twenty

 years ago published a pamphlet in London, in which he pointed out the

 ruinous effects of the zemindary system, and the oppression

 experienced by the ryots in the presidencies both of Bombay and

 Madras. After describing the state of matters generally, he added,

 ‘Such was the melancholy condition of the agricultural labourers,

 that it always gave him the greatest pain to allude to it.’ Three

 years afterward, Mr. Shore, who was a judge in India, published a

 work which was considered as a standard work till now, and he stated

 that ‘the British Government was not regarded in a favourable light

 by the native population of India,’--that a system of taxation and

 extortion was carried on ‘unparalleled in the annals of any country.

 Then they had the authority of an American planter, Mr. Finnie, who

 was in India in 1840, and who spoke of the deplorable condition of

 the cultivators of the soil, and stated that if the Americans were

 similarly treated, they would become as little progressive as the

 native Indians. He might next quote the accounts given by Mr.

 Marriott in 1838, a gentleman who was for thirty years engaged in the

 collection of the revenue in India, and who stated that ‘the

 condition of the cultivators was greatly depressed, and that he

 believed it was still declining.’ There was the evidence of a native

 of India to which he might refer on this subject. It was that of a

 gentleman, a native of Delhi, who was in England in the year 1849,

 and he could appeal to the right hon. baronet the member for Tamworth

 in favour of the credibility of that gentleman. He never met with a

 man of a more dignified character, or one apparently of greater

 intelligence, and there were few who spoke the English language with

 greater purity and perfection. That gentleman had written a pamphlet,

 in which he stated that throughout his whole line of march from

 Bombay he found the Nizam’s territories better cultivated, and the

 ryots in a better state of circumstances, than were the Company’s

 territories, of the people residing within them, who were plunged in

 a state of the greatest poverty; and he concluded his short, but

 comparatively full, notice of the present deplorable state of India,

 by observing that he feared this was but the prelude of many more

 such descriptions of the different portions of the Company’s

 dominions which would be put forth before the subject would attract

 the notice of those whose duty it was to remove the evils that

 existed.”

 

We have here confirmation of the correctness of the views of Colonel

Sleeman, that the condition of the people under the local governments

is better than under the great central government. Heavily as they are

taxed, a small part only of the proceeds of taxes goes, in these

cases, to Calcutta on its way to England, whereas, of the enormous

salaries paid to English governors and judges, nearly the whole must

go abroad, as no one consents to serve for a few years in India,

except on such terms as will enable him to accumulate a fortune and

return home to spend it. In further confirmation of this we have the

facts so fully given in Mr. Campbell’s recent work, (Modern India,

chap, xi.,) and proving that security of person and property increases

as we pass _from_ the old possessions of the Company, and toward the

newly acquired ones. Crime of every kind, gang robbery, perjury, and

forgery, abound in Bengal and Madras, and the poverty of the

cultivator is so great that the revenue is there the least, and is

collected with the greatest difficulty--and there, too, it is that the

power of association has been most effectually destroyed. Passing

thence to the Northwestern provinces more recently acquired, person

and property become more secure and the revenue increases; but when we

reach the Punjab, which until now has been subject to the rule of

Runjeet Singh and his successors, we find that, tyrants as he and they

have been represented, the people have there been left in the exercise

of self-government. The village communities and the beautiful system

of association, destroyed in Bengal, there remain untouched. Officers

of all kinds are there more responsible for the performance of their

duties than are their fellows in the older provinces, and property and

person are more secure than elsewhere in India. Gang robbery is rare,

perjury is unfrequent, and Mr. Campbell informs us that a solemn oath

is “astonishingly binding.” “The longer we possess a province,” he

continues, “the more common and general does perjury become;” and we

need no better evidence than is thus furnished of the slavish tendency

of the system. The hill tribes, on the contrary, are remarkable for

their “strict veracity,” and Colonel Sleeman expresses the belief that

“there is as little falsehood spoken in the village communities,” as

in any part of the world with an equal area and population.[98] In the

new provinces the people read and write with facility, and they are

men of physical and moral energy, good cultivators, and understand

well both their rights and their duties; whereas from the older ones

education has disappeared, and with it all power to associate together

for any good purpose. In the new provinces, commerce is large, as is

shown by the following facts representing the population and

post-office revenue of Bengal, the N. W. Provinces, and the Punjab,

placed in the order of their acquisition by the Company:--

 

                           Population.    Post-office Revenue.

                           -----------    --------------------

    Bengal................ 41,000,000          480,500 rupees.

    N. W. Provinces....... 24,000,000          978,000  

    Punjab................  8,000,000          178,000  

 

We have here exhibited the remarkable fact that in the country of the

Sikhs, so long represented as a scene of grasping tyranny, eight

millions of people pay as much postage as is paid by fifteen millions

in Bengal, although in the latter is Calcutta, the seat of all the

operations of a great centralized government. That such should be the

case is not extraordinary, for the power advantageously to employ

labour diminishes with the approach to the centre of British power,

and increases as we recede from it. Idleness and drunkenness go hand

in hand with each other, and therefore it is that Mr. Campbell finds

himself obliged to state that “intemperance increases where our rule

and system have been long established.”[99] We see thus that the

observations of both Mr. Campbell and Colonel Sleeman, authors of the

most recent works on India, confirm to the letter the earlier

statements of Captain Westmacott, an extract from which is here

given:--

 

 “It is greatly to be deplored, that in places the longest under our

 rule, there is the largest amount of depravity and crime. My travels

 in India have fallen little short of 8000 miles, and extended to

 nearly all the cities of importance in Northern, Western, and Central

 India. I have no hesitation in affirming, that in the Hindoo and

 Mussulman cities, removed from European intercourse, there is much

 less depravity than either in Calcutta, Madras, or Bombay, where

 Europeans chiefly congregate.”

 

Calcutta grows, the city of palaces, but poverty and wretchedness grow

as the people of India find themselves more and more compelled to

resort to that city to make their exchanges. Under the native rule,

the people of each little district could exchange with each other food

for cotton or cotton cloth, paying nobody for the privilege. Now,

every man must send his cotton to Calcutta, thence to go to England

with the rice and the indigo of his neighbours, before he and they can

exchange food for cloth or cotton--and the larger the quantity they

send the greater is the tendency to decline in price. With every

extension of the system there is increasing inability to pay the

taxes, and increasing necessity for seeking new markets in which to

sell cloth and collect what are called rents--and the more wide the

extension of the system the greater is the difficulty of collecting

revenue sufficient for keeping the machine of government in motion.

This difficulty it was that drove the representatives of British power

and civilization into becoming traders in that pernicious drug, opium.

 

 “The very best parts of India,” as we are told,[100] were selected

 for the cultivation of the poppy. The people were told that they must

 either cultivate this plant, mate opium, or give up their land. If

 they refused, they were peremptorily told they must yield or quit.

 The same Company that forced them to grow opium said, You must sell

 the opium to us; and to them it was sold, and they gave the price

 they pleased to put upon the opium thus manufactured; and they then

 sold it to trading speculators at Calcutta, who caused it to be

 smuggled up the Canton River to an island called Lintin, and tea was

 received in exchange. At last, however, the emperor of China, after

 repeated threats, proceeded to execute summary justice; he seized

 every particle of opium; put under bond every European engaged in the

 merchandise of it; and the papers of to-day (1839) inform us that he

 has cut off the China trade, “root and branch.”

 

Unhappily, however, the British nation deemed it expedient to make war

upon the poor Chinese, and compel them to pay for the opium that had

been destroyed; and now the profits of the Indian government from

poisoning a whole people have risen from £1,500,000, at the date of

the above extract, to the enormous sum of £3,500,000, or $16,800,000,

and the market is, as we are informed, still extending itself.[101]

 

That the reader may see, and understand how directly the government is

concerned in this effort at demoralizing and enslaving the Chinese,

the following extract is given:--

 

 “For the supply and manufacture of government opium there is a

 separate establishment. There are two great opium agencies at

 Ghazeepore and Patna, for the Benares and Bahar provinces. Each opium

 agent has several deputies in different districts, and a native

 establishment. They enter into contracts with the cultivators for the

 supply of opium at a rate fixed to meet the market. The land revenue

 authorities do not interfere, except to prevent cultivation without

 permission. Government merely bargains with the cultivators as

 cultivators, in the same way as a private merchant would, _and makes

 advances to them for the cultivation_. The only difficulty found is

 to prevent, their cultivating too much, as the rates are favourable,

 government a sure purchaser, and the cultivation liked. The land

 cultivated is measured, and precaution is taken that the produce is

 all sold to government. The raw opium thus received is sent to the

 head agency, where it is manufactured, packed in chests, and sealed

 with the Company’s seal.”[102]

 

It would seem to the author of this paragraph almost a matter of

rejoicing that the Chinese are bound to continue large consumers of

the drug. “The failure of one attempt to exclude it has shown,” as he

thinks--

 

 “That they are not likely to effect that object; and if we do not

 supply them, some one else will; but the worst of it is, according to

 some people, that if the Chinese only legalized the cultivation in

 their own country, they could produce it much cheaper, and our market

 would be ruined. Both for their sakes and ours we must hope that it

 is not so, or that they will not find it out.”[103]

 

Need we wonder, when gentlemen find pleasure in the idea of an

increasing revenue from _forcing this trade in despite of all the

efforts of the more civilized Chinese government_, that “intemperance

increases” where the British “rule and system has been long

established?” Assuredly not. Poor governments are, as we everywhere

see, driven to encourage gambling, drunkenness, and other

immoralities, as a means of extracting revenue from their unfortunate

taxpayers; and the greater the revenue thus obtained, the poorer

become the people and the weaker the government. Need we be surprised

that that of India should be reduced to become manufacturer and

smuggler of opium, when the people are forced to exhaust the land by

sending away its raw products, and when the restraints upon the _mere

collection_ of domestic salt are so great that English salt now finds

a market in India? The following passage on this subject is worthy of

the perusal of those who desire fully to understand how it is that the

people of that country are restrained in the application of their

labour, and why it is that labour is so badly paid:--

 

 “But those who cry out in England against the monopoly, and their

 unjust exclusion from the salt trade, are egregiously mistaken. As

 concerns them there is positively no monopoly, but the most absolute

 free trade. And, more than this, the only effect of the present mode

 of manufacture in Bengal is to give them a market which they would

 never otherwise have. A government manufacture of salt is doubtless

 more expensive than a private manufacture; but the result of this,

 and of the equality of duty on bad and good salt, is, that fine

 English salt now more or less finds a market in India; whereas, were

 the salt duty and all government interference discontinued to-

 morrow, the cheap Bengal salt would be sold at such a rate that not a

 pound of English or any other foreign salt could be brought into the

 market.”[104]

 

Nevertheless, the system is regarded as one of perfect free trade!

 

Notwithstanding all these efforts at maintaining the revenue, the debt

has increased the last twelve years no less than £15,000,000, or

seventy-two millions of dollars; and yet the government is absolute

proprietor of all the land of India, and enjoys so large a portion of

the beneficial interest in it, that private property therein is

reduced to a sum absolutely insignificant, as will now be shown.

 

The gross land revenue obtained from a country with an area of 491,448

square miles, or above three hundred millions of acres, is 151,786,743

rupees, equal to fifteen millions of pounds sterling, or seventy-two

millions of dollars.[105] What is the value of private rights of

property, subject to the payment of this tax, or rent, may be judged

from the following facts:--In 1848-9 there were sold for taxes, in

that portion of the country subject to the permanent settlement, 1169

estates, at something less than four years’ purchase of the tax.

Further south, in the Madras government, where the ryotwar settlement

is in full operation, the land “would be sold” for balances of rent,

but “generally it is not,” as we are told, “and for a very good

reason, viz. that nobody will buy it.” Private rights in land being

there of no value whatsoever, “the collector of Salem,” as Mr.

Campbell informs us--

 

 “Naïvely mentions ‘various unauthorized modes of stimulating the

 tardy,’ rarely resorted to by heads of villages; such as ‘placing him

 in the sun, obliging him to stand on one leg, or to sit with his head

 confined between his knees.’”[106]

 

In the north-west provinces, “the settlement,” as our author states,

“has certainly been successful in giving a good market value to landed

property;” that is, it sells at about “four years’ purchase on the

revenue.”[107] Still further north, in the newly acquired provinces,

we find great industry, “every thing turned to account,” the

assessment, to which the Company succeeded on the deposition of the

successors of Runjeet Singh, more easy, and land more valuable.[108]

The value of land, like that of labour, therefore increases as we pass

_from_ the old to the new settlements, being precisely the reverse of

what would be the case if the system tended to the enfranchisement and

elevation of the people, and precisely what should be looked for in a

country whose inhabitants were passing from freedom toward slavery.

 

With the data thus obtained we may now ascertain, with perhaps some

approach to accuracy, the value of all the private rights in the land

of India. In no case does that subject to tax appear to be worth more

than four years’ purchase, while in a very large portion of the

country it would seem to be worth absolutely nothing. There are,

however, some tax-free lands that may he set off against those held

under the ryotwar settlement; and it is therefore possible that the

whole are worth four years’ purchase, which would give 288 millions of

dollars, or 60 millions of pounds sterling, as the value of all the

rights in land acquired by the people of India by all the labour of

their predecessors and themselves in the many thousands of years it

has been cultivated. The few people that have occupied the little and

sandy State of New Jersey, with its area of 6900 square miles, have

acquired rights in and on the land that are valued, subject to the

claims of government, at 150 millions of dollars; and the few that

have occupied the little island on which stands the city of New York

have acquired rights that would sell in the market for at least

one-half more than could be obtained for all the proprietary rights to

land in India, with 300 millions of acres and 96 millions of

inhabitants!

 

“Under the native princes,” says Mr. Campbell, “India was a paying

country.” Under British rule, it has ceased to be so, because under

that rule all power of combined action has been annihilated, or is in

train to be, and will be so, by aid of the system that looks to

compelling the whole people, men, women, and children, to work in the

field, producing commodities to be exported in their raw state. Every

act of association is an act of trade, and whatever tends to destroy

association must destroy trade. The internal commerce of India

declines steadily, and the external amounts to but about half a dollar

per head, and no effort can make it grow to any extent. The returns of

last year, of English trade, show a diminution as compared with those

of the previous one, whereas with almost all other countries there is

a large increase. Cuba exports to the large amount of twenty-five

dollars per head, or almost fifty times as much as India; and she

takes of cotton goods from England four times as much per head; and

this she does because it is a part of the policy of Spain to bring

about combination of action, and to enable the planter and the artisan

to work together, whereas the policy of England is to destroy

everywhere the power of association, and thus to destroy the domestic

trade, upon which the foreign one must be built. Centralization is

adverse to trade, and to the freedom of man. Spain does not seek to

establish centralization. Provided she receives a given amount of

revenue, she is content to permit her subjects to employ themselves at

raising sugar or making cloth, as they please, and thus to advance in

civilization; and by this very course it is that she is enabled to

obtain revenue. How centralization operates on the people and the

revenue, and how far it tends to promote the civilization or the

freedom of man, may be seen, on a perusal of the following extract

from a recent speech of Mr. Anstey, in the British House of Commons:--

 

 “Such was the financial condition of India, which the right

 honourable gentleman believed to be so excellent. The intelligent

 natives of India, however, who visited this country, were not of that

 opinion. They told us that the complaints sent from India to this

 country were disregarded here, and that they always would be

 disregarded as long as inquiry into them was imperial, not local.

 They stated that their condition was one of hopeless misery, and that

 it had been so ever since they came under our rule. The result was,

 that cholera had become the normal order of things in that country,

 and in India it never died out. It appeared from the reports of

 medical officers in the army that it did not attack the rich and

 well-fed so frequently as it attacked the poor, and that among them

 it had made the most fearful ravages. The first authentic account

 they had of the appearance of the cholera in India was coincident

 with the imposition of the salt monopoly by Warren Hastings; and by a

 just retribution it had visited their own shores, showing them with

 what a scourge they had so long afflicted the natives of India. It

 might be said of the other taxes that, in one form or another, they

 affected every branch of industry and every necessary of life. They

 affected even the tools of trade, and were sometimes equal in amount

 to the sum for which the tool itself could be purchased in the

 market.

 

 “When on a former occasion he had mentioned those facts before a

 member of the court of directors, he was told that if he had seen the

 papers in the archives, he would perceive that an alteration had

 taken place; but he found, on an inspection of the papers, that the

 result to the purchaser of salt is almost equal to what it had been.

 It was a well known fact that the natives dare not complain. When

 they asked for protection from the laws, they were treated as Juttee

 Persaud had been treated last year--cases were fabricated against

 them, and they were prosecuted for their lives. With the examples

 before them of Nuncomar and Juttee Persaud, it was not surprising

 that the natives were so backward in bringing to justice the persons

 whose oppressions had been so great.”

 

It was in the face of facts like those here presented, and other

similar ones presented to us in the history of Jamaica, that in a

recent despatch Lord Palmerston thus instructed his minister at

Madrid:--

 

 “I have to instruct your lordship to observe to M. de Miraflores that

 the slaves of Cuba form a large portion, and by no means an

 unimportant one, of the population of Cuba; and that any steps taken

 to provide for their emancipation would, therefore, as far as the

 black population is concerned, be quite in unison with the

 recommendation made by her Majesty’s government, that measures should

 be adopted for contenting the people of Cuba, with a view to secure

 the connection between that island and the Spanish crown; and it must

 be evident that if the negro population of Cuba were rendered free,

 that fact would create a most powerful element of resistance to any

 scheme for annexing Cuba to the United States, where slavery still

 exists.

 

 “With regard to the bearing which negro emancipation would have on

 the interests of the white proprietors, it may safely be affirmed

 that free labour costs less than slave labour, and it is indisputable

 that a free and contented peasantry are safer neighbours for the

 wealthy classes above them than ill-treated and resentful slaves; and

 that slaves must, from the nature of things, be more or less

 ill-treated, is a truth which belongs to the inherent principles of

 human nature, and is quite as inevitable as the resentment, however

 suppressed it may be, which is the consequence of ill-treatment.”

 

The negroes of Jamaica have never been permitted to apply their spare

labour even to the refining of their own sugar, _nor are they so at

this day_. They must export it raw, and the more they send the lower

is the price and the larger the proportion taken by the

government--but the poor negro is ruined. Spain, on the contrary,

permits the Cubans to engage in any pursuits they may deem most likely

to afford them a return to labour and capital; and, as a necessary

consequence of this, towns and cities grow up, capital is attracted to

the land, which becomes from day to day more valuable, labour is in

demand, and there is a gradual, though slow, improvement of condition.

The power to resort to other modes of employment diminishes the

necessity for exporting sugar, and when exported to Spain, the

producer is enabled to take for himself nearly the whole price paid by

the consumer, the government claiming only a duty of fifteen per cent.

 

The Hindoo, like the negro, is shut out from the workshop. If he

attempts to convert his cotton into yarn, his spindle is taxed in

nearly all of the profit it can yield him. If he attempts to make

cloth, his loom is subjected to a heavy tax, from which that of his

wealthy English competitor is exempt. His iron ore and his coal must

remain in the ground, and if he dares to apply his labour even to the

collection of the salt which crystallizes before his door, he is

punished by fine and imprisonment. He must raise sugar to be

transported to England, there to be exchanged, perhaps, for English

salt. For the sugar, arrived in that country, the workman pays at the

rate perhaps of forty shillings a hundred, of which the government

claims one-third, the ship owner, the merchant, and others, another

third, and the remaining third is to be fought for by the agents of

the Company, anxious for revenue, and the poor ryot, anxious to obtain

a little salt to eat with his rice, and as much of his neighbour’s

cotton, in the form of English cloth, as will suffice to cover his

loins.

 

Under the Spanish system capital increases, and labour is so valuable

that slaves still continue to be imported. Under the English one,

labour is valueless, and men sell themselves for long years of slavery

at the sugar culture in the Mauritius, in Jamaica, and in Guiana. In

all countries _to which_ men are attracted, civilization tends upward;

but in all those _from which_ men fly, it tends downward.

 

At the moment this despatch was being written by Lord Palmerston, Mr.

Campbell was writing his book, in which it is everywhere shown that

the tendency of India toward centralization and absenteeism, and

therefore toward exhaustion and slavery, is rapidly on the increase.

“The communication with India,” as he says--

 

 “Is every day so much increased and facilitated that we become more

 and more entirely free from native influence, and the disposition to

 Hindooize, which at first certainly showed itself, has altogether

 disappeared. The English in India have now become as English as in

 England.

 

 “While this state of things has great advantages, it has also some

 disadvantage in the want of local knowledge, and of permanency in the

 tenure of appointments which results. As there has been a constant

 succession of total strangers in every appointment, it follows that

 the government must be entirely carried on upon general principles,

 with little aid from local knowledge and experience.”--P. 202.

 

The tendency toward the transfer of English capital to India, as he

informs us, retrogrades instead of advancing, and this is precisely

what we might expect to find to be the case. _Capital never seeks a

country from which men are flying as they now fly from India._ The

English houses bring none, but being in general mere speculators, they

borrow largely and enter into large operations, and when the bubble

bursts, the poor Hindoo suffers in the prostration of trade and

decline in the prices of cotton and sugar. “The consequence is,” as

Mr. Campbell says--

 

 “That European speculation has retrograded. Far up the country, where

 the agents of the old houses were formerly numerous and well supplied

 with money, the planters are now few and needy, and generally earn

 but a precarious subsistence as in fact the servants of native

 capitalists.”--P. 204.

 

Iron, by aid of which the people might improve their processes of

cultivation and manufacture, has little tendency toward India. The

average export of it to that country in 1845 and ‘46 was but 13,000

tons, value £160,000, or about two-pence worth for every five of the

population. Efforts are now being made for the construction of

railroads, but their object is that of carrying out the system of

centralization, and thus still further destroying the power of

association, because they look to the annihilation of what still

remains of domestic manufacture, and thus _cheapening cotton_. With

all the improvements in the transportation of that commodity, its poor

cultivator obtains less for it than he did thirty years since, and the

effect of further improvement can be none other than that of producing

a still further reduction, and still further deterioration of the

condition of the men who raise food and cotton. As yet the power of

association continues in the Punjab, but it is proposed now to hold

there great fairs for the sale of English manufactures, and the day

cannot be far distant when the condition of the people of the new

provinces will be similar to that of those of the old ones, as no

effort will be spared to carry out the system which looks to driving

the whole people to agriculture, and thus compelling them to exhaust

their land. It is needed, says Mr. Chapman, the great advocate of

railways in India, that the connection between “the Indian grower and

English spinner” become more intimate, and “_the more the English is

made to outweigh the native home demand, the more strongly will the

native agriculturist feel that his personal success depends on

securing and improving his British connection_”[109]6750--that is, the

more the natives can be prevented from combining, their labours, the

greater, as Mr. Chapman thinks, will be the prosperity of India.

Centralization has impoverished, and to a considerable extent

depopulated, that country, but its work is not yet done. It remains

yet to reduce the people of the Punjab, of Affghanistan and Burmah, to

the condition of the Bengalese.

 

The Burmese war is, as we are informed, “connected with at least

certain hopes of getting across to China through the Burmese

territories,”[110] and, of course of extending the trade in opium

throughout the whole of interior China; and the revenue from that

source will pay the cost of annexation. It is by aid of this powerful

narcotic, probably, that “civilization” is about, as we are told, to

“plant her standard on the ruins of kingdoms which for thousands of

years have been smouldering into dust.”[111]

 

We are often told of “the dim moral perceptions” of the people of

India, and as many of those who will read this volume may be disposed

to think that the cause of poverty lies in some deficiencies in the

character of the Hindoo, it may not be improper, with a view to the

correction of that opinion, to offer a few passages from the very

interesting work of Colonel Sleeman, who furnishes more information on

that head than any other recent traveller or resident; and his remarks

are the more valuable because of being the fruit of many years of

observation:--

 

 “Sir Thomas Munro has justly observed, ‘I do not exactly know what is

 meant by civilizing the people of India. In the theory and practice

 of good government they may be deficient; but if a good system of

 agriculture--if unrivalled manufactures--if a capacity to produce

 what convenience or luxury demands--if the establishment of schools

 for reading and writing--if the general practice of kindness and

 hospitality--and above all, if a scrupulous respect and delicacy

 toward the female sex are amongst the points that denote a civilized

 people; then the Hindoos are not inferior in civilization to the

 people of Europe.--_Rambles_, vol. i. 4.

 

 “Our tents were pitched upon a green sward on one bank of a small

 stream running into the Nerbudda close by, while the multitude

 occupied the other bank. At night all the tents and booths are

 illuminated, and the scene is hardly less animating by night than by

 day; but what strikes an European most is the entire absence of all

 tumult and disorder at such places. He not only sees no disturbance,

 but feels assured that there will be none; and leaves his wife and

 children in the midst of a crowd of a hundred thousand persons all

 strangers to them, and all speaking a language and following a

 religion different from theirs, while he goes off the whole day,

 hunting and shooting in the distant jungles, without the slightest

 feeling of apprehension for their safety or comfort.”--_Ibid_. 2.

 

 “I am much attached to the agricultural classes of India generally,

 and I have found among them some of the best men I have ever known.

 The peasantry in India have generally very good manners, and are

 exceedingly intelligent, from having so much more leisure, and

 unreserved and easy intercourse with those above them.”--_Ibid_. 76.

 

 “I must say, that I have never either seen or read of a nobler spirit

 than seems to animate all classes of these communities in India on

 such distressing occasions.”--_Ibid_. 197.

 

 “There is no part of the world, I believe, where parents are so much

 reverenced by their sons as they are in India in all classes of

 society.”--_Ibid_. 330.

 

 “An instance of deliberate fraud or falsehood among native merchants

 of respectable stations in society, is extremely rare. Among the many

 hundreds of bills I have had to take from them for private

 remittances, I have never had one dishonoured, or the payment upon

 one delayed beyond the day specified; nor do I recollect ever hearing

 of one who had. They are so careful not to speculate beyond their

 means, that an instance of failure is extremely rare among them. No

 one ever in India hears of families reduced to ruin or distress by

 the failure of merchants and bankers; though here, as in all other

 countries advanced in the arts, a vast number of families subsist

 upon the interest of money employed by them.

 

 “There is no class of men more interested in the stability of our

 rule in India than this of the respectable merchants; nor is there

 any upon whom the welfare of our government, and that of the people,

 more depend. Frugal, first, upon principle, that they may not in

 their expenditure encroach upon their capitals, they become so by

 habit; and when they advance in life they lay out their accumulated

 wealth in the formation of those works which shall secure for them,

 from generation to generation, the blessings of the people of the

 towns in which they have resided, and those of the country around. It

 would not be too much to say, that one-half the great works which

 embellish and enrich the face of India, in tanks, groves, wells,

 temples, &c., have been formed by this class of the people solely

 with the view of securing the blessings of mankind by contributing to

 their happiness in solid and permanent works.”--_Ibid_. vol. ii. 142.

 

 “In the year 1829, while I held the civil charge of the district of

 Jubbulpore, in this valley of the Nerbudda, I caused an estimate to

 be made of the public works of ornament and utility it contained. The

 population of the district at that time amounted to five hundred

 thousand souls, distributed among four thousand and fifty-three

 occupied towns, villages, and hamlets. There were one thousand

 villages more which had formerly been occupied, but were then

 deserted. There were two thousand two hundred and eighty-eight tanks,

 two hundred and nine bowlies, or large wells, with flights of steps

 extending from the top down to the water when in its lowest stage;

 fifteen hundred and sixty wells lined with brick and stone, cemented

 with lime, but without stairs; three hundred and sixty Hindoo

 temples, and twenty-two Mohammedan mosques. The estimated cost of

 these works in grain at the present price, that is the quantity that

 would have been consumed, had the labour been paid in kind at the

 present ordinary rate, was eighty-six lacks, sixty-six thousand and

 forty-three rupees (86,66,043,) £866,604 sterling.

 

 “The labourer was estimated to be paid at the rate of about two-

 thirds the quantity of corn he would get in England if paid in kind,

 and corn sells here at about one-third the price it fetches in

 average seasons in England. In Europe, therefore, these works,

 supposing the labour equally efficient, would have cost at least four

 times the sum here estimated; and such works formed by private

 individuals for the public good, without any view whatever to return

 in profits, indicates a very high degree of _public spirit_.

 

 “The whole annual rent of the lands of this district amounts to about

 six hundred and fifty thousand rupees a year, (£65,000 sterling,)

 that is, five hundred thousand demandable by the government, and one

 hundred and fifty thousand by those who hold the lands at lease

 immediately under government, over and above what may be considered

 as the profits of their stock as farmers. These works must,

 therefore, have cost about thirteen times the amount of the annual

 rent of the whole of the lands of the districts--or the whole annual

 rent for above thirteen years!”--_Ibid_, vol. ii. 194.

 

We have here private rights in land amounting to 150,000 rupees, in a

country abounding in coal and iron ore,[112] and with a population of

half a million of people. Estimating the private interest at ten

years’ purchase, it is exactly three years’ purchase of the land-tax;

and it follows of course, that _the government takes every year

one-fourth of the whole value of the property_,--at which rate the

little State of New Jersey, with its half-million of inhabitants,

would pay annually above thirty millions of dollars for the support of

those who were charged with the administration of its affairs! Need we

wonder at the poverty of India when thus taxed, while deprived of all

power even to manure its land?

 

 “Three-fourths of the recruits for our Bengal native infantry are

 drawn from the Rajpoot peasantry of the kingdom of Oude, on the left

 bank of the Ganges, where their affections have been linked to the

 soil for a long series of generations. The good feelings of the

 families from which they are drawn, continue, through the whole

 period of their service, to exercise a salutary influence over their

 conduct as men and as soldiers. Though they never take their families

 with them, they visit them on furlough every two or three years, and

 always return to them when the surgeon considers a change of air

 necessary to their recovery from sickness. Their family circles are

 always present to their imaginations; and the recollections of their

 last visit, the hopes of the next, and the assurance that their

 conduct as men and as soldiers in the interval will be reported to

 those circles by their many comrades, who are annually returning on

 furlough to the same parts of the country, tend to produce a general

 and uniform propriety of conduct, that is hardly to be found among

 the soldiers of any other army in the world, and which seems

 incomprehensible to those who are unacquainted with its

 source,--veneration for parents cherished through life and a never

 impaired love of home, and of all the dear objects by which it is

 constituted.”--Ibid. vol. ii. 415.

 

Such are the people that we see now forced to abandon a land of which

not more than half the cultivable part is in cultivation--a land that

abounds in every description of mineral wealth--and to sell themselves

for long years of service, apart from wives, children, and friends, to

be employed in the most unhealthful of all pursuits, the cultivation

of sugar in the Mauritius, and the Sandwich Islands, and among the

swamps of British Guiana, and Jamaica, and for a reward of four or

five rupees ($2 to $2.50) per month. What was their condition in the

Mauritius is thus shown by an intelligent and honest visitor of the

island in 1838:--

 

 “After the passage of the act abolishing slavery, an arrangement was

 sanctioned by the Colonial Government, for the introduction of a

 great number of Indian labourers into the colony. They were engaged

 at five rupees, equal to ten shillings, a month, for five years, with

 also one pound of rice, a quarter of a pound of dhall, or grain, a

 kind of pulse, and one ounce of butter, of ghee, daily. But for every

 day they were absent from their work they were to return two days to

 their masters, who retained one rupee per month, to pay an advance

 made of six months’ wages, and to defray the expense of their

 passage. If these men came into Port Louis to complain of their

 masters, they were lodged in the Bagne prison, till their masters

 were summoned. The masters had a great advantage before the

 magistrates over their servants: the latter being foreigners, but few

 of them could speak French, and they had no one to assist them in

 pleading their cause. They universally represented themselves as

 having been deceived with respect to the kind of labour to be exacted

 from them. But perhaps the greatest evil attendant on their

 introduction into the Mauritius was the small proportion of females

 imported with them, only about two hundred being brought with upward

 of ten thousand men. It was evident that unless the system of

 employing them were closely watched, there was a danger that it might

 ultimately grow into another species of slavery.”[113]

 

We see thus that while the females of India are deprived of all power

to employ themselves in the lighter labour of manufacture, the men are

forced to emigrate, leaving behind their wives and daughters, to

support themselves as best they may. The same author furnishes an

account of the Indian convicts that had been transported to the

island, as follows:--

 

 “Among the Indian convicts working on the road, we noticed one

 wearing chains; several had a slight single ring round the ankle.

 They are lodged in huts with flat roofs, or in other inferior

 dwellings, near the road. There are about seven hundred of them in

 the island. What renders them peculiarly objects of sympathy is, that

 they were sent here for life, and no hope of any remission of

 sentence is held out to them for good conduct. Their’s is a hopeless

 bondage; and though it is said by some that they are not hard worked,

 yet they are generally, perhaps constantly, breaking stones and

 mending the road, and in a tropical sun. There are among them persons

 who were so young when transported that, in their offences, they

 could only be looked on as the dupes of those that were older; and

 many of them bear good characters.”[114]

 

At the date to which these passages refer there was a dreadful famine

in India; but, “during the prevalence of this famine,” as we are

told,--

 

 “Rice was going every hour out of the country. 230,371 bags of 164

 pounds each--making 37,780,844 lbs.--were exported from Calcutta.

 Where? To the Mauritius, to feed the kidnapped Coolies. Yes: to feed

 the men who had been stolen from the banks of the Ganges and the

 hills adjacent, and dragged from their native shore, under pretence

 of going to one of the Company’s villages, to grow in the island of

 Mauritius what they might have grown in abundance upon their own

 fertile, but over-taxed land. The total amount of rice exported from

 Calcutta, during the famine in 1838, was 151,923,696 lbs., besides

 13,722,408 lbs. of other edible grains, which would have fed and kept

 alive all those who perished that year. Wives might have been saved

 to their husbands, babes to their mothers, friends to their friends;

 villages might still have been peopled; a sterile land might have

 been restored to verdure. Freshness and joy and the voices of

 gladness, might have been there. Now, all is stillness, and

 desolation, and death. Yet we are told we have nothing to do with

 India.”[115]

 

The nation that exports raw produce _must_ exhaust its land, and then

it _must_ export its men, who fly from famine, leaving the women and

children to perish behind them.

 

By aid of continued Coolie immigration the export of sugar from the

Mauritius has been doubled in the last sixteen years, having risen

from 70 to 140 millions of pounds. Sugar is therefore very cheap, and

the foreign competition is thereby driven from the British market.

“Such conquests,” however, says, very truly, the London _Spectator_--

 

 “Don’t always bring profit to the conqueror; nor does production

 itself prove prosperity. Competition for the possession of a field

 may be carried so far as to reduce prices below prime cost; and it is

 clear from the notorious facts of the West Indies--from the change of

 property, from the total unproductiveness of much property

 still--that the West India production of sugar has been carried on,

 not only without replacing capital, but with a constant sinking of

 capital.”

 

The “free” Coolie and the “free negro” of Jamaica, have been urged to

competition for the sale of sugar, and they seem likely to perish

together; but compensation for this is found in the fact that--

 

 “Free-trade has, in reducing the prices of commodities for home

 consumption, enabled the labourer to devote a greater share of his

 income toward purchasing clothing and luxuries, and has increased the

 home trade to an enormous extent.”[116]

 

What effect this reduction of “the prices of commodities for home

consumption” has had upon the poor Coolie, may be judged from the

following passage:--

 

 “I here beheld, for the first time, a class of beings of whom we have

 heard much, and for whom I have felt considerable interest. I refer

 to the Coolies imported by the British government to take the place

 of the _faineant_ negroes, when the apprenticeship system was

 abolished. Those that I saw were wandering about the streets, dressed

 rather tastefully, but always meanly, and usually carrying over their

 shoulder a sort of _chiffonier’s_ sack, in which they threw whatever

 refuse stuff they found in the streets or received as charity. Their

 figures are generally superb; and their Eastern costume, to which

 they adhere as far as their poverty will permit of any clothing, sets

 off their lithe and graceful forms to great advantage. Their faces

 are almost uniformly of the finest classic mould, and illuminated by

 pairs of those dark swimming and propitiatory eyes, which exhaust the

 language of tenderness and passion at a glance.

 

 “But they are the most inveterate mendicants on the island. It is

 said that those brought from the interior of India are faithful and

 efficient workmen, while those from Calcutta and its vicinity are

 good for nothing. Those that were prowling about the streets of

 Spanish-town and Kingston, I presume, were of the latter class, for

 there is not a planter on the island, it is said, from whom it would

 be more difficult to get any work than from one of these. They

 subsist by begging altogether: they are not vicious, nor intemperate,

 nor troublesome particularly, except as beggars. In that calling they

 have a pertinacity before which a Northern mendicant would grow pale.

 They will not be denied. They will stand perfectly still and look

 through a window from the street for a quarter of an hour, if not

 driven away, with their imploring eyes fixed upon you, like a

 stricken deer, without saying a word or moving a muscle. They act as

 if it were no disgrace for them to beg, as if the least

 indemnification which they are entitled to expect, for the outrage

 perpetrated upon them in bringing them from their distant homes to

 this strange island, is a daily supply of their few and cheap

 necessities, as they call for them.

 

 “I confess that their begging did not leave upon my mind the

 impression produced by ordinary mendicancy. They do not look as if

 they ought to work. I never saw one smile, and though they showed no

 positive suffering, I never saw one look happy. Each face seemed to

 be constantly telling the unhappy story of their woes, and like

 fragments of a broken mirror, each reflecting in all its hateful

 proportions the national outrage of which they are the victims.”[117]

 

The slave trade has taken a new form, the mild and gentle Hindoo

having taken the place of the barbarous and fierce African; and this

trade is likely to continue so long as it shall be held to be the

chief object of the government of a Christian people to secure to its

people cheap cotton and sugar, without regard to the destruction of

life of which that cheapness is the cause. The people of England send

to India missionary priests and bishops, but they obtain few converts;

nor can it ever be otherwise under a system which tends to destroy the

power of association, and thus prevents that diversification of

employments that is indispensable to the improvement of physical,

moral, intellectual, or political condition. May we not hope that at

no very distant day they will arrive at the conclusion that such

association is as necessary to the Hindoo as they know it to be to

themselves, and that if they desire success in their attempts to bring

the followers of Mohammed, or of Brahma, to an appreciation of the

doctrines of Christ, they must show that their practice and their

teachings are in some degree in harmony with each other? When that day

shall come they will be seen endeavouring to remedy the evil they have

caused, and permitting the poor Hindoo to obtain establishments in

which labour may be combined for the production of iron and of

machinery, by aid of which the native cotton may be twisted in the

neighbourhood in which it is produced, thus enabling the now unhappy

cultivator to exchange directly with his food-producing neighbour,

relieved from the necessity for sending his products to a distance, to

be brought back again in the form of yarn or cloth, at fifteen or

twenty times the price at which he sold it in the form of cotton. That

time arrived, they will appreciate the sound good sense contained in

the following remarks of Colonel Sleeman:--

 

 “If we had any great establishment of this sort in which Christians

 could find employment, and the means of religious and secular

 instruction, thousands of converts would soon flock to them; and they

 would become vast sources of future improvement in industry, social

 comfort, municipal institutions, and religion. What chiefly prevents

 the spread of Christianity in India is the dread of exclusion from

 caste and all its privileges; and the utter hopelessness of their

 ever finding any respectable circle of society of the adopted

 religion, which converts, or would be converts to Christianity, now

 everywhere feel. Form such circles for them--make the members of

 these circles happy in the exertion of honest and independent

 industry--let those who rise to eminence in them feel that they are

 considered as respectable and as important in the social system as

 the servants of government, and converts will flock around you from

 all parts, and from all classes of the Hindoo community. * * * I am

 persuaded that a dozen such establishments as that of Mr. Thomas

 Ashton, of Hyde, as described by a physician of Manchester, and

 noticed in Mr. Baines’s admirable work on the Cotton Manufactures of

 Great Britain, (page 447,) would do more in the way of conversion

 among the people of India than has ever yet been done by all the

 religious establishments, or ever will be done by them without some

 such aid.”--Vol. ii. 164.

 

That there is a steady increase in the tendency toward personal

servitude, or slavery, in India, no one can doubt who will study

carefully the books on that country; and it may not be amiss to

inquire on whom rests the responsibility for this state of things. By

several of the persons that have been quoted, Messrs. Thompson,

Bright, and others, it is charged upon the Company; but none that read

the works of Messrs. Campbell and Sleeman can hesitate to believe that

the direction is now animated by a serious desire to improve the

condition of its poor subjects. Unfortunately, however, the Company is

nearly in the condition of the land-holders of Jamaica, and is itself

tending toward ruin, because its subjects are limited to agriculture,

and because they receive so small a portion of the value of their very

small quantity of products. Now, as in the days of _Joshua Gee_, the

largest portion of that value remains in England, whose people eat

cheap sugar while its producer starves in India. Cheap sugar and cheap

cotton are obtained by the sacrifice of the interests of a great

nation; and while the policy of England shall continue to look to

driving the women and children of India to the labours of the field,

and the men to the raising of sugar in the Mauritius, the soil must

continue to grow poorer, the people must become more and more

enslaved, and the government must find itself more and more dependent

for revenue on the power to poison the people of China; and therefore

will it be seen that however good may be the intentions of the

gentlemen charged with the duties of government, they must find

themselves more and more compelled to grind the poor ryot in the hope

of obtaining revenue.

 

Chapter 13. How slavery grows in Ireland and Scotland

 

The government which followed the completion of the Revolution of

1688, pledged itself to discountenance the woollen manufacture of

Ireland, with a view to compel the export of raw wool to England,

whence its exportation to foreign countries was prohibited; the effect

of which was, of course, to enable the English manufacturer to

purchase it at his own price. From that period forward we find

numerous regulations as to the ports from which alone woollen yarn or

cloth might go to England, and the ports of the latter through which

it might come; while no effort was spared to induce the people of

Ireland to abandon woollens and take to flax. Laws were passed

prohibiting the export of Irish cloth and glass to the colonies. By

other laws Irish ships were deprived of the benefit of the navigation

laws. The fisheries were closed against them. No sugar could be

imported from any place but Great Britain, and no drawback was allowed

on its exportation to Ireland; and thus was the latter compelled to

pay a tax for the support of the British government, while maintaining

its own. All other colonial produce was required to be carried first

to England, after which it might be shipped to Ireland; and as Irish

shipping was excluded from the advantages of the navigation laws, it

followed that the voyage of importation was to be made in British

ships, manned by British seamen, and owned by British merchants, who

were thus authorized to tax the people of Ireland for doing their

work, while a large portion of the Irish people were themselves

unemployed.

 

While thus prohibiting them from applying themselves to manufactures

or trade, every inducement was held out to them to confine themselves

to the production of commodities required by the English

manufacturers, and wool, hemp, and flax were admitted into England

free of duty. We see thus that the system of that day in reference to

Ireland looked to limiting the people of that country, as it limited

the slaves of Jamaica, and now limits the people of Hindostan, to

agriculture alone, and thus depriving the men, the women, and the

children of all employment except the labour of the field, and of all

opportunity for intellectual improvement, such as elsewhere results

from that association which necessarily accompanies improvement in the

mechanic arts.

 

During our war of the Revolution, freedom of trade was claimed for

Ireland; and as the demand was made at a time when a large portion of

her people were under arms as volunteers, the merchants and

manufacturers of England, who had so long acted as middlemen for the

people of the sister kingdom, found themselves obliged to submit to

the removal of some of the restrictions under which the latter had so

long remained. Step by step changes were made, until at length, in

1783, Ireland was declared independent, shortly after which duties

were imposed on various articles of foreign manufacture, avowedly with

the intention of enabling her people to employ some of their surplus

labour in converting her own food and wool, and the cotton wool of

other countries, into cloth. Thenceforward manufactures and trade made

considerable progress, and there was certainly a very considerable

tendency toward improvement. Some idea of the condition of the country

at that time, and of the vast and lamentable change that has since

taken place, may be obtained from the consideration of a few facts

connected with the manufacture of books in the closing years of the

last century. The copyright laws not extending to Ireland, all books

published in England might there be reprinted, and accordingly we find

that all the principal English law reports of the day, very many of

the earlier ones, and many of the best treatises, as well as the

principal novels, travels, and miscellaneous works, were republished

in Dublin, as may be seen by an examination of any of our old

libraries. The publication of such books implies, of course, a

considerable demand for them, and for Ireland herself, as the sale of

books in this country was very small indeed, and there was then no

other part of the world to which they could go. More books were

probably published in Ireland in that day by a single house than are

now required for the supply of the whole kingdom. With 1801, however,

there came a change. By the Act of Union the copyright laws of England

were extended to Ireland, and at once the large and growing

manufacture of books was prostrated. The patent laws were also

extended to Ireland; and as England had so long monopolized the

manufacturing machinery then in use, it was clear that it was there

improvements would be made, and that thenceforth the manufactures of

Ireland must retrograde. Manchester had the home market, the foreign

market, and, to no small extent, that of Ireland open to her; while

the manufacturers of the latter were forced to contend for existence,

and under the most disadvantageous circumstances, on their own soil.

The one could afford to purchase expensive machinery, and to adopt

whatever improvements might be made, while the other could not. The

natural consequence was, that Irish manufactures gradually disappeared

as the Act of Union came into effect. By virtue of its provisions, the

duties established by the Irish Parliament for the purpose of

protecting the farmers of Ireland in their efforts to bring the loom

and the anvil into close proximity with the plough and the harrow,

were gradually to diminish, and free trade was to be fully

established; or, in other words, Manchester and Birmingham were to

have a monopoly of supplying Ireland with cloth and iron. The duty on

English woollens was to continue twenty years. The almost prohibitory

duties on English calicoes and muslins were to continue until 1808;

after which they were to be gradually diminished, until in 1821 they

were to cease. Those on cotton yarn were to cease in 1810. The effect

of this in diminishing the demand for Irish labour, is seen in the

following comparative view of manufactures at the date of the Union,

and at different periods in the ensuing forty years, here given:--

 

  Dublin, 1800,   Master woollen manufacturers. 91...  1840,   12

                 Hands employee............. 4918...    “ ,  602

                 Master wool-combers........   30...  1834,    5

                 Hands employed.............  230...    “ ,   63

                 Carpet manufacturers.......   13...  1841,    1

                 Hands employed.............  720...       none

 

  Kilkenny, 1800, Blanket manufacturers......   56...  1822,   42

                 Hands employed............. 3000...  1822,  925

 

  Dublin, 1800,   Silk-loom wearers at work.. 2500...  1840,  250

  Balbriggan, 1799, Calico looms at work..... 2500...  1841,  226

  Wicklow, 1800,  Hand-looms at work......... 1000...  1841, none

 

  Cork, 1800,     Braid weavers.............. 1000...  1834,   40

                 Worsted weavers............ 2000...         90

                 Hoosiers...................  300...         28

                 Wool-combers...............  700...        110

                 Cotton weavers............. 2000...        220

                 Linen cheek weavers........  600...       none

                 Cotton spinners, bleachers,

                  calico printers....... thousands...       none

 

“For nearly half a century Ireland has had perfectly free trade with

the richest country in the world; and what,” says the author of a

recent work of great ability,--

 

 “Has that free trade done for her? She has even now,” he continues,

 “no employment for her teeming population except upon the land. She

 ought to have had, and might easily have had, other and various

 employments, and plenty of it. Are we to believe,” says he, “the

 calumny that the Irish are lazy and won’t work? Is Irish human nature

 different from other human nature? Are not the most laborious of all

 labourers in London and New York, Irishmen? Are Irishmen inferior in

 understanding? We Englishmen who have personally known Irishmen, in

 the army, at the bar, and in the church, know that there is no better

 head than a disciplined Irish one. But in all these cases that master

 of industry, the stomach, has been well satisfied. Let an Englishman

 exchange his bread and beer, and beef, and mutton, for no breakfast,

 for a lukewarm lumper at dinner, and no supper. With such a diet, how

 much better is he than an Irishman--a Celt, as he calls him? No, the

 truth is, that the misery of Ireland is not from the human nature

 that grows there--it is from England’s perverse legislation, past and

 present.”[118]

 

Deprived of all employment, except in the labour of agriculture, land

became, of course, the great object of pursuit. “Land is life,” had

said, most truly and emphatically, Chief Justice Blackburn; and the

people had now before them the choice between the occupation of land,

_at any rent_, or _starvation_. The lord of the land was thus enabled

to dictate his own terms, and therefore it has been that we have heard

of the payment of five, six, eight, and even as much as ten pounds per

acre. “Enormous rents, low wages, farms of an enormous extent, let by

rapacious and indolent proprietors to monopolizing land-jobbers, to be

relet by intermediate oppressors, for five times their value, among

the wretched starvers on potatoes and water,” led to a constant

succession of outrages, followed by Insurrection Acts, Arms Acts, and

Coercion Acts, when the real remedy was to be found in the adoption of

a system that would emancipate the country from the tyranny of the

spindle and the loom, and permit the labour of Ireland to find

employment at home.

 

That employment could not be had. With the suppression of Irish

manufactures the demand for labour had disappeared. An English

traveller, describing the state of Ireland in 1834, thirteen years

after the free-trade provisions of the Act of Union had come fully

into operation, furnishes numerous facts, some of which will now be

given, showing that the people were compelled to remain idle, although

willing to work at the lowest wages--such wages as could not by any

possibility enable them to do more than merely sustain life, and

perhaps not even that.

 

 CASHEL.--”Wages here only _eightpence a day_, and numbers altogether

 without employment.”

 

 CAHIR.--”I noticed, on Sunday, on coming from church, the streets

 crowded with labourers, with spades and other implements in their

 hands, standing to be hired; and I ascertained that any number of

 these men might have been engaged, on constant employment, at

 _sixpence per day_ without diet.”

 

 WICKLOW.--”The husband of this woman was a labourer, at _sixpence_ a

 day, _eighty_ of which sixpences--that is, eighty days’ labour--were

 absorbed in the rent of the cabin.” “In another cabin was a decently

 dressed woman with five children, and her husband was also a labourer

 at _sixpence a day_. The pig had been taken for rent a few days

 before.” “I found some labourers receiving only _fourpence per day_.”

 

 KILKENNY.--”Upward of 2000 persons totally without employment.” “I

 visited the factories that used to support 200 men with their

 families, and how many men did I find at work? ONE MAN! In place of

 finding men occupied, I saw them in scores, like spectres, walking

 about, and lying about the mill. I saw immense piles of goods

 completed, but for which there was no sale. I saw heaps of blankets,

 and I saw every loom idle. As for the carpets which had excited the

 jealousy and the fears of Kidderminster, not one had been made for

 seven months. To convey an idea of the destitution of these people, I

 mention, that when an order recently arrived for the manufacture of

 as many blankets for the police as would have kept the men at work

 for a few days, bonfires were lighted about the country--not bonfires

 to communicate insurrection, but to evince joy that a few starving

 men were about to earn bread to support their families. Nevertheless,

 we are told that Irishmen will not work at home.”

 

 CALLEN.--”In this town, containing between four and five thousand

 inhabitants, at least one thousand are without regular employment,

 six or seven hundred entirely destitute, and there are upward of two

 hundred mendicants in the town--persons incapable of

 work.”--_Inglis’s Ireland_ in 1834.

 

Such was the picture everywhere presented to the eye of this

intelligent traveller. Go where he might, he found hundreds anxious

for employment, yet no employment could be had, unless they could

travel to England, there to spend _weeks_ in travelling round the

country in quest of _days_ of employment, the wages for which might

enable them to pay their rent at home. “The Celt,” says the _Times_,

“is the hewer of wood and the drawer of water to the Saxon; The great

works of this country,” it continues “depend on _cheap labour_.” The

labour of the slave is always low in price. The people of Ireland were

interdicted all employment but in the cultivation of the land, and

men, women, and children were forced to waste more labour than would

have paid twenty times over for all the British manufactures they

could purchase. They were passing rapidly toward barbarism, and for

the sole reason that they were denied all power of association for any

useful purpose. What was the impression produced by their appearance

on the mind of foreigners may be seen by the following extract from

the work of a well-known and highly intelligent German traveller:--

 

 “A Russian peasant, no doubt, is the slave of a harder master, but

 still he is fed and housed to his content, and no trace of mendicancy

 is to be seen in him. The Hungarians are certainly not among the

 best-used people in the world; still, what fine wheaten bread and

 what wine has even the humblest among them for his daily fare! The

 Hungarian would scarcely believe it, if he were to be told there was

 a country in which the inhabitants must content themselves with

 potatoes every alternate day in the year.

 

 “Servia and Bosnia are reckoned among the most wretched countries of

 Europe, and certainly the appearance of one of their villages has

 little that is attractive about it; but at least the people, if badly

 housed, are well clad. We look not for much luxury or comfort among

 the Tartars of the Crimea; we call them poor and barbarous, but, good

 heavens! they look at least like human creatures. They have a

 national costume, their houses are habitable, their orchards are

 carefully tended, and their gayly harnessed ponies are mostly in good

 condition. An Irishman has nothing national about him but his

 rags,--his habitation is without a plan, his domestic economy without

 rule or law. We have beggars and paupers among us, but they form at

 least an exception; whereas, in Ireland, beggary or abject poverty is

 the prevailing rule. The nation is one of beggars, and they who are

 above beggary seem to form the exception.

 

 “The African negroes go naked, but then they have a tropical sun to

 warm them. The Irish are little removed from a state of nakedness;

 and their climate, though not cold, is cool, and extremely humid. * *

 *

 

 “There are nations of slaves, but they have, by long custom, been

 made unconscious of the yoke of slavery. This is not the case with

 the Irish, who have a strong feeling of liberty within them, and are

 fully sensible of the weight of the yoke they have to bear. They are

 intelligent enough to know the injustice done them by the distorted

 laws of their country; and while they are themselves enduring the

 extreme of poverty, they have frequently before them, in the manner

 of life of their English landlords, a spectacle of the most refined

 luxury that human ingenuity ever invented.”--_Kohl’s Travels in

 Ireland_.

 

It might be thought, however, that Ireland was deficient in the

capital required for obtaining the machinery of manufacture to enable

her people to maintain competition with her powerful neighbour. We

know, however, that previous to the Union she had that machinery; and

from the date of that arrangement, so fraudulently brought about, by

which was settled conclusively the destruction of Irish manufactures,

the _annual_ waste of labour was greater than the whole amount of

capital then employed in the cotton and woollen manufactures of

England. From that date the people of Ireland were thrown, from year

to year, more into the hands of middlemen, who accumulated fortunes

that they _would_ not invest in the improvement of land, and _could_

not, under the system which prostrated manufactures, invest in

machinery of any kind calculated to render labour productive; and all

their accumulations were sent therefore to England for investment. An

official document published by the British government shows that the

transfers of British securities from England to Ireland, that is to

say, the investment of Irish capital in England, in the thirteen years

following the final adoption of free trade in 1821, amounted to as

many millions of pounds sterling; and thus was Ireland forced to

contribute cheap labour and cheap capital to building up “the great

works of Britain.” Further, it was provided by law that whenever the

poor people of a neighbourhood contributed to a saving fund, the

amount should not be applied in any manner calculated to furnish local

employment, but should be transferred for investment in the British

funds. The landlords fled to England, and their rent followed them.

The middlemen sent their capital to England. The trader or the

labourer that could accumulate a little capital saw it sent to

England; and he was then compelled to follow it. Such is the history

of the origin of the present abandonment of Ireland by its

inhabitants.

 

The form in which rents, profits, and savings, as well as taxes, went

to England, was that of raw products of the soil, to be consumed

abroad, yielding nothing to be returned to the land, which was of

course impoverished. The average export of grain in the first three

years following the passage of the Act of Union was about 300,000

quarters, but as the domestic market gradually disappeared, the export

of raw produce increased, until, at the close of twenty years it

exceeded a million of quarters; and at the date of Mr. Inglis’s visit

it had reached an average of two and a half millions, or 22,500,000 of

our bushels. The poor people were, in fact, selling their soil to pay

for cotton and woollen goods that they should have manufactured

themselves, for coal which abounded among themselves, for iron, all

the materials of which existed at home in great profusion, and for a

small quantity of tea, sugar, and other foreign commodities, while the

amount required to pay rent to absentees, and interest to mortgagees,

was estimated at more than thirty millions of dollars. Here was a

drain that no nation could bear, however great its productive power;

and the whole of it was due to the system which forbade the

application of labour, talent, or capital to any thing but

agriculture, and thus forbade advance in civilization. The inducements

to remain at home steadily diminished. Those who could live without

labour found that society had changed; and they fled to England,

France, or Italy. Those who desired to work, and felt that they were

qualified for something beyond mere manual labour, fled to England or

America; and thus by degrees was the unfortunate country depleted of

every thing that could render it a home in which to remain, while

those who could not fly remained to be, as the _Times_ so well

describes it, mere “hewers of wood and drawers of water to the Saxon,”

happy when a full-grown man could find employment at _sixpence a day_,

and that, too, without food.

 

“Throughout the west and south of Ireland,” said an English traveller

in 1842, four years before the exhaustion of the soil had produced

disease among the potatoes--

 

 “The traveller is haunted by the face of the _popular starvation_. It

 is not the exception--it is _the condition_ of the people. In this

 fairest and richest of countries, men are suffering and _starving by

 millions_. There are thousands of them, at this minute, stretched in

 the sunshine at their cabin doors with _no work_, scarcely any food,

 no hope seemingly. Strong countrymen are lying in bed, ‘_for the

 hunger_’--because a man lying on his back does not need so much food

 as a person afoot. Many of them have torn up the unripe potatoes from

 their little gardens, and to exist now must look to winter, when they

 shall have to suffer starvation and cold too.”--_Thackeray_.

 

 “Everywhere,” said the _Quarterly Review_, “throughout all parts,

 even in the best towns, and in Dublin itself, you will meet men and

 boys--not dressed, not covered--but hung round with a collection of

 rags of unrivalled variety, squalidity, and filth--walking dunghills.

 * * * No one ever saw an English scarecrow with such rags.”

 

The difference in the condition of these poor people and that of the

slave--even the slave of Jamaica at that day--consisted in this, that

the negro slave was worth buying, whereas the others were not; and we

know well that the man who pays a good price for a commodity, attaches

to it a value that induces him to give some care to its preservation;

whereas he cares nothing for another that he finds himself forced to

accept. “Starving by millions,” as they are here described, death was

perpetually separating husbands and wives, parents and children, while

to the survivors remained no hope but that of being enabled at some

time or other to fly to another land in which they might be permitted

to sell their labour for food sufficient to support life.

 

The existence of such a state of things was, said the advocates of the

system which looks to converting all the world outside of England into

one great farm, to be accounted for by the fact that the population

was too numerous for the land, and yet a third of the surface,

including the richest lands in the kingdom, was lying unoccupied and

waste.

 

 “Of single counties,” said an English writer, “Mayo, with a

 population of 389,000, and a rental of only £300,000, has an area of

 1,364,000 acres, of which 800,000 are waste! No less than 470,000

 acres, being very nearly equal to the whole extent of surface now

 under cultivation, are declared to be reclaimable. Galway, with a

 population of 423,000, and a valued rental of £433,000, has upward of

 700,000 acres of waste, 410,000 of which are reclaimable! Kerry, with

 a population of 293,000, has an area of 1,186,000 acres--727,000

 being waste, and 400,000 of them reclaimable! Even the Union of

 Glenties, Lord Monteagle’s _ne plus ultra_ of redundant population,

 has an area of 245,000 acres, of which 200,000 are waste, and for the

 most part reclaimable, to its population of 43,000. While the Barony

 of Ennis, that abomination of desolation, has 230,000 acres of land

 to its 5000 paupers--a proportion which, as Mr. Carter, one of the

 principal proprietors, remarks in his circular advertisement for

 tenants, ‘is at the rate of only one family to 230 acres; so that if

 but one head of a family were employed to every 230 acres, there need

 not be a single pauper in the entire district; a proof,’ he adds,

 ‘THAT NOTHING BUT EMPLOYMENT IS WANTING TO SET THIS COUNTRY TO

 RIGHTS!’ In which opinion we fully coincide.”

 

Nothing but employment _was_ needed, but that could not be found under

the system which has caused the annihilation of the cotton manufacture

of India, notwithstanding the advantage of having the cotton on the

spot, free from all cost for carriage. As in Jamaica, and as in India,

the land had been gradually exhausted by the exportation of its

products in their rudest state, and the country had thus been drained

of capital, a necessary consequence of which was that the labour even

of men found no demand, while women and children starved, that the

women and children of England might spin cotton and weave cloth that

Ireland was too poor to purchase. Bad, however, as was all this, a

worse state of things was at hand. Poverty and wretchedness compelled

the wretched people to fly in thousands and tens of thousands across

the Channel, thus following the capital and the soil that had been

transferred to Birmingham and Manchester; and the streets and cellars

of those towns, and those of London, Liverpool, and Glasgow, were

filled with men, women, and children in a state almost of starvation;

while throughout the country, men were offering to perform the farm

labour for food alone, and a cry had arisen among the people of

England that the labourers were likely to be swamped by these starving

Irishmen: to provide against which it was needed that the landlords of

Ireland should be compelled to support their own poor, and forthwith

an act of Parliament was passed for that purpose. Thence arose, of

course, an increased desire to rid the country of the men, women, and

children whose labour could not be sold, and who could therefore pay

no rent. The “Crowbar Brigade” was therefore called into more active

service, as will be seen by the following account of their labours in

a single one of the “Unions” established under the new poor-law

system, which in many cases took the whole rent of the land for the

maintenance of those who had been reduced to pauperism by the

determination of the people of Manchester and Birmingham to continue

the colonial system under which Ireland had been ruined.

 

 “In Galway Union, recent accounts declared the number of poor

 evicted, and their homes levelled within the last two years, to equal

 the numbers in Kilrush--4000 families and 20,000 human beings are

 said to have been here also thrown upon the road, houseless and

 homeless. I can readily believe the statement, for to me some parts

 of the country appeared like an enormous graveyard--the numerous

 gables of the unroofed dwellings seemed to be gigantic tombstones.

 They were, indeed, records of decay and death far more melancholy

 than the grave can show. Looking on them, the doubt rose in my mind,

 am I in a civilized country? Have we really a free constitution? Can

 such scenes be paralleled in Siberia or Caffraria?”

 

A single case described in a paper recently published by Mr. Dickens

in his “_Household Words_,” will convey to the reader some idea of an

eviction, that may be taken as a specimen, and perhaps a fair one, of

the _fifty thousand_ evictions that took place in the single year

1849, and of the hundreds of thousands that have taken place in the

last six years.

 

 “Black piles of peat stood on the solitary ground, ready after a

 summer’s cutting and drying. Presently, patches of cultivation

 presented themselves; plots of ground raised on beds, each a few feet

 wide, with intervening trenches to carry off the boggy water, where

 potatoes had grown, and small fields where grew more ragwort than

 grass, enclosed by banks cast up and tipped here and there with a

 brier or a stone. It was the husbandry of misery and indigence. The

 ground had already been freshly manured by sea-weeds, but the

 village, where was it? Blotches of burnt-ground, scorched heaps of

 rubbish, and fragments of blackened walls, alone were visible. Garden

 plots were trodden down and their few bushes rent up, or hung with

 tatters of rags. The two horsemen, as they hurried by, with gloomy

 visages, uttered no more than the single word--EVICTION!”

 

The scenes that had taken place at the destruction of that village,

are thus described to the author of the sad work, by a poor servant:--

 

 “Oh, bless your honour! If you had seen that poor frantic woman when

 the back of the cabin fell and buried her infant, where she thought

 she had laid it safe for a moment while she flew to part her husband

 and a soldier who had struck the other children with the flat of his

 sword and bade them troop off. Oh, but your honour it was a killing

 sight! * * * I could not help thinking of the poor people at Rathbeg

 when the soldiers and police cried, ‘Down with them! down with them

 even to the ground!’--and then the poor little cabins came down all

 in fire and smoke, amid the howls and cries of the poor creatures.

 Oh, it was a fearful sight, your honour--it was indeed--to see the

 poor women hugging their babies, and the houses where they were born

 burning in the wind. It was dreadful to see the old bed-ridden man

 lie on the ground among the few bits of furniture, and groan to his

 gracious God above! Oh, your honour, you never saw such a sight,

 or--you--sure a--it would never have been done.”

 

This is certainly an awful picture of the slavery resulting from

compelling a whole nation to devote itself to agriculture, and thus

annihilating the power of association--from compelling a whole people

to forego all the advantages resulting from proximity to market for

the sale of their products or the purchase of manure--and from

compelling men, women, and children to be idle, when they would desire

to be employed. In reading it, we are forcibly reminded of the

_razzias_ of the little African kings, who, anxious for a fresh supply

of slaves, collect their troops together and invade the neighbouring

territories, where they enact scenes corresponding exactly with the

one here described. In Africa, however, the slave is fed by those who

have burned and destroyed his house and his farm; but in Ireland, as

labour is valueless, he is turned into the roads or the grave-yards

to die of famine, or of pestilence. And yet, even now, the _Times_

asks the question--

 

 “How are the people to be fed and employed? That is the question

 which still baffles an age that can transmit a message round the

 world in a moment of time, and point out the locality of a planet

 never yet seen. There is the question which founders both the bold

 and the wise.”

 

Up to this time there had been repeated cases of partial famine, but

now the nation was startled by the news of the almost total failure of

the crop of potatoes, the single description of food upon which the

people of Ireland had been reduced to depend. Constant cropping of the

soil, returning to it none of the manure, because of the necessity for

exporting almost the whole of its products, had produced disease in

the vegetable world--precisely as the want of proper nourishment

produces it in the animal world--and now a cry of famine rang

throughout the land. The poor-houses were everywhere filled, while the

roads, and the streets, and the grave-yards were occupied by the

starving and the naked, the dying and the dead; and the presses of

England were filled with denunciations of English and Irish

landholders, who desired to make food dear, while men, women, and

children were perishing by hundreds of thousands for want of food.

Thus far, Ireland had been protected in the market of England, as some

small compensation for the sacrifice she had made of her manufacturing

interests; but now, small as has been the boon, it was to be

withdrawn, precisely as we see to have been the case with the poor

people of Jamaica. Like them, the Irish had become poor, and their

trade had ceased to be of value, although but seventy years before

they had been England’s _best_ customers. The system had exhausted all

the foreign countries with which England had been permitted to

maintain what is denominated free trade--India, Portugal, Turkey, the

West Indies, and Ireland herself--and it had become necessary to make

an effort to obtain markets in the only prosperous countries of the

world, those which had to a greater or less extent placed the consumer

by the side of the producer, to wit--this country, France, Belgium,

Germany, and Russia--and the mode of accomplishing this was that of

offering them the same freedom of trade in food by which Ireland had

been ruined. The farmers were everywhere invited to exhaust their soil

by sending its products to England to be consumed; and the corn-laws

were repealed for the purpose of enabling them to impoverish

themselves by entering into competition with the starving Irishman,

who was thus at once deprived of the market of England, as by the Act

of Union he had been deprived of his own. The cup of wretchedness was

before well nigh full, but it was now filled. The price of food fell,

and the labourer was ruined, for the whole product of his land would

scarcely pay his rent. The landlord was ruined, for he could collect

no rents, and he was at the same time liable for the payment of

enormous taxes for the maintenance of his poor neighbours. His land

was encumbered with mortgages and settlements, created when food was

high, and he could pay no interest; and now a law was passed, by aid

of which property could be summarily disposed of at public sale, and

the proceeds distributed among those who had legal claims upon it. The

landholder of Jamaica, exhausted by the system, had had his property

taken from him at a price fixed by Parliament, and the proceeds

applied to the discharge of debts incurred to his English agents, and

now the same Parliament provided for the transfer of Irish property

with a view to the payment of the same class of debts. The

impoverished landholder now experienced the same fate that had

befallen his poor tenant, and from that date to this, famine and

pestilence, levellings and evictions, have been the order of the day.

Their effect has everywhere been to drive the poor people from the

land, and its consequences are seen in the fact that the population

numbered, in 1850, _one million six hundred and fifty-nine thousand

less than it did in_ 1840; while the starving population of the towns

had largely increased. The county of Cork had diminished 222,000,

while Dublin had grown in numbers 22,000. Galway had lost 125,000,

while the city had gained 7422. Connaught had lost 414,000, while

Limerick and Belfast had gained 30,000. The number of inhabited houses

had fallen from 1,328,000 to 1,047,000, or more than twenty per cent.

Announcing these startling facts, the London _Times_ stated that “_for

a whole generation man had been a drug in Ireland, and population a

nuisance_.” The “inexhaustible Irish supply had,” as it continued,

“kept down the price of English labour,” but this cheapness of labour

had “contributed vastly to the improvement and power” of England, and

largely to “the enjoyment of those who had money to spend.” Now,

however, a change appeared to be at hand, and it was to be feared that

the prosperity of England, based as it had been on cheap Irish labour,

might be interfered with, as famine and pestilence, evictions and

emigration, were thinning out the Celts who had so long, as it is

said, been “hewers of wood and drawers of water for the Saxon.”

Another of the advocates of the system which has exhausted and ruined

Ireland, and is now transferring its land to the men who have enriched

themselves by acting as middlemen between the producers and consumers

of the world, rejoicing in the great number of those who had fled from

their native soil to escape the horrors of starvation and pestilence,

declares that this is to be regarded as the joyful side of the case.

“What,” it asks,

 

 “Will follow? This great good, among others--that _the stagnant

 weight of unemployed population_ in these insulated realms is never

 likely again to accumulate to the dangerous amount which there was

 sometimes cause to apprehend that, from unforeseen revulsions in

 industry or foreign trade, it might have done. A natural vent is now

 so thoroughly opened, and so certain to grow wider and clearer

 everyday, that the overflow will pass off whenever a moderate degree

 of pressure recurs. Population, skill, and capital, also, will no

 longer wait in consternation till they are half spent with watching

 and fear. The way is ready. They will silently shift their quarters

 when the competition or depression here becomes uncomfortable. Every

 family has already friends or acquaintances who have gone before them

 over sea. Socially, our insulation as a people is proved, by the

 census of 1851, to be at an end.”--_Daily News_.

 

The _Times_, too, rejoices in the prospect that the resources of

Ireland will now probably be developed, as the Saxon takes the place

of the Celt, who has so long hewn the wood and drawn the water for his

Saxon masters. “Prosperity and happiness may,” as it thinks,

 

 “Some day reign over that beautiful island. Its fertile soil, its

 rivers and lakes, its water-power, its minerals, and other materials

 for the wants and luxuries of man, may one day be developed; but all

 appearances are against the belief that this will ever happen in the

 days of the Celt. That tribe will soon fulfil the great law of

 Providence which seems to enjoin and reward the union of races. It

 will mix with the Anglo-American, and be known no more as a jealous

 and separate people. Its present place will be occupied by the more

 mixed, more docile, and more serviceable race, which has long borne

 the yoke of sturdy industry in this island, which can submit to a

 master and obey the law. This is no longer a dream, for it is a fact

 now in progress, and every day more apparent.”

 

Commenting upon the view thus presented, an American journalist most

truly says--

 

 “There is a cold-blooded atrocity in the spirit of these remarks for

 which examples will be sought in vain, except among the doctors of

 the free-trade school. Naturalists have learned to look with

 philosophical indifference upon the agonies of a rabbit or a mouse

 expiring in an exhausted receiver, but it requires long teaching from

 the economists before men’s hearts can be so steeled, that after

 pumping out all the sustenance of vitality from one of the fairest

 islands under the sun, they can discourse calmly upon its

 depopulation as proof of the success of the experiment, can talk with

 bitter irony of ‘that _strange_ region of the earth where such a

 people, affectionate and hopeful, genial and witty, industrious and

 independent, was produced and _could not stay_,’ and can gloat in the

 anticipation that prosperity and happiness may some day reign over

 that beautiful island, and its boundless resources for the wants and

 luxuries of man be developed, not for the Celt, but ‘for a more

 mixed, more docile, and more serviceable race, which can submit to a

 master and obey the law.’”--_Albany Journal_.

 

The _Times_ rejoices that the place of the Celt is in future to be

occupied by cattle, as sheep already occupy the place of the

Highlander expelled from the land in which, before Britain undertook

to underwork all other nations and thus secure a monopoly for “the

workshop of the world,” his fathers were as secure in their rights as

was the landowner himself. Irish journals take a different view of the

prospect. They deprecate the idea of the total expulsion of the native

race, and yet they fear that

 

 “There is no doubt that in a few years more, if some stop is not put

 to the present outpouring of the people to America, and latterly to

 Australia, there will not be a million of the present race of

 inhabitants to be found within the compass of the four provinces.”

 

 “No thoughts of the land of their birth,” it continues, “seems to

 enter their minds, although the Irish people have been proverbial for

 their attachment to their country.”--_Connaught Western Star_.

 

A recent journal informs us that

 

 “The Galway papers are full of the most deplorable accounts of

 wholesale evictions, or rather exterminations, in that miserable

 country. The tenantry are turned out of the cottages by scores at a

 time. As many as 203 men, women, and children have been driven upon

 the roads and ditches by way of one day’s work, and have now no

 resource but to beg their bread in desolate places, or to bury their

 griefs, in many instances for ever, within the walls of the Union

 workhouse. Land agents direct the operation. The work is done by a

 large force of police and soldiery. Under the protection of the

 latter, ‘the Crowbar Brigade’ advances to the devoted township, takes

 possession of the houses, such as they are, and, with a few turns of

 the crowbar and a few pulls at a rope, bring down the roof, and leave

 nothing but a tottering chimney, if even that. The sun that rose on a

 village sets on a desert; the police return to their barracks, and

 the people are nowhere to be found, or are vainly watching from some

 friendly covert for the chance of crouching once more under their

 ruined homes.

 

 “What to the Irish heart is more painful than even the large amount

 and stern method of the destruction, is that the authors this time

 are Saxon strangers. It is a wealthy London company that is invading

 the quiet retreats of Connemara, and robbing a primitive peasantry of

 its last hold on the earth; The Law Life Assurance Company having

 advanced, we believe, £240,000 on the Martin estates, has now become

 the purchaser under the Encumbered Estates Acts, and is adopting

 these summary but usual measures to secure the forfeited pledge. That

 gentlemen, many of whom have never set foot in Ireland, and who are

 wealthy enough to lend a quarter of a million of money, should exact

 the last penny from a wretched peasantry who had no hand, or voice in

 the transaction which gave them new masters, seems utterly

 intolerable to the native Irish reason.”

 

With the growth of the value of land, man has always become free. With

the decline in its value, man has always become enslaved. If we desire

to find the cause of the enormous destruction of life in Ireland, even

in this day of boasted civilization--if we desire to find the cause of

the eviction of tenant and landlord, and the decline in the value of

land, we need scarcely look beyond the following paragraph:--

 

 “The cotton manufacture of Dublin, which employed 14,000 operatives,

 has been destroyed; the 3400 silk-looms of the Liberty have been

 destroyed; the stuff and serge manufacture, which employed 1491

 operatives, have been destroyed; the calico-looms of Balbriggan have

 been destroyed; the flannel manufacture of Rathdrum has been

 destroyed; the blanket manufacture of Kilkenny has been destroyed;

 the camlet trade of Bandon, which produced £100,000 a year, has been

 destroyed; the worsted and stuff manufactures of Waterford have been

 destroyed; the rateen and frieze manufactures of Carrick-on-Suir have

 been destroyed. One business alone survives! One business alone

 thrives and flourishes, and dreads no bankruptcy! That fortunate

 business--which the Union Act has not struck down, but which the

 Union Act has stood by--which the absentee drain has not slackened,

 but has stimulated--which the drainage Acts and navigation laws of

 the Imperial Senate have not deadened but invigorated--that favoured,

 and privileged, and patronized business is the Irish

 coffin-maker’s.”[119]

 

To the separation of the consumer from the producer resulting from the

adoption of the system which has for its object the establishment of a

monopoly of the machinery of manufacture for the world, are due the

exhaustion of Ireland, the ruin of its landholders, the starvation of

its people, and the degradation in the eyes of the world of the

country which has furnished to the continent its best soldiers, and to

the empire not only its most industrious and intelligent labourers,

but also its Burke, its Grattan, its Sheridan, and its Wellington. And

yet we find the _Times_ rejoicing at the gradual disappearance of the

native population, and finding in

 

 “The abstraction of the Celtic race at the rate of a quarter of a

 million a year, a surer remedy for _the inveterate Irish disease_,

 than any human wit could have imagined.”

 

The “inveterate Irish disease” here spoken of is a total absence of

demand for labour, resulting from the unhappy determination of the

people of England to maintain the monopoly of the power to manufacture

for the world. The sure remedy for this is found in famines,

pestilences, and expatriation, the necessary results of the exhaustion

of the land which follows the exportation of its raw products. A

stronger confirmation of the destructive character of such a course of

policy than is contained in the following paragraph could scarcely be

imagined:--

 

 “When the Celt has crossed the Atlantic, he begins for the first time

 in his life to consume the manufactures of this country, and

 indirectly to contribute to its customs. We may possibly live to see

 the day when the chief product of Ireland will be cattle, and English

 and Scotch the majority of her population. The nine or ten millions

 of Irish, who by that time will have settled in the United States,

 cannot be less friendly to England, and will certainly be much better

 customers to her than they now are.”--London _Times_.

 

When the Celt leaves Ireland he leaves an almost purely agricultural

country, and in such countries man generally approaches nearly to the

condition of a slave. When he comes here he comes to a country in

which to some little extent the plough and the loom have been enabled

to come together; and here he becomes a freeman and a customer of

England.

 

The nation that commences by exporting raw products must end by

exporting men; and if we desire evidence of this, we need only look to

the following figures, furnished by the last four censuses of

Ireland:--

 

    1821........ 6,801,827

    1831........ 7,767,401----Increase,   965,574

    1841........ 8,175,124----Increase,   407,723

    1851........ 6,515,794----Decrease, 1,659,330

 

To what causes may this extraordinary course of events be attributed?

Certainly not to any deficiency of land, for nearly one-third of the

whole surface, including millions of acres of the richest soils of the

kingdom, remains in a state of nature. Not to original inferiority of

the soil in cultivation, for it has been confessedly among the richest

in the empire. Not to a deficiency of mineral ores or fuel, for coal

abounds, and iron ores of the richest kind, as well as those of other

metals, exist in vast profusion. Not to any deficiency in the physical

qualities of the Irishman, for it is an established fact that he is

capable of performing far more labour than the Englishman, the

Frenchman, or the Belgian. Not to a deficiency of intellectual

ability, for Ireland has given to England her most distinguished

soldiers and statesmen; and we have in this country everywhere

evidence that the Irishman is capable of the highest degree of

intellectual improvement. Nevertheless, while possessed of every

advantage that nature could give him, we find the Irishman at home a

slave to the severest taskmasters, and reduced to a condition of

poverty and distress, such as is exhibited in no other portion of the

civilized world. No choice is now left him but between expatriation

and starvation, and therefore it is that we see him everywhere

abandoning the home of his fathers, to seek elsewhere that subsistence

which Ireland, rich as she is in soil and in her minerals, in her

navigable rivers, and in her facilities of communication with the

world, can no longer afford him.

 

That the process of eviction is still continued on an extensive scale

is shown by the following extracts from Sir Francis Head’s work on

Ireland, just issued from the press:--

 

 “Here almost immediately I first met with that afflicting spectacle,

 or rather spectre, that almost without intermission haunted me

 through the whole remainder of my tour, namely, stout stone-built

 cabins; unroofed for the purpose of evicting therefrom their

 insolvent tenants.”--P. 110

 

 “On conversing with the master, I ascertained from him that Lord

 Lucan’s evictions have ceased, but that Lord Erne evicted on Saturday

 last.”[120]--P. 115

 

 “‘Is this system of eviction,’ said I to the driver, pointing to a

 small cluster of unroofed cabins we were passing at the moment, ‘good

 or bad?’ ‘Well! yere Arn’r!’ he replied, ‘ut’s good and ut’s bad.

 Ut’s good for them that hould large lands, bad for the small. Ut

 laves nothing for tham but the workhouse.’”--P. 121.

 

The tendency of the system which looks to the exportation of raw

produce and the exhaustion of the soil is always toward the

consolidation of the land, because the exportation of population,

whether from Ireland, India, or Virginia, always follows in the wake

of the exportation of food and other raw commodities.

 

 “Among the men were only four that could fairly be called ‘able-

 bodied;’ each of them told me he had been evicted by Lord Lucan. I

 asked the master what had become of the rest. His answer was very

 instructive. ‘Most of them,’ said he, ‘if they can scrape up

 half-a-crown, go to England, from whence, after some little time,

 they send from 2s. 6d. to 10s. and, as soon as their families get

 _that_, they are off to them.’

 

 “‘Does the father go first?’ I thoughtlessly asked.

 

 “‘Oh, no! we keep _him_ to the last. One daughter went off to England

 from here a short time ago, and sent 7s. 6d. _That_ took out the

 mother and another sister. In a few weeks the mother and sister sent

 enough to get over the remaining two sons and the father. Total of

 the family, 6.’”--P. 127.

 

In the above passage we have the equivalent of the exportation of the

negro from the Northern Slave States. Husbands and wives, parents and

children, are forced to fly from each other, never to meet again

unless those who emigrate can save means to send for those who are

left behind.

 

 “We were now joined by the head-steward--a sedate, highly

 intelligent, respectable-looking Scotchman, who has been in Ireland

 thirteen years. He told me that the number of persons that had been

 ejected was about 10,000, of whom one-tenth were employed by Lord

 Lucan, who had given most of them cottages.”

 

 “We passed a cabin, and, closing my umbrella and leaving it on the

 car, I walked in.

 

 “‘Will yere Arn’r take a sate?’ said a woman about thirty-eight, with

 a fine, open countenance, her eyes being listlessly fixed on the

 daylight.

 

 “I sat down. On her lap was an infant. Three bare-footed children, as

 if hatching eggs, sat motionless on the edge of a peat fire, which

 appeared to be almost touching their naked toes; above the embers was

 demurely hanging a black pot. Opposite sat, like a bit of gnarled

 oak, the withered grandmother. The furniture was composed of a

 dingy-coloured wooden wardrobe, with a few plates on the top, and one

 bed close to the fire. There was no chimney but the door, on the

 threshold of which stood, looking exceedingly unhappy, four dripping

 wet fowls; at the far end of the chamber was a regular dungheap, on

 which stood an ass.

 

 “‘Where is your husband, my good woman?’ I said to the youngest of

 the women.

 

 “‘In England, yere Arn’r,’ she replied, ‘saking work.’”--P. 132.

 

“Seeking work!” and yet Ireland abounds, in the richest land

uncultivated, and mineral wealth untouched, because the system forbids

that men should combine their efforts together for the improvement of

their common condition.

 

 “After trotting on for about a mile, and after I had left Lord

 Lucan’s property, I came as usual to a small village of unroofed

 cabins, from the stark walls of which, to my astonishment, I saw here

 and there proceeding a little smoke; and, on approaching it, I beheld

 a picture I shall not readily forget. The tenants had been all

 evicted, and yet, dreadful to say, they were there still! the

 children nestling, and the poor women huddling together, under a

 temporary lean-to of straw, which they had managed to stick into the

 interstices of the walls of their ancient homes.

 

 “‘This is a quare place, yere Arn’r!’ said a fine, honest-looking

 woman, kindly smiling to me, adding, ‘Sit down, yere Arn’r!’

 

 “One of her four children got up and offered me his stool.

 

 “Under another temporary shed I found a tall woman heavy with child,

 a daughter ahout sixteen, and four younger children--_her_ husband

 was also in England, ‘sakin work.’ I entered two or three more of

 these wretched habitations, around which were the innumerable tiny

 fields; surrounded by those low tottering stone walls I have already

 described.* * *--P. 136.

 

 “They were really good people, and from what I read in their

 countenances, I feel confident, that if, instead of distributing

 among them a few shillings, I had asked them to feed _me_, with the

 kindest hospitality they would readily have done so, and that with my

 gold in my pocket I might have slept among them in the most perfect

 security.

 

 “The devotional expressions of the lower class of Irish, and the

 meekness and resignation with which they bear misfortune or

 affliction, struck, me very forcibly. ‘I haven’t aten a bit this

 blessed day, glory be to God!’ said one woman, ‘Troth, I’ve been

 suffering lhong time from poverty and sickness, glory be to God!’

 said another. On entering a strange cabin, the common salutation is,

 ‘God save all here!’ On passing a gang of comrades at labour, a man

 often says, ‘God bless the work, boys!’”--P. 137.

 

The extirpation of the people results necessarily in the decay of the

towns, as is here shown:--

 

 “When my bill came,--for one’s bill at an inn, like death, is sure to

 come,--I asked the waiter what effect the evictions in the

 neighbourhood had had on the town.

 

 “‘They have ruined it,’ he replied; ‘the poor used to support the

 rich; now that the poor are gone the rich shopkeepers are all

 failing. Our town is full of empty shops, and, after all, the

 landlord himself is now being ruined!’”--P. 147.

 

Cheap labour and cheap land are always companions. In Jamaica and

India, land, as we have seen, is almost valueless. How it is in

Ireland may be seen by the following passage:--

 

 “Adjoining is a similar property of about 10,000 acres, purchased, I

 was informed, by Captain Houston, a short time ago, at the rate of

 2-1/2d. an acre.”--P. 153.

 

In a paper recently read before the statistical section of the British

Association, it is shown that the estates recently purchased in

Ireland by English capital embraced 403,065 acres, and that the

purchase money had been £1,095,000, or about £2 15s. ($13.20) per

acre, being little more than is paid for farms with very moderate

improvements in the new States of the Mississippi Valley.

 

Why land is cheap and labour badly rewarded may easily be seen on a

perusal of the following passages:--

 

 “‘Chickuns are about 5d. a couple, dooks 10d. A couple of young gaise

 10d; when auld, not less than 1s. or 14d.’

 

 “‘And turkeys?’ I asked.

 

 “‘I can’t say; we haven’t many of thim in the counthry, and I don’t

 want to tell yere Arn’r a lie. Fish, little or nothing. A large

 turbot, of 30 lbs. weight, for 3s. Lobsters, a dozen for 4d. Soles,

 2d. or 3d. a piece. T’other day I bought a turbot, of 15 lbs. weight,

 for a gentleman, and I paid 18d. for ut.’”--P. 178.

 

 “‘What do you pay for your tea and sugar here?’ I inquired.

 

 “‘Very dare, sir,’ he replied. ‘We pay 5s. for tea, 5d. for brown

 sugar, and 8d. for white; that is, if we buy a single

 pound.’”--P.187.

 

The sugar of the labourer of Jamaica exchanges in Manchester for three

shillings, of which he receives perhaps one, and he perishes because

of the difficulty of obtaining machinery, or clothing. The Hindoo

sells his cotton for a penny a pound, and buys it back in the form of

cloth at eighteen or twenty pence. The Virginia negro raises tobacco

which exchanges for six shillings’ worth of commodities, of which he

and his owner obtain three pence. The poor Irishman raises chickens

which sell in London for shillings, of which he receives pence, and

thus a pound of sugar which had yielded the free negro of Jamaica two

pence, exchanges in the West of Ireland for a pair of chickens or a

dozen lobsters. The reader who may study these facts will readily

understand the destructive effects on the value of land and labour

resulting from the absence of markets, such as arise naturally where

the plough and the loom are permitted, in accordance with the

doctrines of Adam Smith, to take their places by the side of each

other. More than seventy years since he denounced the system which

looked to compelling the exports of raw produce as one productive of

infinite injustice, and certainly the histories of Jamaica and

Virginia, Ireland and India, since his time, would afford him, were he

now present, little reason for a change of opinion.

 

It is common to ascribe the state of things now existing in Ireland to

the rapid growth of population; and that in its turn is charged to the

account of the potato, the excessive use of which, as Mr. McCulloch

informs his readers, has lowered the standard of living and tended to

the multiplication of men, women, and children. “The peasantry of

Ireland live,” as he says, “in miserable mud cabins, without either a

window or a chimney, or any thing that can be called furniture,” and

are distinguished from their fellow labourers across the Channel by

their “filth and misery,” and hence it is, in his opinion, that they

work for low wages. We have here effect substituted for cause. The

absence of demand for labour causes wages to be low, and those wages

will procure nothing but mud cabins and potatoes. It is admitted

everywhere throughout the continent of Europe that the introduction of

the potato has tended greatly to the improvement of the condition of

the people; but then, there is no portion of the continent in which it

is used, where it constitutes an essential part of the governmental

policy to deprive millions of people of all mode of employment except

agriculture, and thus placing those millions at such a distance from

market that the chief part of their labour and its products is lost in

the effort to reach that market, and their land is exhausted because

of the impossibility of returning to the soil any portion of the crop

yielded by it. Commercial centralization produces all these effects.

It looks to the destruction of the value of labour and land, and to

the enslavement of man. It tends to the division of the whole

population into two classes, separated by an impassable gulf--the mere

labourer and the land-owner. It tends to the destruction of the power

of association for any purpose of improvement, whether by the making

of roads or by the founding of schools, and of course to the

prevention of the growth of towns, as we see to have been the case

with Jamaica, so barbarous in this respect when compared with

Martinique or Cuba, islands whose governments have not looked to the

perpetual divorce of the hammer and the harrow. The decay of towns in

Ireland, subsequent to the Union, led to absenteeism, and thus added

to the exhaustion of the land, because Irish wheat was now needed to

pay not only for English cloth but for English services; and the more

the centralization resulting from absenteeism, the greater necessarily

was the difficulty of maintaining the productive powers of the soil.

Mr. McCulloch, however, assures his readers that “it is not easy to

imagine any grounds for pronouncing the expenditure of the rent at

home “more beneficial” to the country than if it had been expended

abroad. (_Principles_, 157.) Another distinguished political economist

says--

 

 “Many persons, also, perplexed by the consideration that all the

 commodities which are exported as remittances of the absentee’s

 income are exports for which no return is obtained; that they are as

 much lost to this country as if they were a tribute paid to a foreign

 state, or even as if they were periodically thrown into the sea. This

 is unquestionably true; but it must be recollected that whatever is

 unproductively consumed, is, by the very terms of the proposition,

 destroyed, without producing any return”--_Senior’s Political

 Economy_, 160.

 

This view is, as the reader will see, based upon the idea of the total

destruction of the commodities consumed. Were it even correct, it

would still follow that there had been transferred from Ireland to

England a demand for services of a thousand kinds, tending to cause a

rise in the price of labour in the one and a fall in the other;--but

if it were altogether incorrect, it would then follow, necessarily,

that the loss to the country _would_ be as great as if the remittances

were “a tribute paid to a foreign state, or even as if they were

periodically thrown into the sea.” That it is altogether incorrect the

reader may readily satisfy himself. Man consumes much, but he destroys

nothing. In eating food he is merely acting as a machine for preparing

the elements of which it is composed for future production; and the

more he can take out of the land the more he can return to it, and the

more rapid will be the improvement in the productive power of the

soil. If the market be at hand, he can take hundreds of bushels of

turnips, carrots, or potatoes, or tons of hay, from an acre of land,

and he can vary the character of his culture from year to year, and

the more he borrows from the great bank the more he can repay to it,

the more he can improve his mind and his cultivation, and the more

readily he can exchange for improved machinery by aid of which to

obtain still increased returns. If, however, the market be distant, he

must raise only those things that will bear carriage, and which from

their small yield command a high price, and thus is he limited in his

cultivation, and the more he is limited the more rapidly he exhausts

his land, the less is his power to obtain roads, to have association

with his fellow-men, to obtain books, to improve his mode of thought,

to make roads, or to purchase machinery. Such is the case even when he

is compelled to sell and buy in distant markets, but still worse is it

when, as in the case of the rent of the absentee, nothing is returned

to the land, for then production diminishes without a corresponding

diminution of the rent, and the poor cultivator is more and more

thrown upon the mercy of the land-owner or his agent, and becomes, as

we see to have been the case in Jamaica and India, practically a

slave. This state of things has in all countries been followed by a

diminution of population resulting from starvation or from

exportation; and hence it is that we see the destruction of life in

Ireland, India, and the West Indies, while from the two former vast

numbers are annually exported, many of them to perish in the new

countries to which they are driven. Out of 99,000 that left Ireland

for Canada in a single year, no less than 13,000 perished on

shipboard, and thousands died afterward of disease, starvation, and

neglect; and thus it is that we have the horrors of “the middle

passage” repeated in our day. It is the slave trade of the last

century reproduced on a grander scale and on a new theatre of action.

 

We are told of the principle of population that men increase faster

than food, and, for evidence that such must always be the case, are

pointed to the fact that when men are few in number they always

cultivate the rich soils, and then food is abundant, but as population

increases they are forced to resort to the poor soils, and then food

becomes scarce. That the contrary of all this is the fact is shown by

the history of England, France, Italy, Greece, India, and every other

nation of the world, and is proved in our own day by all that is at

this moment being done in this country. It is proved by the fact that

Ireland possesses millions of acres of the most fertile soil remaining

in a state of nature, and so likely to remain until she shall have

markets for their produce that will enable their owners readily to

exchange turnips, potatoes, cabbages, and hay, for cloth, machinery,

and MANURE.

 

It is singular that all the political economists of England should so

entirely have overlooked the fact that man is a mere borrower from the

earth, and that when he does not pay his debts, she does as do all

other creditors, that is, she expels him from his holding. England

makes of her soil a grand reservoir for the waste yielded by all the

sugar, coffee, wool, indigo, cotton and other raw commodities of

almost half the world, and thus does she raise a crop that has been

valued at five hundred millions of dollars, or five times more than

the average value of the cotton crop produced by so many millions of

people in this country; and yet so important is manure that she

imports in a single year more than two hundred thousand tons of guano,

at a cost of almost two millions of pounds, and thus does she make

labour productive and land valuable. Nevertheless, her writers teach

other nations that the true mode of becoming rich is to exhaust the

land by sending from it all its products in their rudest state, and

then, when the people of Ireland attempt to follow the soil which they

have sent to England, the people of the latter are told by Mr.

McCulloch that

 

 “The unexampled misery of the Irish people is directly owing to the

 excessive augmentation of their numbers; and, nothing can be more

 perfectly futile than to expect any real or lasting amendment of

 their situation until an effectual check has been given to the

 progress of population. It is obvious too,” he continues, “that the

 low and degraded condition into which the people of Ireland are now

 sunk is the condition to which every people must be reduced whose

 numbers continue, for any considerable period, to increase faster

 than the means of providing for their comfortable and decent

 subsistence.”--_Principles_, 383.

 

The population of Ireland did increase with some rapidity, and the

reason for this was to be found in the fact that poverty had not yet

produced that demoralization which restricts the growth of numbers.

The extraordinary morality of the women of Ireland is admitted

everywhere. In England it is remarked upon by poor-law commissioners,

and here it is a fact that cannot fail to command the attention of the

most superficial observer. How it is at home we are told by Sir

Francis Head, whose statements on this subject cannot be read without

interest:--

 

 “As regards the women of Ireland, their native modesty cannot fail to

 attract the observation of any stranger. Their dress was invariably

 decent, generally pleasing, and often strikingly picturesque. Almost

 all wore woollen petticoats, dyed by themselves, of a rich madder

 colour, between crimson and scarlet. Upon their shoulders, and

 occasionally from their heads, hung, in a variety of beautiful folds,

 sometimes a plaid of red and green, sometimes a cloak, usually dark

 blue or dingy white. Their garments, however, like those of the men,

 were occasionally to be seen in tatters.”--P. 119.

 

Anxious to be fully informed on the subject, the traveller took

occasion to interrogate various police-officers and gentlemen, and the

result of his inquiries will be seen on a perusal of the following

questions and answers:--

 

 Q. “How long have you been on duty in Galway?”

 

 A. “Above nine years.”

 

 Q. “Have you much crime here?”

 

 A. “Very little; it principally consists of petty larcenies.”

 

 Q. “Have there been here many illegitimate children?”

 

 A. “Scarcely any. During the whole of the eight years I have been on

 duty here I have not known of an illegitimate child being reared up

 in any family in the town.”

 

 Q. “What do you mean by being reared up?”

 

 A. “I mean that, being acquainted with every family in Galway, I have

 never known of a child of that description being born.”--P. 208.

 

 Q. “How long have you been on duty here?”

 

 A. “Only six months.”

 

 Q. “During that time have you known of any instance of an

 illegitimate child being born in the village of the Claddagh?”

 

 A. “Not only have I never known of such a case, but I have never

 heard any person attribute such a case to the fisherwomen of

 Claddagh. I was on duty in the three islands of Arran, inhabited

 almost exclusively by fishermen, who also farm potatoes, and I never

 heard of one of their women--who are remarkable for their

 beauty--having had an illegitimate child, nor did I ever hear it

 attributed to them; indeed, I have been informed by Mr. -----, a

 magistrate who has lived in Galway for eight years, and has been on

 temporary duty in the island of Arran, that he also had never heard

 there of a case of that nature.”--P. 209.

 

 A. “I have been here better than two years, and during that time I

 have never known of any woman of Claddagh having had an illegitimate

 child--indeed, I have never even heard of it.”

 

 Q. “Have you ever known of any such case in Galway?”

 

 A. “Oh, I think there have been some cases in _town_. Of my own

 knowledge I cannot say so, but I have _heard_ of it.”--_Ibid_.

 

 Q. “How long have you been in charge of the Claddagh village?”

 

 A. “I have been nine years here, for five years of which last March I

 have been in charge of Claddagh.”

 

 Q. “During that time has there been an illegitimate child born

 there?”

 

 A. “No, I have never heard of it, and if it had happened I should

 have been sure to have heard of it, as they wouldn’t have allowed her

 to stop in the village.”--P. 210.

 

The reader will now be pleased to recollect that the production of

food, flax, cotton, and other raw commodities requires hard labour and

exposure, and it is for such labour men are fitted--that the

conversion of food, flax, and cotton into cloth requires little

exertion and is unattended with exposure, and is therefore especially

fitted for the weaker sex--and that when the work of conversion is

monopolized by people who live at a distance from the place of

production, the woman and the child must be driven to the labour of

the field; and therefore it is that we see the women and the children

of Jamaica and Carolina, of Portugal and Turkey, of India and of

Ireland, compelled to remain idle or to cultivate the land, because of

the existence of a system which denies to all places in the world but

one the power to bring the consumer to the side of the producer. It

was time for woman to take up the cause of her sex, and it may be

hoped that she will prosecute the inquiry into the causes of the

demoralization and degradation of the women of so large a portion of

the world, until she shall succeed in extirpating the system so long

since denounced by the greatest of all economists, as “a manifest

violation of the most sacred rights of man [and woman] kind.”

 

       *       *       *       *       *

 

SCOTLAND.

 

Centralization tends everywhere to the exhaustion of the land, and to

its consolidation in fewer hands, and with every step in this

direction man becomes less and less free to determine for whom he will

work and what shall be his reward. That such has been the tendency in

Jamaica, India, and Ireland, has been shown, and it is now proposed to

show that the same tendency exists in Scotland, the Northern part of

which has become exclusively agricultural as even its home

manufactures have passed away, and must look to a distance for a

market for all its products, involving, of course, a necessity for

exhausting the land.

 

The Highland tacksman, originally co-proprietor of the land of the

clan, became at first vassal, then hereditary tenant, then tenant at

will, and thus the property in land passed from the many into the

hands of the few, who have not hesitated to avail themselves of the

power so obtained. The payment of money rents was claimed by them

eighty years since, but the amount was very small, as is shown by the

following passage from a work of that date:--

 

 “The rent of these lands is very trifling compared to their extent,

 but compared to the number of mouths which a farm maintains, it will

 perhaps be found that a plot of land in the highlands of Scotland

 feeds ten times more people than a farm of the same extent in the

 richest provinces.”--_Stewart’s Political Economy_, vol. i. chap.

 xvi.

 

Of some of the proceedings of the present century the following sketch

is furnished by a recent English writer:--

 

 “Even in the beginning of the 19th century the rental imposts were

 very small, as is shown by the work of Mr. Lock, (1820,) the steward

 of the Countess of Sutherland, who directed the improvements on her

 estates. He gives for instance the rental of the Kintradawell estate

 for 1811, from which it appears that up to then, every family was

 obliged to pay a yearly impost of a few shillings in money, a few

 fowls, and some days’ work, at the highest.

 

 “It was only after 1811 that the ultimate and real usurpation was

 enacted, the forcible, transformation of _clan-property_ into the

 _private property_, in the modern sense, _of the chief_. The person

 who stood at the head of this economical revolution, was the Countess

 of Sutherland and Marchioness of Stafford.

 

 “Let us first state that the ancestors of the marchioness were the

 ‘great men’ of the most northern part of Scotland, of very near

 three-quarters of Sutherlandshire. This county is more extensive than

 many French departments or small German principalities. When the

 Countess of Sutherland inherited these estates, which she afterward

 brought to her husband, the Marquis of Stafford, afterward Duke of

 Sutherland, the population of them was already reduced to 15,000. The

 countess resolved upon a radical economical reform, and determined

 upon transforming the whole tract of country into sheep-walks. From

 1814 to 1820, these 15,000 inhabitants, about 3000 families, were

 systematically expelled and exterminated. All their villages were

 demolished and burned down, and all their fields converted into

 pasturage. British soldiers were commanded for this execution, and

 came to blows with the natives. An old woman refusing to quit her

 hut, was burned in the flames of it. Thus the countess appropriated

 to herself _seven hundred and ninety-four thousand acres of land_,

 which from time immemorial had belonged to the clan. She allotted to

 the expelled natives about six thousand acres--two acres per family.

 These six thousand acres had been lying waste until then, and brought

 no revenue to the proprietors. The countess was generous enough to

 sell the acre at 2s. 6d. on an average, to the clan-men who for

 centuries past had shed their blood for her family. The whole of the

 unrightfully appropriated clan-land she divided into twenty-nine

 large sheep-farms, each of them inhabited by one single family,

 mostly English farm-labourers; and in 1821 the 15,000 Gaels had

 already been superseded by 131,000 sheep.

 

 “A portion of the aborigines had been thrown upon the sea-shore, and

 attempted to live by fishing. They became amphibious, and, as an

 English author says, lived half on land and half on water, and after

 all did not half live upon both.”

 

Throughout the North of Scotland the tenants of the small grazing

farms into which the Highland counties had been divided, have been

ousted for the purpose of creating sheep-walks, and to such an extent

has this been carried, that where once, and at no distant period, were

numerous black-cattle farms, not an inhabitant is now to be seen for

many miles.[121] The work, too, is still going on. “The example of

Sutherland,” says Mr. Thornton,[122] “is imitated in the neighbouring

counties.”

 

The misery of these poor people is thus described:--

 

 “Hinds engaged by the year are seldom paid more than two-thirds of

 what they would receive in the South, and few of them are fortunate

 enough to obtain regular employment. Farm-servants, however, form

 only a small proportion of the peasantry, a much greater number being

 crofters, or tenants of small pieces of ground, from which they

 derive almost their whole subsistence. Most of them live very

 miserably. The soil is so poor, and rents in some instances so

 exorbitant, that occupiers of four or five acres can do little more

 than maintain themselves, yet it is their aid alone that saves their

 still poorer brethren from starvation. This is true even of

 Sutherland, which is commonly represented as a highly improved

 county, and in which a signal change for the better is said to have

 taken place in the character and habits of the people.[123] Recent

 inquiry has discovered that even there, in districts once famous for

 fine men and gallant soldiers, the inhabitants have degenerated into

 a meagre and stunted race. In the healthiest situations, on hillsides

 fronting the sea, the faces of their famished children are as thin

 and pale as they could be in the foul atmosphere of a London

 alley.[124] Still more deplorable are the scenes exhibited in the

 Western Highlands, especially on the coasts and in the adjoining

 islands. A large population has there been assembled, so ill provided

 with any means of support, that during part of almost every year from

 45,000 to 80,000 [125] of them are in a state of destitution, and

 entirely dependent upon charity. Many of the heads of families hold

 crofts from four to seven acres in extent, but these, notwithstanding

 their small size, and the extreme barrenness of the soil, have often

 two, three, and sometimes even four families upon them. One estate in

 the Hebrides, the nominal rent of which is only £5200 a year, is

 divided into 1108 crofts, and is supposed to have more than 8300

 persons living upon it. In another instance a rental of £1814 is

 payable (for little is really paid) by 365 crofters, and the whole

 population of the estate is estimated at more than 2300. In Cromarty,

 1500 persons are settled upon an estate let nominally for £750, but

 “paying not more than half that sum.”--_Thornton_, 74.

 

 “Of course, they live most wretchedly. Potatoes are the usual food,

 for oatmeal is considered a luxury, to be reserved for high days and

 holidays, but even potatoes are not raised in sufficient abundance.

 The year’s stock is generally exhausted before the succeeding crop is

 ripe, and the poor are then often in a most desperate condition, for

 the poor-law is a dead letter in the North of Scotland, and the want

 of a legal provision for the necessitous is but ill supplied by the

 spontaneous contributions of the land-owners.”--_Ibid_. 76.

 

At the moment of writing this, the journals of the day furnish

information that famine prevails in the Hebrides, and that “in the

Isle of Skye alone there are 10,000 able-bodied persons at this time

without work, without food, and without credit.”

 

The condition of these poor people would certainly be much improved

could they find some indulgent master who would purchase them at such

prices as would make it to his interest to feed, clothe, and lodge

them well in return for their labour.

 

In the days of Adam Smith about one-fifth of the surface of Scotland

was supposed to be entailed, and he saw the disadvantages of the

system to be so great that he denounced the system as being “founded

upon the most absurd of all suppositions--the supposition that every

successive generation of men have not an equal right to the earth and

all that it possesses; but that the property of the present generation

should be retained and regulated according to the fancy of those who

died perhaps five hundred years ago.” Instead of changing the system,

and doing that which might tend to the establishment of greater

freedom of trade in land, the movement has been in a contrary

direction, and to such an extent that one-half of Scotland is now

supposed to be entailed; and yet, singularly enough, this is the

system advocated by Mr. McCulloch, a follower in the foot-steps of

Adam Smith, as being the one calculated “to render all classes more

industrious, and to augment at the same time the mass of wealth and

the scale of enjoyment.”

 

The effects of the system are seen in the enormous rents contracted to

be paid for the use of small pieces of land at a distance from market,

the failure in the payment of which makes the poor cultivator a mere

slave to the proprietor. How the latter use their power, may be seen

by the following extract from a Canadian journal of 1851:--

 

 “A Colonel -----, the owner of estates in South Uist and Barra, in

 the highlands of Scotland, has sent off over 1100 destitute tenants

 and cotters under the most cruel and delusive temptations; assuring

 them that they would be taken care of immediately on their arrival at

 Quebec by the emigrant agent, receive a free passage to Upper Canada,

 where they would be provided with work by the government agents, and

 receive grants of land on certain imaginary conditions. Seventy-one

 of the last cargo of four hundred and fifty have signed a statement

 that some of them fled to the mountains when an attempt was made to

 force them to emigrate. ‘Whereupon,’ they add, ‘Mr. Fleming gave

 orders to a policeman, who was accompanied by the ground officer of

 the estate in Barra, and some constables, to pursue the people who

 had run away among the mountains, which they did, and succeeded in

 capturing about twenty from the mountains and from other islands in

 the neighbourhood; but only came with the officers on an attempt

 being made to handcuff them, and that some who ran away were not

 brought back; in consequence of which four families, at least, have

 been divided, some having come in the ships to Quebec, while other

 members of the same families are left in the highlands.’”

 

 “On board the Conrad and the Birman were 518 persons from Mull and

 Tyree, sent out by his grace the Duke of -----, who provided them

 with a free passage to Montreal, where on arrival they presented the

 same appearance of destitution as those from South Uist, sent out by

 Colonel -----, that is, ‘entirely destitute of money and

 provisions.’”

 

Numbers of these people perished, as we are told, of disease and want

of food in the winter which followed their arrival in Canada; and that

such would have been the case might naturally have been anticipated by

those who exported them.

 

The wretched cotters who are being everywhere expelled from the land

are forced to take refuge in cities and towns, precisely as we see now

to be the case in Ireland. “In Glasgow,” says Mr. Thornton--

 

 “There are nearly 30,000 poor Highlanders, most of them living in a

 state of misery, which shows how dreadful must have been the

 privations to which such misery is preferred. Such of them as are

 able-bodied obtain employment without much difficulty, and may not

 perhaps have much reason to complain of deficiency of the first

 requisites of life; but the quarter they inhabit is described as

 enclosing a larger amount of filth, crime, misery, and disease, than

 could have been supposed to exist in one spot in any civilized

 country. It consists of long lanes called ‘wynds,’ so narrow that a

 cart could scarcely pass through them, opening upon ‘closes,’ or

 courts, about 15 or 20 feet square, round which the houses, mostly

 three stories high, are built, and in the centre of which is a

 dunghill. The houses are occupied indiscriminately by labourers of

 the lowest class, thieves, and prostitutes, and every apartment is

 filled with a promiscuous crowd of men and women, all in the most

 revolting state of filth. Amid such scenes and such companions as

 these, thousands of the most intelligent of the Highlanders are

 content to take refuge, for it is precisely those who are best

 educated and best informed that are most impatient of the penury they

 have to endure at home.

 

 “The inhabitants of the Glasgow wynds and closes may be likened to

 those of the Liverpool cellars, or to those of the worst parts of

 Leeds, St. Giles’s, and Bethnal Green, in London; and every other

 class of the Scottish urban labouring population may likewise be

 delineated with the same touches (more darkened, however,) which have

 been used in describing the corresponding class in English towns.

 Manufacturing operatives are in pretty much the same position in both

 countries. Those of Scotland shared even more largely than their

 Southern brethren in the distress of 1840-2, when Paisley in

 particular exhibited scenes of wo far surpassing any thing that has

 been related of Bolton or Stockport.”--P. 77.

 

The extent to which these poor people have been driven from the land

may be judged by the following statement of population and

house-accommodation:--

 

                                               Persons to

               Population.  Inhabited houses.   a house.

               -----------  -----------------  ----------

    1841......  2,628,957......  503,357......  5.22

    1851......  2,870,784......  366,650......  7.83

 

Intemperance and immorality keep pace with the decline in the power of

men over their own actions, as is shown in the following statement of

the consumption of British spirits, under circumstances almost

precisely similar as regards the amount of duty:--

 

                       Duty.          Gallons.

                       -----          --------

    1802.............. 3.10-1/2.....  1,158,558

    1831.............. 3.4  ........  5,700,689

    1841.............. 3.8  ........  5,989,905

    1851.............. 3.8  ........  6,830,710

 

In 1801 the population was 1,599,068, and since that time it has

increased eighty per cent., whereas the consumption of spirits has

grown almost six hundred per cent.!

 

The poor people who are expelled from the land cannot be sold. The

hammer of the auctioneer cannot be allowed to separate parents from

children, or husbands from wives, but poverty, drunkenness, and

prostitution produce a similar effect, and in a form even more

deplorable. In the five years preceding 1840, every fifth person in

Glasgow had been attacked by fever, and the deaths therefrom amounted

to almost five thousand.

 

It is impossible to study the condition of this portion of the United

Kingdom without arriving at the conclusion that society is rapidly

being divided into the very rich and the very poor, and that the

latter are steadily declining in their power of self-government, and

becoming more and more slaves to the former. Centralization tends

here, as everywhere, to absenteeism, and “absenteeism,” says Dr.

Forbes of Glasgow [126] --

 

 “Is in its results everywhere the same. All the transactions and

 communications between the richer and the poorer classes, have thus

 substituted for them the sternness of official agency, in the room of

 that kind and generous treatment which, let them meet unrestrained,

 the more prosperous children of the same parent would in almost every

 case pay to their less fortunate brothers. * * * Where the power of

 sympathy has been altogether or nearly abolished among the different

 ranks of society, one of the first effects appears in a yawning and

 ever-widening gulf of poverty which gathers round its foundations. As

 the lofty shore indicates the depth of the surrounding ocean, the

 proud pinnacles of wealth in society are the indices of a

 corresponding depression among the humbler ranks. The greatest misery

 of man is ever the adjunct of his proudest splendour.”

 

Such are the results everywhere of that system which looks to

converting England into a great workshop and confining the people of

all other nations to the labours of the field. In Jamaica, it

annihilated three-fifths of all the negroes imported, and it is now

rapidly driving the remainder into barbarism and ultimately to

annihilation. In the Southern States, it causes the export of men,

women, and children, and the breaking up of families. In India, it has

caused famines and pestilences, and is now establishing the slave

trade in a new form. In Ireland, it has in half a century carried the

people back to a condition worthy only of the darkest part of the

Middle Ages, and is now extirpating them from the land of their

fathers. In Scotland, it is rapidly dividing the population into two

parts--the master on one hand, and the slave on the other. How it has

operated, and is now operating, in England itself, we may how examine.

 

Chapter 14. How slavery grows in England

 

The Roman people sought to centralize within their walls the power of

governing and taxing all the nations of the earth, and to a great

extent they succeeded; but in the effort to acquire power over others

they lost all power over themselves. As the city grew in size and as

its great men became greater, the proportions of the people everywhere

became less. The freemen of the Campagna had almost disappeared even

in the days of the elder Scipio, and their humble habitations had

given way to palaces, the centre of great estates, cultivated by

slaves. Step by step with the increase of power abroad came increased

consolidation of the land at home, and, as the people were more and

more driven from the soil the city grew in numbers and magnificence,

and in the poverty and rapacity of its inhabitants. The populace

needed to be fed, and that they might be so there was established a

great system of poor-laws, carried into effect by aid of the taxation

of distant provinces, at whose expense they were both fed and

entertained. They demanded cheap food, and they obtained their desires

at the cost of the cultivators, abroad and at home, who became more

and more enslaved as Rome itself was more cheaply supplied. Desires

grew with their indulgence, and the greater the facility for living

without labour, the greater became the necessity for seeking “new

markets” in which to exercise their powers of appropriation, and the

more extensive became the domain of slavery. Bankers and middlemen

grew more and more in power, and while the wealth of Crassus enabled

him to obtain the control of the East, enormous loans gave to Cæsar

the command of the West, leaving to Pompey and his moneyed friends the

power to tax the centre and the South. Next, Augustus finds the city

of brick and leaves it of marble; and Herodes Atticus appears upon the

stage sole improver, and almost sole owner, in Attica, once so free,

while bankers and nobles accumulate enormous possessions in Africa,

Gaul, and Britain, and the greater the extent of absentee ownership

the greater becomes the wretchedness and the crime of the pauper mob

of Rome. Still onward the city grows, absorbing the wealth of the

world, and with it grow the poverty, slavery, and rapacity of the

people, the exhaustion of provinces, and the avarice and tyranny of

rulers and magistrates, until at length the empire, rotten at the

heart, becomes the prey of barbarians, and all become slaves

alike,--thus furnishing proof conclusive that the community which

desires to command respect for its own rights _must_ practise respect

for those of others; or in other words, must adopt as its motto the

great lesson which lies at the base of all Christianity--”Do unto

others as ye would that they should do unto you.”

 

A survey of the British Empire at the present moment presents to view

some features so strongly resembling those observed in ancient Rome as

to warrant calling the attention of the reader to their careful

observation. Like Rome, England has desired to establish political

centralization by aid of fleets and armies, but to this she has added

commercial centralization, far more destructive in its effects, and

far more rapid in its operation. Rome was content that her subjects

should occupy themselves as they pleased, either in the fields or in

the factories, provided only that they paid their taxes. England, on

the contrary, has sought to restrict her subjects and the people of

the world in their modes of employment; and this she has done with a

view to compel them to make all their exchanges in her single market,

leaving to her to fix the prices of all she bought and all she sold,

thus taxing them at her discretion in both time and money. She has

sought to compel all other nations to follow the plough, leaving to

her the loom and the anvil, and thus to render it necessary that they

should bring to her all their products in the rudest form, at great

cost of transportation, and total loss of the manure yielded by them,

thus exhausting their soil and themselves; and the consequences of

this are seen in the ruin, depopulation, and slavery of the West

Indies, Ireland, India, Portugal, Turkey, and other countries that

have been partially or wholly subjected to her dominion. Hence it is

that she is seen to be everywhere seeking “new markets.” Bengal having

been in a great degree exhausted, it became necessary to annex the

North-west provinces, and thence we find her stretching out her hand

at one moment to seize on Affghanistan, at another to force the

Chinese into permitting her to smuggle opium, and at a third to expel

the Sikhs and occupy the Punjab, as preliminary to this invasion and

subjection of the Burman Empire. She needs, and must have new markets,

as Rome needed new provinces, and for the same reason, the exhaustion

of the old ones. She rejoices with great joy at the creation of a new

market in Australia, and looks with a longing eye on the Empire of

Japan, whose prosperous people, under a peaceful government, prefer to

avoid entering on the same course of action that has resulted in the

reduction of the wealthy and powerful Hindostan to its present

distressed condition.

 

It was against this system that Adam Smith cautioned his countrymen,

as not only a violation of “the most sacred rights” of man, but as

leading inevitably to consequences in the highest degree injurious to

themselves, in depreciating the value of both labour and capital. Up

to his time, however, it had been carried out in a very small degree.

The colonies were then few in number, but, those were heavily taxed,

as has been shown in the candid admission of _Joshua Gee_, that the

colonists carried home but one-fourth of the value of the commodities

they brought to the great market.[127] The system was then only in its

infancy. In India, the Company had but then first obtained the

concession of a right to act in the capacity of tax-gatherer for

Bengal. On this continent, the right thus to tax the colonists was

seriously contested, and _The Wealth of Nations_ had not been long

before the world before it came to be explicitly and successfully

denied. The tendency of the system was, however, so obvious to its

author, that he desired to warn his countrymen against the effort to

build up “colonies of customers,” as unworthy of a great people, and

worthy only of “a nation of shopkeepers,”--and happy for them would it

have been had his advice been taken. It was not. From that day to the

present, every step has been in the direction against which he

cautioned them, as was shown in a former chapter, and from year to

year the people of England have become more and more the mere traders

in the products of the labours of other men, and more and more

compelled to seek “new markets,” as did the Roman people,--the only

difference being that in every case the exhaustion has been

accomplished with a rapidity unparalleled in the annals of Rome, or of

the world. A century since, India was rich, and now her government,

collecting annually one-fifth of the whole value of the land, is

sustained only by means of a monopoly of the power to poison and

enslave the Chinese by means of a vile drug, and the poor Hindoo is

forced to seek for food in the swamps of Jamaica and Guiana. Half a

century since, Ireland had a highly cultivated society, with a press

that sent forth large editions of the most valuable and expensive

books produced in England, and now her people are decimated by famine

and pestilence. Twenty years since, there existed some little prospect

that the poor negroes of Jamaica and Guiana might at some future time

become civilized, but that hope has passed away, as has the value of

the land upon which they have been employed. What has been the effect

of this course of policy upon the condition of the people of England

we may now inquire.

 

In the days of Adam Smith it was estimated that there were in that

country 220,000 owners of land, and as a necessary consequence of this

extensive ownership of property, there was a very decided tendency

toward an increase in the freedom of man, as shown in the efforts made

but a few years later for obtaining a reform in various matters of

government. The French Revolution came, however, and now the doctrine

of “ships, colonies, and commerce” had much to do in bringing about a

state of war, during the whole of which England enjoyed almost a

monopoly of the trade of the world. Having all the woollen and cotton

machinery, and almost all the machinery for the production of iron,

she was enabled to buy produce and sell manufactures at her own

prices; and thus were the already wealthy greatly enriched. The poor-

houses were, however, everywhere filled with starving labourers, and

so rapidly did their number increase that it became at length

necessary to give to the statute of Elizabeth a new and enlarged

construction; and here do we find another coincidence in the working

of Roman and British centralization. A still further one will be found

in the fact that precisely as the labourer was losing all power of

self-government, the little proprietors of land disappeared, to be

replaced by day-labourers.

 

The peace, however came, and with it a desire on the part of other

nations to supply themselves with cloth, iron, and other manufactured

commodities; and to enable them to carry into effect their wishes,

many of them imposed duties having for their object the bringing

together of the plough and the loom, the hammer and the harrow. This

produced, of course, a necessity for new exertions to underwork those

nations, leading to constant improvements of machinery, each tending

to enable the capitalist more and more to accumulate fortune and

purchase land, the consolidation of which has been continued until at

length it has resulted in the fact, that in place of the 220,000

English land-owners of the days of Adam Smith, there now exist but

30,000, while all the land of Scotland has, as is stated, accumulated

in the hands of 6000 persons.

 

As the 190,000 proprietors came by degrees to be represented by

day-labourers, pauperism increased, and the labourer became from year

to year more enslaved, and more dependent for existence upon the

favours of farmers, parish beadles, and constables, until at length a

reform of the system having become absolutely necessary, it was

undertaken. Instead, however, of inquiring into the causes of this

increased dependence with a view to their abolition, it was determined

to abolish the relief that they had rendered necessary, and hence the

existence of the new poor-law. By virtue of its provisions, inability

to obtain food became a crime punishable by the separation of husbands

from wives and parents from children; and thus we see that in the last

twenty years English legislation has tended greatly in the same

direction with the domestic slave trade of this country.

 

Consolidation of the land drove the labourers from the cultivation of

the soil, while improved machinery tended constantly to drive them out

from the factory, and thus were the poor made poorer and weaker, as

the rich grew richer and stronger. Ireland, too, contributed largely

to the same result. As the Act of Union gradually closed her factories

and drove her people to cultivation as the sole means of supporting

life, they found themselves, like the Italians of olden time, forced

to emigrate to the place where taxes were distributed, in the hope of

obtaining wages, and their competition threw the English labourer

still more in the hands of the capitalist. From year to year the small

proprietor was seen to pass into the condition of a day-labourer, and

the small employing mechanic or tradesman to pass into a receiver of

wages, and thus did the whole people tend more and more to become

divided into two great classes, separated from each other by an

impassable gulf, the very rich and the very poor, the master and the

slave.

 

As England became more and more flooded with the wretched people of

the sister island, driven from home in search of employment, the

wealthy found it more and more easy to accomplish “the great works”

for which, as the London _Times_ inform us, the country is indebted to

the “cheap labour of Ireland,” and the greater the influx of this

labour the more rapid was the decline in the power of both Ireland and

Britain to furnish a market for the products of the manufacturing,

labour of England. Hence arose, of course, a necessity for looking

abroad for new markets to take the place of those before obtained at

home, and thus cheap labour, a _consequence_ of the system, became in

its turn a _cause_ of new efforts at dispensing with and further

cheapening labour. As the Irishman could no longer buy, it became

necessary that the Hindoo should be driven from his own market. As the

Highlander was expelled, it became more and more necessary to

underwork the spinners and weavers of China. As the Bengalese now

become impoverished, there arises a necessity for filling the Punjab,

and Affghanistan, Burmah and Borneo, with British goods. Pauperism

lies necessarily at the root of such a system. “It is,” said a speaker

at the late Bradford election for representative in Parliament--

 

 “Its root. That system is based on foreign competition. Now I assert,

 that _under the buy cheap and sell dear principle, brought to bear on

 foreign competition, the ruin of the working and small trading

 classes must go on. Why?_ Labour is the creator of all wealth. A man

 must work before a grain is grown, or a yard is woven. But there is

 no self-employment for the working-man in this country. Labour is a

 hired commodity--labour is a thing in the market that is bought and

 sold; consequently, as labour creates all wealth, labour is the first

 thing bought. ‘Buy cheap! buy cheap!’ Labour is bought in the

 cheapest market. But now comes the next. ‘Sell dear! sell dear!’ Sell

 what? _Labors produce_. To whom? To the foreigner--ay! and to _the

 labourer himself_--for labour not being self-employed, the labourer

 is _not_ the partaker of the first-fruits of his toil. ‘Buy cheap,

 sell dear.’ How do you like it? ‘Buy cheap, sell dear.’ Buy the

 working-man’s labour cheaply, and sell back to that very working-man

 the produce of his own labour dear! The principle of inherent loss is

 in the bargain. The employer buys the labour cheap--he sells, and on

 the sale he must, make a profit: he sells to the working-man

 himself--and thus every bargain between employer and employed is a

 deliberate cheat on the part of the employer. Thus labour has to sink

 through eternal loss, that capital may rise through lasting fraud.

 But the system stops not here. THIS IS BROUGHT TO BEAR ON FOREIGN

 COMPETITION--WHICH MEANS, WE MUST RUIN THE TRADE OF OTHER COUNTRIES,

 AS WE HAVE RUINED THE LABOUR OF OUR OWN. How does it work? The

 high-taxed country has to undersell the low-taxed. _Competition

 abroad is constantly increasing, consequently cheapness must increase

 also._ Therefore, wages in England must keep constantly falling. And

 how do they effect the fall? By _surplus labour_. By monopoly of the

 land, which drives more hands than are wanted into the factory. By

 monopoly of machinery, which drives those hands into the street; by

 woman labour, which drives the man from the shuttle; by child labour,

 which drives the woman from the loom. Then planting their foot upon

 that living base of surplus, they press its aching heart beneath

 their heel, and cry ‘Starvation! Who’ll work? A half loaf is better

 than no bread at all;’ and the writhing mass grasps greedily at their

 terms. Such is the system for the working-man. But, electors, how

 does it operate on you? how does it affect home trade, the

 shopkeeper, poor’s rate, and taxation? _For every increase of

 competition abroad there must be an increase of cheapness at home._

 Every increase of cheapness in labour is based on increase of labour

 surplus, and this surplus is obtained by an increase of machinery. I

 repeat, how does this operate on you? The Manchester liberal on my

 left establishes a new patent, and throws three hundred men as a

 surplus in the streets. Shopkeepers! Three hundred customers less.

 Rate-payers! Three hundred paupers more. But, mark me! The evil stops

 not there. _These three hundred men operate first to bring down the

 wages of those who remain at work in their own trade._ The employer

 says, ‘Now I reduce your wages.’ The men demur. Then he adds, ‘Do you

 see those three hundred men who have just walked out? _you may change

 places if you like_, they’re sighing to come in on any terms, for

 they’re starving.’ The men feel it, and are crushed. Ah! you

 Manchester liberal! Pharisee of politics! those men are

 listening--have I got you now? But the evil stops not yet. _Those

 men, driven from their own trade, seek employment in others, when

 they swell the surplus and bring wages down._”

 

Strong as is all this, it is nevertheless true, England is engaged in

a war of extermination waged against the labour of all other countries

employed in any pursuit except that of raising raw produce to be sent

to her own market, there to be exchanged for the cloth and the iron

produced at the mills and furnaces of her _millionaires_, who have

accumulated their vast fortunes at the expense of Ireland, India,

Portugal, Turkey, and the other countries that have been ruined by the

system which looks to the exhaustion of the soil of all other lands,

to the impoverishment and enslavement of their people, and which was

so indignantly denounced by Adam Smith. In the effort to crush them

she has been crushing her own people, and the more rapid the spread of

pauperism at home the greater have been her efforts to produce the

surplus labour which causes a fall of wages at home and abroad.

 

With the consolidation of land in the hands of a few proprietors there

is a steady decline in the number of people employed upon it, and an

equally steady one in that hope of rising in the world which is

elsewhere seen to be the best incentive to exertion. “The peasant

knows,” says a recent English writer,[128] “that he must die in the

same position in which he was born.” Again, he says, “the want of

small farms deprives the peasant of all hope of improving his

condition in life.” The London _Times_ assures its readers that “once

a peasant in England, the man must remain a peasant for ever;” and Mr.

Kay, after careful examination of the condition of the people of

continental Europe, assures his readers that, as one of the

consequences of this state of things, the peasantry of England “are

more ignorant, more demoralized, less capable of helping themselves,

and more pauperized, than those of any other country in Europe, if we

except Russia, Turkey, South Italy, and some parts of the Austrian

Empire.”[129]

 

Under such circumstances, the middle class tends gradually to pass

away, and its condition is well expressed by the term now so

frequently, used, “the uneasy class.” The small capitalist, who would

elsewhere purchase a piece of land, a horse and cart, or a machine of

some kind calculated to enable him to double the productiveness of his

labour and increase its reward, is in England forced to make his

investments in savings banks or life-insurance offices, and thus to

place his little capital in the hands of others, at three per cent.,

whereas he could have fifty or a hundred per cent., could he be

permitted to use it himself. There is, therefore, a perpetual strife

for life, and each man is, as has been said, “endeavouring to snatch

the piece of bread from his neighbour’s mouth.” The atmosphere of

England is one of intense gloom. Every one is anxious for the future,

for himself or his children. There is a universal feeling of doubt as

to how to dispose of the labour or the talents of themselves or their

sons, and the largest fees are paid to men already wealthy, in the

hope of obtaining aid toward securing steady employment. “This _gloom_

of England,” says a late English writer--

 

 “Is in truth one of the most formidable evils of modern times. With

 all the advance, in morality and decency of the present century, we

 have receded rather than gone forward in the attainment of that true

 Christian cheerfulness, which--notwithstanding the popular

 proverb--I believe to be the blessing next in value to godliness.

 

 “I truly believe,” he continues, “that one of the chief obstacles to

 the progress of pure living Christianity in this country is to be

 found in that worldly carefulness which causes our intense gravity,

 and makes us the most silent nation in Europe. The respectability of

 England is its bane; we worship respectability, and thus contrive to

 lose both the enjoyments of earth and the enjoyments of heaven. If

 Great Britain could once learn to laugh like a child, she would be in

 the way once more to pray like a saint.

 

 “But this is not all: the sensuality and gross vice, and the hateful

 moroseness and harshness of temper, which result from our

 indisposition for gayety and enjoyment, are literally awful to think

 of. Pride and licentiousness triumph in our land, because we are too

 careworn or too stupid to enter heartily into innocent recreations.

 Those two demons, one of which first cast man out of Paradise, while

 the other has degraded him to the level of the brutes, are served by

 myriads of helpless slaves, who are handed over to a bondage of

 passion, through the gloominess that broods over our national

 character. The young and the old alike, the poor and the wealthy, are

 literally driven to excess, because there is nothing in our state of

 society to refresh them after their toils, or to make life as much a

 season of enjoyment as the inevitable lot of mortality will allow.

 

 “Men fly to vice for the want of pure and innocent pleasures. The

 gin-shops receive those who might be entertaining themselves with the

 works of art in a public gallery. The whole animal portion of our

 being is fostered at the expense of the spiritual. We become

 brutalized, because we are morbidly afraid of being frivolous and of

 wasting our time. The devil keeps possession of an Englishman’s

 heart, through the instrumentality of his carnal passions, because he

 is too proud and too stupid to laugh and enjoy himself.

 

 “Secret sin destroys its myriads, immolated on the altar of outward

 respectability and of a regard for the opinion of a money-getting

 world.”

 

The existence of such a state of things is indeed a “formidable evil,”

but how could it fail to exist in a country in which all individuality

is being lost as the little land-owner gradually disappears to be

replaced by the day-labourer, and as the little shop-keeper gradually

sinks into a clerk? How could it be otherwise in a country in which

weak women, and children of the most tender age, spend their nights in

cellars, and the long day of twelve or fifteen hours in factories,

whose owners know of them nothing but, as in a penitentiary, their

number--a country in which males and females work naked in

coal-mines--and find themselves compelled to do all these things

because of the necessity for preventing the poor Hindoo from calling

to his aid the powerful steam, and for compelling him, his wife, and

his children, to limit themselves to the labour of the field? How

could it be otherwise in a country in which “labourers, whether well

off or not, never attempt to be better?”[130] How otherwise in a

country distinguished among all others for the enormous wealth of a

few, for the intensity of toil and labour of all below them, and for

the anxiety with which the future is regarded by all but those who,

bereft of hope, know that all they can expect on this side of the

grave is an indifferent supply of food and raiment? “In no country of

the world,” says Mr. Kay--

 

 “Is so much time spent in the mere acquisition of wealth, and so

 little time in the enjoyment of life and of all the means of

 happiness which God has given to man, as in England.

 

 “In no country in the world do the middle classes labour so intensely

 as here. One would think, to view the present state of English

 society, that man was created for no other purpose than to collect

 wealth, and that he was forbidden to gratify the beautiful tastes

 with which he has been gifted for the sake of his own happiness. To

 be rich, with us, is the great virtue, the pass into all society, the

 excuse for many frailties, and the mask for numerous deformities.”

 

An Eastern proverb says that “curses, like young chickens, always come

home to roost.” Few cases could be presented of a more perfect

realization of this than is found in the present condition of England.

Half a century since it was decreed that the poor people of Ireland

should confine themselves to the cultivation and exhaustion of their

soil, abstaining from the mining of coal, the smelting of ore, or the

making of cloth; and during nearly all that time they have so flooded

England with “cheap labour” as to have produced from the _Times_ the

declaration, before referred to, that “for a whole generation man has

been a drug and population a nuisance”--precisely the state of things

in which men tend most to become enslaved. Cheap corn, cheap cotton,

cheap tobacco, and cheap sugar, mean low-priced agricultural labour;

and the low-priced labourer is always a slave, and aiding to produce

elsewhere the slavery of his fellow-labourers, whether in the field

or in the workshop. This, however, is in perfect accordance with the

doctrines of some of England’s most distinguished statesmen, as the

reader has already seen in the declaration of Mr. Huskisson, that “to

give capital a fair remuneration, the price of labour must be kept

down,”--by which he proved the perfect accuracy of the predictions of

the author of _The Wealth of Nations_.

 

The harmony of true interests among nations is perfect, and an

enlightened self-interest would lead every nation to carry into full

effect the golden rule of Christianity; and yet even now, the most

distinguished men in England regard smuggling almost as a virtuous

act, and the smuggler as a great reformer, because his labours tend to

enable their countrymen to do everywhere what has been done in the

West Indies, in Ireland, Portugal, Turkey, and India--separate the

consumer from the producer. They regard it as the appointed work of

England to convert the whole earth into one vast farm dependent upon

one vast workshop, and that shop in the island of Great Britain. Such

being the views of peers of the realm, lord chancellors, ministers of

state, political economists, and statisticians, can we wonder at a

decline of morality among the middle class, under the combined

influence of the struggle for life, and the assurance that “the end

sanctifies the means,” and that false invoices are but a means of

working out a great reformation in the commercial system of the world?

Good ends rarely require such means for their accomplishment, and the

very fact that it was needed to have Gibraltar as a means of smuggling

into Spain, Canada as a means of smuggling into this country,[131] and

Hong Kong for the purpose of poisoning the Chinese with smuggled

opium, should have led to a careful consideration of the question

whether or not the system which looked to exhausting the soil of

Virginia and driving the poor negro to the sugar culture in Texas, was

one of the modes of “doing God service.”

 

Unsound moral feeling is a necessary consequence of an exclusive

devotion to trade such as is now seen to exist in England. It is the

business of the trader to buy cheaply and sell dearly, be the

consequences what they may to those from whom he buys, or to whom he

sells; and unhappily the prosperity of England now depends so entirely

on buying cheaply and selling dearly that she is forced to overlook

the effects upon those to whom she sells, or from whom she buys, and

she therefore rejoices when others are being ruined, and grieves when

they are being enriched. Her interests are always, and necessarily so,

opposed to those of the rest of the world. She _must_ look at every

thing with the eyes of the mere trader who wishes to buy cheaply and

sell dearly, living at the cost of the producer and the consumer. The

former desires good prices for his sugar, and yet so anxious was she

to obtain cheap sugar that she forgot her engagements with the poor

emancipated negroes of Jamaica. The former desire’s good prices for

his corn, but so anxious was she to have cheap corn, that she forgot

having deprived the people of Ireland of all employment but in

agriculture, and at once adopted measures whose action is now

expelling the whole nation from the scenes of their youth, and

separating husbands and wives, mothers and children. She has placed

herself in a false position, and cannot now _afford_ to reflect upon

the operation of cheap sugar and cheap corn, cheap cotton and cheap

tobacco, upon the people who produce them; and therefore it is that

the situation of Ireland and India, and of the poor people Of Jamaica,

is so much shut out from discussion. Such being the case with those

who should give tone to public opinion, how can we look for sound or

correct feeling among the poor occupants of “the sweater’s den,”[132]

or among the 20,000 tailors of London, seeking for work and unable to

find it? Or, how look for it among the poor shopkeepers, compelled in

self-defence to adulterate almost every thing they sell, when they see

the great cotton manufacturer using annually hundreds of barrels of

flour to enable him to impose worthless cloth upon the poor Hindoo,

and thus annihilate his foreign competitor? Or, how expect to find it

among the poor operatives of Lancashire, at one moment working full

time, at another but three days in a week, and at a third totally

deprived of employment, because goods can no longer be smuggled into

foreign countries to leave a profit? With them, the question of food

or no food is dependent altogether upon the size of the cotton crop.

If the slave trade is brisk, much cotton is made, and they have wages

with which to support their wives and children. If the crop is large,

the planter may be ruined, but they themselves are fed. “The weekly

mail from America,” we are told--

 

 “Is not of more moment to the great cotton lord of Manchester, than

 it is to John Shuttle the weaver. * * * If he ever thinks how

 entirely his own existence and that of his own little household

 depend upon the American crop * * * he would tremble at the least

 rumour of war with the Yankees. War with America--a hurricane in

 Georgia--a flood in Alabama--are one and all death-cries to the

 mill-spinner and power-loom weaver. * * * When the cotton fields of

 the Southern States yield less than the usual quantity of cotton, the

 Manchester operative eats less than his average quantity of food.

 When his blood boils at the indignities and cruelties heaped upon the

 coloured, race in the ‘Land of the Free,’ he does not always remember

 that _to the slave States_ of America _he owes his all_--that _it is

 for his advantage_ that the _negro should wear his chains in

 peace_.”--_Household Words_.

 

“If his “blood boils” at the sufferings of the negro in Brazil, or of

the Hindoo in the Mauritius, he must recollect that it is at the cost

of those sufferings that he is supplied with cheap sugar. If he be

shocked at the continuance of the African slave trade, he must

recollect that if negroes ceased to be imported into Cuba, he might

have to pay a higher price for his coffee. If he is excited at the

idea of the domestic slave trade of this country, he must calm himself

by reflecting that it is “for his advantage” it is continued, and that

without it he could not have cheap cotton. The labourers of the

various parts of the world are thus taught that there is among

themselves an universal antagonism of interests, and this tends, of

course, to the production of a bad state of moral feeling, and an

universal tendency to decline in the feeling of self-dependence. Men,

women, and children are becoming from day to day more dependent on the

will of others, and as it is that dependence which constitutes

slavery, we might with reason expect to find some of the vices of the

slave--and were we to find them we should not greatly err in

attributing their existence to the system thus described by Adam

Smith:--

 

 “The industry of Great Britain, instead of being accommodated to a

 great number of small markets, has been principally suited to one

 great market. Her commerce, instead of running in a great number of

 small channels, has been taught to run principally in one great

 channel. But the whole system of her industry and commerce has

 thereby been rendered less secure, the whole state of her body

 politic less healthful than it otherwise would have been. In her

 present condition, Great Britain resembles one of those unwholesome

 bodies in which some of the vital parts are overgrown, and which,

 upon that account, are liable to many dangerous disorders, scarce

 incident to those in which all the parts are more properly

 proportioned. A small stop in that great blood-vessel which has been

 artificially swelled beyond its natural dimensions, and through which

 an unnatural proportion of the industry and commerce of the country

 has been forced to circulate, is very likely to bring on the most

 dangerous disorders upon the whole body politic.”

 

This is an accurate picture of that country under a system that seeks

to direct the whole energies of its people into one direction, that of

“buying in the cheapest market and selling in the dearest one,”--the

pursuit that is, of all others, the least favourable to the

development of the moral and intellectual faculties of man. How it is

operating may be judged by the following description from an English

writer already quoted:--

 

 “Of the children of the poor, who are yearly born in England, vast

 numbers never receive any education at all, while many others never

 enter any thing better than a dame or a Sunday-school. In the towns

 they are left in crowds until about eight or nine years of age, to

 amuse themselves in the dirt of the streets, while their parents

 pursue their daily toil. In these public thoroughfares, during the

 part of their lives which is most susceptible of impressions and most

 retentive of them, they acquire dirty, immoral, and disorderly

 habits; they become accustomed to wear filthy and ragged clothes;

 they learn to pilfer and to steal; they associate with boys who have

 been in prison, and who have there been hardened in crime by evil

 associates; they learn how to curse one another, how to fight, how to

 gamble, and how to fill up idle hours by vicious pastimes; they

 acquire no knowledge except the knowledge of vice; they never come in

 contact with their betters; and they are not taught either the truths

 of religion or the way by which to improve their condition in life.

 Their amusements are as low as their habits. The excitements of low

 debauchery too horrible to be named, of spirituous liquors, which

 they begin to drink as early as they can collect pence wherewith to

 buy them, of the commission and concealments of thefts, and of rude

 and disgusting sports, are the pleasures of their life. The idea of

 going to musical meetings such as those of the German poor, would be

 scoffed at, even if there were any such meetings for them to attend.

 Innocent dancing is unknown to them. Country sports they cannot have.

 Read they cannot. So they hurry for amusement and excitement to the

 gratification of sensual desires and appetites. In this manner,

 filthy, lewd, sensual, boisterous, and skilful in the commission of

 crime, a great part of the populations of our towns grow up to

 manhood. Of the truth or falsehood of this description any one can

 convince himself, who will examine our criminal records, or who will

 visit the back streets of any English town, when the schools are

 full, and count the children upon the door-steps and pavements, and

 note their condition, manners, and appearance, and their degraded and

 disgusting practices.”--Kay, vol. i. 33.[133]

 

This is, however, little different from what might be looked, for in a

country whose provision for the education of its people is thus

described:--

 

 “About one-half of our poor can neither read nor write. The test of

 signing the name at marriage is a very imperfect absolute test of

 education, but it is a very good relative one: taking that test, how

 stands Leeds itself in the Registrar-General’s returns? In Leeds,

 which is the centre of the movement for letting education remain as

 it is, left entirely to chance and charity to supply its

 deficiencies, how do we find the fact? This, that in 1846, the last

 year to which these returns are brought down, of 1850 marriages

 celebrated in Leeds and Hunslet, 508 of the men and 1020 of the

 women, or considerably more than one-half of the latter, signed their

 names with marks. ‘I have also a personal knowledge of this

 fact--that of 47 men employed upon a railway in this immediate

 neighbourhood, only 14 men can sign their names in the receipt of

 their wages; and this not because of any diffidence on their part,

 but positively because they cannot write.’ And only lately, the

 _Leeds Mercury_ itself gave a most striking instance of ignorance

 among persons from Boeotian Pudsey: of 12 witnesses, ‘all of

 respectable appearance, examined before the Mayor of Bradford at the

 court-house there, only one man could sign his name, and that

 indifferently.’ Mr. Nelson has clearly shown in statistics of crime

 in England and Wales from 1834 to 1844, that crime is invariably the

 most prevalent in those districts where the fewest numbers in

 proportion to the population can read and write. Is it not indeed

 beginning at the wrong end to try and reform men, after they have

 become criminals? Yet you cannot begin, with children, from want of

 schools. Poverty is the result of ignorance, and then ignorance is

 again the unhappy result of poverty. ‘Ignorance makes men improvident

 and thoughtless--women as well as men; it makes them blind to the

 future--to the future of this life as well as the life beyond. It

 makes them dead to higher pleasures than those of the mere senses,

 and keeps them down to the level of the mere animal. Hence the

 enormous extent of drunkenness throughout this country, and the

 frightful waste of means which it involves.’ At Bilston, amidst

 20,000 people, there are but two struggling schools--one has lately

 ceased; at Millenhall, Darlaston, and Pelsall, amid a teeming

 population, no school whatever. In Oldham, among 100,000, but one

 public day-school for the labouring classes; the others are an infant

 school, and some dame and factory schools. At Birmingham, there are

 21,824 children at school, and 23,176, at no school; at Liverpool,

 50,000 out of 90,000 at no school; at Leicester, 8200 out of 12,500;

 and at Leeds itself, in 1841, (the date of the latest returns,) some

 9600 out of 16,400, were at no school whatever. It is the same in the

 counties. ‘I have seen it stated, that a woman for some time had to

 officiate as clerk in a church in Norfolk, there being no adult male

 in the parish able to read and write. For a population of 17,000,000

 we have but twelve normal schools; while in Massachusetts they have

 three such schools for only 800,000 of population.”

 

Such being the education of the young, we may now look to see how Mr.

Kay describes that provided for people of a more advanced period of

life:--

 

 “The crowd of low pot-houses in our manufacturing districts is a sad

 and singular spectacle. They are to be found in every street and

 alley of the towns, and in almost every lane and turning of the more

 rural villages of those districts, if any of those villages can be

 called rural.

 

 “The habit of drunkenness pervades the masses of the operatives to an

 extent never before known in our country.

 

 “In a great number of these taverns and pot-houses of the

 manufacturing districts, prostitutes are kept for the express purpose

 of enticing the operatives to frequent them, thus rendering them

 doubly immoral and pernicious. I have been assured in Lancashire, on

 the best authority, that in one of the manufacturing towns, and that,

 too, about third rate in point of size and population, there are

 _sixty_ taverns, where prostitutes are kept by the tavern landlords,

 in order to entice customers into them. Their demoralizing influence

 upon the population _cannot be exaggerated_; and yet these are almost

 the only resorts which the operatives have, when seeking amusement or

 relaxation.

 

 “In those taverns where prostitutes are not actually kept for the

 purpose of enticing customers, they are always to be found in the

 evenings, at the time the workmen go there to drink. In London and in

 Lancashire the gin-palaces are the regular rendezvous for the

 abandoned of both sexes, and the places where the lowest grade of

 women-of-the-town resort to find customers. It is quite clear that

 young men, who once begin to meet their, friends at these places,

 cannot long escape the moral degradation of these hot-houses of vice.

 

 “The singular and remarkable difference between the respective

 condition of the peasants and operatives of Germany and Switzerland,

 and those of England and Ireland, in this respect, is alone

 sufficient to prove the singular difference between their respective

 social condition.

 

 “The village inn in Germany is quite a different kind of place to the

 village inn in England. It is intended and used less for mere

 drinking, than, as a place for meeting and conversation; it is, so to

 speak, the villagers’ club.”--Vol. i. 232.

 

Under such circumstances, we cannot be surprised when told by Mr.

Alison that over the whole kingdom crime increases four times as fast

as the population, and that “in Lancashire population doubles in

thirty years, crime in five years and a half.” How, indeed, could it

be otherwise under a system based upon the idea of “keeping labour

down”--one that tends to the consolidation of the land and the

exclusion of men from the work of cultivation, and then excludes them

from the factory, while forcing hundreds of thousands of indigent and

almost starving Irish into England in search of employment? The

process of “eviction” in Ireland has been already described. How the

same work has been, and is being, performed in England is thus stated

by the _Times_:--

 

 “Our village peasantry are jostled about from cottage to cottage, or

 from cottage to no cottage at all, as freely and with as little

 regard to their personal tastes, and conveniences as if we were

 removing our pigs, cows, and horses from one sty or shed to another.

 If they cannot get a house over their heads they go to the Union, and

 are distributed--the man in one part, the wife in another, and the

 children again somewhere else. That is a settled thing. Our peasantry

 bear it, or, if they can’t bear it, they die, and there is an end of

 it on this side of the grave; though how it will stand at the great

 audit, we leave an ‘English Catholic’ to imagine. We only mean to say

 that in England the work has been done; cotters have been

 exterminated; small holdings abolished; the process of eviction

 rendered superfluous; the landlord’s word made law; the refuge of the

 discontented reduced to a workhouse, and all without a shot, or a

 bludgeon, or a missile being heard of.”

 

Thus driven from the land, they are forced to take refuge in London

and Liverpool, Manchester, Birmingham, and Leeds, and accordingly

there it is that we find nearly the whole increase of population in

the last ten years. Out of less than two millions, more than 400,000

were added to the number of London alone, and those who are familiar

with Mr. Mayhew’s work, _London Labour and London Poor_, do not need

to be told of the extraordinary wretchedness, nor of the immorality

that there abound. Inquiries get on foot by Lord Ashley have shown

that “in the midst of that city there are,” says Mr. Kay--

 

 “Persons, forming a separate class, having pursuits, interests,

 manners; and customs of their own, and that the filthy, deserted,

 roaming, and lawless children, who may be called the source of

 19-20ths of the crime which desolates the metropolis, are not fewer

 in number than THIRTY THOUSAND!

 

 “These 30,000 are quite independent of the number of mere pauper

 children, who crowd the streets of Londen, and who never enter a

 school: but of these latter nothing will be said here.

 

 “Now, what are the pursuits, the dwelling-houses, and the habits of

 these poor wretches? Of 1600, who were examined, 162 confessed that

 they had been in prison, not merely once, or even twice, but some of

 them several times; 116 had run away from their homes; 170 slept in

 the “lodging-houses;” 253 had lived altogether by beggary; 216 had

 neither shoes nor stockings; 280 had no hat or cap, or covering for

 the head; 101 had no linen; 249 had never slept in a bed; many had no

 recollection of ever having been in a bed; 68 were the children of

 convicts,”--Vol. i. 394.

 

In the towns of the manufacturing districts there are, says the same

author--

 

 “A great number of cellars beneath the houses of the small

 shopkeepers and operatives, which are inhabited by crowds of poor

 inhabitants. Each of these cellar-houses contains at the most two,

 and often, and in some towns generally, only one room. These rooms

 measure in Liverpool, from 10 to 12 feet square. In some other towns,

 they are rather larger. They are generally flagged. The flags lie

 “directly” upon the earth, and are generally wretchedly damp. In wet

 weather they are very often not dry for weeks together. Within a few

 feet of the windows of these cellars, rises the wall which keeps the

 street from falling in upon them, darkening the gloomy rooms, and

 preventing the sun’s rays penetrating into them.

 

 “Dr. Duncan, in describing the cellar-houses of the manufacturing

 districts, says[134]--’The cellars are ten or twelve feet square;

 generally flagged, but frequently having only the bare earth for a

 floor, and sometimes less than six feet in height. There is

 frequently no window, so that light and air can gain access to the

 cellar only by the door, the top of which is often not higher than

 the level of the street. In such cellars ventilation is out of the

 question. They, are of course dark; and from the defective drainage,

 they are also very generally damp. There is sometimes a back cellar,

 used as a sleeping apartment, having no direct communication with the

 external atmosphere, and deriving its scanty supply of light and air

 solely from the front apartment.’”--Vol. i. 447.

 

 “One of the city missionaries, describing the state of the Mint

 district in the city of London, says, ‘it is utterly impossible to

 describe the scenes, which are to be witnessed here, or to set forth

 in its naked deformity the awful characters sin here assumes. * * *

 _In Mint street, alone, there are nineteen lodging-houses._ The

 majority of these latter are awful sinks of iniquity, and are used as

 houses of accommodation. In some of them, both sexes sleep together

 indiscriminately, and such acts are practised and witnessed, that

 married persons, who are in other respects awfully depraved, have

 been so shocked, as to be compelled to get up in the night and leave

 the house. Many of the half-naked impostors, who perambulate the

 streets of London in the daytime, and obtain a livelihood by their

 deceptions, after having thrown off their bandages, crutches, &c.,

 may be found here in their true character; some regaling themselves

 in the most extravagant manner; others gambling or playing cards,

 while the worst of language proceeds from their lips. Quarrels and

 fights are very common, and the cry of murder is frequently heard.

 The public-houses in this street are crowded to excess, especially,

 on the Sabbath evening.[135]

 

 “In the police reports published in the _Sun_ newspaper of the 11th

 of October, 1849, the following account is given of ‘_a penny

 lodging-house_’ in Blue Anchor Yard, Rosemary Lane. One of the

 policemen examined, thus describes a room in this lodging-

 house:--’It was a very small one, extremely filthy, and there was no

 furniture of any description in it. _There were sixteen men, women,

 and children lying on the floor, without covering. Some of them were

 half naked._ For this miserable shelter, each lodger paid a penny.

 The stench was intolerable, and the place had not been cleaned out

 for some time.’

 

 “If the nightly inmates of these dens are added to the tramps who

 seek lodging in the vagrant-wards of the workhouses, we shall find

 that there are at least between 40,000 and 50,000 tramps who are

 daily infesting our roads and streets!”--Vol. i. 431.

 

In the agricultural districts, whole families, husbands and wives,

sons and daughters, sisters-in-law and brothers-in-law, sleep

together, and here we find a source of extraordinary immorality. “The

accounts we receive,” says Mr. Kay--

 

 “From all parts of the country show that these miserable cottages are

 crowded to an extreme, and that the crowding is progressively

 increasing. People of both sexes, and of all ages, both married and

 unmarried--parents, brothers, sisters, and strangers--sleep in the

 same rooms and often in the same beds. One gentleman tells us of six

 people of different sexes and ages, two of whom were man and wife,

 sleeping in the same bed, three with their heads at the top and three

 with their heads at the foot of the bed. Another tells us of adult

 uncles and nieces sleeping in the same room close to each other;

 another of the uncles and nieces sleeping in the same bed together;

 another of adult brothers, and sisters sleeping in the same room with

 a brother and his wife just married; many tell us of adult brothers

 and sisters sleeping in the same beds; another tells us of rooms so

 filled with beds that there is no space between them, but that

 brothers, sisters, and parents crawl over each other half naked in

 order to get to their respective resting-places; another of its being

 common for men and women, not being relations, to undress together in

 the same room, without any feeling of its being indelicate; another

 of cases where women have been delivered in bed-rooms crowded with

 men, young women, and children; and others mention facts of these

 crowded bed-rooms much too horrible to be alluded to. Nor are these

 solitary instances, but similar reports are given by gentlemen

 writing in ALL parts of the country.

 

 “The miserable character of the houses of our peasantry, is, of

 itself, and independently of the causes which have made the houses so

 wretched, degrading and demoralising the poor of our rural districts

 in a fearful manner. It stimulates the unhealthy and unnatural

 increase of population. The young peasants from their earliest years

 are accustomed to sleep in the same bed-rooms with people of both

 sexes, and with both married and unmarried persons. They therefore

 lose all sense of the indelicacy of such a life. They know, too, that

 they can gain nothing by deferring their marriages and by saving;

 that it is impossible for them to obtain better houses by so doing;

 and that in many cases they must wait many years before they could

 obtain a separate house of any sort. They feel that if they defer

 their marriage for ten or fifteen years, they will be at the end of

 that period in just the same position as before, and no better off

 for their waiting. Having then lost all hope of any improvement of

 their social situation, and all sense of the indelicacy of taking a

 wife home to the bedroom already occupied by parents, brothers, and

 sisters, they marry early in life,--often, if not generally, before

 the age of twenty,--and very often occupy, for the first part of

 their married life, another bed in the already crowded sleeping-room

 of their parents! In this way the morality of the peasants is

 destroyed; the numbers of this degraded population are unnaturally

 increased, and their means of subsistence are diminished by the

 increasing competition of their increasing numbers.”--Vol. i. 472.

 

A necessary consequence of this demoralization is that infanticide

prevails to a degree unknown in any other part of the civilized world.

The London _Leader_ informs its readers that upon a recent occasion--

 

 “It was declared by the coroner of Leeds, and assented to as probable

 by the surgeon, that there were, as near as could be calculated,

 about three hundred children put to death yearly in Leeds alone that

 were not registered by the law. In other words, three hundred infants

 were murdered to avoid the consequences of their living, and these

 murders, as the coroner said, are never detected.”

 

The reader may now advantageously turn to the account of the state of

education in Leeds, already given,[136] with a view to ascertain the

intellectual condition of the women guilty of the foul and unnatural

crime of child-murder. Doing so, he will find that out of eighteen

hundred and fifty that were married there were _one thousand and

twenty who could not sign their names_--and this in the centre of

civilization in the middle of the nineteenth century!

 

But a short time since, the _Morning Chronicle_ gave its readers a

list of twenty-two trials, for child-murder alone, that had been

_reported_ in its columns, and these were stated to be but one-half of

those that had taken place in the short period of twenty-seven days!

On the same occasion it stated that although English ruffianism had

“not taken to the knife,” it had

 

 “Advanced in the devilish accomplishment of biting off noses and

 scooping out eyes. Kicking a man to death while he is down,” it

 continued, “or treating, a wife in the same way--stamping on an enemy

 or a paramour with hobnailed boots--smashing a woman’s head with a

 hand-iron--these atrocities, which are of almost daily occurrence in

 our cities, are not so much imputed crimes as they are the

 extravagant exaggerations of the coarse, brutal, sullen temper of an

 Englishman, brutified by ignorance and stupefied by drink.”

 

On the same occasion the _Chronicle_ stated that in villages few young

people of the present day marry until, as the phrase is, it has

“become necessary.” It is, it continued, the rural practice to “keep

company in a very loose sense, till a cradle is as necessary as a

ring.” On another, and quite recent occasion, the same journal

furnished its readers with the following striking illustration of the

state of morals:--

 

 “In one of the recent Dorsetshire cases, [of child murder,] common

 cause was made by the girls of the county. They attended the trial in

 large numbers; and we are informed that on the acquittal of the

 prisoner a general expression of delight was perceptible in the

 court; and they left the assizes town boasting ‘that they might now

 do as they liked.’ We are then, it seems, with all our boasted

 civilization, relapsing into a barbarous and savage state of

 society.”

 

Lest it might be supposed that this condition of things had been

inherited, the editor stated that--

 

 “This deplorable state of morals was of comparatively recent growth.

 Old people,” he continued, “can often tell the year when the first of

 such cases occurred in their families; and what a sensation of shame

 it then excited; while they will also tell us that the difficulty now

 is to find a lowly couple in village life with whom the rule of

 decency and Christianity is not the exception. It is a disgraceful

 fact--and one which education, and especially religious education,

 has to account for--that a state of morals has grown up in which it

 can no longer be said that our maidens are given in marriage.”

 

Infanticide is not, however, confined to the unmarried. Burial clubs

abound. “In our large provincial towns,” says Mr. Kay--

 

 “The poor are in the habit of entering their children in what are

 called ‘burial clubs.’ A small sum is paid every year by the parent,

 and this entitles him to receive from 3£. to 5£. from the club, on

 the death of the child. Many parents enter their children in several

 clubs. One man in Manchester has been known to enter his child in

 _nineteen_ different clubs. On the death of such a child, the parent

 becomes entitled to receive a large sum of money; and as the burial

 of the child does not necessarily cost more than 1£., or, at the

 most, 1£.10s., the parent realizes a considerable sum after all the

 expenses are paid!

 

 “It has been clearly ascertained, that it is a common practice among

 the more degraded classes of poor in many of our towns, to enter

 their infants in these clubs, and then to cause their death either by

 starvation, ill-usage, or poison! What more horrible symptom of moral

 degradation can be conceived? One’s mind revolts against it, and

 would fain reject it as a monstrous fiction. But, alas! it seems to

 be but too true.

 

 “Mr. Chadwick says, ‘officers of these burial societies, relieving

 officers, and others, whose administrative duties put them in

 communication with the lowest classes in these districts,’ (the

 manufacturing districts,) ‘express their moral conviction of the

 operation of such bounties to produce instances of the visible

 neglect of children of which they are witnesses. They often say, ‘You

 are not treating that child properly; it will not live: _is it in the

 club_?’ And the answer corresponds with the impression produced by

 the sight.”--Vol. i. 433.

 

Commenting on these and numerous other facts of similar kind, the same

author says--

 

 “These accounts are really almost too horrible to be believed at all;

 and were they not given us on the authority of such great experience

 and benevolence, we should totally discredit them.

 

 “But, alas, they are only too true! There can be no doubt, that a

 great part of the poorer classes of this country are sunk into such a

 frightful depth of hoplessness, misery, and utter moral degradation,

 that even mothers forget their affection for their helpless little

 offspring, and kill them, as a butcher does his lambs, in order to

 make money by the murder, and therewith to lessen their pauperism and

 misery?”--P. 446.

 

How rapid is the progress of demoralization may be seen from the fact

that in the thirty years from 1821 to 1851, the consumption of British

spirits increased from 4,125,616 to 9,595,368 gallons, or in a ratio

more than double that of the population. The use of opium is also

increasing with rapidity.[137] Intemperance and improvidence go hand

in hand with each other, and hence arises a necessity for burial clubs

for the disposal of the children and the maintenance of the parents.

 

A recent English journal states that--

 

 “It is estimated that in Manchester there are 1500 ‘unfortunate

 females;’ that they lead to an annual expenditure of £470,000; and

 that some 250 of them die, in horror and despair, yearly. In England

 it is calculated that there are 40,000 houses of ill-fame, and

 280,000 prostitutes; and, further, that not less than £8,000,000 are

 spent annually in these places.”

 

This may, or may not, be exaggerated, but the condition to which are

reduced so many of the weaker sex would warrant us in expecting a

great decay of morality. When severe labour cannot command a

sufficiency of food, can we be surprised that women find themselves

forced to resort to prostitution as a means of support?

 

A committee of gentlemen who had investigated the condition of the

sewing-women of London made a report stating that no less than 33,000

of them were “permanently at the starvation point,” and were compelled

to resort to prostitution as a means of eking out a subsistence. But a

few weeks since, the _Times_ informed its readers that shirts were

made for a _penny a piece_ by women who found the needles and thread,

and the _Daily News_ furnished evidence that hundreds of young women

had no choice but between prostitution and making artificial flowers

at _twopence a day_! Young ladies seeking to be governesses, and

capable of giving varied instruction, are expected to be satisfied

with the wages and treatment of scullions, and find it difficult to

obtain situations even on such terms. It is in such facts as these

that we must find the causes of those given in the above paragraph.

 

If we desire to find the character of the young we must look to that

of the aged, and especially to that of the mothers. We see here

something of the hundreds of thousands of young women who are to

supply the future population of England; and if the character of the

latter be in accordance with that of the former, with what hope can we

look to the future?

 

Nothing indicates more fully the deterioration resulting from this

unceasing struggle for life, than the harsh treatment to which are

subjected persons who need aid in their distress. A case of this kind,

furnished by the _Times_, as occurring at the Lambeth workhouse, so

strongly indicates the decay of kind and generous feeling, that, long

as it is, it is here given:--

 

 “A poor creature, a young English girl--to be sure, she is not a

 black--a parcel of drenched rags clinging to her trembling form,

 every mark of agony and despair in her countenance, lifts her hand to

 the bell. She rings once and again, and at length the door porter

 appears, accompanied by a person holding a situation under the

 guardians--his name is Brooke--and he is a policeman. She is

 starving, she is pregnant, and almost in the pains of labour, but the

 stern officials will not take her in. Why? Because she had been in

 the workhouse until Tuesday morning last, and had then been

 discharged by ‘order of the guardians.’ Nor is this all. The tale of

 parochial bounty is not yet half told out. During that long wet

 Tuesday she wandered about. She had not a friend in this great town

 to whom she could apply for the smallest assistance, and on Tuesday

 night she came back to implore once more the kindly shelter of the

 parish workhouse. For yet that night she was taken in, but the next

 morning cast forth into the world again with a piece of dry bread in

 her hand. On Wednesday the same scene was renewed--the same fruitless

 casting about for food and shelter, the same disappointment, and the

 same despair. But parochial bounty can only go thus far, and no

 farther. Charity herself was worn out with the importunity of this

 persevering pauper, and on Thursday night the doors of the parish

 workhouse were finally and sternly shut in her face.

 

 “But she was not alone in her sufferings. You might have supposed

 that the misery of London--enormous as the amount of London misery

 undoubtedly is--could have shown no counterpart to the frightful

 position of this unfortunate creature--without a home, without a

 friend, without a character, without a shelter, without a bite of

 food--betrayed by her seducer, and the mark for the last twelve hours

 of the floodgates of heaven. * * * Can it be there are two of them?

 Yes! Another young woman, precisely in the same situation, knocks at

 the same workhouse door, and is refused admittance by the same stern

 guardians of the ratepayers’ pockets. The two unfortunates club their

 anguish and their despair together, and set forth in quest of some

 archway or place of shelter, beneath which they may crouch until the

 gas-lamps are put out, and the day breaks once more upon their

 sufferings. Well, on they roamed, until one of the two, Sarah

 Sherford, was actually seized with the pangs of labour, when they

 resolved to stagger back to the workhouse; but again the door was

 shut in their faces. What was to be done? They were driven away from

 the house, and moved slowly along, with many a pause of agony, no

 doubt, until they met with a policeman, one Daniel Donovan, who

 directed them to a coffee-house where they might hope to get shelter.

 The coffee-house did not open till 2 o’clock, when they had two

 hours’ shelter. But at that hour they were again cast out, as the

 keeper was obliged to come into the street with his stall and attend

 to it. ‘At this time (we will here copy the language of our report)

 Sherford’s labour pains had considerably increased, and they again

 spoke to the same policeman, Donovan, and told him that, unless she

 was taken into the workhouse or some other place, she must give birth

 to her infant in the street.’ Daniel Donovan accordingly conveyed the

 two unfortunate creatures to the workhouse once more, at 4 o’clock in

 the morning. ‘The policeman on duty there,’ said this witness, ‘told

 him that they had been there before, and seemed to have some

 _hesitation_ about admitting them, but on being told that one was in

 the pains of labour, he let them in.’”

 

What slavery can be worse than this? Here are young women, women in

distress, starving and almost in the pains of labour, driven about

from post to pillar, and from pillar to post, by day and by night,

totally unable to obtain the smallest aid. Assuredly it would be

difficult to find any thing to equal this in any other country

claiming to rank among the civilized nations of the world.

 

At the moment of writing this page, an English journal furnishes a

case of death from starvation, and closes its account with the

following paragraph, strikingly illustrative of the state of things

which naturally arises where every man is “trying to live by snatching

the bread from his neighbour’s mouth.”

 

 “It is hardly possible to conceive a more horrible case. A stalwart,

 strong-framed man, in the prime of life--his long pilgrimage of

 martyrdom from London to Stoney-Stratford--his wretched appeals for

 help to the “_civilization_” around him--his seven days fast--his

 brutal abandonment by his fellow-men--his seeking shelter and being

 driven from resting-place to resting-place--the crowning inhumanity

 of the person named Slade and the patient, miserable death of the

 worn-out man--are a picture perfectly astonishing to contemplate.

 

 “No doubt he invaded the rights of property, when he sought shelter

 in the shed and in the lone barn!!!”

 

The recent developments in regard to Bethlem Hospital are thus

described:--

 

 “Some of the cases of cruelty brought to light by the examiners are

 almost too revolting to describe. It appears that the incurables are

 lodged in cells partially under ground, where their only conches are

 troughs filled with straw and covered with a blanket. On these

 miserable beds, worse than many a man gives to his horse or dog, the

 victims lie in the coldest weather, without night-clothes, frequently

 creeping into the straw in order to keep warm. These poor

 unfortunates also are often fed in a way as disgusting as it is

 cruel, being laid on their backs, and held down by one of the nurses,

 while another forces into the mouth the bread and milk which is their

 allotted food. This revolting practice is adopted to save time, for

 it was proved on oath that patients, thus treated, ate their meals by

 themselves, if allowed sufficient leisure. The imbecile patients,

 instead of being bathed with decency, as humanity and health demands,

 are thrown on the stone-floor, in a state of nudity, and there mopped

 by the nurses. Such things would seem incredible, if they had not

 been proved on oath. Some who were not incurable, having been treated

 in this manner, exposed these atrocities, after their recovery; and

 the result was an investigation, which led to the discovery of the

 abominable manner in which this vast charity has been administered.”

 

These things are a necessary consequence of an universal trading

spirit. For the first time in the annals of the world it has been

proclaimed in England that the paramount object of desire with the

people of a great and Christian nation is to buy cheaply and sell

dearly; and when men find themselves, in self-defence, compelled to

beat down the poor sewing-woman to a penny for making a shirt, or the

poor flower-girl to a scale of wages so low that she must resort to

prostitution for the purpose of supporting life, they can neither be

expected to be charitable themselves, nor to tolerate much charity in

the public officers charged with the expenditure of their

contributions. There is consequently everywhere to be seen a degree of

harshness in the treatment of those who have the misfortune to be

poor, and a degree of contempt in the mode of speech adopted in

relation to them, totally incompatible with the idea of advance in

_real_ civilization.

 

       *       *       *       *       *

 

The facts thus far given rest, as the reader will have seen, on the

highest English authority. It is scarcely possible to study them

without arriving at the conclusion that the labouring people of

England are gradually losing all control over the disposition of their

own labour--or in other words, that they are becoming enslaved--and

that with the decay of freedom there has been a decay of morality,

such as has been observed in every other country similarly

circumstanced. To ascertain the cause of this we must refer again to

Adam Smith, who tells us that--

 

 “No equal quantity of productive labour or capital employed in

 manufacture can ever occasion so great a reproduction as if it were

 employed in agriculture. In these, nature does nothing, man does all,

 and the reproduction must always be proportioned to the strength of

 the agents that occasion it. The capital employed in agriculture,

 therefore, not only puts into motion a greater quantity of productive

 labour than any equal capital employed in manufacture; but, in

 proportion, too, to the quantity of productive labour which it

 employs, it adds a much greater value to the annual value of the land

 and labour of the country, to the real wealth and revenue of its

 inhabitants. Of all the ways which a capital can be employed, it is

 by far the most advantageous to society.”

 

This is the starting point of his whole system, and is directly the

opposite of that from which starts the modern English

politico-economical school that professes to follow in his footsteps,

as will now be shown. The passage here given, which really constitutes

the base upon which rests the whole structure of Dr. Smith’s work, is

regarded by Mr. McCulloch as “the most objectionable” one in it, and

he expresses great surprise that “so acute and sagacious a reasoner

should have maintained a doctrine so manifestly erroneous.” “So far

indeed,” says that gentleman--

 

 “Is it from being true that nature does much for man in agriculture,

 and nothing for manufactures, that the fact is more nearly the

 reverse. There are no limits to the bounty of nature in manufactures;

 but there are limits, and those not very remote, to her bounty in

 agriculture. The greatest possible amount of capital might be

 expended in the construction of steam-engines, or of any other sort

 of machinery, and, after they had been multiplied indefinitely, the

 last would be as prompt and efficient in producing commodities and

 saving labour as the first. Such, however, is not the case with the

 soil. Lands of the first quality are speedily exhausted; and it is

 impossible to apply capital indefinitely even to the best soils,

 without obtaining from it a constantly diminishing rate of

 profit.”--_Principles of Political Economy_.

 

The error here results from the general error of Mr. Ricardo’s system,

which places the poor cultivator among the rich soils of the swamps

and river-bottoms, and sends his rich successors to the poor soils of

the hills,--being directly the reverse of what has happened in every

country of the world, in every county in England, and on every farm in

each and all of those counties.[138] Had he not been misled by the

idea of “the constantly increasing sterility of the soil,” Mr.

McCulloch could not have failed to see that the only advantage

resulting from the use of the steam-engine, or the loom, or any other

machine in use for the conversion of the products of the earth, was,

that it diminished the quantity of labour required to be so applied,

and increased the quantity that might be given to the work of

production.

 

It is quite true that wheelbarrows and carts, wagons and ships, may be

increased indefinitely; but of what use can they possibly be, unless

the things to be carried be first produced, and whence can those

things be obtained except from the earth? The grist-mill is useful,

provided there is grain to be ground, but not otherwise. The

cotton-mill would be useless unless the cotton was first produced.

Agriculture _must_ precede manufactures, and last of all, says Dr.

Smith, comes foreign commerce.[139]

 

The reader has had before him a passage from Mr. J.S. Mill, in which

that gentleman says that “if the law [of the occupation of the land]

were different, almost all the phenomena of the production and

distribution of wealth would be different from what they now are.” In

the days of Adam Smith it had not yet been suggested that men began by

the cultivation of rich soils, and then passed to poor ones, with

constantly diminishing power to obtain food. Population, therefore,

had not come to be regarded as “a nuisance” to be abated by any

measures, however revolting, and imposing upon Christian men the

necessity of hardening their hearts, and permitting their fellow-men

to suffer every extremity of poverty and distress “short of absolute

death,” with a view to bring about a necessity for refraining to

gratify that natural inclination which leads men and women to

associate in the manner tending to promote the growth of numbers and

the development of the best feelings of the human heart. It was then

considered right that men and women should marry, and increase of

population was regarded as evidence of increased wealth and strength.

Dr. Smith, therefore, looked at the affairs of the world as they were,

and be saw that the production of commodities not only preceded their

conversion and exchange, but that in the work of production the earth

aided man by increasing the _quantity_ of things to, be consumed;

whereas labour applied in other ways could change them only in their

_form_ or in their _place_, making no addition to their quantity. He,

therefore, saw clearly that the nearer the spinner and the weaver came

to the producer of food and wool, the more would be the quantity of

food and cloth to be divided between them; and thus was he led to see

how great an act of injustice it was on the part of his countrymen to

endeavour to compel the people of the world to send their raw

materials to them to be converted, at such vast loss of

transportation. He had no faith in the productive power of ships or

wagons. He knew that the barrel of flour or the bale of cotton, put

into the ship, came out a barrel of flour or a bale of cotton, the

weight of neither having been increased by the labour employed in

transporting it from this place of production to that of consumption.

He saw clearly that to place the consumer by the side of the producer

was to economize labour and aid production, and therefore to increase

the power to trade. He was, therefore, in favour of the local

application of labour and capital, by aid of which towns should grow

up in the midst of producers of food; and he believed that if “human

institutions” had not been at war with the best interests of man,

those towns would “nowhere have increased beyond what, the improvement

and cultivation of the territory in which they were situated could

support.” Widely different is all this from the system which builds up

London, Liverpool, Manchester, and Birmingham, to be the manufacturing

centres of the world, and urges upon all nations the adoption of a

system looking directly to their maintenance and increase!

 

Directly opposed in this respect to Dr. Smith, Mr. McCulloch has

unbounded faith in the productive power of ships and wagons. To him--

 

 “It is plain that the capital and labour employed in carrying

 commodities from where they are to be produced to where they are to

 be consumed, and in dividing them into minute portions so as to fit

 the wants of consumers, are really as productive as if they were

 employed in agriculture or in manufactures.”--_Principles_, 166.

 

The man who carries the food adds, as he seems to think, as much to

the quantity to be consumed as did the one who ploughed the ground and

sowed the seed; and he who stands at the counter measuring cloth adds

as much to the quantity of cloth as did he who produced it. No

benefit, in his view, results from any saving of the labour of

transportation or exchange. He has, therefore, no faith in the

advantage to be derived from the local application of labour or

capital. He believes that it matters nothing to the farmer of Ireland

whether his food be consumed on the farm or at a distance from

it--whether his grass be fed on the land or carried to market--whether

the manure be returned to the land or wasted on the road--whether, of

course, the land be impoverished or enriched. He is even disposed to

believe that it is frequently more to the advantage of the people of

that country that the food there produced should be divided among the

labourers of France or Italy than among themselves.[140]

 

He believes in the advantage of large manufacturing towns at a

distance from those who produce the food and raw materials of

manufacture; and that perfect freedom of trade consists in the quiet

submission of the farmers and planters of the world to the working of

a system which Dr. Smith, regarded as tending so greatly to “the

discouragement of agriculture,” that it was the main object of his

work to teach the people of Britain that it was not more unjust to

others than injurious to themselves.

 

In a work just issued from the press, Mr. McCulloch tells his readers

that--

 

 “For the reasons now stated, a village built in the immediate

 vicinity of a gentleman’s seat generally declines on his becoming an

 absentee. That, however, is in most cases any thing but an injury.

 The inhabitants of such villages are generally poor, needy

 dependants, destitute of any invention, and without any wish to

 distinguish themselves. But when the proprietors are elsewhere, they

 are forced to trust to their own resources, and either establish some

 sort of manufacture, or resort to those manufacturing and commercial

 cities where there is _always_ a ready demand for labourers, and

 where every latent spark of genius is sure to be elicited. Although,

 therefore, it be certainly true that absenteeism has a tendency to

 reduce the villages which are found in the neighbourhood of the

 residences of extensive proprietors, it is not on that account

 prejudicial to the country at large, but the reverse.”[141]

 

It is here seen that the people who own large estates are supposed to

be surrounded by “poor and needy dependants,” who are to be stimulated

to exertion by the pressure of want, and that this pressure is to be

produced by the absenteeism of the proprietor. We have here the master

administering the lash to his poor slave, and the only difference

between the English master and the Jamaica one appears to be, that

absenteeism in the one case forces the poor labourer to seek the lanes

and alleys of a great city, and in the other causes him to be worked

to death. The slavery of Ireland, Jamaica, and India is a natural

consequence of the absenteeism of the great land-owners; and the

larger the properties, the greater must be the tendency to

absenteeism, centralization, and slavery; and yet Mr. McCulloch

assures his readers that

 

 “The advantage of preserving large estates from being frittered down

 by a scheme of equal division is not limited to its effects on the

 younger children of their owners. It raises universally the standard

 of competence, and gives new force to the springs which set industry

 in motion. The manner of living in great landlords is that in which

 every one is ambitious of being able to indulge; and their habits of

 expense, though somewhat injurious to themselves, act as powerful

 incentives to the ingenuity and enterprise of other classes, who

 never think their fortunes sufficiently ample unless they will enable

 them to emulate the splendour of the richest landlords; so that the

 custom of primogeniture seems to render all classes more industrious,

 and to augment at the same time the mass of wealth and the scale of

 enjoyment.”--_ Principles_.

 

The modern system tends necessarily to the consolidation of land, and

the more completely that object can be attained, the greater must, be

“the splendour of the richest landlords,” the greater the habits of

expense among the few, the greater their power to absent themselves,

the greater the power of the rapacious middleman or agent, the greater

the poverty and squalor of “the poor and needy dependants,” and the

greater the necessity for seeking shelter in the cellars of

Manchester, the wynds of Glasgow, or the brothels of London and

Liverpool; but the larger must be the supply of the commodity called

“cheap labour.” In other words, slaves will be more numerous, and

masters will he more able to decide on what shall be the employment of

the labourer, and what shall be its reward.

 

Adam Smith knew nothing of all this. He saw that capital was always

best managed by its owner, and therefore had no faith in a universal

system of agencies. He saw that the little proprietor was by far the

greatest improver, and he had no belief in the advantage of great

farmers surrounded by day-labourers. He believed in the advantage of

making twelve exchanges in a year in place of one, and he saw clearly

that the nearer the consumer could come to the producer the larger and

more profitable would be commerce. He therefore taught that the

workman should go to the place where, food being abundant, moderate

labour would command much food. His successors teach that the food

should come to the place where, men being abundant and food scarce,

much labour will command little food, and that when population has

thus been rendered superabundant, the surplus should go abroad to

raise more food for the supply of those they left behind. The one

teaches the concentration of man, and the _local_ division of labour.

The other, the dispersion of man, and the _territorial_ division of

labour. They differ thus in every thing, except that they both use the

_word_ free trade--but with reference to totally distinct ideas. With

the one, COMMERCE has that enlarged signification which embraces every

description of intercourse resulting from the exercise of “man’s

natural inclination” for association, while with the other TRADE has

reference to no idea, beyond that of the mere pedler who buys in the

cheapest market and sells in the dearest one. The system of the one is

perfectly harmonious, and tends toward peace among men. The other is a

mass of discords, tending toward war among the men and the nations of

the earth.

 

As ordinarily used, the word Commerce has scarcely any signification

except that of trade with distant men, and yet that is the least

profitable commerce that can be maintained,--as the reader may satisfy

himself if he will reflect that when the miller and the farmer are

near neighbours they divide between them all the flour that is made,

whereas, when they are widely separated, a third man, the carrier,

intervenes between them and takes a large portion of it, leaving less

to be divided between those who raise the wheat and those who convert

it into flour. The more perfect the power of association the greater

must be the power to maintain commerce, for _every act of association

is an act of commerce_, as it is proposed now to show, beginning at

the beginning, in the family, which long precedes the nation. Doing

so, we find the husband exchanging his services in the raising of food

and the materials of clothing, for those of his wife, employed in the

preparation of food for the table, and the conversion of raw materials

into clothing,--and here it is we find the greatest of all trades. Of

all the labour employed on the farms and in the farm-houses of the

Union, we should, could we have an accurate statement, find that the

proportion of its products exchanged beyond their own limits, scarcely

exceeded one-third, and was certainly far less than one-half, the

remainder being given to the raising of food and raw materials for

their own consumption, and the conversion of that food and those

materials into the forms fitting them for their own uses.

 

At the next step we find ourselves in the little community, of which

the owner of this farm constitutes a portion; and here we find the

farmer exchanging his wheat with one neighbour for a day’s labour--the

use of his wagon and his horse for other days of labour--his potatoes

with a third for the shoeing of his horse, and with a fourth for the

shoeing of himself and his children, or the making of his coat. On one

day he or his family have labour to spare, and they pass it off to a

neighbour to be repaid by him in labour on another day. One requires

aid in the spring, the other in the autumn; one gives a day’s labour

in hauling lumber, in exchange for that of another, employed in mining

coal or iron ore. Another trades the labour that has been employed in

the purchase of a plough for that of his neighbour which had been

applied to the purchase of a cradle. Exchanges being thus made on the

spot, from hour to hour and from day to day, with little or no

intervention of persons whose business is trade, their amount is

large, and, combined with those of the family, equals probably

four-fifths of the total product of the labour of the community,

leaving not more than one-fifth to be traded off with distant men; and

this proportion is often greatly diminished as with increasing

population and wealth a market is made on the land for the products of

the land.

 

This little community forms part of a larger one, styled a nation, the

members of which are distant hundreds or thousands of miles from each

other, and here we find difficulties tending greatly to limit the

power to trade. The man in latitude 40° may have labour to sell for

which he can find no purchaser, while he who lives in latitude 50° is

at the moment grieving to see his crop perish on the ground for want

of aid in harvest. The first may have potatoes rotting, and his wagon

and horses idle, while the second may need potatoes, and have his

lumber on his hands for want of means of transportation--yet distance

forbids exchange between them.

 

Again, this nation forms part of a world, the inhabitants of which are

distant tens of thousands of miles from each other, and totally unable

to effect exchanges of labour, or even of commodities, except of

certain kinds that will bear transportation to distant markets.

Commerce tends, therefore, to diminish in its amount with every

circumstance tending to increase the necessity for going to a

distance, and to increase in amount with every one tending to diminish

the distance within which it must be maintained. As it now stands with

the great farming interest of the Union, the proportions are probably

as follows:--

 

    Exchanges in the family................... 55 per cent.

             in the neighbourhood............ 25    

             in the nation................... 15    

             with other nations..............  5    

                                              ---

    Total.................................... 100

 

It will now be obvious that any law, domestic or foreign, tending to

interfere with the exchanges of the family or the neighbourhood, would

be of more serious importance than one that should, to the same

extent, affect those with the rest of the nation, and that one which

should affect the trade of one part of the nation with another, would

be more injurious than one which should tend to limit the trade with

distant nations. Japan refuses to have intercourse with either Europe

or America, yet this total interdiction of trade with a great empire

is less important to the farmers of the Union than would be the

imposition of a duty of one farthing a bushel upon the vegetable food

raised on their farms to be consumed in their families.

 

The great trade is the home trade, and the greater the tendency to the

performance of trade at home the more rapid will be the increase of

prosperity, and the greater the power to effect exchanges abroad. The

reason of this is to be found in the fact that the power of production

increases with the power of combined exertion, and all combination is

an exchange of labour for labour, the exchange being made at home. The

more exchanges are thus effected the smaller is the number of the men,

wagons, ships, or sailors employed in making them, and the greater the

number of persons employed in the work of production, with increase in

the quantity of commodities produced, and the _power_ to exchange

grows with the power to produce, while the power to produce diminishes

with every increase in the _necessity_ for exchange. Again, when the

work of exchange is performed at home, the power of combination

facilitates the disposal of a vast amount of labour that would

otherwise be wasted, and an infinite number of things that would

otherwise have no value whatever, but which, combined with the labour

that is saved, are quite sufficient to make one community rich by

comparison with another in which such savings cannot be effected.

Virginia wastes more labour and more commodities that would have value

in New England, than would pay five times over for all the cloth and

iron she consumes.

 

Again, the quantity of capital required for effecting exchanges tends

to diminish as commerce comes nearer home. The ship that goes to China

performs no more exchanges in a year than the canal-boat that trades

from city to city performs in a month; and the little and inexpensive

railroad car passing from village to village may perform almost twice

as many as the fine packet-ship that has cost ninety or a hundred

thousand dollars. With the extension of the home trade, labour and

capital become, therefore, more productive of commodities required for

the support and comfort of man, and the wages of the labourer and the

profits of the capitalist tend to increase, and commerce tends still

further to increase. On the other hand, with the diminution of the

power to effect exchanges at home, labour and capital become less

productive of commodities; the wages of the labourer and the profits

of the capitalist tend to decrease, and trade tends still further to

diminish. All this will be found fully exemplified among ourselves on

a comparison of the years 1835-36 with 1841-42, while the contrary and

upward tendency is exemplified by the years 1845-6 and 7, as compared

with 1841-2.

 

The fashionable doctrine of our day is, however, that the prosperity

of a nation is to be measured by the amount of its trade with people,

who are distant, as manifested by custom-house returns, and not by the

quantity of exchanges among persons who live near each other, and who

trade without the intervention of ships, and with little need of

steamboats or wagons. If the trade of a neighbourhood be closed by the

failure of a furnace or a mill, and the workman be thus deprived of

the power to trade off the labour of himself or his children, or the

farmer deprived of the power to trade off his food, consolation is

found in the increased quantity of exports--_itself, perhaps, the

direct consequence of a diminished ability to consume at home_. If

canal-boats cease to be built, the nation is deemed to be enriched by

the substitution of ocean steamers requiring fifty times the capital

for the performance of the same quantity of exchanges. If the failure

of mills and furnaces causes men to be thrown out of employment, the

remedy is to be found, not in the revisal of the measures that have

produced these effects, but in the exportation of the men themselves

to distant climes, thus producing a necessity for the permanent use of

ships instead of canal-boats, with diminished power to maintain trade,

and every increase of this _necessity_ is regarded as an evidence of

growing wealth and power.

 

The whole tendency of modern commercial policy is to the substitution

of the distant market for the near one. England exports her people to

Australia that they may there grow the wool that might he grown at

home more cheaply; and we export to California, by hundreds of

thousands, men who enjoy themselves in hunting gold, leaving behind

them untouched the real gold-mines--those of coal and iron--in which

their labour would be thrice more productive. The reports of a late

Secretary of the Treasury abound in suggestions as to the value of the

distant trade. Steam-ships were, he thought, needed to enable us to

obtain the control of the commerce of China and Japan. “With our front

on both oceans and the gulf,” it was thought, “we might secure this

commerce, and with it, in time, command the trade of the world.”

England, not to be outdone in this race for “the commerce of the

world,” adds steadily to her fleet of ocean steamers, and the

government contributes its aid for their maintenance, by the payment

of enormous sums withdrawn from the people at home, and diminishing

the home market to thrice the extent that it increases the foreign

one. The latest accounts inform us of new arrangements about to be

made with a view to competition with this country for the passenger

traffic to and within the tropics, while the greatest of all trades

now left to British ships is represented to be the transport of

British men, women, and children, so heavily taxed at home for the

maintenance of this very system that they are compelled to seek an

asylum abroad. In all this there is nothing like freedom of trade, or

freedom of man; as the only real difference between the freeman and

the slave is, that the former exchanges himself, his labour and his

products, while the latter must permit another to do it for him.

 

Mr. McCulloch regards himself as a disciple of Adam Smith, and so does

Lord John Russell. We, too, are his disciple, but in _The Wealth of

Nations_, can find no warrant for the system advocated by either. The

system of Dr. Smith tended to the production of that natural freedom

of trade, each step toward which would have been attended with

improvement in the condition of the people, and increase in the _power

to trade_, thus affording proof conclusive of the soundness of the

doctrine; whereas every step in the direction now known as free trade

is attended with deterioration of condition, and _increased necessity_

for trade, with _diminished power_ to trade. Those who profess to be

his followers and suppose that they are carrying out his principles,

find results directly the reverse of their anticipations; and the

reason for this may readily be found in the fact that the English

school of political economists long since repudiated the whole of the

system of Dr. Smith, retaining of it little more than _the mere words_

“free trade.”

 

The basis of all commerce is to be found in production, and therefore

it was that Dr. Smith looked upon agriculture, the science of

production, as the first pursuit of man, and manufactures and commerce

as beneficial only to the extent that they tended to aid agriculture

and increase the quantity of commodities to be converted or exchanged,

preparatory to their being consumed. He held, therefore, that the

return to labour would be greater in a trade in which exchanges could

be made once a month than in another in which they could only be made

once in a year, and he was opposed to the system then in vogue,

because it had, “in all cases,” turned trade,

 

 “From a foreign trade of consumption with a neighbouring, into one

 with a more distant country; in many cases, from a direct foreign

 trade of consumption, into a round-about one; and in some cases, from

 all foreign trade of consumption, into a carrying trade. It has in

 all cases, therefore,” he continues, “turned it from a direction in

 which it would have maintained a greater quantity of productive

 labour, into one in which it can maintain a much smaller quantity.”

 

All this is directly the reverse of what is taught by the modern

British economists; and we have thus two distinct schools, that of

Adam Smith and that of his successors. The one taught that labour

directly applied to production was most advantageous, and that by

bringing the consumer to take his place by the side of the producer,

production and the consequent power to trade would be increased. The

other teaches, that every increase of capital or labour applied to

production must be attended with diminished return, whereas ships and

steam-engines may be increased _ad infinitum_ without such diminution:

the necessary inference from which is, that the more widely the

consumer and the producer are separated, with increased necessity for

the use of ships and engines, the more advantageously labour will be

applied, and the greater will be the power to trade. The two systems

start from a different base, and tend in an opposite direction, and

yet the modern school claims Dr. Smith as founder. While teaching a

theory of production totally different, Mr. McCulloch informs us that

“the fundamental principles on which the _production_ of wealth

depends” were established by Dr. Smith, “beyond the reach of cavil or

dispute.”

 

The difference between the two schools may be thus illustrated: Dr.

Smith regarded commerce as forming a true pyramid, thus--

 

                         Exchanges abroad.

                        Exchanges at home.

                   Conversion into cloth and iron.

              Production of food and other raw materials.

 

This is in exact accordance with what we know to be true; but

according to the modern school, commerce forms an inverted pyramid,

thus--

 

                    Exchanges with distant men.

                        Exchanges at home.

                            Conversion.

                            Production.

 

The difference between these figures is great, but not greater than

that between two systems, the one of which regards the earth as the

great and perpetually improving machine to which the labour of man may

be profitably applied, while the other gives precedence to those very

minute and perpetually deteriorating portions of it which go to the

construction of ships, wagons, and steam-engines. An examination of

these figures will perhaps enable the reader to understand the cause

of the unsteadiness observed wherever the modern system is adopted.

 

       *       *       *       *       *

 

It will be easy now to see why it is that the commercial policy of

England has always been so diametrically opposed to that advocated by

the author of _The Wealth of Nations_. He saw clearly that the man and

the easily transported spindle should go to the food and the cotton,

and that, when once there, ‘they were there for ever; whereas the

bulky food and cotton might be transported to the man and the spindle

for a thousand years, and that the necessity for transportation in the

thousand and first would be as great as it had been in the first; and

that the more transportation was needed, the less food and cloth would

fall to the share of both producer and consumer. His countrymen denied

the truth of this, and from that day to the present they have

endeavoured to prevent the other nations of the world from obtaining

machinery of any kind that would enable them to obtain the aid of

those natural agents which they themselves regard as more useful than

the earth itself. “The power of water,” says Mr. McCulloch--

 

 “And of wind, which move our machinery, support our ships, and impel

 them over the deep--the pressure of the atmosphere, and the

 elasticity of steam, which enables us to work the most powerful

 engines, are they not the spontaneous gifts of nature? Machinery is

 advantageous only because it gives us the means of pressing some of

 the powers of nature into our service, and of making them perform the

 principal part of what, we must otherwise have wholly performed

 ourselves. In navigation is it possible to doubt that the powers of

 nature--the buoyancy of the water, the impulse of the wind, and the

 polarity of the magnet--contribute fully as much as the labours of

 the sailor to waft our ships from one hemisphere to another? In

 bleaching and fermentation the whole processes are carried on by

 natural agents. And it is to the effects of heat in softening and

 melting metals, in preparing our food, and in warming our houses,

 that we owe many of our most powerful and convenient instruments, and

 that those northern climates have been made to afford a comfortable

 habitation.”--_Principles_, 165.

 

This is all most true, but what does it prove in regard to British

policy? Has not its object been that of preventing the people of the

world from availing themselves of the vast deposites, of iron ore and

of fuel throughout the earth, and thus to deprive them of the power to

call to their aid the pressure of the atmosphere and the elasticity of

steam? Has it not looked to depriving them of all power to avail

themselves of the natural agents required in the processes of

bleaching and fermentation, in softening woods, and melting metals,

and was not that the object had in view by a distinguished statesman,

since Chancellor of England, when he said, that “the country could

well afford the losses then resulting from the exportation of

manufactured goods, as its effect would be to smother in the cradle

the manufactures of other nations?” Has not this been the object of

every movement of Great Britain since the days of Adam Smith, and does

not the following diagram represent exactly what would be the state of

affairs if she could carry into full effect her desire to become “the

workshop of the world?”

 

 

                             \British ships/

    Producers of raw materials\           / Consumers of cloth and iron

       Europe, Asia, Africa    >         <  in Europe, Asia, Africa

           America            /           \ North and South America

                             /   And rails \

 

 

Mr. McCulloch insists that agriculture is less profitable than

manufactures and trade, and his countrymen insist that all the world

outside of England shall be one great farm, leaving to England herself

the use of all the various natural agents required in manufactures and

commerce, that they may remain poor while she becomes rich. There is

in all this a degree of selfishness not to be paralleled, and

particularly when we reflect that it involves a necessity on the part

of all other nations for abstaining from those scientific pursuits

required for the development of the intellect, and which so naturally

accompany the habit of association in towns, for the purpose of

converting the food, the wool, the hides, and the timber of the farmer

into clothing and furniture for his use. It is the policy of

barbarism, and directly opposed to any advance in civilization, as

will be fully seen when we examine into its working in reference to

any particular trade or country.

 

The annual average production of cotton is probably seventeen hundred

millions of pounds, or less than two pounds per head for the

population of the world; and certainly not one-tenth of what would be

consumed could they find means to pay for it; and not one-tenth of

what would be good for them; and yet it is a drug, selling in India at

two and three cents per pound, and commanding here at this moment,

notwithstanding the abundance of gold, but eight or nine cents, with a

certainty that, should we again be favoured, as we were a few years

since, with a succession of large crops, it will fall to a lower point

than it ever yet has seen: a state of things that could not exist were

the people of the world to consume even one-third as much as would be

good for them. Why do they not? Why is it that India, with her hundred

millions of population, and with her domestic manufacture in a state

of ruin, consumes of British cottons to the extent of only sixteen

cents per head--or little more, probably, than a couple of yards of

cloth? To these questions an answer may perhaps be found upon an

examination of the circumstances which govern the consumption of other

commodities; for we may be quite certain that cotton obeys precisely

the same laws as sugar and coffee, wine and wheat. Such an examination

would result in showing that when a commodity is at once produced at

or near the place of growth in the form fitting it for use, the

consumption is invariably large; and that when it has to go through

many and distant hands before being consumed, it is as invariably

small. The consumption of sugar on a plantation is large; but if it

were needed that before being consumed it should be sent to Holland to

be refined, and then brought back again, we may feel well assured that

there would not be one pound consumed on any given plantation where

now there are twenty, or possibly fifty. The consumption of cotton on

the plantation is very small indeed, because, before being consumed,

‘it has to be dragged through long and muddy roads to the landing,

thence carried to New Orleans, thence to Liverpool, and thence to

Manchester, after which the cloth has to be returned, the planter

receiving one bale for every five he sent away, and giving the labour

of cultivating an acre in exchange for fifty, sixty, or eighty pounds

of its product. If, now, the people who raised the cotton were free to

call to their aid the various natural agents of whose service it is

the object of the British system to deprive them, and if, therefore,

the work of converting it into cloth were performed on the ground

where it was raised, or in its neighbourhood, is it not clear that the

consumption would be largely increased? The people who made the cloth

would be the consumers of numerous things raised on the plantation

that are now wasted, while the facility of converting such things into

cloth would be a bounty on raising them; and thus, while five times

the quantity of cotton would be consumed, the real cost--that is, the

labour cost--would be less than it is for the smaller quantity now

used. So, too, in India. It may be regarded as doubtful if the

quantity of cotton to day consumed in that country is one-half what it

was half a century since--and for the reason that the number of people

now interposed between the consumer and the producer is so great. The

consumption of wine in France is enormous, whereas here there is

scarcely any consumed; and yet the apparent excess of price is not so

great as would warrant us in expecting to find so great a difference.

The real cause is not so much to be found in the excess of price,

though that is considerable, as in the mode of payment. A peasant in

France obtains wine in exchange for much that would be wasted but for

the proximity of the wine-vat, and the demand it makes for the labour

of himself and others. He raises milk, eggs, and chickens, and he has

fruit, cabbages, potatoes, or turnips, commodities that from their

bulky or perishable nature cannot be sent to a distance, but can be

exchanged at home. The farmer of Ohio cannot exchange his spare

labour, or that of his horses, for wine, nor can he pay for it in

peaches or strawberries, of which the yield of an acre might produce

him hundreds of dollars--nor in potatoes or turnips, of which he can

obtain hundreds of bushels; but he must pay in wheat, of which an acre

yields him a dozen bushels, one-half of which are eaten up in the

process of exchange between him and the wine-grower. Whenever the

culture of the grape shall come to be established in that State, and

wine shall be made at home, it will be found that the _gallons_

consumed will be almost as numerous as are now the _drops_. Look where

we may, we shall find the same result. Wherever the consumer and the

producer are brought into close connection with each other, the

increase of consumption is wonderful, even where there is no reduction

in the nominal price; and wherever they are separated, the diminution

of consumption is equally wonderful, even where there is a reduction

of the nominal price--and it is so because the facility of exchange

diminishes as the distance increases. A man who has even a single

hour’s labour to spare may exchange it with his neighbour for as much

cotton cloth as would make a shirt; but if the labour market is

distant, he may, and will, waste daily as much time as would buy him a

whole piece of cotton cloth, and may have to go shirtless while cotton

is a drug. When the labour market is near, land acquires value and men

become rich and free. When it is distant, land is of little value and

men continue poor and enslaved.

 

Before proceeding further, it would be well for the reader to look

around his own neighbourhood, and see how many exchanges are even now

made that could not be made by people that were separated even ten or

twenty miles from each other, and how many conveniences and comforts

are enjoyed in exchange for both labour and commodities that would be

wasted but for the existence of direct intercourse between the

parties--and, then to satisfy himself if the same law which may be

deduced from the small facts of a village neighbourhood, will not be

found equally applicable to the great ones of larger communities.

 

Having reflected upon these things, let him next look at the present

condition of the cotton trade, and remark the fact that scarcely any

of the wool produced is consumed without first travelling thousands of

miles, and passing through almost hundreds of hands. The places of

production are India, Egypt, Brazil, the West Indies, and our Southern

States. In the first, the manufacture is in a state of ruin. In the

second, third, and fourth, it has never been permitted to have an

existence; and in the last it has but recently made an effort to

struggle into life, but from month to month we hear of the stoppage or

destruction of Southern mills, and the day is apparently now not far

distant when we shall have again to say that no portion of the cotton

crop can be consumed in the cotton-growing region until after it shall

have travelled thousands of miles in quest of hands to convert it into

cloth.

 

Why is this? Why is it that the light and easily transported spindle

and loom are not placed in and about the cotton fields? The planters

have labour, _that is now wasted_, that would be abundant for the

conversion of half their crops, if they could but bring the machinery

to the land, instead of taking the produce of the land to the

machinery. Once brought there, it would be there for ever; whereas,

let them carry the cotton to the spindle as long as they may, the work

must still be repeated. Again, why is it that the people of India, to

whom the world was so long indebted for all its cotton goods, have not

only ceased to supply distant countries, but have actually ceased to

spin yarn or make cloth for themselves? Why should they carry raw

cotton on the backs of bullocks for hundreds of miles, and then send

it by sea for thousands of miles, paying freights, commissions, and

charges of all kinds to an amount so greatly exceeding the original

price, to part with sixty millions of pounds of raw material, to

receive in exchange eight or ten millions of pounds of cloth and yarn?

Is it not clear that the labour of converting the cotton into yarn is

not one-quarter as great as was the labour of raising, the cotton

itself? Nevertheless, we here see them giving six or eight pounds of

cotton for probably a single one of yarn, while labour unemployed

abounds throughout India. Further, Brazil raises cotton, and she has

spare labour, and yet she sends her cotton to look for the spindle,

instead of bringing the spindle to look for the cotton, as she might

so readily do. Why does she so? The answer to these questions is to be

found in British legislation, founded on the idea that the mode of

securing to the people of England the highest prosperity is to deprive

all mankind, outside of her own limits, of the power to mine coal,

make iron, construct machinery, or use steam, in aid of their efforts

to obtain food, clothing, or any other of the necessaries of life.

This system is directly opposed to that advocated by Adam Smith. Not

only, said he, is it injurious to other nations, but it must be

injurious to yourselves, for it will diminish the productiveness of

both labour and capital, and will, at the same time, render you daily

more and more dependent upon the operations of other countries, when

you should be becoming more independent of them. His warnings were

then, as they are now, unheeded; and from his day to the present,

England has been engaged in an incessant effort utterly to destroy the

manufactures of India, and to _crush every attempt elsewhere to

establish any competition with her for the purchase of cotton_. The

reader will determine for himself if this is not a true picture of the

operations of the last seventy years. If it is, let him next determine

if the tendency of the system is not that of enslaving the producers

of cotton, white, brown, and black, and compelling them to carry all

their wool to a single market, in which one set of masters dictates

the price at which they _must_ sell the raw material and _must_ buy

the manufactured one. Could there be a greater tyranny than this?

 

To fully understand the working of the system in diminishing the power

to consume, let us apply elsewhere the same principle, placing in

Rochester, on the Falls of the Genesee, a set of corn-millers who had

contrived so effectually to crush all attempts to establish mills in

other parts of the Middle States, that no man could eat bread that had

not travelled up to that place in its most bulky form, coming back in

its most compact one, leaving at the mill all the refuse that might

have been applied to the fattening of hogs and cattle--and let us

suppose that the diagram on the following page represented the corn

trade of that portion of the Union.

 

 

                       \  Wagons and   /

    Producers of food   \             / Consumers of food

      in those states    >           <  in those states

                        /             \

                       /Rochester mills\

 

 

Now, suppose all the grain of half a dozen States had to make its way

through such a narrow passage as is above indicated, is it not clear

that the owners of roads, wagons, and mills would be masters of the

owners of land? Is it not clear that the larger the crops the higher

would be freights, and the larger the charge for the use of mills, the

smaller would be the price of a bushel of wheat as compared with that

of a bag of meal? Would not the farmers find themselves to be mere

slaves to the owners of a small quantity of mill machinery? That such

would be the case, no one can even for a moment doubt--nor is it at

all susceptible of doubt that the establishment of such a system would

diminish by one-half the consumption of food, throughout those States,

and also the power to produce it, for all the refuse would be fed at

and near Rochester, and the manure yielded by it would be totally lost

to the farmer who raised the food. The value of both labour and land

would thus be greatly diminished. Admitting, for a moment, that such a

system existed, what would be the remedy? Would it not be found in an

effort to break down the monopoly, and thus to establish among the

people the power to trade among themselves without paying, toll to the

millers of Rochester? Assuredly it would; and to that end they would

be seen uniting among themselves to induce millers to come and settle

among them, precisely as we see men every where uniting to bring

schools and colleges to their neighbourhood, well assured that a small

present outlay is soon made up, even in a pecuniary point of view, in

being enabled to keep their children at home while being educated,

instead of sending them abroad, there to be boarded and lodged, while

food is wasted at home that they might eat, and chambers are empty

that they might occupy. Education thus obtained costs a parent almost

literally nothing, while that for which a child must go to a distance

is so costly that few can obtain it. Precisely so is it with food and

with cloth. The mere labour of converting grain into flour is as

nothing when compared with that required for its transportation

hundreds of miles; and the mere labour required for the conversion of

cotton into cloth is as nothing compared with the charges attendant

upon its transportation from the plantation to Manchester and back

again. Commercial centralization looks, however, to compelling the

planter to pay treble the cost of conversion, in the wages and profits

of the people employed in transporting and exchanging the cotton.

 

Admitting that the grain and flour trade were thus centralized, what

would be the effect of a succession of large crops, or even of a

single one? Would not the roads be covered with wagons whenever they

were passable, and even at times when, they were almost impassable?

Would not every one be anxious to anticipate the apprehended fall of

prices by being early in the market? Would not freights be high? Would

not the farmer, on his arrival in Rochester, find that every

store-house was filled to overflowing? Would not storage be high?

Would he not approach the miller, cap in hand, and would not the

latter receive him with his hat on his head? Assuredly such would be

the case, and he would hear everywhere of the astonishing extent of

“the surplus”--of how rapidly production was exceeding consumption--of

the length of time his grain must remain on hand before it could be

ground--of the low price of flour, &c. &c.;--and the result would be

that the more grain carried to market the less would be carried back,

and _the less he would be able to consume_; and at last he would

arrive at the conclusion that the only effect of large crops granted

him by the bounty of Heaven was that of enriching the miller at his

expense, by compelling him to allow more toll for the privilege of

creeping through the hole provided for him by the miller. He would

pray for droughts and freshets--for storms and frosts--as the only

means of escape from ruin.

 

The reader may determine for himself if this is not a fair picture of

the cotton trade? Do the planters profit by good crops? Assuredly not.

The more they send to market the less they receive for it. Do they

profit by improvements in the transportation of their commodity?

Certainly not. With the growth of railroads, cotton has fallen in

price, and will not this day command on the plantation near as much,

per pound, as it did before the railroad was invented. In India, the

cost of transportation from the place of production to England has

fallen in the last forty years sevenpence,[142] and yet the grower of

cotton obtains for it one-third less than he did before--receiving now

little more than two cents, when before he had from three to four. Who

profits by the reduction of cost of transportation and conversion?

_The man who keeps the toll-gate through which it passes to the

world_, and who opens it only gradually, so as to permit the increased

quantity to pass through slowly, paying largely for the privilege.

That all this is perfectly in accordance with the facts of the ease

must be obvious to every reader. The planter becomes rich when crops

are short, but then the mill-owner makes but little profit. He is

almost ruined when crops are large, but then it is that the mill-owner

is enriched--and thus it is that the system produces universal

discord, whereas under a natural system there would be as perfect

harmony of national, as there is of individual interests.

 

We may now inquire how this would affect the farmers around Rochester.

The consumption of the Middle States would be largely diminished

because of the heavy expense of transporting the wheat to mill and the

flour back again, and this would cause a great increase of the surplus

for which a market must be elsewhere found. This, of course, would

reduce prices, and prevent increase, if it did not produce large

diminution in the value of land. The millers would become

_millionaires_--great men among their poorer neighbours--and they

would purchase large farms to be managed by great farmers, and fine

houses surrounded by large pleasure-grounds. Land would become

everywhere more and more consolidated, because people who could do so

would fly from a country in which such a tyranny existed. The demand

for labour would diminish as the smaller properties became absorbed.

Rochester itself would grow, because it would be filled with cheap

labour from the country, seeking employment, and because there would

be great numbers of wagoners and their horses to be cared for, while

porters innumerable would be engaged in carrying wheat in one

direction and flour in another. Hotels would grow large, thieves and

prostitutes would abound, and morals would decline. From year to year

the millers would become greater men, and the farmers and labourers

smaller men, and step by step all would find themselves becoming

slaves to the caprices of the owners of a little machinery, the whole

cost of which would scarcely exceed _the daily loss_ resulting from

the existence of the system. By degrees, the vices of the slave would

become more and more apparent. Intemperance would grow, and education

would diminish, as the people of the surrounding country became more

dependent on the millers for food and clothing in exchange for cheap

grain and cheaper labour. The smaller towns would everywhere decline,

and from day to day the millers would find it more easy so to direct

the affairs of the community as to secure a continuance of their

monopoly. Local newspapers would pass away, and in their stead the

people throughout the country would be supplied with the Rochester

_Times_, which would assure the farmers that cheap food tended to

produce cheaper labour, and the land-owners that if they did not

obtain high rents it was their own fault, the defect being in their

own bad cultivation--and the more rapid the augmentation of the

millers’ fortunes, and of the extent of their pleasure-grounds, the

greater, they would be assured, must be the prosperity of the whole

people; even although the same paper might find itself obliged to

inform its readers that the overgrown capital presented it as

 

 “A strange result of the terrible statistics of society, that there

 was upon an average one person out of twenty of the inhabitants of

 the luxurious metropolis every day destitute of food and employment,

 and every night without a place for shelter or repose?”--London

 _Times_.

 

We have here slavery at home as a consequence of the determination, to

subject to slavery people abroad. With each step in the growth of the

millers’ fortunes, and of the splendour of their residences, land

would have become consolidated and production would have diminished,

and the whole population would have tended more and more to become a

mass of mere traders, producing nothing themselves, but buying cheaply

and selling dearly, and thus deriving their support from the exercise

of the power to tax the unfortunate people forced to trade with them;

a state of things in the highest degree adverse to moral,

intellectual, or political improvement.

 

The reader may now turn to the extracts from Mr. McCulloch’s works

already given, (page 240 _ante_,) and compare with them this view of

the effects of supposed commercial centralization on this side of the

Atlantic. Doing so, he will find it there stated that it is to the

consolidation of the land, and to the luxury of the style of living of

the great landlords, surrounded, as they, “in most cases” are, by

“poor and needy dependants,” whose necessities finally compel them to

seek in large cities a market for their own labour, and that of their

wives and children, that we are to look for an augmentation of “the

mass of wealth and the scale of enjoyment!” Modern British political

economy holds no single idea that is in harmony with the real

doctrines of Adam Smith, and yet it claims him as its head!

 

       *       *       *       *       *

 

The reader is requested now to remark--

 

I. That the system of commercial centralization sought to be

established by Great Britain is precisely similar to the one here

ascribed to the millers of Rochester, with the difference only, that

it has for its object to compel all descriptions of raw produce to

pass through England on its way from the consumer and the producer,

even when the latter are near neighbours to each other, and England

distant many thousand of miles from both.

 

II. That to carry out that system it was required that all other

nations should be prevented from obtaining either the knowledge or the

machinery required for enabling them cheaply to mine coal, smelt iron

ore, or manufacture machines by aid of which they could command the

services of the great natural agents whose value to man is so well

described by Mr. McCulloch. (See page 249 _ante_.)

 

III. That this was at first accomplished by means of prohibitions, and

that it is now maintained by the most strenuous efforts for cheapening

labour, and thus depriving the labourer at home of the power to

determine for whom he will work or what shall be his wages.

 

IV. That the more perfectly this system can be carried out, the more

entirely must all other nations limit themselves, men, women and

children, to the labour of the field, and the lower must be the

standard of intellect.

 

V. That while the number of agriculturists in other countries must

thus be increased, the power to consume their own products must be

diminished, because of the great increase of the charges between the

producer and the consumer.

 

VI. That this, in turn, must be attended with an increase in the

quantity of food and other raw materials thrown on the market of

Britain, with great increase in the competition between the foreign

and domestic producers for the possession of that market, and great

diminution of prices.

 

VII. That this tends necessarily to “discourage agriculture” in

Britain, and to prevent the application of labour to the improvement

of the land.

 

VIII. That it likewise tends to the deterioration of the condition of

the foreign agriculturist, who is thus deprived of the power to

improve his land, or to increase the quantity of his products.

 

IX. That the smaller the quantity of commodities produced, the less

must be the power to pay for labour, and the less the competition for

the purchase of the labourer’s services.

 

X. That with the decline in the demand for labour, the less must be

the power of consumption on the part of the labourer, the greater must

be the tendency to a glut of foreign and domestic produce, in the

general market of the world, and the greater the tendency to a further

diminution of the labourer’s reward.

 

XI. That, the greater the quantity of raw produce seeking to pass

through the market of England, the greater must be the tendency to a

decline in the value of English land, and the larger the charges of

the owners of the mills, ships, and shops, through which the produce

must pass, and the greater their power of accumulation, at the cost of

both labour and land.

 

XII. That the less the labour applied to the improvement of the soil,

the more must the population of the country be driven from off the

land, the greater must be the tendency of the latter toward

consolidation, and the greater the tendency toward absenteeism and the

substitution of great farmers and day-labourers for small proprietors,

with further decline in production and in the demand for labour.

 

XIII. That with the reduction of the country population, local places

of exchange must pass away; and that labour and land must decline in

power as ships, mills, and their owners become more united and more

powerful.

 

XIV. That the tendency of the whole system is, therefore, toward

diminishing the value and the power of land, and toward rendering the

labourer a mere slave to the trading community, which obtains from day

to day more and more the power to impose taxes at its pleasure, and to

centralize in its own hands the direction of the affairs of the

nation; to the destruction of local self-government, and to the

deterioration of the physical, moral, intellectual, and political

condition of the people.

 

In accordance with these views, an examination of the productive power

of the United Kingdom should result in showing that production has not

kept pace with population; and that such had been the ease we should

be disposed to infer from the increasing demand for cheap labour, and

from the decline that has unquestionably taken place in the control of

the labourer over his own operations. That the facts are in accordance

with this inference the reader may perhaps be disposed to admit after

having examined carefully the following figures.

 

In 1815, now thirty-eight years since, the declared value of the

exports of the United Kingdom, of British produce and manufacture, was

as follows:--

 

    Of woollen manufactures............... £9,381,426

     “ cotton             ............... 20,620,000

     “ silk               ...............    622,118

     “ linen              ...............  1,777,563

    And of other commodities.............. 19,231,684

                                           ----------

    Total................................. 51,632,791

 

In the same year there were imported of

 

    Wool.................................. 13,634,000 lbs.

    Cotton................................ 99,306,000 

    Silk..................................  1,807,000 

    Flax.................................. 41,000,000 

    Grain.................................    267,000 qrs.

    Flour.................................    202,000 cwts.

    Butter................................    125,000 

    Cheese................................    106,000 

 

If to the raw cotton, wool, silk, and flax that were re-exported in a

manufactured state, and to the dyeing materials and other articles

required for their manufacture, we now add the whole foreign food, as

above shown, we can scarcely make, of foreign commodities re-exported,

an amount exceeding twelve, or at most thirteen millions, leaving

thirty-eight millions as the value of the British produce exported in

that year; and this divided among the people of the United Kingdom

would give nearly £2 per head.

 

In 1851 the exports, were as follows:--

 

    Manufactures of wool.................... £10,314,000

                   cotton..................  30,078,000

                   silk....................   1,329,000

                   flax....................   5,048,000

    All other commodities...................  21,723,569

                                             -----------

    Total................................... £68,492,569

 

We see thus that nearly the whole increase that had taken place in the

long period of thirty-six years was to be found in four branches of

manufacture, the materials of which were wholly drawn from abroad, as

is shown in the following statement of imports for that year:--

 

    Wool....................................  83,000,000 lbs.

    Cotton.................................. 700,000,000 

    Silk....................................   5,020,000 

    Flax.................................... 135,000,000 

    Eggs.................................... 115,000,000 

    Oxen, cows, calves, sheep, hogs, &c.....     300,000 

    Corn....................................   8,147,675 qrs.

    Flour...................................   5,384,552 cwts.

    Potatoes................................     635,000 

    Provisions..............................     450,000 

    Butter..................................     354,000 

    Cheese..................................     338,000 

    Hams and lard...........................     130,000 

 

The wool imported was more than was required to produce the cloth

exported, and from this it follows that the whole export represented

foreign wool. The cotton, silk, flax, dyeing-materials, &c. exported

were all foreign, and the food imported was adequate, or nearly so, to

feed the people who produced the goods exported. Such being the case,

it would follow that the total exports of British and Irish produce

could scarcely have amounted to even £15,000,000, and it certainly

could not have exceeded that sum--and that would give about 10s. per

head, or one-fourth as much as in 1815.

 

The difference between the two periods is precisely the same as that

between the farmer and the shoemaker. The man who, by the labour of

himself and sons, is enabled to send to market the equivalent of a

thousand bushels of wheat, has first _fed himself and them_, and

therefore he has _the whole proceeds_ of his sales to apply to the

purchase of clothing, furniture, or books, or to add to his capital.

His neighbour buys food and leather, and sells shoes. He _has been

fed_, and the first appropriation to be made of the proceeds of his

sales is to buy more food and leather; and all he has to apply to

other purposes is _the difference_ between the price at which he buys

and that at which he sells. Admitting that difference to be one-sixth,

it would follow that his sales must be six times as large to enable

him to have the same value to be applied to the purchase of other

commodities than food, or to the increase of his capital. Another

neighbour buys and sells wheat, or shoes, at a commission of five per

cent., out of which he has _to be fed_. To enable him to have an

amount of gross commissions equal to the farmer’s sales, he must do

twenty times as much business; and if, we allow one-half of it for the

purchase of food, he must do forty times as much to enable him to have

the same amount with which to purchase other commodities, or to

increase his capital. Precisely so is it with a nation. When it sells

its own food and leather, _it has fed itself_, and may dispose as it

will of the whole amount of sales. When it buys food and leather, and

sells shoes, _it has been fed_, and must first pay the producers of

those commodities; and all that it can appropriate to the purchase of

clothing or furniture, or to the increase, of its capital, is the

_difference_; and, to enable it to have the same amount to be so

applied, it must sell six times as much in value. When it acts as a

mere buyer and seller of sugar, cotton, cloth, or shoes, it has _to be

fed_ out of the differences, and then it may require forty times the

amount of sales to yield the same result.

 

  These things being understood, we may now compare the two

  years above referred to. In the first, 1815, the sales of

  domestic produce amounted to.................... £38,600,000

 

  And if to this we add the difference on

  £13,000,000.....................................   2,166,667

                                                   -----------

  We obtain the amount, applicable to the purchase

  of other commodities than food.................  £40,766,667

 

  In the second, 1851, the sales of domestic produce

  were ........................................... £15,000,000

  To which add differences on £53,492,000, say....   9,000,000

                                                    ----------

  We have, as applicable to other purposes than the

  purchase of food...............................  £24,000,000

 

Divided among the population, of those years, it gives £2 per head in

the first, and 16s. in the other; but even this, great as it is, does

not represent in its full extent the decline that has taken place. The

smaller the change of form made in the commodity imported before

exporting it, the more nearly does the business resemble that of the

mere trader, and the larger must be the quantity of merchandise

passing, to leave behind the same result. In 1815, the export of yarn

of any kind was trivial, because other countries were then unprovided

with looms. In 1851 the export of mere yarn, upon which the

expenditure of British labour had been only that of twisting it, was

as follows:--

 

    Cotton.................................. 144,000,000 lbs.

    Linen...................................  19,000,000 

    Silk....................................     390,000 

    Woollen.................................  14,800,000 

 

The reader will readily perceive that in all these cases the foreign

raw material bears a much larger proportion to the value than would

have been the case had the exports taken place in the form of cloth.

An examination of these facts can scarcely fail to satisfy him how

deceptive are any calculations based upon statements of the amount of

exports and imports; and yet it is to them we are always referred for

evidence of the growing prosperity of England. With every year there

must be an increasing tendency in the same direction, as the

manufacturers of India are more and more compelled to depend on

England for yarn, and as the nations of Europe become more and more

enabled to shut out cloth and limit their imports to yarn. From

producer, England has become, or is rapidly becoming, a mere trader,

and trade has not grown to such an extent as was required to make

amends for the change. She is therefore in the position of the man who

has substituted _a trade_ of a thousand dollars a year for _a

production_ of five hundred. In 1815, the people of the United Kingdom

had to divide among themselves, then twenty millions in number, almost

forty millions, the value of their surplus products exported to all

parts of the earth. In 1851, being nearly thirty millions in number,

they had to divide only fifteen millions, whereas had production been

maintained, it should have reached sixty millions, or almost the total

amount of exports. In place of this vast amount of _products_ for

sale, they had only the _differences_ upon an excess trade of

£40,000,000, and this can scarcely be estimated at more than eight or

ten, toward making up a deficit of forty-five millions. Such being the

facts, it will not now be difficult for the reader to understand why

it is that there is a decline in the material and moral condition of

the people.

 

How this state of things has been brought about is shown by the steady

diminution in the proportion of the population engaged in the work of

production. Adam Smith cautioned his countrymen that “if the whole

surplus produce of America in grain of all sorts, salt provisions, and

fish,” were “forced into the market of Great Britain,” it would

“interfere too much with the prosperity of our own people.” He thought

it would be a “great discouragement to agriculture.” And yet, from

that hour to the present, no effort has been spared to increase in all

the nations of the world the surplus of raw produce, to be poured into

the British market, and thus to produce competition between the

producers abroad and the producers at home, to the manifest injury of

both. The more the linen manufacture, or those of wool, hemp, or iron,

could be discouraged abroad, the greater was the quantity of raw

products to be sent to London and Liverpool, and the less the

inducement for applying labour to the improvement of English land. For

a time, this operation, so far as regarded food, was restrained by the

corn-laws; but now the whole system is precisely that which was

reprobated by the most profound political economist that Britain has

ever produced. Its consequences are seen in the following figures:--In

1811, the proportion of the population of England engaged in

agriculture was 35 per cent. In 1841 it had fallen to 25 per cent.,

and now it can scarcely exceed 22 per cent., and even in 1841 the

actual number was less than it had been thirty years before.[143]

 

Thus driven out from the land, Englishmen had to seek other

employment, while the same system was annually driving to England tens

of thousands of the poor people of Scotland and Ireland; and thus

forced competition for the sale in England of the raw products of the

earth produced competition there for the sale of labour; the result of

which is seen in the fact that agricultural wages have been from 6s.

to 9s. a week, and the labourer has become from year to year more a

slave to the caprices of his employer, whether the great farmer or the

wealthy owner of mills or furnaces. The total population of the

_United Kingdom_ dependent upon agriculture cannot be taken at more

than ten millions; and as agricultural wages cannot be estimated at a

higher average than 5s. per week, there cannot be, including the

earnings of women, more than 6s. per family; and if that be divided

among four, it gives 1s. 6d. per head, or £3 18s. per annum, and a

total amount, to be divided among ten millions of people, of 40

millions of pounds, or 192 millions of dollars. In reflecting upon

this, the reader is requested to bear in mind that it provides wages

for every week in the year, whereas throughout a considerable portion

of the United Kingdom very much of the time is unoccupied.

 

Cheap labour has, in every country, gone hand in hand with cheap land.

Such having been the case, it may not now be difficult to account for

the small value of land when compared with the vast advantages it

possesses in being everywhere close to a market in which to exchange

its raw products for manufactured ones, and also for manure. The

reader has seen the estimate of _M. Thunen_, one of the best

agriculturists of Germany, of the vast difference in the value of land

in Mecklenburgh close to market, as compared with that distant from

it; but he can everywhere see for himself that that which is close to

a city will command thrice as much rent as that distant twenty miles,

and ten times as much as that which is five hundred miles distant.

Now, almost the whole land of the United Kingdom is in the condition

of the best of that here described. The distances are everywhere

small, and the roads are, or ought to be, good; and yet the total

rental of land, mines, and minerals, is but £55,000,000, and this for

an area of 70 millions of acres, giving an average of only about $3.60

per acre, or $9--less than £2,--per head of the population. This is

very small indeed, and it tends to show to how great an extent the

system must have discouraged agriculture. In 1815, with a population

of only twenty millions, the rental amounted, exclusive of houses,

mines, minerals, fisheries, &c., to fifty-two and a half millions,

and the exports of the produce of British and Irish land were then

almost three times as great as they are now, with a population almost

one-half greater than it was then.

 

The very small value of the land of the United Kingdom, when compared

with its advantages, can be properly appreciated by the reader only

after an examination of the course of things elsewhere. The price of

food raised in this country is dependent, almost entirely, on what can

be obtained for the very small quantity sent to England. “Mark Lane,”

as it is said, “governs the world’s prices.” It does govern them in

New York and Philadelphia, where prices must be as much below those of

London or Liverpool as the cost of transportation, insurance, and

commissions, or there could be no export. Their prices, in turn,

govern those of Ohio and Pennsylvania, Indiana and Illinois, which

must always be as much below those of New York as the cost of getting

the produce there. If, now, we examine into the mere cost of

transporting the average produce of an acre of land from the farm to

the market of England, we shall find that it would be far more than

the average rental of English land; and yet that rental includes coal,

copper, iron, and tin mines that supply a large portion of the world.

 

Under such circumstances, land in this country should be of very small

value, if even of any; and yet the following facts tend to show that

the people of Massachusetts, with a population of only 994,000,

scattered over a surface of five millions of acres, with a soil so

poor that but 2,133,000 are improved, and possessed of no mines of

coal, iron, tin, lead, or copper, have, in the short period they have

occupied it, acquired rights in land equal, per acre, to those

acquired by the people of England in their fertile soils, with their

rich mines, in two thousand years. The cash value of the farms of that

State in 1850 was $109,000,000, which, _divided over the whole

surface_, would give $22 per acre, and this, at six per cent., would

yield $1.32. Add to this the difference between wages of four, six,

and eight shillings per week in the United Kingdom, and twenty or

twenty-five dollars per month in Massachusetts, and it will be found

that the return in the latter is quite equal to that in the former;

and yet the price of agricultural produce generally, is as much below

that of England as the cost of freight and commission, which alone are

greater than the whole rent of English land.

 

New York has thirty millions of acres, of which only twelve millions

have been in any manner improved; and those she has been steadily

exhausting, because of the absence of a market on or near the land,

such as is possessed by England. She has neither coal nor other mines

of any importance, and her factories are few in number; and yet the

cash value of farms, as returned by the Marshal, was 554 millions of

dollars, and that was certainly less than the real value. If we take

the latter at 620 millions, it will gives $50 per acre for the

improved land, or an average of $20 for all. Taking the rent at six

per cent. on $50, we obtain $3 per acre, or nearly the average of the

United Kingdom; and it would be quite reasonable to make the mines and

minerals of the latter a set-off against the land that is unimproved.

 

If the reader desire to understand the cause of the small value, of

English land when compared with its vast advantages, he may find it in

the following passage:--

 

 “Land-owners possess extensive territories which owe little or

 nothing to the hand of the improver; where undeveloped sources of

 production lie wasting and useless in the midst of the most certain

 and tempting markets of the vast consuming population of this

 country.”--_Economist_, London.

 

 Unfortunately, however, those markets are small, while the tendency

 of the whole British system is toward converting the entire earth

 into one vast farm for their supply, and thus preventing the

 application of labour to the improvement of land at home. The

 tendency of prices, whether of land, labour, or their products, is

 toward a level, and whatever tends to lessen the price of any of

 those commodities in Ireland, India, Virginia, or Carolina, tends to

 produce the same effect in England; and we have seen that such is the

 direct tendency of English policy with regard to the land of all

 those countries. With decline in value, there must ever be a tendency

 to consolidation, and thus the policy advocated by the _Economist_

 produces the evil of which it so much and so frequently complains.

 

The profits of farmers are generally estimated at half the rental,

which would give for a total of rents and profits about 85 millions;

and if to this be added the wages of agricultural labour, we obtain

but about 125 millions, of which less than one-third goes to the

labourer.[144]

 

We have here the necessary result of consolidation of land--itself

the result of an attempt to compel the whole people of the world to

compete with each other in a single and limited market for the sale of

raw produce. With every increase of this competition, the small

proprietor has found himself less and less able to pay the taxes to

which he was subjected, and has finally been obliged to pass into the

condition of a day-labourer, to compete with the almost starving

Irishman, or the poor native of Scotland, driven into England in

search of employment; and hence have resulted the extraordinary facts

that in many parts of that country, enjoying, as it does, every

advantage except a sound system of trade, men gladly labour for six

shillings ($1.44) a week; that women labour in the fields; and that

thousands of the latter, destitute of a change of under-clothing, are

compelled to go to bed while their chemises are being washed.[145]

 

Driven from the land by the cheap food and cheap labour of Ireland,

the English labourer has to seek the town, and there he finds himself

at the mercy of the great manufacturer; and thus, between the

tenant-farmer on the one hand, and the large capitalist on the other,

he is ground as between the upper and the nether millstone. The result

is seen in the facts heretofore given. He loses gradually all

self-respect, and he, his wife, and his children become vagrants, and

fall on the public for support. Of the wandering life of great numbers

of these poor people some idea may be formed from the following

statement of Mr. Mayhew[146] :--

 

 “I happened to be in the country a little time back, and it

 astonished me to find, in a town with a population of 20,800, that no

 less than 11,000 vagabonds passed through the town in thirteen weeks.

 We have large classes known in the metropolis as the people of the

 streets.”

 

It will, however, be said that if cheap corn tend to drive him from

employment, he has a compensation in cheaper sugar, cotton, coffee,

rum, and other foreign commodities--and such is undoubtedly the case;

but he enjoys these things at the cost of his fellow labourers, black,

white, and brown, in this country, the West Indies, India, and

elsewhere. The destruction of manufactures in this country in 1815 and

1816 drove the whole population to the raising of food, tobacco, and

cotton; and a similar operation in India drove the people of that

country to the raising of rice, indigo, sugar, and cotton, that _must_

go to the market of England, because of the diminution in the domestic

markets for labour or its products. The diminished domestic

consumption of India forces her cotton into the one great market,

there to compete with that of other countries, and to reduce their

prices. It forces the Hindoo to the Mauritius, to aid in destroying

the poor negroes of Jamaica, Cuba, and Brazil; but the more the sugar

and cotton that _must_ go to the distant market, the higher will be

the freights, the lower will be the prices, the larger will be the

British revenue, the greater will be the consumption, and the greater

will be the “prosperity” of England, but the more enslaved will be the

producers of those commodities. Competition for their sale tends to

produce low prices, and the more the people of the world, men, women,

and children, can be limited to agriculture, the greater must be the

necessity for dependence on England for cloth and iron, the higher

will be their prices, and the more wretched will be the poor labourer

everywhere.

 

The reader may perhaps understand the working of the system after an

examination of the following comparative prices of commodities:--

 

                               1815.              1852.

                               -----              -----

    England sells--

      Bar iron, per ton.... £13  5s. 0d. ..... £9   0s. 0d.

      Tin, per cwt.........   7  0   0   .....  5   2   0

      Copper    “ .........   6  5   0   .....  5  10   0

      Lead      “ .........   1  6   6   .....  1   4   0

 

    England buys--

      Cotton, per lb.......   0  1   6   .....  0   0   6

      Sugar, per cwt.......   3  0   0   .....  1   0   0

 

While these principal articles of raw produce have fallen to one-

third of the prices of 1815, iron, copper, tin, and lead, the

commodities that she supplies to the world, have not fallen more than

twenty-five per cent. It is more difficult to exhibit the changes of

woven goods, but that the planters are constantly giving more cotton

for less cloth will be seen on an examination of the following facts

in relation to a recent large-crop year, as compared with the course

of things but a dozen years before. From 1830 to 1835, the price of

cotton here was about eleven cents, which we may suppose to be about

what it would yield in England, free of freight and charges. In those

years our average export was about 320,000,000, yielding about

$35,000,000, and the average price of cotton cloth, per piece of 24

yards, weighing 5 lbs. 12 oz., was 7s. 10d., ($1.88,) and that of iron

£6 10s. ($31.20.) Our exports would therefore have produced, delivered

in Liverpool, 18,500,000 pieces of cloth, or about 1,100,000 tons of

iron. In 1845 and 1846, the _home consumption_ of cotton by the people

of England was almost the same quantity, say 311,000,000 pounds, and

the average price here was 6-1/2 cents, making the product

$20,000,000. The price of cloth then was 6s. 6-3/4 d., ($1.57 1/2,)

and that of iron about £10, ($48;) and the result was, that the

planters could have, for nearly the same quantity of cotton, about

12,500,000 pieces of cloth, or about 420,000 tons of iron, also

delivered in Liverpool. Dividing the return between the two

commodities, it stands thus:--

 

  Average from:     1830 to 1835.   1845-6.       Loss.

  -------------     -------------   -------       -----

  Cloth, pieces.... 9,250,000 ... 6,250,000 ... 3,000,000

  And iron, tons...   550,000 ...   210,000 ...   340,000

 

The labour required for converting cotton into cloth had been greatly

diminished, and yet the proportion, retained by the manufacturers had

greatly increased, as will now be shown:--

 

                              Weight of Cotton   Retained

                  Weight of     given to the      by the

                 Cotton used.     planters.    manufacturers.

                 ------------ ---------------- --------------

  1830 to 1835... 320,000,000... 110,000,000... 210,000,000

  1845 and 1846.. 311,000,000... 74,000,000.... 237,000,000

 

In the first period, the planter would have had 34 per cent. of his

cotton returned to him in the form of cloth, but in the second only 24

per cent. The grist miller gives the farmer from year to year a larger

proportion of the product of his grain, and thus the latter has all

the profit of every improvement. The cotton miller gives the planter

from year to year a smaller proportion of the cloth produced. The one

miller comes daily nearer to the producer. The other goes daily

farther from him, for with the increased product the surface over

which it is raised is increased.

 

How this operates on a large scale will now be seen on an examination

of the following facts:--

 

  The declared or actual _value_ of exports

  of British produce in manufactures in 1815 was.. £51,632,971

  And the _quantity_ of foreign merchandise

  retained for consumption in that year was....... £17,238,841  [147]

 

This shows, of course, that the prices of the raw products of the

earth were then high by comparison with those of the articles that

Great Britain had to sell.

 

  In 1849, the _value_ of British exports was..... £63,596,025

  And the _quantity_ of foreign merchandise

  retained for consumption was no less than....... £80,312,717

 

We see thus that while the value of exports had increased only

_one-fourth_, the produce received in exchange was _almost five times

greater_; and here it is that we find the effect of that _unlimited_

competition for the sale in England of the raw products of the world,

and _limited_ competition for the purchase of the manufactured ones,

which it is the object of the system to establish. The nation is

rapidly passing from the strong and independent position of one that

produces commodities for sale, into the weak and dependent one of the

mere trader who depends for his living upon the differences between

the prices at which he sells and those at which he buys--that is, upon

his power to tax the producers and consumers of the earth. It is the

most extraordinary and most universal system of taxation ever devised,

and it is carried out at the cost of weakening and enfeebling the

people of all the purely agricultural countries. The more completely

all the world, outside of England, can be rendered one great farm, in

which men, women, and children, the strong and the weak, the young and

the aged, can be reduced to field labour as the only means of support,

the larger will be the sum of those _differences_ upon which the

English people are now to so great an extent maintained, but the more

rapid will be the tendency everywhere toward barbarism and slavery.

The more, on the other hand, that the artisan can be brought to the

side of the farmer, the smaller must be the sum of these

_differences_, or taxes, and the greater will everywhere be the

tendency toward civilization and freedom; but the greater will be that

English distress which is seen always to exist when the producers of

the world obtain much cloth and iron in exchange for their sugar and

their cotton. The English system is therefore a war for the

perpetuation and extension of slavery.

 

On a recent occasion the Chancellor of the Exchequer congratulated the

House of Commons on the flourishing state of the revenue,

notwithstanding, that, they had

 

 “In ten years repealed or reduced the duties on coffee, timber,

 currants, wool, sugar, molasses, cotton wool, butter, cheese, silk

 manufactures, tallow, spirits, copper ore, oil and sperm, and an

 amazing number of other articles, which produced a small amount of

 revenue, with respect to which it is not material, and would be

 almost preposterous, that I should trouble the House in detail. It is

 sufficient for me to observe this remarkable fact, that the reduction

 of your customs duties from 1842 has been systematically continuous;

 that in 1842 you struck off nearly £1,500,000 of revenue calculated

 from the customs duties; that in 1843 you struck off £126,000; in

 1844, £279,000; in 1845, upwards of £3,500,000; in 1846, upwards of

 £1,150,000; in 1847, upwards of £343,000; in 1848, upwards of

 £578,000; in 1849, upwards of £384,000; in 1850, upwards of £331,000;

 and in 1851, upwards of £801,000--making an aggregate, in those ten

 years, of nearly £9,000,000 sterling.”

 

The reason of all this is, that the cultivator abroad is steadily

giving more raw produce for less cloth and iron. The more exclusively

the people of India can be forced to devote themselves to the raising

of cotton and sugar, the cheaper they will be, and the larger will be

the British revenue. The more the price of corn can be diminished, the

greater will be the flight to Texas, and the cheaper will be cotton,

but the larger will be the slave trade of America, India, and Ireland;

and thus it is that the prosperity of the owners of mills and furnaces

in England is always greatest when the people of the world are

becoming most enslaved.

 

It may be asked, however, if this diminution of the prices of foreign

produce is not beneficial to the people of England. It is not, because

it tends to reduce the general price of labour, the commodity they

have to sell. Cheap Irish labour greatly diminishes the value of that

of England, and cheap Irish grain greatly diminishes the demand for

labour in England, while increasing the supply by forcing the Irish

people to cross the Channel. The land and labour of the world have one

common interest, and that is to give as little as possible to those

who perform the exchanges, and to those who superintend them--the

traders and the government. The latter have everywhere one common

interest, and that is to take as much as possible from the producers

and give as little as possible to the consumers, buying cheaply and

selling dearly. Like fire and water, they are excellent servants, but

very bad masters. The nearer the artisan comes to the producer of the

food and the wool, the less is the power of the middleman to impose

taxes, and the greater the power of the farmer to protect himself. The

tendency of the British system, wherever found, is to impoverish the

land-owner and the labourer, and to render both from year to year more

tributary to the owners of an amount of machinery so small that its

whole value would be paid by the weekly--if not even by the

daily--loss inflicted upon the working population of the world by the

system.[148] The more the owners of that machinery become enriched,

the more must the labourer everywhere become enslaved.

 

That such must necessarily be the case will be obvious to any reader

who will reflect how adverse is the system to the development of

intellect. Where all are farmers, there can be little association for

the purpose of maintaining schools, or for the exchange of ideas of

any kind. Employment being limited to the labours of the field, the

women cannot attend to the care of their children, who grow up,

necessarily, rude and barbarous; and such we see now to be the case in

the West Indies, whence schools are rapidly disappearing. In Portugal

and Turkey there is scarcely any provision for instruction, and in

India there has been a decline in that respect, the extent of which is

almost exactly measured by the age of the foreign occupation.[149] In

the Punjab, the country last acquired, men read and write, but in

Bengal and Madras they are entirely uneducated. Ireland had, seventy

years since, a public press of great efficiency, but it has almost

entirely disappeared, as has the demand for books, which before the

Union was so great as to warrant the republication of a large portion

of those that appeared in England. Scotland, too, seventy years since,

gave to the Empire many of its best writers, but she, like Ireland,

has greatly declined. How bad is the provision for education

throughout England, and how low is the standard of intellect among a

large portion of her manufacturing population, the reader has seen,

and he can estimate for himself how much there can be of the reading

of books, or newspapers among an agricultural population hired _by the

day_ at the rate of six, eight, or even nine shillings a week--and it

will, therefore not surprise him to learn that there is no daily

newspaper published out of London. It _is_, however, somewhat

extraordinary that in that city, there should be, as has recently been

stated, but a single one that is not “published at a loss.” That one

circulates 40,000 copies, or more than twice the number of all the

other daily papers united. This is a most unfavourable sign, for

centralization and progress have never gone hand in hand with each

other.

 

The system, too, is repulsive in its character. It tends to the

production of discord among individuals and nations, and hence it is

that we see the numerous strikes and combinations of workmen,

elsewhere so little known. Abroad it is productive of war, as is now

seen in India, and as was so recently the case in China. In Ireland it

is expelling the whole population, and in Scotland it has depopulated

provinces. The vast emigration now going on, and which has reached the

enormous extent of 360,000 in a single year, bears testimony to the

fact that the repulsive power has entirely overcome the attractive

one, and that the love of home, kindred, and friends is rapidly

diminishing. How, indeed, could it be otherwise, in a country in which

labour has been so far cheapened that the leading journal assures its

readers that during a whole generation “man has been a drug, and

population a nuisance?”

 

The fact that such a declaration should be made, and that that and

other influential journals should rejoice in the expulsion of a whole

nation, is evidence how far an unsound system can go toward steeling

the heart against the miseries of our fellow-creatures. These poor

people do not emigrate voluntarily. They are forced to leave their

homes, precisely as is the case with the negro slave of Virginia; but

they have not, as has the slave, any certainty of being fed and

clothed at the end of the journey. Nevertheless, throughout England

there is an almost universal expression of satisfaction at the idea

that the land is being rid of what is held to be its superabundant

population; and one highly respectable journal,[150] after showing

that at the same rate Ireland would be entirely emptied in twenty-four

years, actually assures its readers that it views the process “without

either alarm or regret,” and that it has no fear of the process being

“carried too far or continued too long.”

 

We see thus, on one hand, the people of England engaged in _shutting_

in the poor people of Africa, lest they should be forced to Cuba; and,

on the other, rejoicing at evictions, as the best means of _driving

out_ the poor people of Ireland. In all this there is a total absence

of consistency; but so far as the Irish people are concerned, it is

but a natural consequence of that “unsound social philosophy,” based

upon the Ricardo-Malthusian doctrine, which after having annihilated

the small land-owner and the small trader, denies that the Creator

meant that every man should find a place at his table, and sees no

more reason why a poor labourer should have any more right to be fed,

if willing to work, than the Manchester cotton-spinner should have to

find a purchaser for his cloth. “Labour,” we are told, is “a

commodity,” and if men _will_ marry and bring up children “to an

overstocked and expiring trade,” it is for them to take the

consequences--and “_if we stand between the error and its

consequences, we stand between the evil and its cure_--if we intercept

the penalty (where it does not amount to positive death) we perpetuate

the sin.”[151]

 

Such being the state of opinion in regard to the claims of labour, we

need scarcely be surprised to find a similar state of things in regard

to the rights of property. The act of emancipation was a great

interference with those rights. However proper it might have been

deemed to free the negroes, it was not right to cause the heaviest

portion of the loss to be borne by the few and weak planters. If

justice required the act, all should have borne their equal share of

the burden. So again in regard to Ireland, where special laws have

been passed to enable the mortgagees to sell a large portion of the

land, rendered valueless by a system that had for long years prevented

the Irishman from employing himself except in the work of cultivation.

India appears likely now to come in for its share of similar

legislation. Centralization has not there, we are told, been carried

far enough. Private rights in land, trivial even as they now are,[152]

must be annihilated. None, we are told, can be permitted “to stand

between the cultivator and the government,” even if the collection of

the taxes “should render necessary so large an army of _employé_ as to

threaten the absorption of the lion’s share” of them.[153] In regard

to the rights to land in England itself, one of her most distinguished

writers says that

 

 “When the ‘sacredness of property’ is talked of, it should always be

 remembered that this sacredness does not belong in the same degree to

 landed property. No man made the land. * * * The claim of the

 land-owners to the land is altogether subordinate to the general

 policy of the state. * * * Subject to this proviso (that of

 compensation) the state is at liberty to deal with landed property as

 the general interests of the community may require, even to the

 extent, if it so happen, of doing with the whole what is done with a

 part whenever a bill is passed for a railroad or a street.”--_J. S.

 Mill, Principles_, book ii. chap. ii.

 

In regard to the disposal of property at the death of its owner, the

same author is of opinion that “a certain moderate provision, such as

is admitted to be reasonable in the case of illegitimate children, and

of younger children” is all “that parents owe to their children, and

all, therefore, which the state owes to the children of those who die

intestate.” The surplus, if any, he holds “it may rightfully

appropriate to the general purposes of the community.”--_Ibid_.

 

Extremes generally meet. From the days of Adam Smith to the present

time the policy of England has looked in the direction that led

necessarily to the impoverishment of the small land-owner, and to

the consolidation of land, and during the whole of that period we

have been told of the superior advantages of large farms and great

tenant-farmers; but now, when the injurious effects of the system

are becoming from day to day more obvious, the question of the

existence of _any right_ to land is being discussed, and we are told

that “public reasons” existed “for its being appropriated,” and if

those reasons have “lost their force, the thing would be unjust.”

From this to confiscation the step would not be a very great one. No

such idea certainly could exist in the mind of so enlightened a man

as Mr. Mill, who insists upon compensation; but when a whole people,

among whom the productive power is steadily diminishing as

individual fortunes become more and more colossal, are told that the

proprietors of land, great and small, receive compensation for its

use, for no other reason than that they have been enabled to possess

themselves of a monopoly of its powers, and that rent is to be

regarded as “the recompense of no sacrifice whatever,” but as being

“received by those who neither labour nor put by, but merely hold

out their hands to receive the offerings of the rest of the

community,”[154] can we doubt that the day is approaching when the

right to property in land will be tested in England, as it has

elsewhere been? Assuredly not. Ricardo-Malthusianism tends directly

to what is commonly called Communism, and at that point will England

arrive, under the system which looks to the consolidation of the

land, the aggrandizement of the few, and the destruction of the

physical, moral, intellectual, and political powers of the whole

body of labourers, abroad and at home,

 

Where population and wealth increase together, there is always found a

growing respect for the rights of persons and property. Where they

decline, that respect diminishes; and the tendency of the whole

British politico-economical system being toward the destruction of

population and wealth at home and abroad, it tends necessarily toward

agrarianism in its worst form. That such is the tendency of things in

England we have the assurance of the London _Times_, by which, it has

recently been shown, says Mr. Kay,

 

 “That during the last half century, every thing has been done to

 deprive the peasant of any interest in the preservation of public

 order; of any wish to maintain the existing constitution of society;

 of all hope of raising himself in the world, or of improving his

 condition in life; of all attachment to his country; of all feelings

 of there really existing any community of interest between himself

 and the higher ranks of society; and of all consciousness that he has

 any thing to lose by political changes; and that every thing has been

 done to render him dissatisfied with his condition, envious of the

 richer classes, and discontented with the existing order of things.

 

 “The labourer,” he continues “has no longer any connection with the

 land which he cultivates; he has no stake in the country; he has

 nothing to lose, nothing to defend, and nothing to hope for. The word

 “cottage” has ceased to mean what it once meant--a small house

 surrounded by its little plot of land, which the inmate might

 cultivate as he pleased, for the support and gratification of his

 family and himself. The small freeholds have long since been bought

 up and merged in the great estates. Copyholds have become almost

 extinct, or have been purchased by the great land-owners. The

 commons, upon which the villagers once had the right of pasturing

 cattle for their own use, and on which, too, the games and pastimes

 of the villages were held, have followed the same course: they are

 enclosed, and now form part of the possessions of the great

 landowners. Small holdings of every kind have, in like manner, almost

 entirely disappeared. Farms have gradually become larger and larger,

 and are now, in most parts of the country, far out of the peasant’s

 reach, on account of their size, and of the amount of capital

 requisite to cultivate them. The gulf between the peasant and the

 next step in the social scale--the farmer--is widening and increasing

 day by day. The labourer is thus left without any chance of improving

 his condition. His position is one of hopeless and irremediable

 dependence. The workhouse stands near him, pointing out his dismal

 fate if he falls one step lower, and, like a grim scarecrow, warning

 him to betake himself to some more hospitable region, where he will

 find no middle-age institutions opposing his industrious

 efforts.”--Vol. i. 361.

 

This is slavery, and it is an indication of poverty, and yet we hear

much of the wealth of England. Where, however, is it? The whole rental

of the land, houses, mills, furnaces, and mines of the United Kingdom

but little exceeds one hundred millions of pounds sterling, of which

about one-half is derived from buildings--and if we take the whole,

perishable and imperishable, at twenty years’ purchase, it is but

two-thousand millions.[155] If next we add for machinery of all kinds,

ships, farming stock and implements, 600 millions,[156] we obtain a

total of only 2600 millions, or 12,500 millions of dollars, as the

whole accumulation of more than two thousand years’ given to the

improvement of the land, the building of houses, towns, and

cities--and this gives but little over 400 dollars per head. Sixty

years since, New York had a population of only 340,000, and it was a

poor State, and to this hour it has no mines of any importance that

are worked. Throughout the whole period, her people have been

exhausting her soil, and the product of wheat, on lands that formerly

gave twenty-five and thirty bushels to the acre, has fallen to six or

eight,[157] and yet her houses and lands are valued at almost twelve

hundred millions of dollars, and the total value of the real and

personal estate is not less than fifteen hundred millions, or about

$500 per head--and these are the accumulations almost of the present

century.

 

The _apparent_ wealth of England is, however, great, and it is so for

the same reason that Rome appeared so rich in the days of Crassus and

Lucullus, surrounded by people owning nothing, when compared with the

days when Cincinnatus was surrounded by a vast body of small

proprietors. Consolidation of the land and enormous manufacturing

establishments have almost annihilated the power profitably to use

small capitals, and the consequence is that their owners are forced to

place them in saving funds, life-insurance companies, and in banks at

small interest, and by all of these they are lent out to the large

holders of land and large operators in mills, furnaces, railroads, &c.

As the land has become consolidated, it has been covered with

mortgages, and the effect of this is to double the apparent quantity

of property. While the small proprietors held it, it was assessed to

the revenue as land only. Now, it is assessed, first, as land, upon

which its owner pays a tax, and next as mortgage, upon which the

mortgagee pays the income-tax. The land-owner is thus holding his

property with other people’s means, and the extent to which this is

the case throughout England is wonderfully great. Banks trade little

on their own capital, but almost entirely on that of others.[158] The

capital of the Bank of England haying been expended by the government,

it has always traded exclusively on its deposites and circulation. The

East India Company has no capital, but a very large debt, and nothing

to represent it; and the example of these great institutions is copied

by the smaller ones. Life-insurance companies abound, and the capitals

are said to be large, but “nine-tenths” of them are declared to be “in

a state of ruinous insolvency;”[159] and it is now discovered the true

mode of conducting that business is to have no capital whatsoever. The

trade of England is to a great extent based on the property of

foreigners, in the form of wool, silk, cotton, tobacco, sugar, and

other commodities, sent there for sale, and these furnish much of the

capital of her merchants. While holding this vast amount of foreign

capital, they supply iron and cloth, for which they take the bonds of

the people of other nations; and whenever the amount of these bonds

becomes too large, there comes a pressure in the money market, and the

prices of all foreign commodities are forced down, to the ruin of

their distant owners. To the absence of real capital [160] it is due

that revulsions are so frequent, and so destructive to all countries

intimately connected with her; and it is a necessary consequence of

the vast extent of trading on borrowed capital that the losses by

bankruptcy are so astonishingly great. From 1839 to 1843, a period of

profound peace, eighty-two private bankers became bankrupt; of whom

forty-six paid _no dividends_, twelve paid under twenty-five per

cent., twelve under fifty per cent., three under seventy-five per

cent., and two under one hundred per cent.; leaving seven

unascertained at the date of the report from which this statement is

derived. The last revulsion brought to light the fact that many of the

oldest and most respectable houses in London had been for years

trading entirely on credit, and without even a shilling of capital;

and in Liverpool the destruction was so universal that it was

difficult to discover more than half a dozen houses to whom a cargo

could be confided. Revulsions are a necessary consequence of such a

state of things, and at each and every one of them the small

manufacturer and the small trader or land-owner are more and more

swept away, while centralization steadily increases--and

centralization is adverse to the growth of wealth and civilization.

The whole fabric tends steadily more and more to take the form of an

inverted pyramid, that may be thus represented:--

 

    Ships and mills,

       L a n d,

        Labour.

 

In confirmation of this view we have the following facts given in a

speech of Mr. George Wilson, at a _réunion_ in Manchester, a few weeks

since:--

 

“In the five counties of Buckingham, Dorset, Wilts, Northampton, and

Salop, 63 members were returned by 52,921 voters, while only the same

number were returned by Lancashire and Yorkshire, with 89,669 county

and 84,612 borough voters, making a total of 174,281. So that, if they

returned members in proportion to voters alone, those five counties

could only claim 19; while, if Lancashire took their proportion, it

would be entitled to 207. There were twelve large cities or boroughs

(taking London as a double borough) returning 24 members, with 192,000

voters, and a population of 3,268,218, and 388,000 inhabited houses.

On the other side, 24 members were returned by Andover, Buckingham,

Chippenham, Cockermouth, Totnes, Harwich, Bedford, Lymington,

Marlborough, Great Marlborough, and Richmond; but they had only 3,569

voters, 67,434 inhabitants, and 1,373 inhabited houses. * * The most

timid reformer and most moderate man would hardly object to the

disfranchisement of those boroughs which had a population less than

5000, and to handing over the 20 members to those large

constituencies.”

 

As the people of Ireland are driven from the land to London,

Liverpool, or America, the claims of that country to representation

necessarily diminish; and so with Scotland, as the Highlands and the

Isles undergo the process of wholesale clearance. The same system that

depopulates them tends to depopulate the agricultural counties of

England, and to drive their people to seek employment in the great

cities and manufacturing towns; and this, according to Mr.

McCullogh,[161] is one of the principal advantages resulting from

absenteeism. The wealthy few congregate in London, and the vast mass

of poor labourers in the lanes and alleys, the streets and the

cellars, of London and Liverpool, Birmingham and Sheffield, Manchester

and Leeds; and thus is there a daily increasing tendency toward having

the whole power over England and the world placed in the hands of the

owners of a small quantity of machinery--the same men that but a few

years since were described by Sir Robert Peel as compelling children

to work sixteen hours a day during the week, and to appropriate a part

of Sunday to cleaning the machinery--and the same that recently

resisted every attempt at regulating the hours of labour, on the

ground that all the profit resulted from the power to require “the

last hour.” Many of these gentlemen are liberal, and are actuated by

the best intentions; but they have allowed themselves to be led away

by a false and pernicious theory that looks directly to the

enslavement of the human race, and are thus blinded to the

consequences of the system they advocate; but even were they right, it

could not but be dangerous to centralize nearly the whole legislative

power in a small portion of the United Kingdom, occupied by people

whose existence is almost entirely dependent on the question whether

cotton is cheap or dear, and who are liable to be thrown so entirely

under the control of their employers.

 

With each step in this direction, consolidation of the land tends to

increase, and there is increased necessity for “cheap labour.” “The

whole question” of England’s manufacturing superiority, we are told,

“has become one of a cheap and abundant supply of labour.”[162] That

is, if labour can be kept down, and the labourer can be prevented from

having a choice of employers, then the system may be maintained, but

not otherwise. Where, however, the labourer has not the power of

determining for whom he will work, he is a slave; and to that

condition it is that the system tends to reduce the English people, as

it has already done with the once free men of India. Alarmed at the

idea that the present flight from England may tend to give the

labourer power to select his employer, and to have some control over

the amount of his reward, the London _Times_ suggests the expediency

of importing cheap labourers from Germany and other parts of the

continent, to aid in underworking their fellow-labourers in America

and in India.

 

It has been well said that, according to some political economists,

“man was made for the land, and not the land for man.” In England, it

would almost seem as if he had been made for cotton mills. Such would

appear now to be the views of the _Times_, as, a quarter of a century

since, they certainly were of Mr. Huskisson. The object of all sound

political economy is that of raising the labourer, and increasing the

dignity of labour. That of the English system is to “keep labour

down,” and to degrade the labourer to the condition of a mere slave;

and such is its effect everywhere--and nowhere is its tendency in that

direction more obvious than in England itself.[163]

 

Consolidation of land on one side and a determination to underwork the

world on the other, are producing a rapid deterioration of material

and moral condition, and, as a natural consequence, there is a steady

diminution in the power of local self-government. The diminution of

the agricultural population and the centralization of exchanges have

been attended by decay of the agricultural towns, and their remaining

people become less and less capable of performing for themselves those

duties to which their predecessors were accustomed--and hence it is

that political centralization grows so rapidly. Scarcely a session of

Parliament now passes without witnessing the creation of a new

commission for the management of the poor, the drainage of towns, the

regulation of lodging-houses, or other matters that could be better

attended to by the local authorities, were it not that the population,

is being so rapidly divided into two classes widely remote from each

other--the poor labourer and the rich absentee landlord or other

capitalist.

 

With the decay of the power of the people over their own actions, the

nation is gradually losing its independent position among the nations

of the earth. It is seen that the whole “prosperity” of the country

depends on the power to purchase cheap cotton, cheap sugar, and other

cheap products of the soil, and it is feared that something may

interfere to prevent the continuance of the system which maintains the

domestic slave trade of this country. We are, therefore, told by all

the English journals, that “England is far too dependent on America

for her supply of cotton. There is,” says the _Daily News_, “too much

risk in relying on any one country, if we consider the climate and

seasons alone; but the risk is seriously aggravated when the country

is not our own, but is inhabited by a nation which, however friendly

on the whole, and however closely allied with us by blood and

language, has been at war with us more than once, and might possibly

some day be so again.”

 

From month to month, and from year to year, we have the same note,

always deepening in its intensity,--and yet the dependence increases

instead of diminishing. On one day, the great prosperity of the

country is proved by the publication of a long list of new cotton

mills, and, on the next, we are told of--

 

 “The frightful predicament of multitudes of people whom a natural

 disaster [a short crop of cotton] denies leave to toil--who must

 work or starve, but who cannot work because the prime material of

 their work is not to be obtained in the world.”--_Lawson’s Merchants’

 Magazine_, Dec. 1852.

 

What worse slavery can we have than this? It is feared that this

country will not continue to supply cheap cotton, and it is known that

India cannot enlarge its export, and, therefore, the whole mind of

England is on the stretch to discover some new source from which it

may be derived, that may tend to increase the competition for its

sale, and reduce it lower than it even now is. At one time, it is

hoped that it may be grown in Australia--but cheap labour cannot

there be had. At another, it is recommended as expedient to encourage

its culture in Natal, (South Africa,) as there it can be grown, as we

are assured, by aid of cheap--or slave--labour, from India.[164]

 

It is to this feeling of growing dependence, and growing weakness,

that must be attributed the publication of passages like the

following, from the London _Times_:--

 

 “It used to be said that if Athens, and Lacedæmon could but make up

 their minds to be good friends and make a common cause, they would be

 masters of the world. The wealth, the science, the maritime

 enterprise, and daring ambition of the one, assisted by the

 population, the territory, the warlike spirit, and stern institutions

 of the other, could not fail to carry the whole world before them.

 That was a project hostile to the peace and prosperity of mankind,

 and ministering only to national vanity. A far grander object, of

 more easy and more honourable acquisition, lies before England and

 the United States, and all other countries owning our origin and

 speaking our language. Let them agree not in an alliance offensive

 and defensive, but simply to never go to war with one another. Let

 them permit one another to develop as Providence seems to suggest,

 and the British race will gradually and quietly attain to a

 pre-eminence beyond the reach of mere policy and arms. The vast and

 ever-increasing interchange of commodities between the several

 members of this great family, the almost daily communications now

 opened across, not one, but several oceans, the perpetual discovery

 of new means of locomotion, in which steam itself now bids fair to be

 supplanted by an equally powerful but cheaper and more convenient

 agency--all promise to unite the whole British race throughout the

 world in one social and commercial unity, more mutually beneficial

 than any contrivance of politics. Already, what does Austria gain

 from Hungary, France from Algiers, Russia from Siberia, or any

 absolute monarchy from its abject population, or what town from its

 rural suburbs, that England does not derive in a much greater degree

 from the United States, and the United States from England? What

 commercial partnership, what industrious household exhibits so direct

 an exchange of services? All that is wanted is that we should

 recognise this fact, and give it all the assistance in our power. We

 cannot be independent of one another. The attempt is more than

 unsocial; it is suicidal. Could either dispense with the labour of

 the other, it would immediately lose the reward of its own industry.

 Whether national jealousy, or the thirst for warlike enterprise, or

 the grosser appetite of commercial monopoly, attempt the separation,

 the result and the crime are the same. We are made helps meet for one

 another. Heaven has joined all who speak the British language, and

 what Heaven has joined let no man think to put asunder.”

 

The allies of England have been Portugal and Ireland, India and the

West Indies, and what is their condition has been shown. With Turkey

she has had a most intimate connection, and that great empire is now

prostrate. What inducement can she, then, offer in consideration of an

alliance with her? The more intimate our connection, the smaller must

be the domestic market for food and cotton, the lower must be their

prices, and the larger must be the domestic slave trade, now so

rapidly increasing. Her system tends toward the enslavement of the

labourer throughout the earth, and toward the destruction everywhere

of the value of the land; and therefore it is that she needs allies.

Therefore; it is that the _Times_, a journal that but ten years since

could find no term of vituperation sufficiently strong to be applied

to the people of this country, now tells its readers that--

 

 “It is the prospect of these expanding and strengthening affinities

 that imparts so much interest to the mutual hospitalities shown by

 British and American citizens to the diplomatic representatives of

 the sister States.”

 

“To give capital a fair remuneration,” it was needed that “_the price

of English labour should be kept down_;” and it has been kept down to

so low a point as to have enabled the cotton mills of Manchester to

supersede the poor Hindoo in his own market, and to drive him to the

raising of cheap sugar to supply the cheap labour of England--and to

supersede the manufacturers of this country, and drive our countrymen

to the raising of cheap corn to feed the cheap labour of England,

driven out of Ireland. Cheap food next forces the exportation of

negroes from Maryland and Virginia to Alabama and Mississippi, there

to raise cheap cotton to supersede the wretched cultivator of India;

and thus, in succession, each and every part of the agricultural world

is forced into competition with every other part, and the labourers of

the world become from day to day more enslaved; and all because the

people of England are determined that the whole earth shall become one

great farm, with but a single workshop, in which shall be fixed the

prices of all its occupants have to sell or need to buy. For the first

time in the history of the world, there exists a nation whose whole

system of policy is found in the shopkeeper’s maxim, Buy cheap and

sell dear; and the results are seen in the fact that that nation is

becoming from day to day less powerful and less capable of the

exercise of self-government among the community of nations. From day

to day England is more and more seen to be losing the independent

position of the farmer who sells the produce of his own labour, and

occupying more and more that of the shopkeeper, anxious to conciliate

the favour of those who have goods to sell or goods to buy; and with

each day there is increased anxiety lest there should be a change in

the feelings of the customers who bring cotton and take in exchange

cloth and iron. The records of history might be searched in vain for a

case like hers--for a nation voluntarily subjecting itself to a

process of the most exhaustive kind. They present no previous case of

a great community, abounding in men of high intelligence, rejoicing in

the diminution of the proportion of its people _capable of feeding

themselves and others_, and in the increasing proportion _requiring to

be fed_. England now exports in a year nearly 400,000 men and women

that have been raised at enormous cost,[165] and she rejoices at

receiving in exchange 300,000 infants yet to be raised. She exports

the young, and retains the aged. She sends abroad the sound, and keeps

at home the unsound. She expels the industrious, and retains the idle.

She parts with the small capitalist, but she keeps the pauper. She

sends men from her own land, and with them the commodities they must

consume while preparing for cultivation distant lands;--and all these

things are regarded as evidences of growing wealth and power. She

sends men from where they could make twelve or twenty exchanges in a

year to a distance from, which they can make but one; and this is

taken as evidence of the growth of commerce. She sends her people from

the land to become trampers in her roads, or to seek refuge in filthy

lanes and cellars; and this is hailed as tending to promote the

freedom of man. In all this, however, she is but realizing the

prophecies of Adam Smith, in relation to the determination of his

countrymen to see in foreign trade alone “England’s treasure.”

 

In all nations, ancient and modern, freedom has come with the growth

of association, and every act of association is an act of commerce.

Commerce, and freedom grow, therefore, together, and whatever tends to

lessen the one must tend equally to lessen the other. The object of

the whole British system is to destroy the power of association, for

it seeks to prevent everywhere the growth of the mechanic arts, and

without them there can be no local places of exchange, and none of

that combination so needful to material, moral, intellectual, and

political improvement. That such has been its effect in Portugal and

Turkey, the West Indies, and India, and in our Southern States, we

know--and in all of these freedom declines as the power of association

diminishes. That such has been its effect in Ireland and Scotland, the

reader has seen. In England we may see everywhere the same tendency to

prevent the existence of association, or of freedom of trade. Land,

the great instrument of production, is becoming from day to day more

consolidated. Capital, the next great instrument, is subjected to the

control of the Bank of England--an institution that has probably

caused more ruin than any other that has ever existed.[166]

 

Associations for banking or manufacturing purposes are restrained by a

system of responsibility that tends to prevent prudent men from taking

part in their formation. The whole tendency of the system is to fetter

and restrain the productive power; and hence it is that it has proved

necessary to establish the fact that the great Creator had made a

serious mistake in the laws regulating the increase of food and of

men, and that the _cheapened_ labourer was bound to correct the error

by repressing that natural desire for association which leads to an

increase of population. The consequences of all this are seen in the

fact that there is in that country no real freedom of commerce. There

is no competition for the purchase of labour, and the labourer is

therefore a slave to the capitalist. There is no competition for the

use of capital, and its owner is a slave to his banker, who requires

him to content himself with the smallest profits. There is scarcely

any power to sell land, for it is everywhere hedged round with

entails, jointures, and marriage settlements, that fetter and enslave

its owner. There is no competition for obtaining “maidens in

marriage,” for the _Chronicle_ assures us that marriage now rarely

takes place until the cradle has become as necessary as the ring;[167]

and when that is the case, the man will always be found a tyrant and

the woman a slave. In the effort to destroy the power of association,

and the freedom of trade and of man abroad, England has in a great

degree annihilated freedom at home; and all this she has done because,

from the day of the publication of _The Wealth of Nations_, her every

movement has looked to the perpetuation of the system denounced by its

author as a “manifest violation of the most sacred rights of mankind.”

 

Chapter 15. How can slavery be extinguished?

 

How can slavery be extinguished, and man be made free? This question,

as regarded England, was answered some years since by a distinguished

anti-corn-law orator, when he said that for a long time past, in that

country, two men had been seeking one master, whereas the time was

then at hand when two masters would be seeking one man. Now, we all

know that when two men desire to purchase a commodity, it rises in

value, and its owner finds himself more free to determine for himself

what to do with it than he could do if there were only one person

desiring to have it, and infinitely more free than he could be if

there were two sellers to one buyer. To make men free there must be

competition for the purchase of their services, and the more the

competition the greater must be their value, and that of the men who

have them to sell.

 

It has already been shown [168] that in purely agricultural

communities there can be very little competition for the purchase of

labour; and that such is the fact the reader can readily satisfy

himself by reflecting on the history of the past, or examining the

condition of man as he at present exists among the various nations of

the earth. History shows that labour has become valuable, and that man

has become free, precisely as the artisan has been enabled to take his

place by the side of the ploughman--precisely as labour has become

diversified--precisely as small towns have arisen in which the

producer of food and wool could readily exchange for cloth and

iron--precisely as manure could more readily be obtained to aid in

maintaining the productiveness of the soil--and precisely, therefore,

as men have acquired the power of associating with their fellow-men.

With the growth of that power they have everywhere been seen to obtain

increased returns from land, increased reward of labour, and increased

power to accumulate the means of making roads, establishing schools,

and doing all other things tending to the improvement of their modes

of action and their habits of thought; and thus it is that freedom of

thought, speech, action, and trade have always grown with the growth

of the value of labour and land.

 

It is desired to abolish the _trade_ in slaves. No such trade could

exist were men everywhere free; but as they are not so, it has in many

countries been deemed necessary to prohibit the sale of men from off

the land, as preliminary to the establishment of freedom. Nothing of

this kind, however, can now be looked for, because there exists no

power to coerce the owners of slaves to adopt any such measures; nor,

if it did exist, would it be desirable that it should he exercised, as

it would make the condition of both the slave and his master worse

than it is even now. Neither is it necessary, because there exists “a

higher law”--a great law of the Creator--that will effectually

extinguish the trade whenever it shall be permitted to come into

activity.

 

Why is it that men in Africa sell their fellow-men to be transported

to Cuba or Brazil? For the same reason, obviously, that other men

sell flour in Boston or Baltimore to go to Liverpool or Rio

Janeiro--because it is cheaper in the former than in the latter

cities. If, then, we desired to put a stop to the export, would not

our object be effectually accomplished by the adoption of measures

that would cause prices to be higher in Boston than in Liverpool,

and higher in Baltimore than in Rio? That such would be the case

must be admitted by all. If, then, we desired to stop the export of

negroes from Africa, would not our object be effectually and

permanently attained could we so raise the value of man in Africa

that he would be worth as much, or more, there than in Cuba? Would

not the export of Coolies cease if man could be rendered more,

valuable in India than in Jamaica or Guiana? Would not the

destruction of cottages, the eviction of their inhabitants, and the

waste of life throughout Ireland, at once be terminated, could man

be made as valuable there as he is here? Would not the export of the

men, women, and children of Great Britain cease, if labour there

could be brought to a level with that of Massachusetts, New York,

and Pennsylvania? Assuredly it would; for men do not voluntarily

leave home, kindred, and friends. On the contrary, so great is the

attachment to home, that it requires, in most cases, greatly

superior attractions to induce them to emigrate. Adam Smith said

that, of all commodities, man was the hardest to be removed--and

daily observation shows that he was right.

 

To terminate the African slave trade, we need, then, only to raise the

value of man _in Africa_. To terminate the forced export of men,

women, and children from Ireland, we need only to raise the value of

men _in Ireland_; and to put an end to our own domestic slave trade,

nothing is needed except that we raise the value of man _in Virginia_.

To bring the trade in slaves, of all colours and in all countries, at

once and permanently to a close, we need to raise the value of man _at

home_, let that home be where it may. How can this be done? By

precisely the same course of action that terminated the export of

slaves from England to Ireland. In the days of the Plantagenets, men

were so much more valuable in the latter country than in the former

one, that the market of Ireland was “glutted with English slaves;” but

as, by degrees, the artisan took his place by the side of the English

ploughman, the trade passed away, because towns arose and men became

strong to defend their rights as they were more and more enabled to

associate with each other. Since then, the artisan has disappeared

from Ireland, and the towns have decayed, and men have become weak

because they have lost the power to associate, and, therefore, it is

that the market of England has been so glutted with Irish slaves that

man has been declared to be “a drug, and population a nuisance.”

 

Such precisely has been the course of things in Africa. For two

centuries it had been deemed desirable to have from that country the

same “inexhaustible supply of cheap labour” that Ireland has supplied

to England; and, therefore, no effort was spared to prevent the

negroes from making any improvement in their modes of cultivation. “It

was,” says Macpherson, “the European policy” to prevent the Africans

from arriving at perfection in any of their pursuits, “from a fear of

interfering with established branches of trade elsewhere.” More

properly, it was the English policy. “The truth is,” said Mr. Pitt, in

1791--

 

 “There is no nation in Europe which has plunged so deeply into this

 guilt as Britain. _We_ stopped the natural progress of civilization

 in Africa. _We_ cut her off from the opportunity of improvement. _We_

 kept her down in a state of darkness, bondage, ignorance, and

 bloodshed. We have there subverted the whole order of nature; we have

 aggravated every natural barbarity, and furnished to every man

 motives for committing, under the name of trade, acts of perpetual

 hostility and perfidy against his neighbour. Thus had the perversion

 of British commerce carried misery instead of happiness to one whole

 quarter of the globe. False to the very principles of trade,

 unmindful of our duty, what almost irreparable mischief had we done

 to that continent! We had obtained as yet only so much knowledge of

 its productions as to show that there was a capacity for trade which

 we checked.”

 

How was all this done? By preventing the poor Africans from obtaining

machinery to enable them to prepare their sugar for market, or for

producing cotton and indigo and combining them into cloth--precisely

the same course of operation that was pursued in Jamaica with such

extraordinary loss of life. Guns and gunpowder aided in providing

cheap labour, and how they were supplied, even so recently as in 1807,

will be seen on a perusal of the following passage, from an eminent

English authority, almost of our own day:--

 

 “A regular branch of trade here, at Birmingham, is the manufacture of

 guns for the African market. They are made for about a dollar and a

 half: the barrel is filled with water, and if the water does not come

 through, it is thought proof sufficient. Of course, they burst when

 fired, and mangle the wretched negro, who has purchased them upon the

 credit of English faith, and received them, most probably, as the

 price of human flesh! No secret is made of this abominable trade, yet

 the government never interferes, and the persons concerned in it are

 not marked and shunned as infamous.”--_Southey’s “Espriella’s Letters”_.

 

It is deemed now desirable to have cheap labour applied to the

collection of gold-dust and hides, palm-leaves and ivory, and the

description of commodities at present exported to that country will be

seen by the following cargo-list of the brig Lily, which sailed from

Liverpool a few weeks since for the African coast, but blew up and was

destroyed in the neighbourhood of the Isle of Man, to wit:--

 

    50 tons gunpowder,

    20 puncheons rum,

    A quantity of firearms, and

    Some bale-goods.

 

Such are not the commodities required for raising the value of man in

Africa, and until it can be raised to a level with his value in Cuba,

the export of men will be continued from the African coast as

certainly as the export from Ireland will be continued so long as men

are cheaper there than elsewhere; and as certainly as the trade

described in the following letter will be continued, so long as the

people India shall be allowed to do nothing but raise sugar and cotton

for a distant market, and shall thus be compelled to forego all the

advantages so long enjoyed by them under the native governments, when

the history of the cotton manufacture was the history of almost every

family in India:--

 

 “_Havana_, Feb. 11, 1853.

 

 “On the morning of the 7th, arrived from Amoa, Singapore, and

 Jamaica, the British ship Panama, Fisher, 522 tons, 131 days’

 passage, with 261 Asiatics (Coolies) on board, to be introduced to

 the labour of the island, _purchased_ for a service of four years.

 The loss on the passage was a considerable percentage, being 90

 thrown overboard. The speculators in this material are Messrs.

 Viloldo, Wardrop & Co., who have permission of the government to

 cover five thousand subjects. The cargo is yet held in quarantine.

 

 “On the 8th inst., arrived from Amoa and St. Helena, the ship

 Blenheim, Molison, 808 tons, 104 days’ passage, bringing to the same

 consignees 412 Coolies. Died on the voyage, 38. Money will be

 realized by those who have the privilege of making the introduction,

 and English capital will find some play; but I doubt very much

 whether the purposes of English _philanthropy_ will be realized, for,

 reasoning from the past, at the expiration of the four years, nearly

 all have been sacrificed, while the condition of African labour will

 be unmitigated. A short term an cupidity strain the lash over the

 poor Coolie, and he dies; is secreted if he lives, and advantage

 taken of his ignorance for extended time when once merged in

 plantation-service, where investigation can be

 avoided.”--_Correspondence of the New York Journal of _Commerce_.

 

This trade is sanctioned by the British government because it provides

an outlet for Hindoo labour, _rendered surplus_ by the destruction of

the power of association throughout India, and yet the same government

expends large sums annually in closing an outlet for African labour,

rendered surplus by the rum and the gunpowder that are supplied to

Africa!

 

To stop the export of men from that important portion of the earth, it

is required that we should raise the value of man in Africa, and to do

this, the African must be enabled to have machinery, to bring the

artisan to his door, to build towns, to have schools, and to make

roads. To give to the African these things, and to excite in his

breast a desire for something better than rum, gunpowder, and murder,

and thus to raise the standard of morals and the value of labour, has

been the object of the founders of the Republic of Liberia, one of the

most important and excellent undertakings of our day. Thus far,

however, it has been looked upon very coldly by all the nations of

Europe, and it is but recently that it has received from any of them

the slightest recognition and even now it is regarded solely as being

likely to aid in providing cheap labour, to be employed in increasing

the supplies of sugar and cotton, and thus cheapening those

commodities in the market of the world, at the cost of the slaves of

America and of India.

 

Nevertheless it has made considerable progress. Its numbers now amount

to 150,000,[169] a large proportion of whom are natives, upon whom the

example of the colonists from this country has operated to produce a

love of industry and a desire for many of the comforts of civilized

life. By aid, generally, of persuasion, but occasionally by that of

force, it has put an end to the export of men throughout a country

having several hundred miles of coast. The difficulty, however, is

that wages are very low, and thus there is but little inducement for

the immigration of men from the interior, or from this country.[170]

Much progress has thus been made, yet it is small compared with what,

might be made could the republic offer greater inducements to settlers

from the interior, or from this country; that is, could it raise the

value of man, ridding itself of _cheap labour_. Where there is nothing

but agriculture, the men must be idle for very much of their time, and

the women and children _must_ be idle or work in the field; and where

people are forced to remain idle they remain poor and weak, and they

can have neither towns, nor roads, nor schools. Were it in the power

of the republic to say to the people for hundreds of miles around,

that there was a demand for labour every day in the year, and at good

wages--that at one time cotton was to be picked, and at another it was

to be converted into cloth--that in the summer the cane was to be

cultivated, in the autumn the sugar was to be gathered, and in the

winter it was to be refined--that at one time houses and mills were to

be built, and at another roads to be made--that in one quarter stone

was to be quarried, and in another timber to be felled--there would be

hundreds of thousands of Africans who would come to seek employment,

and each man that came would give strength to the republic while

diminishing the strength of the little tyrants of the interior, who

would soon find men becoming less abundant and more valuable, and it

would then become necessary to try to retain their subjects. Every man

that came would desire to have his wife and children follow him, and

it would soon come to be seen that population and wealth were

synonymous, as was once supposed to be the case in Europe. By degrees,

roads would be made into the interior, and civilized black men would

return to their old homes, carrying with them habits of industry and

intelligence, a knowledge of agriculture and of the processes of the

coarser manufactures, and with every step in this direction labour

would acquire new value, and men would everywhere become more free.

 

To accomplish these things alone and unassisted might, however,

require almost centuries, and to render assistance would be to

repudiate altogether the doctrine of cheap labour, cheap sugar, and

cheap cotton. Let us suppose that on his last visit to England,

President Roberts should have invoked the aid of the English Premier

in an address to the following effect, and then see what must have

been the reply:--

 

“My Lord:

 

“We have in our young republic a population of 150,000, scattered over

a surface capable of supporting the whole population of England, and

all engaged in producing the same commodities,--as a consequence of

which we have, and can have, but little trade among ourselves. During

a large portion of the year our men have little to do, and they waste

much time, and our women and children are limited altogether to the

labours of the field, to the great neglect of education. Widely

scattered, we have much need of roads, but are too poor to make them,

and therefore much produce perishes on the ground. We cannot cultivate

bulky articles, because the cost of transportation would be greater

than their product at market; and of those that we do cultivate nearly

the whole must be sent to a distance, with steady diminution in the

fertility of the soil. We need machinery and mechanics. With them we

could convert our cotton and our indigo into cloth, and thus find

employment for women and children. Mechanics would need houses, and

carpenters and blacksmiths would find employment, and gradually towns

would arise and our people would be from day to day more enabled to

make their exchanges at home, while acquiring increased power to make

roads, and land would become valuable, while men would become from day

to day more free. Immigration from the interior would be large, and

from year to year we should be enabled to extend our relations with

the distant tribes, giving value to their labour and disseminating

knowledge, and thus should we, at no distant period, be enabled not

only to put an end to the slave trade, but also to place millions of

barbarians on the road to wealth and civilization. To accomplish these

things, however, we need the aid and countenance of Great Britain.”

 

The reply to this would necessarily have been--

 

“Mr. President:

 

“We are aware of the advantage of diversification of employments, for

to that were our own people indebted for their freedom. With the

immigration of artisans came the growth of our towns, the value of our

land, and the strength of the nation. We are aware, too, of the

advantages of those natural agents which so much assist the powers of

man; but it is contrary to British policy to aid in the establishment

of manufactures of any description in any part of the world. On the

contrary, we have spared no pains to annihilate those existing in

India, and we are now maintaining numerous colonies, at vast expense,

for the single purpose of ‘stifling in their infancy the manufactures

of other nations.’ We need large supplies of cotton, and the more you

send us, the cheaper it will be; whereas, if you make cloth, you will

have no cotton to sell, no cloth to buy. We need cheap sugar, and if

you have artisans to eat your sugar, you will have none to send us to

pay for axes or hammers. We need cheap hides, palm-leaves and ivory,

and if your people settle themselves in towns, they will have less

time to employ themselves in the collection of those commodities. We

need cheap labour, and the cheaper your cotton and your sugar the

lower will be the price of labour. Be content. Cultivate the earth,

and send its products to our markets, and we will send you cloth and

iron. You will, it is true, find it difficult to make roads, or to

build schools, and your women will have to work in the

sugar-plantations; but this will prevent the growth of population, and

there will be less danger of your being compelled to resort to ‘the

inferior soils’ that yield so much less in return to labour. The great

danger now existing is that population may outrun food, and all our

measures in Ireland, India, Turkey, and other countries are directed

toward preventing the occurrence of so unhappy a state of things.”

 

Let us next suppose that the people of Virginia should address the

British nation, and in the following terms:--

 

“We are surrounded by men who raise cotton wool, and we have in our

own State land unoccupied that could furnish more sheep’s wool than

would be required for clothing half our nation. Within our limits

there are water-powers now running to waste that could, if properly

used, convert into cloth half the cotton raised in the Union. We have

coal and iron ore in unlimited quantity, and are _daily_ wasting

almost as much labour as would be required for making all the cloth

and iron we consume in a month. Nevertheless, we can make neither

cloth nor iron. Many of our people have attempted it, but they have,

almost without exception, been ruined. When you charge high prices for

cloth, we build mills; but no sooner are they built than there comes a

crisis at ‘the mighty heart of commerce,’ and cloths are poured into

our markets so abundantly and sold so cheaply, that our people become

bankrupt. When you charge high prices for iron, as you _now_ do, we

build furnaces; but no sooner are they ready than your periodical

crisis comes, and then you sell iron so cheaply that the

furnace-master is ruined. As a consequence of this, we are compelled

to devote ourselves to raising tobacco and corn to go abroad, and our

women and children are barbarized, while our lands are exhausted. You

receive our tobacco, and you pay us but three pence for that which

sells for six shillings, and we are thus kept poor. Our corn is too

bulky to go abroad in its rude state, and to enable it to go to market

we are obliged to manufacture it into negroes for Texas. We detest the

domestic slave trade, and it is abhorrent to our feelings to sell a

negro, but we have no remedy, nor can we have while, because of

inability to have machinery, labour is so cheap. If we could make

iron, or cloth, we should need houses, and towns, and carpenters, and

blacksmiths, and then people from other States would flock to us, and

our towns and cities would grow rapidly, and there would be a great

demand for potatoes and turnips, cabbages and carrots, peas and beans,

and then we could take from the land tons of green crops, where now we

obtain only bushels of wheat. Land would then become valuable, and

great plantations would become divided into small farms, and with each

step in this direction labour would become more productive, and the

labourer would from day to day acquire the power to determine for whom

he would work and how he should be paid--and thus, as has been the

case in all other countries, our slaves would become free as we became

rich.”

 

To this what would be the reply? Must it not be to the following

effect:--

 

“We need cheap food, and the more you can be limited to agriculture,

the greater will be the quantity of wheat pressing upon our market,

and the more cheaply will our cheap labourers be fed. We need large

revenue, and the more you can be forced to raise tobacco, the larger

our consumption, and the larger our revenue. We need cheap cotton and

cheap sugar, and the less the value of men, women, and children in

Virginia, the larger will be the export of slaves to Texas, the

greater will be the competition of the producers of cotton and sugar

to sell their commodities in our markets, and the lower will be

prices, while the greater will be the competition for the purchase of

our cloth, iron, lead, and copper, and the higher will be prices. Our

rule is to buy cheaply and sell dearly, and it is only the slave that

submits dearly to buy and cheaply to sell. Our interest requires that

we should be the great work-shop of the world, and that we may be so

it is needful that we should use all the means in our power to prevent

other nations from availing themselves of their vast deposites of ore

and fuel; for if they made iron they would obtain machinery, and be

enabled to call to their aid the vast powers that nature has

everywhere provided for the service of man. We desire that there shall

be no steam-engines, no bleaching apparatus, no furnaces, no

rolling-mills, except our own; and our reason for this is, that we are

quite satisfied that agriculture is the worst and least profitable

pursuit of man, while manufactures are the best and most profitable.

It is our wish, therefore, that you should continue to raise tobacco

and corn, and manufacture the corn into negroes for Texas and

Arkansas; and the more extensive the slave trade the better we shall

be pleased, because we know that the more negroes you export the lower

will be the price of cotton. Our people are becoming from day to day

more satisfied that it is ‘for their advantage’ that the negro shall

‘wear his chains in peace,’ even although it may cause the separation

of husbands and wives, parents and children, and although they know

that, in default of other employment, women and children are obliged

to employ their labour in the culture of rice among the swamps of

Carolina, or in that of sugar among the richest and most unhealthy

lands of Texas. This will have one advantage. It will lessen the

danger of over-population.”

 

Again, let us suppose the people of Ireland to come to their brethren

across the Channel and say--”Half a century since we were rapidly

improving. We had large manufactures of various kinds, and our towns

were thriving, and schools were increasing in number, making a large,

demand for books, with constantly increasing improvement in the demand

for labour, and in its quality. Since then, however, a lamentable

change has taken place. Our mills and furnaces have everywhere been

closed, and our people have been compelled to depend entirely upon the

land; the consequence of which is seen in the fact that they have been

required to pay such enormous rents that they themselves have been

unable to consume any thing but potatoes, and have starved by hundreds

of thousands, because they could find no market for labour that would

enable them to purchase even of them enough to support life. Labour

has been so valueless that our houses have been pulled down by

hundreds of thousands, and we find ourselves now compelled to separate

from each other, husbands abandoning wives, sons abandoning parents,

and brothers abandoning sisters. We fear that our whole nation will

disappear from the earth; and the only mode of preventing so sad an

event is to be found in raising the value of labour. We need to make a

market at home for it and for the products of our land; but that we

cannot have unless we have machinery. Aid us in this. Let us supply

ourselves. Let us make cloth and iron, and let us exchange those

commodities among ourselves for the labour that is now everywhere

being wasted. We shall then see old towns flourish and new ones arise,

and we shall have schools, and our land will become valuable, while we

shall become free.”

 

The answer to this would necessarily be as follows:--

 

“It is to the cheap labour that Ireland has supplied that we are

indebted for ‘our great works,’ and cheap labour is now more than ever

needed, because we have not only to underwork the Hindoo but also to

underwork several of the principal nations of Europe and America. That

we may have cheap labour we must have cheap food. Were we to permit

you to become manufacturers you would make a market at home for your

labour and wages would rise, and you would then be able to eat meat

and wheaten bread, instead of potatoes, and the effect of this would

be to raise the price of food; and thus should we be disabled from

competing with the people of Germany, of Belgium, and of America, in

the various markets of the world. Further than this, were you to

become manufacturers you would consume a dozen pounds of cotton where

now you consume but one, and this would raise the price of cotton, as

the demand for Germany and Russia has now raised it, while your

competition with us might lower the price of cloth. We need to have

cheap cotton while selling dear cloth. We need to have cheap food

while selling dear iron. Our paramount rule of action is, ‘buy in the

cheapest market and sell in the dearest one’--and the less civilized

those with whom we have to deal the cheaper we can always buy and the

dearer we can sell. It is, therefore, to our interest that your women

should labour in the field, and that your children should grow up

uneducated and barbarous. Even, however, were we so disposed, you

could not compete with us. Your labour is cheap, it is true, but after

having, for half a century, been deprived of manufactures, you have

little skill, and it would require many years for you to acquire it.

Your foreign trade has disappeared with your manufactures, and the

products of your looms would have no market but your own. When we

invent a pattern we have the whole world for a market, and after

having supplied the domestic demand, we can furnish of it for foreign

markets so cheaply as to set at defiance all competition. Further than

all this, we have, at very short intervals, periods of monetary crisis

that are so severe as to sweep away many of our own manufacturers, and

at those times goods are forced into all the markets of the world, to

be sold at any price that can be obtained for them. Look only at the

facts of the last few years. Six years since, railroad iron was worth

£12 per ton. Three years since, it could be had for £4.10, or even

less. Now it is at £10, and a year hence it may be either £12 or £4;

and whether it shall be the one or the other is dependent altogether

upon the movements of the great Bank which regulates all our affairs.

Under such circumstances, how could your infant establishments hope to

exist? Be content. The Celt has long been ‘the hewer of wood and

drawer of water for the Saxon,’ and so he must continue. We should

regret to see you all driven from your native soil, because it would

deprive us of our supply of cheap labour; but we shall have in

exchange the great fact that Ireland will become one vast

grazing-farm, and will supply us with cheap provisions, and thus aid

in keeping down the prices of all descriptions of food sent to our

markets.”

 

The Hindoo, in like manner, would be told that his aid was needed for

keeping down the price of American and Egyptian cotton, and Brazilian

and Cuban sugar, and that the price of both would rise were he

permitted to obtain machinery that would enable him to mine coal and

iron ore, by aid of which to obtain spindles and looms for the

conversion of his cotton into cloth, and thus raise the value of his

labour. The Brazilian would be told that it was the policy of England

to have cheap sugar, and that the more he confined himself and his

people--men, women, and children--to the culture of the cane, the

lower would be the prices of the product of the slaves of Cuba and the

Mauritius.

 

Seeing that the policy of England was thus directly opposed to every

thing like association, or the growth of towns and other local places

of exchange, and that it looked only to cheapening labour and

enslaving the labourer, the questions would naturally arise: Can we

not help ourselves? Is there no mode of escaping from this thraldom?

Must our women always labour in the field? Must our children always be

deprived of schools? Must we continue for ever to raise negroes for

sale? Must the slave trade last for ever? Must the agricultural

communities of the world be compelled for all time to compete against

each other in one very limited market for the sale of all they have to

sell, and the purchase of all they have to buy? Are there not some

nations in which men are becoming more free, and might we not aid the

cause of freedom by studying the course they have pursued and are

pursuing? Let us; then, inquire into the policy of some of the various

peoples of Continental Europe, and see if we cannot obtain an answer

to these questions.

 

Chapter 16. How freedom grows in northern Germany

 

Local action has always, to a considerable extent, existed in Germany.

For a time, there was a tendency to the centralization of power in the

hands of Austria, but the growth of Prussia at the north has produced

counter attraction, and there is from day to day an increasing

tendency toward decentralization, local activity, and freedom.

 

It is now but little more than seventy years since the Elector of

Hesse sold large numbers of his poor subjects to the government of

England to aid it in establishing unlimited control over the people of

this country. About the same period, Frederick of Prussia had his

emissaries everywhere employed in seizing men of proper size for his

grenadier regiments--and so hot was the pursuit, that it was dangerous

for a man of any nation, or however free, if of six feet high, to

place himself within their reach. The people were slaves, badly fed,

badly clothed, and badly lodged, and their rulers were tyrants. The

language of the higher classes was French, German being then regarded

as coarse and vulgar, fit only for the serf. German literature was

then only struggling into existence. Of the mechanic arts, little was

known, and the people were almost exclusively agricultural, while the

machinery used in agriculture was of the rudest kind. Commerce at home

was very small, and abroad it was limited to the export of the rude

products of the field, to be exchanged for the luxuries of London or

Paris required for the use of the higher orders of society.

 

Thirty years later, the slave trade furnished cargoes to many, if not

most, of the vessels that traded between this country and Germany.

Men, women, and children were brought out and sold for terms of years,

at the close of which they became free, and many of the, most

respectable people in the Middle States are descended from “indented”

German servants.

 

The last half century has, however, been marked by the adoption of

measures tending to the complete establishment of the mechanic arts

throughout Germany, and to the growth of places for the performance of

local exchanges. The change commenced during the period of the

continental system; but, at the close of the war, the manufacturing

establishments of the country were, to a great extent, swept away, and

the raw material of cloth was again compelled to travel to a distance

in search of the spindle and the loom, the export of which from

England, as well as of colliers and artisans, was, as the reader has

seen, prohibited. But very few years, however, elapsed before it

became evident that the people were becoming poorer, and the land

becoming exhausted, and then it was that were commenced the smaller

Unions for the purpose of bringing the loom to take its natural place

by the side of the plough and the harrow. Step by step they grew in

size and strength, until, in 1835, only twenty years after the battle

of Waterloo, was formed the _Zoll-Verein_, or great German Union,

under which the internal commerce was rendered almost entirely free,

while the external one was subjected to certain restraints, having for

their object to cause the artisan to come and place himself where food

and wool were cheap, in accordance with the doctrines of Adam Smith.

 

In 1825, Germany exported almost thirty millions of pounds of raw wool

to England, where it was subjected to a duty of twelve cents per pound

for the privilege of passing through the machinery there provided for

its manufacture into cloth. Since that time, the product has doubled,

and yet not only has the export almost ceased, but much foreign wool

is now imported for the purpose of mixing with that produced at home.

The effect of this has, of course, been to make a large market for

both food and wool that would otherwise have been pressed on the

market of England, with great reduction in the price of both; and

woollen cloths are now so cheaply produced in Germany, that they are

exported to almost all parts of the world. Wool is higher and cloth is

lower, and, therefore, it is, as we shall see, that the people are now

so much better clothed.

 

At the date of the formation of the Union, the total import of raw

cotton and cotton yarn was about 300,000 cwts., but so rapid was the

extension of the manufacture, that in less than six years it had

doubled, and so cheaply were cotton goods supplied, that a large

export trade had already arisen. In 1845, when the Union, was but ten

years old, the import of cotton and yarn had reached a million of

hundredweights, and since that time there has been a large increase.

The iron manufacture, also, grew so rapidly that whereas, in 1834, the

consumption had been only _eleven_ pounds per head, in 1847 it had

risen to _twenty-five pounds_, having thus more than doubled; and with

each step in this direction, the people were obtaining better

machinery for cultivating the land and for converting its raw products

into manufactured ones.

 

In no country has there been a more rapid increase in this

diversification of employments, and increase in the demand for labour,

than in Germany since the formation of the Union. Everywhere

throughout the country men are now becoming enabled to combine the

labours of the workshop with those of the field and the garden, and

“the social and economical results” of this cannot, says Mr. Kay [171]

--

 

 “Be rated too highly. The interchange of garden-labour with

 manufacturing employments, which is advantageous to the operative,

 who works in his own house, is a real luxury and necessity for the

 factory operative, whose occupations are almost always necessarily

 prejudicial to health. After his day’s labour in the factories, he

 experiences a physical reinvigoration from moderate labour in the

 open air, and, moreover, he derives from it some economical

 advantages. He is enabled by this means to cultivate at least part of

 the vegetables which his family require for their consumption,

 instead of having to purchase them in the market at a considerable

 outlay. He can sometimes, also, keep a cow, which supplies his family

 with milk, and provides a healthy occupation for his wife and

 children when they leave the factory.”

 

As a necessary consequence of this creation of a domestic market, the

farmer has ceased to be compelled to devote himself exclusively to the

production of wheat, or other articles of small bulk and large price,

and can now “have a succession of crops,” says Mr. Howitt--

 

 “Like a market-gardener. They have their carrots, poppies, hemp,

 flax, saintfoin, lucerne, rape, colewort, cabbage, rutabaga, black

 turnips, Swedish and white turnips, teazles, Jerusalem artichokes,

 mangelwurzel, parsnips, kidney-beans, field beans, and peas, vetches,

 Indian corn, buckwheat, madder for the manufacturer, potatoes, their

 great crop of tobacco, millet--all or the greater part under the

 family management, in their own family allotments. They have had

 these things first to sow, many of them to transplant, to hoe, to

 weed, to clear off insects, to top; many of them to mow and gather in

 successive crops. They have their water-meadows--of which kind almost

 all their meadows are to flood, to mow, and reflood; watercourses to

 reopen and to make anew; their early fruits to gather, to bring to

 market, with their green crops of vegetables; their cattle, sheep,

 calves, fowls; (most of them prisoners,) and poultry to look after;

 their vines, as they shoot rampantly in the summer heat, to prune,

 and thin out the leaves when they are too thick; and any one may

 imagine what a scene of incessant labour it is.”--_Rural and Domestic

 Life in Germany_, p. 50.

 

The existence of a domestic market enables them, of course, to manure

their land. “No means,” says Mr. Kay--

 

 “Are spared to make the ground produce as much as possible. Not a

 square yard of land is uncultivated or unused. No stories are left

 mingled with the soil. The ground is cleared of weeds and rubbish,

 and the lumps of earth are broken up with as much care as in an

 English garden. If it is meadow land, it is cleaned of obnoxious

 herbs and weeds. Only the sweet grasses which are good for the cattle

 are allowed to grow. All the manure from the house, farm, and yard is

 carefully collected and scientifically prepared. The liquid manure is

 then carried, in hand-carts like our road-watering carts into the

 fields, and is watered over the meadows in equal proportions. The

 solid manures are broken up, cleared of stones and rubbish, and are

 then properly mixed and spread over the lands which require them. No

 room is lost in hedges or ditches, and no breeding-places are left

 for the vermin which in many parts of England do so much injury to

 the farmers’ crops. The character of the soil of each district is

 carefully examined, and a suitable rotation of crops is chosen, so as

 to obtain the greatest possible return without injuring the land; and

 the cattle are well housed, are kept beautifully clean, and are

 groomed and tended like the horses of our huntsmen.”--Vol. i. 118.

 

The labours of the field have become productive, and there has been

excited, says Dr. Shubert--

 

 “A singular and increasing interest in agriculture and in the

 breeding of cattle; and if in some localities, on account of peculiar

 circumstances or of a less degree of intelligence, certain branches

 of the science of agriculture are less developed than in other

 localities, it is, nevertheless, undeniable that an almost universal

 progress has been made in the cultivation of the soil and in the

 breeding of cattle. No one can any longer, as was the custom thirty

 years ago, describe the Prussian system of agriculture by the single

 appellation of the three-year-course system; no man can, as formerly,

 confine his enumeration of richly-cultivated districts to a few

 localities. In the present day, there is no district of Prussia in

 which intelligence, persevering energy, and an ungrudged expenditure

 of capital, has not immensely improved a considerable part of the

 country for the purposes of agriculture and of the breeding of

 cattle.”[172]

 

Speaking of that portion of Germany which lies on the Rhine and the

Neckar, Professor Rau, of Heidelberg, says that--

 

 “Whoever travels hastily through this part of the country must have

 been agreeably surprised with the luxuriant vegetation of the fields,

 with the orchards and vineyards which cover the hillside’s, with the

 size of the villages, with the breadth of their streets, with the

 beauty of their official buildings, with the cleanliness and

 stateliness of their houses, with the good clothing in which the

 people appear at their festivities, and with the universal proofs of

 a prosperity which has been caused by industry and skill, and which

 has survived all the political changes of the times. * * * The

 unwearied assiduity of the peasants--who are to be seen actively

 employed the whole of every year and of every day, and who are never

 idle, because they understand how to arrange their work, and how to

 set apart for every time and season its appropriate duties--is as

 remarkable as their eagerness to avail themselves of every

 circumstance and of every new invention which can aid them, and their

 ingenuity in improving their resources, are praiseworthy. It is easy

 to perceive that the peasant of this district really understands his

 business. He can give reasons for the occasional failures of his

 operations; he knows and remembers clearly his pecuniary resources;

 he arranges his choice of fruits according to their prices; and he

 makes his calculations by the general signs and tidings of the

 weather.”--_Landwirthshaft der Rheinpfalz_.

 

The people of this country “stand untutored,” says Mr. Kay, “except by

experience; but,” he continues--

 

 “Could the tourist hear these men in their blouses and thick gaiters

 converse on the subject, he would be surprised at the mass of

 practical knowledge they possess, and at the caution and yet the

 keenness with which they study these advantages. Of this all may rest

 assured, that from the commencement of the offsets of the Eifel,

 where the village cultivation assumes an individual and strictly

 local character, good reason can be given for the manner in which

 every inch of ground is laid out, as for every balm, root, or tree

 that covers it.”--Vol. i. 130.

 

The system of agriculture is making rapid progress, as is always the

case when the artisan is brought to the side of the husbandman.

Constant intercourse with each other sharpens the intellect, and men

learn to know the extent of their powers. Each step upward is but the

preparation for a new and greater one, and therefore it is that

everywhere among those small farmers, says Mr. Kay, “science is

welcomed.” “Each,” he continues--

 

 “Is so anxious to emulate and surpass his neighbours, that any new

 invention, which benefits one, is eagerly sought out and adopted by

 the others.”--Vol. i. 149.

 

The quantity of stock that is fed is constantly and rapidly

increasing, and, as a necessary consequence, the increase in the

quantity of grain is more rapid than in the population, although that

of Prussia and Saxony now increases faster than that of any other

nation of Europe.[173]

 

The land of Germany is much divided. A part of this division was the

work of governments which interfered between the owners and the

peasants, and gave to the latter absolute rights over a part of the

land they cultivated, instead of previous claims to rights of so

uncertain a kind as rendered the peasant a mere slave to the

land-owner. Those rights, however, could not have been maintained had

not the policy of the government tended to promote the growth of

population and wealth. Centralization would have tended to the

reconsolidation of the land, as it has done in India, Ireland,

Scotland, and England; but decentralization here gives value to land,

and aids in carrying out the system commenced by government. Professor

Reichensperger [174] says--

 

 “That the price of land which is divided into small properties, in

 the Prussian Rhine provinces, is much higher, and has been rising

 much more rapidly, than the price of land on the great estates. He

 and Professor Rau both say that this rise in the price of the small

 estates would have ruined the more recent, purchasers, unless the

 productiveness of the small estates had increased in at least an

 equal proportion; and as the small proprietors have been gradually

 becoming more and more prosperous, notwithstanding the increasing

 prices they have paid for their land, he argues, with apparent

 justness, that this would seem to show that not only the _gross_

 profits of the small estates, but the _net_ profits also, have been

 gradually increasing, and that the _net_ profits per acre of land,

 when farmed by small proprietors, are greater than the net profits

 per acre of land farmed by great proprietors.”--_Kay_, vol. i. 116.

 

The admirable effect of the division of land, which follows

necessarily in the wake of the growth of population and wealth, is

thus described by Sismondi:--[175]

 

 “Wherever are found peasant proprietors, are also found that ease,

 that security, that independence, and that confidence in the future,

 which insure at the same time happiness and virtue. The peasant who,

 with his family, does all the work on his little inheritance, who

 neither pays rent to any one above him, nor wages to any one below

 him, who regulates his production by his consumption, who eats his

 own corn, drinks his own wine, and is clothed with his own flax and

 wool, cares little about knowing the price of the market; for he has

 little to sell and little to buy, and is never ruined by the

 revolutions of commerce. Far from fearing for the future, it is

 embellished by his hopes; for he puts out to profit, for his children

 or for ages to come, every instant which is not required by the

 labour of the year. Only a few moments, stolen from otherwise lost

 time, are required to put into the ground the nut which in a hundred

 years will become a large tree; to hollow out the aqueduct which will

 drain his field for ever; to form the conduit which will bring him a

 spring of water; to improve, by many little labours and attentions

 bestowed in spare moments, all the kinds of animals and vegetables by

 which he is surrounded. This little patrimony is a true savings-bank,

 always ready to receive his little profits, and usefully to employ

 his leisure moments. The ever-acting powers of nature make his

 labours fruitful, and return to him a hundredfold. The peasant has a

 strong sense of the happiness attached to the condition of

 proprietor. Thus he is always eager to purchase land at any price. He

 pays for it more than it is worth; but what reason he has to esteem

 at a high price the advantage of thenceforward always employing his

 labour advantageously, without being obliged to offer it cheap, and

 of always finding his bread when he wants it, without being obliged

 to buy it dear!”--_Kay_; vol. i. 153.

 

The German people borrow from the earth, and they pay their debts; and

this they are enabled to do because the market is everywhere near, and

becoming nearer every day, as, with the increase of population and

wealth, men are enabled to obtain better machinery of conversion and

transportation. They are, therefore, says Mr. Kay--

 

 “Gradually acquiring capital, and their great ambition is to have

 land of their own. They eagerly seize every opportunity of purchasing

 a small farm; and the price is so raised by the competition, that

 land pays little more than two per cent. interest for the

 purchase-money. Large properties gradually disappear, and are divided

 into small portions, which sell at a high rate. But the wealth and

 industry of the population is continually increasing, being rather

 through the masses, than accumulated in individuals.”--Vol. i. 183.

 

The disappearance of large properties in Germany proceeds, _pari

passu_, with the disappearance of small ones in England. If the reader

desire to know the views of Adam Smith as to the relative advantages

of the two systems, he may turn to the description, from his pen, of

the feelings of the small proprietor, given in a former chapter;[176]

after which he may profit by reading the following remarks of Mr. Kay,

prompted by his observation of the course of things in Germany:--

 

 “But there can be no doubt that five acres, the property of an

 intelligent peasant, who farms it himself, in a country where the

 peasants have learned to farm, will always produce much more per acre

 than an equal number of acres will do when farmed by a mere

 _leasehold_ tenant. In the case of the peasant proprietor, the

 increased activity and energy of the farmer, and the deep interest he

 feels in the improvement of his land, which are always caused by the

 fact of _ownership_, more than compensate the advantage arising from

 the fact that the capital required to work the large farms is less in

 proportion to the quantity of land cultivated than the capital

 required to work the small farm. In the cases of a large farm and of

 a small farm, the occupiers of which are both tenants of another

 person, and not owners themselves, it may be true that the produce of

 the large farm will be greater in proportion to the capital employed

 in cultivation than that of the small farm; and that, therefore, the

 farming of the larger farm will be the most economical, and will

 render the largest rent to the landlord.”--Vol. i. 113.

 

Land is constantly changing hands, and “people of all classes,” says

Mr. Kay--

 

 “Are able to become proprietors. Shopkeepers and labourers of the

 towns purchase gardens outside the towns, where they and their

 families work in the fine evenings, in raising vegetables and fruit

 for the use of their households; shopkeepers, who have laid by a

 little competence, purchase farms, to which they and their families

 retire from the toil and disquiet of a town life; farmers purchase

 the farms they used formerly to rent of great land-owners; while most

 of the peasants of these countries have purchased and live upon farms

 of their own, or are now economizing and laying by all that they can

 possibly spare from their earnings, in order therewith as soon as

 possible to purchase a farm or a garden.”--Vol. i. 58.

 

We have here the strongest inducements to exertion and economy. Every

man seeks to have a little farm, or a garden, of his own, and all

have, says Mr. Kay--

 

 “The consciousness that they have their fate in their own hands; that

 their station in life depends upon their own exertions; that they can

 rise in the world, if they will, only be patient and laborious

 enough; that they can gain an independent position by industry and

 economy; that they are not cut off by an insurmountable barrier from

 the next step in the social scale; that it is possible to purchase a

 house and farm of their own; and that the more industrious and

 prudent they are, the better will be the position of their families:

 [and this consciousness] gives the labourers of those countries,

 where the land is not tied up in the hands of a few, an elasticity of

 feeling, a hopefulness, an energy, a pleasure in economy and labour,

 a distaste for expenditure upon gross sensual enjoyments,--which

 would only diminish the gradually increasing store,--and an

 independence of character, which the dependent and helpless labourers

 of the other country can never experience. In short, the life of a

 peasant in those countries where the land is not kept from

 subdividing by the laws is one of the highest moral education. His

 unfettered position stimulates him to better his condition, to

 economize, to be industrious, to husband his powers, to acquire moral

 habits, to use foresight, to gain knowledge about agriculture, and to

 give his children a good education, so that they may improve the

 patrimony and social position he will bequeath to them.”--Vol. i.

 200.

 

We have here the stimulus of hope of improvement--a state of things

widely different from that described in a former chapter in relation

to England, where, says the _Times_, “once a peasant, a man must

remain a peasant for ever.” Such is the difference between the one

system, that looks to centralizing in the hands of a few proprietors

of machinery power over the lives and fortunes of all the cultivators

of the world, and the other, that looks to giving to all those

cultivators power over themselves. The first is the system of slavery,

and the last that of freedom.

 

Hope is the mother of industry, and industry in her turn begets

temperance. “In the German and Swiss towns,” says Mr. Kay--

 

 “There are no places to be compared to those sources of the

 demoralization of our town poor--the gin-palaces. There is very

 little drunkenness in either towns or villages, while the absence of

 the gin-palaces removes from the young the strong causes of

 degradation and corruption which exist at the doors of the English

 homes, affording scenes and temptations which cannot but Inflict upon

 our labouring classes moral injury which they would not otherwise

 suffer.” * * * “The total absence of intemperance and drunkenness at

 these, and indeed at all other fêtes in Germany, is very singular. I

 never saw a drunken man either in Prussia or Saxony, and I was

 assured by every one that such a sight was rare. I believe the

 temperance of the poor to be owing to the civilizing effects of their

 education in the schools and in the army, to the saving and careful

 habits which the possibility of purchasing land; and the longing to

 purchase it, nourish in their minds, and to their having higher and

 more pleasurable amusements than the alehouse and hard drinking.”--

 Vol. i. 247, 261.

 

As a natural consequence of this, pauperism is rare, as will be seen

by the following extract from a report of the Prussian Minister of

Statistics, given by Mr. Kay:--

 

 “As our Prussian agriculture raises so much more meat and bread on

 the same extent of territory than it used to do, it follows that

 agriculture must have been greatly increased both in science and

 industry. There are other facts which confirm the truth of this

 conclusion. The division of estates has, since 1831, proceeded more

 and more throughout the country. There are now many more small

 independent proprietors than formerly. Yet, however many complaints

 of pauperism are heard among the dependent labourers, WE NEVER HEARD

 IT COMPLAINED THAT PAUPERISM IS INCREASING AMONG THE PEASANT

 PROPRIETORS. Nor do we hear that the estates of the peasants in the

 eastern provinces are becoming too small, _or that the system of

 freedom of disposition leads to too great a division of the father’s

 land among the children_.” * * * “_It is an almost universally

 acknowledged fact that the gross produce of the land, in grain,

 potatoes, and cattle, is increased when the land is cultivated by

 those who own small portions of it_; and if this had not been the

 case, it would have been impossible to raise as much of the necessary

 articles of food as has been wanted for the increasing population.

 Even on the larger estates, the improvement in the system of

 agriculture is too manifest to admit of any doubt.... Industry, and

 capital, and labour are expended upon the soil. It is rendered

 productive by means of manuring and careful tillage. The amount of

 the produce is increased.... The prices of the estates, on account of

 their increased productiveness, have increased. The great commons,

 many acres of which used to lie wholly uncultivated, are

 disappearing, and are being turned into meadows and fields. The

 cultivation of potatoes has increased very considerably. Greater

 plots of lands are now devoted to the cultivation of potatoes than

 ever used to be.... The old system of the three-field system of

 agriculture, according to which one-third of the field used to be

 left always fallow, in order to recruit the land, is now scarcely

 ever to be met with.... With respect to the cattle, the farmers now

 labour to improve the breed. Sheep-breeding is rationally and

 scientifically pursued on the great estates.... A remarkable activity

 in agricultural pursuits has been raised; and, as all attempts to

 improve agriculture are encouraged and assisted by the present

 government, agricultural colleges are founded, agricultural

 associations of scientific farmers meet in all provinces to suggest

 improvements to aid in carrying out experiments, and even the peasant

 proprietors form such associations among themselves, and establish

 model farms and institutions for themselves.”--Vol. i. 266.

 

The English system, which looks to the consolidation of land and the

aggrandizement of the large capitalist, tends, on the contrary, to

deprive the labourer

 

 “Of every worldly inducement to practise self-denial, prudence, and

 economy; it deprives him of every hope of rising in the world; it

 makes him totally careless about self-improvement, about the

 institutions of his country, and about the security of property; it

 undermines all his independence of character; it makes him dependent

 on the workhouse, or on the charity he can obtain by begging at the

 hall; and it renders him the fawning follower of the all-powerful

 land-owner.”--Vol. i. 290.

 

The change that has taken place in the consumption of clothing is thus

shown:--

 

                  Per head in 1805.          In 1842.

                  -----------------          --------

    Ells of cloth............. 3/4 ............ 1-1/5

           linen.............  4  ............ 5

           woollen stuffs.... 3/4 ............ 13

           silks............. 1/4 ............   3/8

 

“The Sunday suit of the peasants,” says Mr. Kay--

 

 “In Germany, Switzerland, and Holland rivals that of the middle

 classes. A stranger taken into the rooms where the village dances are

 held, and where the young men and young women are dressed in their

 best clothes, would often be unable to tell what class of people were

 around him.” * * * “It is very curious and interesting, at the

 provincial fairs, to see not only what a total absence there is of

 any thing like the rags and filth of pauperism, but also what

 evidence of comfort and prosperity there is in the clean and

 comfortable attire of the women.”--Vol. i. 225, 227.

 

In further evidence of the improvement of the condition of the female

sex, he tells us that

 

 “An Englishman, taken to the markets, fairs, and village festivals of

 these countries, would scarcely credit his eyes were he to see the

 peasant-girls who meet there to join in the festivities; they are so

 much more lady-like in their appearance, in their manners, and in

 their dress than those of our country parishes.”--Vol. i. 31.

 

The contrast between the education of the children of the poor in

Germany and England is thus shown:--

 

 “I advise my readers to spend a few hours in any of our back streets

 and alleys, those nurseries of vice and feeders of the jails, and to

 assure himself that children of the same class as those he will see

 in [these] haunts--dirty, rude, boisterous, playing in the mud with

 uncombed hair, filthy and torn garments, and skin that looks as if it

 had not been washed for months--are always, throughout Germany,

 Switzerland, Denmark, Holland, and a great part of France, either in

 school or in the school play-ground, clean, well-dressed, polite and

 civil in their manners, and healthy, intelligent, and happy in their

 appearance. It is this difference in the early life of the poor of

 the towns of these countries which explains the astonishing

 improvement which has taken place in the state of the back streets

 and alleys of many of their towns. The majority of their town poor

 are growing up with tastes which render them unfit to endure such

 degradation as the filth and misery of our town pauperism.”--Vol. i.

 198.

 

As a natural consequence, there is that tendency toward equality which

everywhere else is attendant on _real_ freedom. “The difference,” says

Mr. Kay--

 

 “Between the condition of the juvenile population of these countries

 and of our own may be imagined, when I inform my readers that many of

 the boys and girls of the higher classes of society in these

 countries are educated at the same desks with the boys and girls of

 the poorest of the people, and that children comparable with the

 class which attends our ‘ragged schools’ are scarcely ever to be

 found. How impossible it would be to induce our gentry to let their

 children be educated with such children as frequent the ‘ragged

 schools,’ I need not remind my readers.”--P. 101.

 

This tendency to equality is further shown in the following passage:--

 

 “The manners of the peasants in Germany and Switzerland form, as I

 have already said, a very singular contrast to the manners of our

 peasants. They are polite, but independent. The manner of salutation

 encourages this feeling. If a German gentleman addresses a peasant,

 he raises his hat before the poor man, as we do before ladies. The

 peasant replies by a polite ‘Pray be covered, sir,’ and then, in good

 German, answers the questions put to him.”--P. 159.

 

With growing tendency to equality of fortune, as the people pass from

slavery toward freedom, there is less of ostentatious display, and

less necessity for that slavish devotion to labour remarked in

England. “All classes,” says Mr. Kay--

 

 “In Germany, Switzerland, France, and Holland are therefore satisfied

 with less income than the corresponding classes in England. They,

 therefore, devote less time to labour, and more time to healthy and

 improving recreation. The style of living among the mercantile

 classes of these countries is much simpler than in England, but their

 enjoyment of life is much greater.”--Vol. i. 303.

 

As a consequence of this, the amusements of their leisure hours are of

a more improving character, as is here seen:--

 

 “The amusements of the peasants and operatives in the greater part of

 Germany, Switzerland, and Holland, where they are well educated, and

 where they are generally proprietors of farms or gardens, are of a

 much higher and of a much more healthy character than those of the

 most prosperous of similar classes in England. Indeed, it may be

 safely affirmed that the amusements of the poor in Germany are of a

 higher character than the amusements of the lower part of the middle

 classes in England. This may at first seem a rather bold assertion;

 but it will not be thought so, when I have shown what their

 amusements are.

 

 “The gardens, which belong to the town labourers and small

 shopkeepers, afford their proprietors the healthiest possible kind of

 recreation after the labours of the day. But, independently of this,

 the mere amusements of the poor of these countries prove the

 civilization, the comfort, and the prosperity of their social state.”

 * * * “There are, perhaps, no peasantry in the world who have so much

 healthy recreation and amusement as the peasants of Germany, and

 especially as those of Prussia and Saxony. In the suburbs of all the

 towns of Prussia and Saxony regular garden, concerts and promenades

 are given. An admittance fee of from one penny to sixpence admits any

 one to these amusements.” * * * “I went constantly to these garden-

 concerts. I rejoiced to see that it was possible for the richest and

 the poorest of the people to find a common meeting ground; that the

 poor did not live for labour only; and that the schools had taught

 the poor to find pleasure in such improving and civilizing pleasures.

 I saw daily proofs at these meetings of the excellent effects of the

 social system of Germany. I learned there how high a civilization the

 poorer classes of a nation are capable of attaining under a

 well-arranged system of those laws which affect the social condition

 of a people. I found proofs at these meetings of the truth of that

 which I am anxious to teach my countrymen, that the poorer classes of

 Germany are much less pauperized, much more civilized, and much

 happier than our own peasantry.” * * * “The dancing itself, even in

 those tents frequented by the poorest peasants, is quite as good, and

 is conducted with quite as much decorum, as that of the first

 ballrooms of London. The polka, the waltz, and several dances not

 known in England, are danced by the German peasants with great

 elegance. They dance quicker than we do; and, from the training in

 music which they receive from their childhood, and for many years of

 their lives, the poorest peasants dance in much better time than

 English people generally do.”--Vol. i. 235, 237, 240, 244.

 

How strikingly does the following view of the state of education

contrast with that given in a former chapter in relation to the

education of the poor of England!--

 

 “Four years ago the Prussian government made a general inquiry

 throughout the kingdom, to discover how far the school education of

 the people had been extended; and it was then ascertained that, out

 of all the young men in the kingdom who had attained the age of

 twenty-one years, _only two in every hundred were unable to read_.

 This fact was communicated to me by the Inspector-General of the

 kingdom.

 

 “The poor of these countries read a great deal more than even those

 of our own country who are able to read. It is a general custom in

 Germany and Switzerland for four or five families of labourers to

 club together, and to subscribe among themselves for one or two of

 the newspapers which come out once or twice a week. These papers are

 passed from family to family, or are interchanged.” * * * “I remember

 one day, when walking near Berlin in the company of Herr Hintz, a

 professor in Dr. Diesterweg’s Normal College, and of another teacher,

 we saw a poor woman cutting up in the road logs of wood for winter

 use. My companions pointed her out to me, and said, ‘Perhaps you will

 scarcely believe it, but in the neighbourhood of Berlin poor women,

 like that one, read translations of Sir Walter Scott’s novels, and of

 many of the interesting works of your language, besides those of the

 principal writers of Germany.’ This account was afterward confirmed

 by the testimony of several other persons.

 

 “Often and often have I seen the poor cab-drivers of Berlin, while

 waiting for a fare, amusing themselves by reading German books, which

 they had brought with them in the morning expressly for the purpose

 of supplying amusement and occupation for their leisure hours.

 

 “In many parts of these countries, the peasants and the workmen of

 the towns attend regular weekly lectures or weekly classes, where

 they practise singing or chanting, or learn mechanical drawing,

 history, or science.

 

 “As will be seen afterward, women as well, as men, girls as well as

 boys, enjoy in these countries the same advantages, and go through

 the same, school education. The women of the poorer classes of these

 countries, in point of intelligence and knowledge, are almost equal

 to the men.”--P. 63, 65.

 

These facts would seem fully to warrant the author in his expression

of the belief that

 

 “The moral, intellectual, and social condition of the peasants and

 operatives of those parts of Germany, Holland, Switzerland, and

 France where the poor have been educated, where the land has been

 released from the feudal laws, and where the peasants have been

 enabled to acquire, is very much higher, happier, and more

 satisfactory than that of the peasants and operatives of England; and

 that while these latter are struggling in the deepest ignorance,

 pauperism, and moral degradation, the former are steadily and

 progressively attaining a condition, both socially and politically

 considered, of a higher, happier, and more hopeful character.”--Vol.

 i. 7.

 

The extensive possession of property produces here, as everywhere,

respect for the rights of property. “In the neighbourhood of towns,”

says Mr. Kay--

 

 “The land is scarcely any more enclosed, except in the case of the

 small gardens which surround the houses, than in the more rural

 districts. Yet this right is seldom abused. The condition of the

 lands near a German, or Swiss, or Dutch town is as orderly, as neat,

 and as undisturbed by trespassers as in the most secluded and most

 strictly preserved of our rural districts. All the poor have friends

 or relations who are themselves proprietors. Every man, however poor,

 feels that he himself may, some day or other, become a proprietor.

 All are, consequently, immediately interested in the preservation of

 property, and in watching over the rights and interests of their

 neighbours.”--P. 249.

 

How strongly the same cause tends to the maintenance of public order,

may be seen on a perusal of the following passages:--

 

 “Every peasant who possesses one of these estates becomes interested

 in the maintenance of public order, in the tranquillity of the

 country, in the suppression of crimes, in the fostering of industry

 among his own children, and in the promotion of their intelligence. A

 class of peasant proprietors forms the strongest of all conservative

 classes.” * * * “Throughout all the excitement of the revolutions of

 1848, the peasant proprietors of France, Germany, Holland, and

 Switzerland were almost universally found upon the side of order, and

 opposed to revolutionary excesses. It was only in the provinces where

 the land was divided among the nobles, and where the peasants were

 only serfs, as in the Polish provinces, Bohemia, Austria, and some

 parts of South Germany, that they showed themselves rebellious. In

 Prussia they sent deputation after deputation to Frederic William, to

 assure him of their support; in one province the peasant proprietors

 elected his brother as their representative; and in others they

 declared, by petition after petition forwarded to the chamber, and by

 the results of the elections, how strongly they were opposed to the

 anarchical party in Berlin.”--Vol. i. 33, 273.

 

It is where land acquires value that men become free, and the more

rapid the growth of value in land, the more rapid has ever been the

growth of freedom. To enable it to acquire value, the artisan and the

ploughman _must_ take their places by the side of each other; and the

greater the tendency to this, the more rapid will be the progress of

man toward moral, intellectual, and political elevation. It is in this

direction that all the policy of Germany now tends, whereas that of

England tends toward destroying everywhere the value of labour and

land, and everywhere impairing the condition of man. The one system

tends to the establishment everywhere of mills, furnaces, and towns,

places of exchange, in accordance with the view of Dr. Smith, who

tells us that “had human institutions never disturbed the natural

course of things, the progressive wealth and increase of the towns

would, in every political society, be consequential and in proportion

to the improvement and cultivation of the territory and country.” The

other tends toward building up London and Liverpool, Manchester and

Birmingham, at the cost of enormous taxation imposed upon all the

farmers and planters of the world; and its effects in remote parts of

the United Kingdom itself, compared with those observed in Germany,

are thus described:

 

 “If any one has travelled in the mountainous parts of Scotland and

 Wales, where the farmers are only under-lessees of great landlords,

 without security of tenure, and liable to be turned out of possession

 with half a year’s notice, and where the peasants are only labourers,

 without any land of their own, and generally without even the use of

 a garden; if he has travelled in the mountainous parts of

 Switzerland, Saxony, and the hilly parts of the Prussian Rhine

 provinces, where most of the farmers and peasants possess, or can by

 economy and industry obtain, land of their own; and if he has paid

 any serious attention to the condition of the farms, peasants, and

 children of these several countries, he cannot fail to have observed

 the astonishing superiority of the condition of the peasants,

 children, and farms in the last-mentioned countries.

 

 “The miserable cultivation, the undrained and rush-covered valleys,

 the great number of sides of hills, terraces on the rocks, sides of

 streams, and other places capable of the richest cultivation, but

 wholly disused, even for game preserves; the vast tracts of the

 richest lands lying in moors, and bogs, and swamps, and used only for

 the breeding-places of game, and deer, and vermin, while the poor

 peasants are starving beside them; the miserable huts of cottages,

 with their one story, their two low rooms, their wretched and

 undrained floors, and their dilapidated roofs; and the crowds of

 miserable, half-clad, ragged, dirty, uncombed, and unwashed children,

 never blessed with any education, never trained in cleanliness or

 morality, and never taught any pure religion, are as astounding on

 the one hand as the happy condition of the peasants in the Protestant

 cantons of Switzerland, in the Tyrol, in Saxony, and in the

 mountainous parts of the Prussian Rhine provinces, is pleasing upon

 the other--where every plot of land that can bear any thing is

 brought into the most beautiful state of cultivation; where the

 valleys are richly and scientifically farmed; where the manures are

 collected with the greatest care; where the houses are generally

 large, roomy, well-built, and in excellent repair, and are improving

 every day; where the children are beautifully clean, comfortably

 dressed, and attending excellent schools; and where the condition of

 the people is one of hope, industry, and progress.”--Vol. i. 140.

 

The artisan has ever been the ally of the farmer in his contests with

those who sought to tax him, let the form of taxation be what it

might. The tendency of the British system is everywhere toward

separating the two, and _using each to crush the other_. Hence it is

that in all the countries subject to the system there is an abjectness

of spirit not to be found in other parts of the world. The vices

charged by the English journals on the people of Ireland are those of

slavery--falsehood and dissimulation. The Hindoo of Bengal is a mean

and crouching animal, compared with the free people of the upper

country who have remained under their native princes. Throughout

England there is a deference to rank, a servility, a toadyism,

entirely inconsistent with progress in civilization.[177]

 

The English labourer is, says Mr. Howitt [178]--

 

 “So cut off from the idea of property, that he comes habitually to

 look upon it as a thing from which he is warned by the laws of the

 great proprietors, and becomes in consequence spiritless,

 purposeless.”

 

Compare with this the following description of a German bauer, from

the same authority:--

 

 “The German bauer, on the contrary, looks on the country as made for

 him and his fellow-men. He feels himself a man; he has a stake in the

 country as good as that of the bulk of his neighbours; no man can

 threaten him with ejection or the workhouse so long as he is active

 and economical. He walks, therefore, with a bold step; he looks you

 in the face with the air of a free man, but of a respectful

 one.”--_Ibid_.

 

The reader may now advantageously compare the progress of the last

half century in Ireland and in Germany. Doing so, he will see that in

the former there has been a steady tendency to the expulsion of the

mechanic, the exhaustion of the soil, the consolidation of the land,

and the resolution of the whole nation into a mass of wretched tenants

at will, holding under the middleman agent of the great absentee

landlord, with constant decline in the material, moral, and

intellectual condition of all classes of society, and constantly

increasing inability on the part of the nation to assert its rights.

Seventy years since the Irish people extorted the admission of their

right to legislate for themselves, whereas now the total disappearance

of the nation from among the communities of the world is regarded as a

thing to be prayed for, and a calculation is made that but twenty-four

more years will be required, at the present rate, for its total

extinction. In Germany, on the contrary, the mechanic is everywhere

invited, and towns are everywhere growing. The soil is being

everywhere enriched, and agricultural knowledge is being diffused

throughout the nation; and land so rapidly acquires value that it is

becoming more divided from day to day. The proprietor is everywhere

taking the place of the serf, and the demand for labour becomes steady

and man becomes valuable. The people are everywhere improving in their

material and moral condition; and so rapid is the improvement of

intellectual condition, that German literature now commands the

attention of the whole civilized world. With each step in this

direction, there is an increasing tendency toward union and peace,

whereas as Ireland declines there is an increasing tendency toward

discord, violence, and crime. Having studied these things, the reader

may then call to mind that Ireland has thus declined, although, in the

whole half century, her soil has never been pressed by the foot of an

enemy in arms, whereas Germany has thus improved, although repeatedly

overrun and plundered by hostile armies.

 

Chapter 17. How freedom grows in Russia

 

Among the nations of the world whose policy looks to carrying out the

views of Adam Smith, in bringing the artisan as near as possible to

the food and the wool, Russia stands distinguished. The information we

have in reference to the movements of that country is limited; but all

of it tends to prove that with the growth of population and wealth,

and with the increased diversification of labour, land is acquiring

value, and man is advancing rapidly toward freedom. “The industry of

Russia,” says a recent American journal--

 

 “Has been built up, as alone the industry of a nation can be, under a

 system of protection, from time to time modified as experience has

 dictated; but never destroyed by specious abstractions or the dogmas

 of mere doctrinaires. Fifty years ago manufactures were unknown

 there, and the caravans trading to the interior and supplying the

 wants of distant tribes in Asia went laden with the products of

 British and other foreign workshops. When the present emperor mounted

 the throne, in 1825, the country could not produce the cloth required

 to uniform its own soldiers; further back, in 1800, the exportation

 of coloured cloth was prohibited under severe penalties; but through

 the influence of adequate protection, as early as 1834, Russian cloth

 was taken by the caravans to Kiachta; and at this day the markets of

 all Central Asia are supplied by the fabrics of Russian looms, which

 in Affghanistan and China are crowding British cloths entirely out of

 sale--notwithstanding the latter have the advantage in

 transportation--while in Tartary and Russia itself British woollens

 are now scarcely heard of. In 1812 there were in Russia 136 cloth

 factories; in 1824, 324; in 1812 there were 129 cotton factories; in

 1824, 484. From 1812 to 1839 the whole number of manufacturing

 establishments in the empire more than trebled, and since then they

 have increased in a much greater ratio, though from the absence of

 official statistics we are not able to give the figures. Of the total

 amount of manufactured articles consumed in 1843, but one-sixth were

 imported. And along with this vast aggrandizement of manufacturing

 industry and commerce, there has been a steady increase of both

 imports and exports, as well as of revenue from customs. The increase

 in imports has consisted of articles of luxury and raw materials for

 manufacture. And, as if to leave nothing wanting in the

 demonstration, the increase of exports has constantly included more

 and more of the products of agriculture. Thus in this empire we see

 what we must always see under an adequate and judicious system of

 protection, that a proper tariff not only improves, refines, and

 diversifies the labour of a country, but enlarges its commerce,

 increases the prosperity of its agricultural population, renders the

 people better and better able to contribute to the support of the

 Government, and raises the nation to a position of independence and

 real equality among the powers of the globe. All this is indubitably

 proved by the example of Russia, for there protection has been steady

 and adequate, and the consequences are what we have described.”--_N.

 York Tribune_.

 

The reader may advantageously compare the following sketch, from the

same source, of the present position of Russia, so recently a scene of

barbarism, with that already laid before him, of her neighbour Turkey,

whose policy commands to so great an extent the admiration of those

economists who advocate the system which looks to converting the whole

world outside of England into one vast farm, and all its people, men,

women, and children, into field labourers, dependent on one great

workshop in which to make all their exchanges:--

 

 “Russia, we are told, is triumphant in the Great Exhibition. Her

 natural products excite interest and admiration for their variety and

 excellence; her works of art provoke astonishment for their richness

 and beauty. Her jewellers and gold-workers carry off the palm from

 even those of Paris. Her satins and brocades compete with the richest

 contributions of Lyons. She exhibits tables of malachite and caskets

 of ebony, whose curious richness indicates at once the lavish

 expenditure of a barbaric court, and the refinement and taste of

 civilization. Nor do we deem it of much account that her part of the

 exhibition is not exclusively the work of native artisans. Her satins

 are none the less genuine product of the country because the

 loveliest were woven by emigrants from the _Croix Rousse_ or the

 _Guillotiére_, seduced by high wages from their sunnier home in order

 to build up the industry of the Great Empire and train the grandsons

 of Mongol savages in the exquisite mysteries of French taste and

 dexterity. It matters not that the exhibition offers infinitely more

 than a fair illustration of the average capacity of Russian labour.

 It is none the less true that a people who half a century ago were

 without manufactures of any but the rudest kind, are now able by some

 means to furnish forth an unsurpassed display, though all the world

 is there to compete with them.

 

 “We are no lover of Russian power, and have no wish to exaggerate the

 degree of perfection to which Russian industry has attained. We do

 not doubt that any cotton factory in the environs of Moscow might be

 found imperfect when contrasted with one of Manchester or Lowell. We

 are confident that the artisans of a New-England village very far

 surpass those of a Russian one in most qualities of intelligence and

 manhood. Indeed, it is absurd to make the comparison; it is absurd to

 do what travellers insist on doing--that is, to judge every nation by

 the highest standard, and pronounce each a failure which does not

 exhibit the intellect of France, the solidity and power of England,

 or the enterprise, liberty, and order of the United States. All that

 should be asked is, whether a people has surpassed its own previous

 condition and is in the way of improvement and progress. And that, in

 respect of industry, at least, Russia is in that way, her show at the

 Exhibition may safely be taken as a brilliant and conclusive proof.”

 

Russia is powerful, and is becoming more so daily. Why is it so? It is

because her people are daily more and more learning the advantages of

diversification of labour and combination of exertion, and more and

more improving in their physical and intellectual condition--the

necessary preliminaries to an improvement of their political

condition. Turkey is weak; and why is it so? Because among her people

the habit of association is daily passing away as the few remaining

manufactures disappear, and as the travelling pedler supersedes the

resident shopkeeper.

 

It is said, however, that Russian policy is unfavorable to commerce;

but is not its real tendency that of producing a great internal

commerce upon which alone a great foreign one can be built? That it

does produce the effect of enabling her people to combine their

exertions for their common benefit is most certain; and equally so

that it tends to give her that direct intercourse with the world which

is essential to the existence of freedom. The slave trades with the

world through his master, who fixes the price of the labour he has to

sell and the food and clothing he has to buy, and this is exactly the

system that Great Britain desires to establish for the farmers of the

world--she being the only buyer of raw products, and the only seller

of manufactured ones.

 

So long as Russia exports only food and hemp, she can trade with

Brazil for sugar, and with Carolina for cotton, only through the

medium of British ships, British ports, British merchants, and British

looms, for she can need no raw cotton; but with the extension of

manufactures she needs cotton, which she can draw directly from the

planter, paying him in iron, by aid of which he may have machinery. In

illustration of this, we have the fact that so recently as in 1846,

out of a total consumption of cotton amounting to 310,656 cwts., no

less than 122,082 cwts. had passed through British spindles; whereas

in 1850, out of a total consumption more than one-half greater, and

amounting to 487,612 cwts., only 64,505 cwts. had passed through the

hands of the spinners of Manchester.

 

The export of raw cotton to Russia has since largely increased, but

the precise extent of increase cannot be ascertained, although some

estimate may be formed from the growth of the consumption of one of

the principal dyeing materials, indigo; the export of which from

England to Russia is thus given in the London _Economist_:--

 

               1849.        1850.        1851.        1852.

               -----        -----        -----        -----

    Chests,    3225.......  4105.......  4953.......  5175

 

We have here an increase in three years of almost sixty per cent.,

proving a steady increase in the power to obtain clothing and to

maintain commerce internal and external, directly the reverse of what

has been observed in Turkey, Ireland, India, and other countries in

which the British system prevails; and the reason of this is that that

system looks to destroying the power of association. It would have all

the people of India engage themselves in raising cotton, and all those

of Brazil and Cuba in raising sugar, while those of Germany and Russia

should raise food and wool; and we know well that when all are

farmers, or all planters, the power of association scarcely exists;

the consequence of which is seen in the exceeding weakness of all the

communities of the world in which the plough and the loom, the hammer

and the harrow, are prevented from coming together. It is an unnatural

one. Men everywhere seek to combine their exertions with those of

their fellow-men; an object sought to be attained by the introduction

of that diversification of employment advocated throughout his work by

the author of _The Wealth of Nations_. How naturally the habit of

association arises, and how beneficial are its effects, may be seen

from a few extracts now offered to the reader, from an interesting

article in a recent English journal. In Russia, says its author--

 

 “There does not prevail that marked distinction between the modes of

 life of the dwellers in town and country which is found in other

 countries; and the general freedom of trade, which in other nations

 is still an object of exertion, has existed in Russia since a long

 by-gone period. A strong manufacturing and industrial tendency

 prevails in a large portion of Russia, which, based upon the communal

 system, has led to the formation of what we may term ‘national

 association factories.’”

 

In corroboration of this view of the general freedom of internal

trade, we are told that, widely different from the system of western

Europe,

 

 “There exists no such thing as a trade guild, or company, nor any

 restraint of a similar nature. Any member of a commune can at

 pleasure abandon the occupation he may be engaged in, and take up

 another; all that he has to do in effecting the change is to quit the

 commune in which his old trade is carried on, and repair to another,

 where his new one is followed.”

 

The tendency of manufacturing industry is

 

 “For the most part entirely communal; the inhabitants of one village,

 for example, are all shoemakers, in another smiths, in a third

 tanners only, and so on. A natural division of labor thus prevails

 exactly as in a factory. The members of the commune mutually assist

 one another with capital or labor; purchases are usually made in

 common, and sales also invariably, but they always send their

 manufactures in a general mass to the towns and market-places, where

 they have a common warehouse for their disposal.”

 

In common with all countries that are as yet unable fully to carry out

the idea of Adam Smith, of compressing a large quantity of food and

wool into a piece of cloth, and thus fitting it for cheap

transportation to distant markets, and which are, therefore, largely

dependent on those distant markets for the sale of raw produce, the

cultivation of the soil in Russia is not--

 

 “In general, very remunerative, and also can only be engaged in for a

 few months in the year, which is, perhaps, the reason why the peasant

 in Russia evinces so great an inclination for manufactures and other

 branches of industry, the character of which generally depends on the

 nature of raw products found in the districts where they are

 followed.”

 

Without diversification of employment much labour would be wasted, and

the people would find themselves unable to purchase clothing or

machinery of cultivation. Throughout the empire the labourer appears

to follow in the direction indicated by nature, working up the

materials on the land on which they are produced, and thus economizing

transportation. Thus--

 

 “In the government of Yaroslaf the whole inhabitants of one place are

 potters. Upward of two thousand inhabitants in another place are

 rope-makers and harness-makers. The population of the district of

 Uglitich in 1835 sent three millions of yards of linen cloth to the

 markets of Rybeeck and Moscow. The peasants on one estate are all

 candle-makers, on a second they are all manufacturers of felt hats,

 and on a third they are solely occupied in smiths’ work, chiefly the

 making of axes. In the district of Pashechoe there are about seventy

 tanneries, which give occupation to a large number of families; they

 have no paid workmen, but perform all the operations among

 themselves, preparing leather to the value of about twenty-five

 thousand roubles a year, and which is disposed of on their account in

 Rybeeck. In the districts where the forest-trees mostly consist of

 lindens, the inhabitants are principally engaged in the manufacture

 of matting, which, according to its greater or less degree of

 fineness, is employed either for sacking or sail cloth, or merely as

 packing mats. The linden-tree grows only on moist soils, rich in

 black _humus_, or vegetable mould; but will not grow at all in sandy

 soils, which renders it comparatively scarce in some parts of Russia,

 while in others it grows abundantly. The mats are prepared from the

 inner bark, and as the linden is ready for stripping at only fifteen

 years of age, and indeed is best at that age, these trees form a rich

 source of profit for those who dwell in the districts where they

 grow.”

 

We have here a system of combined exertion that tends greatly to

account for the rapid progress of Russia in population, wealth, and

power.

 

The men who thus associate for local purposes acquire information, and

with it the desire for more; and thus we find them passing freely, as

interest may direct them, from one part of the empire to another--a

state of things very different from that produced in England by the

law of settlement, under which men have everywhere been forbidden to

change their locality, and everywhere been liable to be seized and

sent back to their original parishes, lest they might at some time or

other become chargeable upon the new one in which they had desired to

find employment, for which they had sought in vain at home. “The

Russian” says our author--

 

 “Has a great disposition for wandering about beyond his native place,

 but not for travelling abroad. The love of home seems to be merged,

 to a great extent, in love of country. A Russian feels himself at

 home everywhere within Russia; and, in a political sense, this

 rambling disposition of the people, and the close intercourse between

 the inhabitants of the various provinces to which it leads,

 contributes to knit a closer bond of union between the people, and to

 arouse and maintain a national policy and a patriotic love of

 country. Although he may quit his native place, the Russian never

 wholly severs the connection with it; and, as we have before

 mentioned, being fitted by natural talent to turn his hand to any

 species of work, he in general never limits himself in his wanderings

 to any particular occupation, but tries at several; but chooses

 whatever may seem to him the most advantageous. When they pursue any

 definite extensive trade, such as that of a carpenter, mason, or the

 like, in large towns, they associate together, and form a sort of

 trades’ association, and the cleverest assume the position of a sort

 of contractor for the labour required. Thus, if a nobleman should

 want to build a house, or even a palace, in St. Petersburgh, he

 applies to such a contractor, (_prodratshnik_,) lays before him the

 elevation and plans, and makes a contract with him to do the work

 required for a specified sum. The contractor then makes an agreement

 with his comrades respecting the assistance they are to give, and the

 share they are to receive of the profit; after which he usually sets

 off to his native place, either alone or with some of his comrades,

 to obtain the requisite capital to carry on the work with. The

 inhabitants, who also have their share of the gains, readily make up

 the necessary sum, _and every thing is done in trust and confidence_;

 it is, indeed, very rare to hear of frauds in these matters. The

 carpenters (_plotniki_) form a peculiar class of the workmen we have

 described. As most of the houses in Russia, and especially in the

 country parts, are built of wood, the number and importance of the

 carpenters, as a class, are very great in comparison with other

 countries. Almost every peasant, whatever other trade he may follow,

 is also something of a carpenter, and knows how to shape and put

 together the timbers for a dwelling. The _plotniki_ in the villages

 are never any thing more than these general carpenters, and never

 acquire any regular knowledge of their business. The real Russian

 _plotniki_ seldom carries any other tools with him than an axe and a

 chisel, and with these he wanders through all parts of the empire,

 seeking, and everywhere finding, work.”

 

The picture here presented is certainly widely different from that

presented by Great Britain and Ireland. A Russian appears to be at

home everywhere in Russia. He wanders where he will, everywhere

seeking and finding work; whereas an Irishman appears hardly to be at

home anywhere within the limits of the United Kingdom. In England, and

still more in Scotland, he is not acknowledged as a fellow-citizen. He

is _only an Irishman_--one of those half-savage Celts intended by

nature to supply the demand of England for cheap labour; that is, for

that labour which is to be rewarded by the scantiest supplies of food

and clothing. The difference in the moral effect of the two systems is

thus very great. The one tends to bring about that combination of

exertion which everywhere produces a kindly habit of feeling, whereas

the other tends everywhere to the production of dissatisfaction and

gloom; and it is so because that under it there is necessarily a

constant increase of the feeling that every man is to live by the

taxation of his neighbour, buying cheaply what that neighbour has to

sell, and selling dearly what that neighbour has to buy. The existence

of this state of things is obvious to all familiar with the current

literature of England, which abounds in exhibitions of the tendency of

the system to render man a tyrant to his wife, his daughter, his

horse, and even his dog. A recent English traveller in Russia presents

a different state of feeling as there existing. “The Russian

coachman,” he says--

 

 “Seldom uses his whip, and generally only knocks with it upon the

 footboard of the sledge, by way of a gentle admonition to his steed,

 with whom, meanwhile, he keeps up a running colloquy, seldom giving

 him harder words than _’My brother--my friend--my little pigeon--my

 sweetheart_.’ ‘Come, my pretty pigeon, make use of your legs,’ he

 will say. ‘What, now! art blind? Come, be brisk! Take care of that

 stone, there. Don’t see it?--There, that’s right! Bravo! hop, hop,

 hop! Steady boy, steady! What art turning thy head for? Look out

 boldly before thee!--Hurra! Yukh! Yukh!’

 

 “I could not,” he continues, “help contrasting this with the

 offensive language we constantly hear in England from carters and

 boys employed in driving horses. You are continually shocked by the

 oaths used. They seem to think the horses will not go unless they

 swear at them; and boys consider it manly to imitate this example,

 and learn to swear too, and break God’s commandments by taking his

 holy name in vain. And this while making use of a fine, noble animal

 he has given for our service and not for abuse. There is much

 unnecessary cruelty in the treatment of these dumb creatures, for

 they are often beaten when doing their best, or from not

 understanding what their masters want them to do.”

 

Of the truth of this, as regards England, the journals of that country

often furnish most revolting evidence; but the mere fact that there

exists there a society for preventing cruelty to animals, would seem

to show that its services had been much needed.

 

The manner in which the system of diversified labour is gradually

extending personal freedom among the people of Russia, and preparing

them eventually for the enjoyment of the highest degree of political

freedom, is shown in the following passage. “The landholders,” says

the author before referred to--

 

 “Having serfs, gave them permission to engage in manufactures, and to

 seek for work for themselves where they liked, on the mere condition

 of paying their lord a personal tax, (_obrok_). Each person is rated

 according to his personal capabilities, talents, and capacities, at a

 certain capital; and according to what he estimates himself capable

 of gaining, he is taxed at a fixed sum as interest of that capital.

 Actors and singers are generally serfs, and they are obliged to pay

 _obrok_, for the exercise of their art, as much as the lowest

 handicraftsman. In recent times, the manufacturing system of Western

 Europe has been introduced into Russia, and the natives have been

 encouraged to establish all sorts of manufactures on these models;

 and it remains to be seen whether the new system will have the

 anticipated effect of contributing to the formation of a middle

 class, which hitherto has been the chief want in Russia as a

 political state.”

 

That such must be the effect cannot be doubted. The middle class has

everywhere grown with the growth of towns and other places of local

exchange, and men have become free precisely as they have been able to

unite together for the increase of the productiveness of their labour.

In every part of the movement which thus tends to the emancipation of

the serf, the government is seen to be actively co-operating, and it

is scarcely possible to read an account of what is there being done

without a feeling of great respect for the emperor, “so often,” says a

recent writer, “denounced as a deadly foe to freedom--the true father

of his country, earnestly striving to develop and mature the rights of

his subjects.”[179]

 

For male serfs, says the same author, at all times until recently,

military service was the only avenue to freedom. It required, however,

twenty years’ service, and by the close of that time the soldier

became so accustomed to that mode of life that he rarely left it. A

few years since, however, the term was shortened to eight years, and

thousands of men are now annually restored to civil life, free men,

who but a few years previously had been slaves, liable to be bought

and sold with the land.

 

Formerly the lord had the same unlimited power of disposing of his

serfs that is now possessed by the people of our Southern States. The

serf was a mere chattel, an article of traffic and merchandise; and

husbands and wives, parents and children, were constantly liable to be

separated from each other. By an ukase of 1827, however, they were

declared an integral and inseparable portion of the soil. “The

immediate consequence of this decree,” says Mr. Jerrmann,[180]

 

 “Was the cessation, at least in its most repulsive form, of the

 degrading traffic in human flesh, by sale, barter, or gift.

 Thenceforward no serf could be transferred to another owner, except

 by the sale of the land to which he belonged. To secure to itself the

 refusal of the land and the human beings appertaining to it, and at

 the same time to avert from the landholder the ruin consequent on

 dealings with usurers, the government established an imperial

 loan-bank, which made advances on mortgage of lands to the extent of

 two-thirds of their value. The borrowers had to pay back each year

 three per cent of the loan, besides three per cent. interest. If they

 failed to do this, the Crown returned them the instalments already

 paid, gave them the remaining third of the value of the property, and

 took possession of the land and its population. This was the first

 stage of freedom for the serfs. They became Crown peasants, held

 their dwellings and bit of land as an hereditary fief from the Crown,

 and paid annually for the same a sum total of five rubles, (about

 four shillings for each male person;) a rent for which, assuredly, in

 the whole of Germany, the very poorest farm is not to be had; to say

 nothing of the consideration that in case of bad harvests,

 destruction by hail, disease, &c., the Crown is bound to supply the

 strict necessities of its peasant, and to find them in daily bread,

 in the indispensable stock of cattle and seed-corn, to repair their

 habitations, and so forth.

 

 “By this arrangement, and in a short time, a considerable portion of

 the lands of the Russian nobility became the property of the state,

 and with it a large number of serfs became Crown peasants. This was

 the first and most important step toward opening the road to freedom

 to that majority of the Russian population which consists of slaves.”

 

We have here the stage of preparation for that division of the land

which has, in all countries of the world, attended the growth of

wealth and population, and which is essential to further growth not

only in wealth but in freedom. Consolidation of the land has

everywhere been the accompaniment of slavery, and so must it always

be.

 

At the next step, we find the emperor bestowing upon the serf, as

preparatory to entire freedom, certain civil rights. An ukase

 

 “Permitted them to enter into contracts. Thereby was accorded to them

 not only the right of possessing property, but the infinitely higher

 blessing of a legal recognition of their moral worth as men. Hitherto

 the serf was recognised by the state only as a sort of beast in human

 form. He could hold no property, give no legal evidence, take no

 oath. No matter how eloquent his speech, he was dumb before the law.

 He might have treasures in his dwelling, the law knew him only as a

 pauper. His word and honor were valueless compared to those of the

 vilest freeman. In short, morally he could not be said to exist. The

 Emperor Nicholas gave to the serfs, that vast majority of his

 subjects, the first sensation of moral worth, the first throb of

 self-respect, the first perception of the rights and dignity and

 duty of man! What professed friend of the people can boast to have

 done more, or yet so much, for so many millions of men?”--_Ibid_, p.

 24.

 

“Having given the serfs power to hold property, the emperor now,” says

our author, “taught them to prize the said property above all in the

interest of their freedom.” The serf

 

 “Could, not buy his own freedom, but he became free by the purchase

 of the patch of soil to which he was linked. To such purchase the

 right of contract cleared his road. The lazy Russian, who worked with

 an ill-will toward his master, doing as little as he could for the

 latter’s profit, toiled day and night for his own advantage. Idleness

 was replaced by the diligent improvement of his farm, brutal

 drunkenness by frugality and sobriety; the earth, previously

 neglected, requited the unwonted care with its richest treasures. By

 the magic of industry, wretched hovels were transformed into

 comfortable dwellings, wildernesses into blooming fields, desolate

 steppes and deep morasses into productive land; whole communities,

 lately sunk in poverty, exhibited unmistakable signs of competency

 and well-doing. The serfs, now allowed to enter into contracts, lent

 the lord of the soil the money of which he often stood in need, on

 the same conditions as the Crown, receiving in security the land they

 occupied, their own bodies, and the bodies of their wives and

 children. The nobleman preferred the serfs’ loan to the government’s

 loan, because, when pay-day came for the annual interest and

 instalment, the Crown, if he was not prepared to pay, took possession

 of his estate, having funds wherewith to pay him the residue of its

 value. The parish of serfs, which had lent money to its owner, lacked

 these funds. Pay-day came, the debtor did not pay, but neither could

 the serfs produce the one-third of the value of the land which they

 must disburse to him in order to be free. Thus they lost their

 capital and did not gain their liberty. But Nicholas lived! the

 father of his subjects.

 

 “Between the anxious debtor and the still more anxious creditor now

 interposed an imperial ukase, which in such cases opened to the

 parishes of serfs the imperial treasury. Mark this; for it is worthy,

 to be noted; the Russian imperial treasury was opened to the serfs,

 that they might purchase their freedom!

 

 “The Government might simply have released the creditors from their

 embarrassment by paying the debtor the one-third still due to him,

 and then land and tenants belonged to the state;--one parish the more

 of _Crown peasants_. Nicholas did not adopt that course. He lent the

 serfs the money they needed to buy themselves from their master, and

 for this loan (a third only of the value) they mortgaged themselves

 and their lands to the Crown, paid annually three per cent. interest

 and three per cent. of the capital, and would thus in about thirty

 years be free, and proprietors of their land! That they would be able

 to pay off this third was evident, since, to obtain its amount they

 had still the same resources which enabled them to save up the

 two-thirds already paid. Supposing, however, the very worst,--that

 through inevitable misfortunes, such as pestilence, disease of

 cattle, &c., they were prevented satisfying the rightful claims of

 the Crown, in that case the Crown paid them back the two-thirds value

 which they had previously disbursed to their former owner, and they

 became a parish of Crown peasants, whose lot, compared to their

 earlier one, was still enviable. But not once in a hundred times do

 such cases occur, while, by the above plan, whole parishes gradually

 acquire their freedom, not by a sudden and violent change, which

 could not fail to have some evil consequences, but in course of time,

 after a probation of labour and frugality, and after thus attaining

 to the knowledge that without these two great factors of true

 freedom, no real liberty can possibly be durable.”--_Ibid_.

 

The free peasants as yet constitute small class, but they live

 

 “As free and happy men, upon their own land; are active, frugal, and,

 without exception, well off. This they must be, for considerable

 means are necessary for the purchase of their freedom; and, once

 free, and in possession of a farm of their own, their energy and

 industry, manifested even in a state of slavery, are redoubled by the

 enjoyment of personal liberty, and their earnings naturally increase

 in a like measure.

 

 “The second class, the crown peasants, are far better off (setting

 aside, of course, the consciousness of freedom) than the peasants of

 Germany. They must furnish their quota of recruits, but that is their

 only material burden. Besides that, they annually pay to the Crown a

 sum of five rubles (about four shillings) for each male person of the

 household. Supposing the family to include eight working men, which

 is no small number for a farm, the yearly tribute paid amounts to

 thirty-two shillings. And what a farm that must be which employs

 eight men all the year round! In what country of civilized Europe has

 the peasant so light a burden to bear? How much heavier those which

 press upon the English farmer, the French, the German, and above all

 the Austrian, who often gives up three-fourths of his harvest in

 taxes. If the Crown peasant be so fortunate as to be settled in the

 neighbourhood of a large town, his prosperity soon exceeds that even

 of the Altenburg husbandmen, said to be the richest in all Germany.

 On the other hand, he can never purchase his freedom; hitherto, at

 least, no law of the Crown has granted him this privilege.”--_Ibid_,

 156.

 

That this, however, is the tendency of every movement, must be

admitted by all who have studied the facts already given, and who read

the following account of the commencement of local self-government:--

 

 “But what would our ardent anti-Russians say, if I took them into the

 interior of the empire, gave them an insight into the organization of

 parishes, and showed them, to their infinite astonishment, what they

 never yet dreamed of, that the whole of that organization is based

 upon republican principles, that there every thing has its origin in

 election by the people, and that that was already the case at a

 period when the great mass of German democrats did not so much as

 know the meaning of popular franchise. Certainly the Russian serfs do

 not know at the present day what it means; but without knowing the

 name of the thing, without having ever heard a word of Lafayette’s

 ill-omened ‘_trône monarchique, environné d’institutions

 républicaines_,’ they choose their own elders, their administrators,

 their dispensers of justice and finance, and never dream that they,

 _slaves_, enjoy and benefit by privileges by which some of the most

 civilized nations have proved themselves incapable of profiting.

 

 “Space does not here permit a more extensive sketch of what the

 Emperor Nicholas has done, and still is daily doing, for the true

 freedom of his subjects; but what I have here brought forward must

 surely suffice to place him, in the eyes of every unprejudiced

 person, in the light of a real lover of his people. That his care has

 created a paradise that no highly criminal abuse of power, no

 shameful neglect prevails in the departments of justice and

 police--it is hoped no reflecting reader will infer from this

 exposition of facts. But the still-existing abuses alter nothing in

 my view of the emperor’s character, of his assiduous efforts to raise

 his nation out of the deep slough in which it still is partly sunk,

 of his efficacious endeavours to elevate his people to a knowledge

 and use of their rights as men--alter nothing in my profound

 persuasion that Czar Nicholas I. is the true father of his

 country.”--_Ibid_, 27.

 

We are told that the policy, of Russia is adverse to the progress of

civilization, while that of England is favourable to it, and that we

should aid the latter in opposing the former. How is this to be

proved? Shall we look to Ireland for the proof? If we do, we shall

meet there nothing but famine, pestilence, and depopulation. Or to

Scotland, where men, whose ancestors had occupied the same spot for

centuries are being hunted down that they may be transported to the

shores of the St. Lawrence, there to perish, as they so recently have

done, of cold and of hunger? Or to India, whose whole class of small

proprietors and manufacturers has disappeared under the blighting

influence of her system, and whose commerce diminishes, now from year

to year? Or to Portugal, the weakest and most wretched of the

communities of Europe? Or to China, poisoned with _smuggled_ opium,

that costs the nation annually little less than forty millions of

dollars, without which the Indian government could not be maintained?

Look where we may, we see a growing tendency toward slavery wherever

the British system is permitted to obtain; whereas freedom grows in

the ratio in which that system is repudiated.

 

That such must necessarily be the case will be seen by every reader

who will for a moment reflect on the difference between the effect of

the Russian system on the condition of Russian women, and that of the

British system on the condition of those of India. In the former there

is everywhere arising a demand for women to be employed in the lighter

labour of conversion, and thus do they tend from day to day to become

more self-supporting, and less dependent on the will of husbands,

brothers, or sons. In the other the demand for their labour has passed

away, and their condition declines, and so it must continue to do

while Manchester shall be determined upon closing the domestic demand

for cotton and driving the whole population to the production of

sugar, rice, and cotton, for export to England.

 

The system of Russia is attractive of population, and French, German,

and American mechanics of every description find demand for their

services. That of England is repulsive, as is seen by the _forced_

export of men from England, Scotland, Ireland, and India, now followed

by whole cargoes of women [181] sent out by aid of public

contributions, presenting a spectacle almost as humiliating to the

pride of the sex as can be found in the slave bazaar of

Constantinople.

 

Chapter 18. How freedom grows in Denmark

 

Compared with Ireland, India, or Turkey, DENMARK is a very poor

country. She has, says one of the most enlightened of modern British

travellers--

 

 “No metals or minerals, no fire power, no water power, no products or

 capabilities for becoming a manufacturing country supplying foreign

 consumers. She has no harbours on the North Sea. Her navigation is

 naturally confined to the Baltic. Her commerce is naturally confined

 to the home consumption of the necessaries and luxuries of civilized

 life, which the export of her corn and other agricultural products

 enables her to import and consume. She stands alone in her corner of

 the world, exchanging her loaf of bread, which she can spare, for

 articles she cannot provide for herself, but still providing for

 herself every thing she can by her own industry.”[182]

 

That industry is protected by heavy import duties, and those duties

are avowedly imposed with the view of enabling the farmer everywhere

to have the artisan at his side; thus bringing together the producers

and the consumers of the earth. “The greater part of their clothing

materials,” says Mr. Laing--

 

 “Linen, mixed linen and cotton, and woollen cloth, is home-made; and

 the materials to be worked up, the cotton yarns, dye stuffs, and

 utensils, are what they require from the shops. The flax and wool are

 grown and manufactured on the peasant’s farm; the spinning and

 weaving done in the house; the bleaching, dyeing, fulling done at

 home or in the village.” * * * “Bunches of ribbons, silver clasps,

 gold ear-rings, and other ornaments of some value, are profusely used

 in many of the female dresses, although the main material is

 home-made woollen and linen. Some of these female peasant costumes

 are very becoming when exhibited in silk, fine cloth, and lace, as

 they are worn by handsome country girls, daughters of rich peasant

 proprietors in the islands, who sometimes visit Copenhagen. They have

 often the air and appearance of ladies, and in fact are so in

 education, in their easy or even wealthy circumstances, and an

 inherited superiority over others of the same class.” * * * “In a

 large country-church at Gettorf, my own coat and the minister’s were,

 as far as I could observe, the only two in the congregation not of

 home-made cloth; and in Copenhagen the working and every-day clothes

 of respectable tradesmen and people of the middle class, and of all

 the artisans and the lower labouring classes, are, if not home-made

 and sent to them by their friends, at least country made; that is,

 not factory made, but spun, woven, and sold in the web, by peasants,

 who have more than they want for their family use, to small

 shopkeepers. This is particularly the case with linen. Flax is a crop

 on every farm; and the skutching, hackling, spinning, weaving, and

 bleaching are carried on in every country family.”--Pp. 381, 382,

 383.

 

The manufacture of this clothing finds employment for almost the whole

female population of the country and for a large proportion of the

male population during the winter months. Under a different system,

the money price of this clothing would be less than it now is--as low,

perhaps, as it has been in Ireland--but what would be its labour

price? Cloth is cheap in that country, but man is so much cheaper that

he not only goes in rags, but perishes of starvation, because

compelled to exhaust his land and waste his labour. “Where,” asks very

justly Mr. Laing--

 

 “Would be the gain to the Danish nation, if the small proportion of

 its numbers who do not live by husbandry got their shirts and jackets

 and all other clothing one-half cheaper, and the great majority, who

 now find winter employment in manufacturing their own clothing

 materials, for the time and labour which are of no value to them at

 that season, and can be turned to no account, were thrown idle by the

 competition of the superior and cheaper products of machinery and the

 factory?”--P. 385.

 

None! The only benefit derived by man from improvement in the

machinery of conversion is, that he is thereby enabled to give more

time, labour, and thought to the improvement of the earth, the great

machine of production; and in that there _can_ be no improvement under

a system that looks to the exportation of raw products, the sending

away of the soil, and the return of no manure to the land.

 

The whole Danish system tends to the local employment of both labour

and capital, and therefore to the growth of wealth and the division of

the land, and the improvement of the modes of cultivation. “With a

large and increasing proportion--

 

 “Of the small farms belonging to peasant proprietors, working

 themselves with hired labourers, and of a size to keep from five to

 thirty or forty cows summer and winter, there are many large farms of

 a size to keep from two hundred to three hundred, and even four

 hundred cows, summer and winter, and let to verpachters, or large

 tenant farmers, paying money rents. This class of verpachters are

 farmers of great capital and skill, very intelligent and

 enterprising, well acquainted with all modern improvements in

 husbandry, using guano, tile-draining, pipe-draining, and likely to

 be very formidable rivals in the English markets to the

 old-fashioned, use-and-want English farmers, and even to most of our

 improving large farmers in Scotland.”--_Laing_, 52.

 

The system of this country has attracted instead of repelling

population, and with its growth there has been a constant and rapid

advance toward freedom. The class of verpachters above described

 

 “Were originally strangers from Mecklenburg, Brunswick, and Hanover,

 bred to the complicated arrangements and business of a great dairy

 farm, and they are the best educated, most skilful, and most

 successful farmers in the North of Europe. Many of them have

 purchased large estates. The extensive farms they occupy, generally

 on leases of nine years, are the domains and estates of the nobles,

 which, before 1784, were cultivated by the serfs, who were, before

 that period, _adscripti glebæ_, and who were bound to work every day,

 without wages, on the main farm of the feudal lord, and had cottages

 and land, on the outskirts of the estate, to work upon for their own

 living when they were not wanted on the farm of the baron. Their

 feudal lord could imprison them, flog them, reclaim them if they had

 deserted from his land, and had complete feudal jurisdiction over

 them in his baronial court.”--P. 53.

 

It is, however, not only in land, but in various other modes, that the

little owner of capital is enabled to employ it with advantage. “The

first thing a Dane does with his savings,” says Mr. Brown,[183]

British consul at Copenhagen--

 

 “Is to purchase a clock; then a horse and cow, which he hires out,

 and which pay good interest. Then his ambition is to become a petty

 proprietor; and _this class of persons is better off than any in

 Denmark_. Indeed, I know no people in any country who have more

 easily within their reach all that is really necessary for life than

 this class, which is very large in comparison with that of

 labourers.”

 

To the power advantageously to employ the small accumulations of the

labourer, it is due that the proportion of small proprietors has

become so wonderfully large. “The largest proportion of the country,

and of the best land of it,” says Mr. Laing,[184] is in their hands--

 

 “With farms of a size to keep ten or fifteen cows, and which they

 cultivate by hired labour, along with the labour of the family. These

 small proprietors, called huffner, probably from _hoff_, a

 farm-steading and court-yard, correspond to the yeomen, small

 freeholders, and statesmen, of the North of England, and many of them

 are wealthy. Of this class of estates, it is reckoned there are about

 125,150 in the two duchies: some of the huffners appear to be

 copyholders, not freeholders; that is, they hold their land by

 hereditary right, and may sell or dispose of it; but their land is

 subject to certain fixed payments of money, labour, cartages,

 ploughing yearly to the lord of the manor of which they hold it, or

 to fixed fines for non-payment. A class of smaller land-holders are

 called Innsters, and are properly cottars with a house, a yard, and

 land for a cow or two, and pay a rent in money and in labour, and

 receive wages, at a reduced rate, for their work all the year round.

 They are equivalent to our class of married farm-servants, but with

 the difference that they cannot be turned off at the will or

 convenience of the verpachter, or large farmer, but hold of the

 proprietor; and all the conditions under which they hold--sometimes

 for life, sometimes for a term of years--are as fixed and supported

 by law, as those between the proprietor and the verpachter. Of this

 class there are about 67,710, and of house-cottars without land;

 17,480, and 36,283 day-labourers in husbandry. The land is well

 divided among a total population of only 662,500 souls.”--P. 43.

 

Even the poorest of these labouring householders has a garden, some

land, and a cow;[185] and everywhere the eye and hand of the little

proprietor may be seen busily employed, while the larger farmers, says

our author--

 

 “Attend our English cattle-shows and agricultural meetings, are

 educated men, acquainted with every agricultural improvement, have

 agricultural meetings and cattle-shows of their own, and publish the

 transactions and essays of the members. They use guano, and all the

 animal or chemical manures, have introduced tile-draining, machinery

 for making pipes and tiles, and are no strangers to irrigation on

 their old grass meadows.”--P. 127.

 

As a natural consequence, the people are well clothed. “The

proportion,” says Mr. Laing--

 

 “Of well-dressed people in the streets is quite as great as in our

 large towns; few are so shabby in clothes as the unemployed or

 half-employed workmen and labourers in Edinburgh; and a proletarian

 class, half-naked and in rags, is not to be seen. The supply of

 clothing material for the middle and lower classes seems as great,

 whether we look at the people themselves or at the second or third

 rate class of shops with goods for their use.”--P. 379.

 

In regard to house accommodation, he says:--

 

 “The country people of Denmark and the duchies are well lodged. The

 material is brick. The roofing is of thatch in the country, and of

 tiles in the towns. Slate is unknown. The dwelling apartments are

 always floored with wood. I have described in a former note the great

 hall in which all the cattle and crops and wagons are housed, and

 into which the dwelling apartments open. The accommodations outside

 of the meanest cottage, the yard, garden, and offices, approach more

 to the dwellings of the English than of the Scotch people of the same

 class.”--P. 420.

 

Every parish has its established schoolmaster, as well as

 

 “Its established minister; but it appears to me that the class of

 parochial schoolmasters here stands in a much higher position than,

 in Scotland. They are better paid, their houses, glebes, and stipends

 are better, relatively to the ordinary houses and incomes of the

 middle class in country places, and they are men of much higher

 education than their Scotch brethren.” * * * “It is quite free to any

 one who pleases to open a school; and to parents to send their

 children to school or not, as they please. If the young people are

 sufficiently instructed to receive confirmation from the clergyman,

 or to stand an examination for admission as students at the

 university, where or how they acquired their instruction is not

 asked. Government has provided schools, and highly qualified and

 well-paid teachers, but invests them with no monopoly of teaching, no

 powers as a corporate body, and keeps them distinct from and

 unconnected with the professional body in the university.”--Pp. 170,

 336.

 

“The most striking feature in the character of these small town

populations,” says our author--

 

 “And that which the traveller least expects to find in countries so

 secluded, so removed from intercourse with other countries, by

 situation and want of exchangeable products, as Sleswick, Jutland,

 and the Danish islands, is the great diffusion of education,

 literature, and literary tastes. In towns, for instance, of 6000

 inhabitants, in England, we seldom find such establishments as the

 6000 inhabitants of Aalborg, the most northerly town in Jutland,

 possess. They enjoy, on the banks of the Lymfiord, a classical school

 for the branches of learning required from students entering the

 university; an educational institution, and six burger schools for

 the ordinary branches of education, and in which the Lancastrian

 method of mutual instruction is in use; a library of 12,000 volumes,

 belonging to the province of Aalborg, is open to the public; a

 circulating library of 2000 volumes; several private collections and

 museums, to which access is readily given; a dramatic association,

 acting every other Sunday; and two club-houses for balls and

 concerts. A printing office and a newspaper, published weekly or

 oftener, are, in such towns, establishments of course. Wyborg, the

 most ancient town in Jutland, the capital in the time of the pagan

 kings, and once a great city, with twelve parish churches and six

 monasteries, but now containing no remains of its former grandeur,

 and only about 3000 inhabitants, has its newspaper three times a

 week, its classical school, its burger school, its public library,

 circulating library, and its dramatic association acting six or eight

 plays in the course of the winter. These, being county towns, the

 seats of district courts and business, have, no doubt, more of such

 establishments than the populations of the towns themselves could

 support; but this indicates a wide diffusion of education and

 intellectual tastes in the surrounding country. Randers, on the Guden

 River, the only river of any length of course which runs into the

 Baltic or Cattegat from the peninsular land, and the only one in

 which salmon are caught, is not a provincial capital, and is only

 about twenty-five English miles from the capital Wyborg; but it has,

 for its 6000 inhabitants, a classical school, several burger schools;

 one of which has above 300 children taught by the mutual-instruction

 method, a book society, a musical society, a circulating library, a

 printing press, a newspaper published three times a week, a

 club-house, and a dramatic society. Aarhuus, with, about the same

 population as Randers, and about the same distance from it as Randers

 from Wyborg, has a high school, two burger schools, and a ragged or

 poor school, a provincial library of 3000 or 4000 volumes, a school

 library of about the same extent, a library belonging to a club, a

 collection of minerals and shells belonging to the high schools, a

 printing press, (from which a newspaper and a literary periodical are

 issued,) book and music shops, a club-house, concert and ball-room,

 and a dramatic society. Holstebro, a little inland town of about 800

 inhabitants, about thirty-five English miles west from Wyborg, has

 its burger school on the mutual-instruction system, its reading

 society, and its agricultural society. In every little town in this

 country, the traveller finds educational institutions and indications

 of intellectual taste for reading, music, theatrical representations,

 which, he cannot but admit, surpass what he finds at home in England,

 in similar towns and among the same classes.”--P.316.

 

We have here abundant evidence of the beneficial effect of local

action, as compared with centralisation. Instead of having great

establishments in Copenhagen, and no local schools, or newspapers,

there is everywhere provision for education, and evidence that the

people avail themselves of it. Their tastes are cultivated, and

becoming more so from day to day; and thus do they present a striking

contrast with the picture furnished by the opposite shore of the

German Ocean, and for the reason that there the system is based on the

idea of cheapening labour at home and underworking the labourer

abroad. The windows of the poorest houses, says Mr. Laing--

 

 “Rarely want a bit of ornamental drapery, and are always decked with

 flowers and plants in flower-pots. The people have a passion for

 flowers. The peasant girl and village beau are adorned with bouquets

 of the finest of ordinary flowers; and in the town you see people

 buying, flowers who with us, in the same station, would think it

 extravagance. The soil and climate favour this taste. In no part of

 Europe are the ordinary garden-flowers produced in such abundance and

 luxuriance as in Holstein and Sleswick.”--P. 50.

 

The people have everywhere “leisure to be happy, amused, and

educated,”[186] and, as a consequence, the sale of books is large. The

number of circulating libraries is no less than six hundred,[187] and

their demands give

 

 “More impulse to literary activity than appears in Edinburgh, where

 literature is rather passive than active, and what is produced worth

 publishing is generally sent to the London market. This is the reason

 why a greater number of publications appear in the course of the year

 in Copenhagen than in Edinburgh.” * * * “The transmission of books

 and other small parcels by post, which we think a great improvement,

 as it unquestionably is, and peculiar to our English post-office

 arrangement, is of old standing in Denmark, and is of great advantage

 for the diffusion of knowledge, and of great convenience to the

 people.”--Pp. 373, 374.

 

The material and intellectual condition of this people is declared by

Mr. Laing--and he is an experienced and most observant traveller--to

be higher than that of any other in Europe;[188] while Mr. Kay, also

very high authority, places the people of England among the most

ignorant and helpless of those of Europe. The Danes consume more food

for the mind

 

 “Than the Scotch; have more daily and weekly newspapers, and other

 periodical works, in their metropolis and in their country towns, and

 publish more translated and original works; have more public

 libraries, larger libraries, and libraries more easily accessible to

 persons of all classes, not only in Copenhagen, but in all provincial

 and country towns; have more small circulating libraries, book-clubs,

 musical associations, theatres and theatrical associations, and

 original dramatic compositions; more museums, galleries, collections

 of statues, paintings, antiquities, and objects gratifying to the

 tastes of a refined and intellectual people, and open equally to all

 classes, than the people of Scotland can produce in the length and

 breadth of the land.”--P. 390.

 

High moral condition is a necessary consequence of an elevated

material and intellectual one; and therefore it is that we find the

Dane distinguished for kindness, urbanity, and regard for others,[189]

and this is found in all portions of society. In visiting the Museum

of Northern Antiquities, which is open to the public, free of charge,

on certain days--

 

 “The visitors are not left to gape in ignorance at what they see.

 Professors of the highest attainments in antiquarian

 science--Professor Thomsen, M. Worsaae, and others--men who, in fact,

 have created a science out of an undigested mass of relics,

 curiosities, and specimens, of the arts in the early ages--go round

 with groups of the visitors, and explain equally to all, high and

 low, with the greatest zeal, intelligence, and affability, the uses

 of the articles exhibited, the state of the arts in the ages in which

 they were used, the gradual progress of mankind from shells, stones,

 and bones to bronze and iron, as the materials for tools, ornaments,

 and weapons, and the conclusions made, and the grounds and reasons

 for making them, in their antiquarian researches. They deliver, in

 fact, an extempore lecture, intelligible to the peasant and

 instructive to the philosopher.”--P. 399.

 

In place of the wide gulf that divides the two great portions of

English society, we find here great equality of social intercourse,

and

 

 “It seems not to be condescension merely on one side, and grateful

 respect for being noticed at all on the other, but a feeling of

 independence and mutual respect between individuals of the most

 different stations and classes. This may be accounted for from wealth

 not being so all-important as in our social state; its influence in

 society is less where the majority are merely occupied in living

 agreeably on what they have, without motive or desire to have

 more.”--P. 423.

 

How strikingly does the following contrast with the description of

London, and its hundred thousand people without a place to lay their

heads!--

 

 “The streets are but poorly lighted, gas is not yet introduced, and

 the police is an invisible force; yet one may walk at all hours

 through this town without seeing a disorderly person, a man in liquor

 unable to take care of himself, or a female street-walker. Every one

 appears to have a home and bed of some kind, and the houseless are

 unknown as a class.”--P. 394.

 

Why this is so is, that, because of the growing improvement in the

condition of the people, the land is daily increasing in value, and is

becoming divided, and men are attracted from the city to the land and

the smaller towns--directly the reverse of what is observed in

England. “There is,” says Mr. Laing--

 

 “No such influx, as in our large towns, of operatives in every trade,

 who, coming from the country to better their condition, are by far

 too numerous for the demand, must take work at lower and lower wages

 to keep themselves from starving, and who reduce their

 fellow-craftsmen and themselves to equal misery. Employment is more

 fixed and stationary for the employed and the employers. There is no

 foreign trade or home consumption to occasion great and sudden

 activity and expansion in manufactures, and equally great and sudden

 stagnation and collapse.”--P. 394.

 

“Drunkenness has almost,” we are told, “disappeared from the Danish

character,” and it is

 

 “The education of the tastes for more refined amusements than the

 counter of the gin-palace or the back parlour of the whisky-shop

 afford, that has superseded the craving for the excitement of

 spirituous liquor. The tea-gardens, concert-rooms, ball-rooms,

 theatres, skittle-grounds, all frequented indiscriminately by the

 highest and the lowest classes, have been the schools of useful

 knowledge that have imparted to the lowest class something of the

 manners and habits of the highest, and have eradicated drunkenness

 and brutality, in ordinary intercourse, from the character of the

 labouring people.”--P. 396.

 

Denmark is, says this high authority, “a living evidence of the

falsity of the theory that population increases more rapidly than

subsistence where the land of the country is held by small working

proprietors;”[190] and she is a living evidence, too, of the falsity

of the theory that men commence with the cultivation of the most

productive soils, and find themselves, as wealth and population

increase, forced to resort to poorer ones, with diminished return to

labour. Why she is enabled to afford such conclusive evidence of this

is, that she pursues a policy tending to permit her people to have

that real free trade which consists in having the power to choose

between the foreign and domestic markets--a power, the exercise of

which is denied to India and Ireland, Portugal and Turkey. She desires

to exercise control over her own movements, and not over those of

others; and therefore it is that her people become from day to day

more free and her land from day to day more valuable.

 

Turkey is the paradise of the system commonly known by the name of

free trade--that system under which the artisan _is not permitted_ to

take his place by the side of the producer of silk and cotton--and the

consequence is, seen in the growing depopulation of the country, the

increasing poverty and slavery of its people, the worthlessness of its

land, and in the weakness of its government. Denmark, on the contrary,

is the paradise of the system supposed to be opposed to free

trade--that system under which the artisan and the farmer _are_

permitted to combine their efforts--and the consequence is seen in the

increase of population, in the growth of wealth and freedom, in the

growing value of land, in the increasing tendency to equality, and in

the strength of its government, as exhibited in its resistance of the

whole power of Northern Germany during the late Schleswig-Holstein

war, and as afterward exhibited toward those of its own subjects who

had aided in bringing on the war. “It is to the honour,” says Mr.

Laing [191] --

 

 “Of the Danish king and government, and it is a striking example of

 the different progress of civilization in the North and in the South

 of Europe, that during the three years this insurrection lasted, and

 now that it is quelled, not one individual has been tried and put to

 death, or in any way punished for a civil or political offence by

 sentence of a court-martial, or of any other than the ordinary courts

 of justice; not one life has been taken but in the field of battle,

 and by the chance of war. Banishment for life has been the highest

 punishment inflicted upon traitors who, as military officers

 deserting their colours, breaking their oaths of fidelity, and giving

 up important trusts to the enemy, would have been tried by

 court-martial and shot in any other country. Civil functionaries who

 had abused their official power, and turned it against the

 government, were simply dismissed.”

 

These facts contrast strikingly with those recently presented to view

by Irish history. Ireland had no friends in her recent attempt at

change of government. Her leaders had not even attempted to call in

the aid of other nations. They stood alone, and yet the English

government deemed it necessary to place them in an island at a

distance of many thousand miles, and to keep them there confined.

Denmark, on the contrary, was surrounded by enemies close at

hand--enemies that needed no ships for the invasion of her

territory--and yet she contented herself with simple banishment. The

policy of the former looks abroad, and therefore is it weak at home.

That of the latter looks homeward, and therefore is it that at home

she is strong; small as she is, compared with other powers, in her

territory and in the number of her population.

 

Chapter 19. How freedom grows in Spain and in Belgium

 

Spain expelled the industrious portion of her population, and almost

at the same time acquired colonies of vast extent, to which she looked

for revenue. Centralization here was almost perfect--and here, as

everywhere, it has been accompanied by poverty and weakness. With

difficulty she has been enabled to defend her rights on her own soil,

and she has found it quite impossible to maintain her power abroad,

and for the reason that her system tended to the impoverishment of her

people and the destruction of the value of labour and land. Her

history tends throughout to show that nations which desire respect for

their own rights, _must_ learn to respect those of others.

 

The policy of Spain has been unfavourable to commerce, internal and

external. Exchanges at home were burdened with heavy taxes, and the

raw materials of manufacture, even those produced at home, were so

heavily taxed on their passage from the place of production to that of

consumption, that manufactures could not prosper. The great middle

class of artisans could therefore scarcely be found, and the scattered

agriculturists were thus deprived of their aid in the effort to

establish or maintain their freedom. Towns and cities decayed, and

land, became more and more consolidated in the hands of great noblemen

on one side and the church on the other, and talent found no field for

its exercise, except in the service of the church or the state.

 

While thus destroying internal trade by taxation, efforts were made to

build it up by aid of restrictions on external trade; but the very

fact that the former was destroyed made it necessary for thousands and

tens of thousands of persons to endeavour to earn wages in the

smuggling of foreign merchandise, and the country was filled with men

ever ready to violate the law, because of the cheapness of labour. The

laws restraining the import of foreign merchandise were easily

violated, because its bulk was small and its value great; whereas

those interfering with the transit of raw materials were easily

enforced, because the bulk was great and their value small; and

therefore the whole system tended effectually to prevent the artisan

from taking his place by the side of the grower of food and wool; and

hence the depopulation, poverty, and weakness of this once rich and

powerful country.

 

Fortunately for her, however, the day arrived when she was to lose her

colonies, and find herself compelled to follow the advice of Adam

Smith, and look to home for revenue; and almost from that date to the

present, notwithstanding foreign invasions, civil wars, and

revolutions, her course has been onward, and with each succeeding year

there has been a greater tendency toward diversification of

employment, the growth of towns and other places of local exchange,

the improvement of agriculture, the strengthening of the people in

their relations with the government, and the strengthening of the

nation as regards the other nations of the earth.

 

Among the earliest measures tending toward the emancipation of the

people of Germany, Russia, and Denmark, was, as has been seen, the

removal of restrictions upon the trade in land, the great machine of

production. So, too, was it in Spain. According to a return made to

the Cortes of Cadiz, out of sixty millions of acres then in

cultivation, only twenty millions were held by the men who cultivated

them, while thirty were in the hands of great nobles, and ten were

held by the church. Under a decree of secularization, a large portion

of the latter has been sold, and the result is seen in the fact that

the number of owners cultivating their own properties has risen from

273,760 to 546,100; and the number of farms from 403,408 to

1,095,200.[192]

 

A further step toward freedom and the establishment of equal rights,

is found in the abolition of a great variety of small and vexatious

taxes, substituting therefor a land-tax, payable alike by the small

and the great proprietor; and in the abolition of internal duties on

the exchange of the raw materials of manufacture. With each of these

we find increasing tendency toward the establishment of that division

of employment which gives value to labour and land. From 1841 to 1846,

the number of spindles in Catalonia has grown from 62,000 to 121,000,

and that of looms from 30,000 to 45,000, while cotton factories had

been put in operation in various other parts of the kingdom.[193]

Still later, numerous others have been started, and a traveller of the

past year informs us that the province of Granada now bids fair to

rival Catalonia in her manufactures.[194] In 1841, the total value of

the products of the cotton manufacture was estimated at about four

millions of dollars, but in 1846 it had risen to more than six and a

half millions. The woollen manufacture had also rapidly increased, and

this furnishes employment at numerous places throughout the kingdom,

one of which, Alcoy, is specially referred to by M. Block,[195] as

situated among the mountains which separate the ancient kingdom of

Valencia and Murcia, and as having no less than 24,000 spindles, and

12,000 men, in addition to a great number of women and children,

engaged in this branch of manufacture.

 

In regard to the progress of manufactures generally, the following

statement, furnished by a recent American traveller to whom we are

indebted for an excellent work on Spain, furnishes much information,

and cannot be read without interest by all those who derive pleasure

from witnessing advance in civilization.[196]

 

 “Of late years there has been a considerable effort to extend and

 improve the production and manufacture of silk, and the result has

 been very favourable. The silkworm, formerly confined, in a great

 degree, to Valencia and Murcia, is now an article of material

 importance in the wealth of the two Castiles, Rioja, and Aragon. The

 silk fabrics of Talavera, Valencia, and Barcelona are many of them

 admirably wrought, and are sold at rates which appear very moderate.

 I had particular occasion to note the cheapness of the damasks which

 are sold in Madrid from the native looms. It is not easy to imagine

 any thing more magnificent, of their kind. The woollen cloths, too,

 of home manufacture, are, some of them, very admirable, and the

 coarser kinds supply, I believe, a considerable part of the national

 demand. In cheapness I have never seen them surpassed. The finer

 qualities do not bear so favourable a comparison with the foreign

 article; but those who were familiar with the subject informed me

 that their recent improvement had been very decided. Many laudable

 efforts have been made to render the supply of wool more abundant,

 and to improve its quality, and there has been a considerable

 importation of foreign sheep, with a view to crossing on the native

 breeds. The sheep-rearing interest is so very large in Spain, that

 any material improvement in the quality of the wool must add greatly

 to the national wealth, as well as to the importance of the woollen

 manufacture and its ability to encounter foreign competition.

 

 “In the general movement toward an increased and more valuable

 production of the raw material for manufacture, the flax of Leon and

 Galicia and the hemp of Granada have not been forgotten. But the

 article in which the most decided and important progress has been

 made, is the great staple, iron. In 1832; the iron-manufacture of

 Spain was at so low an ebb, that it was necessary to import from

 England the large lamp-posts of cast metal, which adorn the Plaza de

 Armas of the Palace. They bear the London mark, and tell their own

 story. A luxury for the indoors enjoyment or personal ostentation of

 the monarch, would of course have been imported from any quarter,

 without regard to appearances. But a monument of national dependence

 upon foreign industry would hardly have been erected upon such a

 spot, had there been a possibility of avoiding it by any domestic

 recourse. In 1850 the state of things had so far changed, that there

 were in the kingdom twenty-five founderies, eight furnaces of the

 first class, with founderies attached, and twenty-five

 iron-factories, all prosperously and constantly occupied. The

 specimens of work from these establishments, which are to be seen in

 the capital and the chief cities of the provinces, are such as to

 render the independence and prospective success of the nation in this

 particular no longer matters of question. In the beginning of 1850,

 the Marquis of Molins, then Minister of Marine Affairs, upon the

 petition of the iron-manufacturers, directed inquiries to be made, by

 a competent board, into the quality of the native iron, and the

 extent to which the home manufacture might be relied on for the

 purposes of naval construction. The result was so satisfactory, that

 in March of the same year a royal order was issued from the

 department, directing all future contracts to be made with the

 domestic establishments. This, indeed, has been the case since 1845,

 at the arsenal of Ferrol, which has been supplied altogether from the

 iron-works of Biscay. The government, however, had determined for the

 future to be chiefly its own purveyor, and national founderies at

 Ferrol and Trubia, constructed without regard to expense, were about

 to go into operation when the royal order was published.”

 

A necessary consequence of all these steps toward freedom and

association has been great agricultural improvement. “The impoverished

industry and neglected agriculture of the land,” says Mr. Wallis--

 

 “Have received an accession of vigorous labour, no longer tempted

 into sloth by the seductions of a privileged and sensual life. In the

 cities and larger towns the convent buildings have been displaced, to

 make room for private dwellings of more or less convenience and

 elegance, or have been appropriated as public offices or repositories

 of works of art. The extensive grounds which were monopolized by some

 of the orders, in the crowded midst of populous quarters, have been

 converted into walks or squares, dedicated to the public health and

 recreation. In a word, what was intended in the beginning as the

 object of monastic endowments, has been to some extent realized. What

 was meant for the good of all, though intrusted to a few, has been

 taken from the few who used it as their own, and distributed, rudely

 it may be, but yet effectually, among the many who were entitled to

 and needed it.”--P. 276.

 

At the close of the last century, the value of agricultural products

was officially returned at 5143 millions of reals, or about 260

millions of dollars. In 1829, a similar return made it somewhat less,

or about 232 millions, but since that time the increase has been so

rapid, that it is now returned at nearly 450 millions of dollars.[197]

 

Twenty years since, the means of transporting produce throughout the

country were so bad that famine might prevail in Andalusia, and men

might perish there in thousands, while grain wasted on the fields of

Castile, because the _silos_ of the latter no longer afforded room to

store it. Even now, “in some districts, it is a familiar fact,

 

 “That the wine of one vintage has to be emptied, in waste, in order

 to furnish skins for the wine of the next--the difficulty and cost of

 transportation to market being such as utterly to preclude the

 producer from attempting a more profitable disposition of it. Staples

 of the most absolute and uniform necessity--wheat, for instance--are

 at prices absurdly different in different parts of the kingdom; the

 proximity to market being such as to give them their current value in

 one quarter, while in another they are perhaps rotting in their

 places of deposite, without the hope of a demand. Until such a state

 of things shall have been cured, it will be useless to improve the

 soil, or stimulate production in the secluded districts; and of

 course every circumstance which wears the promise of such cure must

 enter into the calculations of the future, and avail in them

 according to its probabilities.”--_Wallis_, P. 328.

 

We see thus that here, as everywhere, the power to make roads is least

where the necessity for them is greatest. Had the farmers of Castile a

near market in which their wheat could be combined with the wool that

is shorn in their immediate neighbourhood, they could export cloth,

and _that_ could travel even on bad roads. As it is, they have to

export both wheat and wool, and on such roads, whereas if the artisan

could, in accordance, with the doctrines of Adam Smith, everywhere

take his place by the side of the ploughman and the shepherd; and if

women and children could thus everywhere be enabled to find other

employment than in field labour, towns would grow up, and men would

become rich and strong, and roads could be made without difficulty.

Even now, however, there is a rapidly increasing tendency toward the

construction of railroads, and the completion and enlargement of

canals, and not a doubt can be entertained that in a few years the

modes of intercourse will be so improved as to put an end to the

enormous differences in prices here observed.[198]

 

Those differences are, however, precisely similar to those now

regarded as desirable by English writers who find compensation for the

loss of men, “in the great stimulus that our extensive emigration will

give to every branch of the shipping interest.”[199] The nearer the

place of exchange the fewer ships and seamen are needed, and the

richer _must_ grow the producer and the consumer, because the number

of persons among whom the total product is to be divided is then the

least.

 

With increased power of association there is a steady improvement in

the provision for education. Half a century since, the whole number of

students at all the educational establishments in the kingdom was but

30,000,[200] and it had not materially varied in 1835; whereas the

number now in the public schools alone, for the support of which there

is an annual appropriation of $750,000, is above 700,000, or one to 17

of the population. The primary and other schools reach the number of

16,000; and besides these and the universities, there are numerous

other institutions devoted to particular branches of education, some

of which are provided for by government, and others by public bodies

or private subscription. “No impediment,” says Mr. Wallis--

 

 “Is thrown by law in the way of private teachers--except that they

 are required to produce certain certificates of good character and

 conduct, and of having gone through a prescribed course, which is

 more or less extensive, in proportion to the rank of the institution

 they may desire to open.”

 

As a necessary consequence of these changes there has been a great

increase in the value of land, and of real estate generally. Mr.

Wallis states that the church property has “commanded an average of

nearly double the price at which it was officially assessed according

to the standard of value at the time of its seizure,” and we need

desire no better evidence that man is tending gradually toward freedom

than is to be found in this single fact.

 

It might be supposed, that with the increased tendency to convert at

home the raw products of the earth, there would be a diminution of

foreign commerce; but directly the reverse is the case. In the three

years, from 1846 to 1849, the import of raw cotton rose from

16,000,000 to 27,000,000 of pounds; that of yarn from 5,200,000 to

6,800,000 pounds; and that of bar-iron from 5,400,000 to more than

8,000,000; and the general movements of exports and imports for the

last twenty-four years, as given by M. Block, (p. 18,) has been, as

follows:--

 

              Imports, in francs.       Exports, in francs.

              -------------------       -------------------

    1827.........   95,235,000.........     71,912,000

 

    1843.........  114,325,000.........     82,279,000

 

    1846.........  157,513,000.........    129,106,000

 

  And to this may be added, as since published by the

  government, the account for

 

    1851.........  171,912,000.........    124,377,000

 

With each step in the direction of bringing the consumer and the

producer to take their places by the side of each other, the people

acquire power to protect themselves, as is seen in the freedom of

debate in the Chamber of Deputies, and in the extent to which those

debates, with their comments thereon, are made known throughout the

kingdom by the writers of a newspaper press that, although restricted,

has been well characterized as, “fearless and plain speaking.” In

1826, Madrid had but two daily newspapers, both of them most

contemptible in character. In February, 1850, there were thirteen,

with an aggregate circulation of 35,000 copies; and yet Madrid has no

commerce, and can furnish little advertising for their support. [201]

 

With the increase of production and of wealth, and with the growth of

the power of association, and of intelligence among the people, the

government gradually acquires strength in the community of nations,

and power to enforce its laws, as is here shown in the large decline

that has taken place in the English exports to Portugal and Gibraltar,

heretofore the great smuggling depots for English manufactures,[202]

 

as compared with those to Spain direct:

 

                  Portugal.      Gibraltar.          Spain.

                  ---------      ----------          ------

    In 1839..... £1,217,082..... £1,433,932......  £262,231

       1852.....  1,048,356.....    481,286...... 1,015,493

 

The system that looks to consolidation of the land tends toward

inequality, and that such has been, and is, the tendency of that of

England, wherever fully carried out, has been shown. Those of Germany,

Russia, and Denmark tend in the opposite direction, and under them men

are becoming daily more independent in their action, and consequently

more and more kindly and respectful in their treatment of each other.

Such, likewise, is the case in Spain. “The Spaniard,” says Mr.

Wallis--

 

 “Has a sense of equality, which blesses him who gives as well as him

 who takes. If he requires the concession from others, he demands it

 chiefly and emphatically through the concessions which he makes to

 them. There is so much self-respect involved in his respect to

 others, and in his manifestation of it, that reciprocity is

 unavoidable. To this, and this mainly, is attributable the high,

 courteous bearing, which is conspicuous in all the people, and which

 renders the personal intercourse of the respective classes and

 conditions less marked by strong and invidious distinctions, than in

 any other nation with whose manners and customs I am familiar. It is

 this, perhaps, more than any other circumstance, which has tempered

 and made sufferable the oppression of unequal and despotic

 institutions, illustrating ‘the advantage to which,’ in the words of

 a philosophic writer, ‘the manners of a people may turn the most

 unfavourable position and the worst laws.’”--P. 383.

 

Again, he says--

 

 “If in the midst of the very kindness which made him at home upon the

 briefest acquaintance, he should perceive an attentive politeness,

 approaching so near to formality as now and then to embarrass him, he

 would soon be brought to understand and admire it as the expression

 of habitual consideration for the feelings of others. He would value

 it the more when he learned from its universality, that what was

 elsewhere chiefly a thing of manners and education, was there a

 genial instinct developed into a social charity.”--P. 207.

 

The “popular element is fully at work,” and it requires, says the same

author, but a comparison of the present with the past, “to remove all

doubts of the present, and to justify the happiest augury.” “The lotos

of freedom has,” he continues--

 

 “Been tasted, and it cannot readily be stricken from their lips. So

 long as the more important guaranties are not altogether violated--so

 long as the government substantially, dedicates itself to the public

 good, by originating and fostering schemes of public usefulness, it

 may take almost any liberties with forms and non-essentials. Much

 further it will not be permitted to go, and every day diminishes the

 facility with which it may go even thus far. Every work of internal

 improvement, which brings men closer together, enabling them to

 compare opinions with readiness and concentrate strength for their

 maintenance; every new interest that is built up; every heavy and

 permanent investment of capital or industry; every movement that

 develops and diffuses the public intelligence and energy, is a

 bulwark more or less formidable against reaction. Nay, every

 circumstance that makes the public wiser, richer, or better, must

 shorten the career of arbitrary rule. The compulsion, which was and

 still is a necessary evil for the preservation of peace, must be

 withdrawn when peace becomes an instinct as well as a necessity. The

 existence of a stringent system will no longer be acquiesced in when

 the people shall have grown less in need of government, and better

 able to direct it for themselves. Thus, in their season, the very

 interests which shall be consolidated and made vigorous by forced

 tranquillity will rise, themselves, into the mastery. The stream of

 power as it rolls peacefully along, is daily strengthening the banks,

 which every day, though imperceptibly, encroach on it.” --P. 381.

 

       *       *       *       *       *

 

BELGIUM.

 

Belgium is a country with four and a half millions of inhabitants, or

about one-half more than the State of New York. It is burdened with a

heavy debt assumed at the period of its separation from Holland, and

it finds itself compelled to maintain an army that is large in

proportion to its population, because in the vicinity of neighbours

who have at all times shown themselves ready to make it the

battle-ground of Europe. In no country of Europe has there been so

great a destruction, of property and life, and yet in none has there

been so great a tendency toward freedom; and for the reason that in

none has there been manifested so little disposition to interfere with

the affairs of other nations. It is burdened now with a taxation

amounting to about twenty-three millions of dollars, or five dollars

and a half per head; and yet, amid all the revolutions and attempts at

revolution by which the peace of Europe is disturbed, we hear nothing

of the Belgians, whose course is as tranquil as it was before the days

of 1848--and this is a consequence of following in the path indicated

by Adam Smith.

 

The policy of Belgium looks more homeward than that of any nation of

Europe. She has no colonies, and she seeks none. To a greater extent

than almost any other nation, she has sought to enable her farmers to

have local places of exchange, giving value to her labour and her

land. Where these exist, men are certain to become free; and equally

certain is it that where they do not exist, freedom must be a plant of

exceedingly slow growth, even where it does not absolutely perish for

want of nourishment. If evidence be desired of the freedom of the

Belgians, it is to be found in the fact that there is nowhere to be

seen, as we are on all hands assured, a more contented, virtuous, and

generally comfortable population than that engaged in the cultivation

of her fields. The following sketch is from a report published by

order of Parliament, and cannot fail to be read with interest by those

who desire to understand how it is that the dense population of this

little country is enabled to draw from a soil naturally indifferent

such large returns, while the Hindoo, with all his advantages of early

civilization, wealth, and population, perishes of famine or flies from

pestilence, leaving behind him, uncultivated, the richest soils, and

sells himself to slavery in Cuba:--

 

 “The farms in Belgium rarely exceed one hundred acres. The number

 containing fifty acres is not great; those of thirty or twenty are

 more numerous, but the number of holdings of from five to ten and

 twenty acres is very considerable.

 

 “The small farms of from five to ten acres, which abound in many

 parts of Belgium, closely resemble the small holdings in Ireland; but

 the small Irish cultivator exists in a state of miserable privation

 of the common comforts and conveniences of civilized life, while the

 Belgian peasant farmer enjoys a large share of those comforts. The

 houses of the small cultivators of Belgium are generally

 substantially built, and in good repair; they have commonly a

 sleeping room in the attic, and closets for beds connected with the

 lower apartment, which is convenient in size; a small cellarage for

 the dairy, and store for the grain, as well as an oven, and an

 outhouse for the potatoes, with a roomy cattle-stall, piggery, and

 poultry loft. The house generally contains decent furniture, the

 bedding sufficient in quantity, and an air of comfort, pervades the

 establishment. In the cow-house the cattle are supplied with straw

 for bedding; the dung and moisture are carefully collected in the

 tank; the ditches had been secured to collect materials for manure;

 the dry leaves, potato-tops, &c. had been collected in a moist ditch

 to undergo the process of fermentation, and heaps of compost were in

 course of preparation. The premises were kept in neat and compact

 order, and a scrupulous attention to a most rigid economy was

 everywhere apparent. The family were decently clad; none of them were

 ragged or slovenly, even when their dress consisted of the coarsest

 material.

 

 “In the greater part of the flat country of Belgium the soil is light

 and sandy, and easily worked; but its productive powers are certainly

 inferior to the general soil of Ireland, and the climate does not

 appear to be superior. To the soil and climate therefore, the Belgian

 does not owe his superiority. The difference is to be found in the

 system, of cultivation, and the forethought of the people. The

 cultivation of small farms in Belgium differs from the Irish: 1. In

 the quantity of stall-fed stock which is kept, and by which a supply

 of manure is regularly secured; 2. In the strict attention paid to

 the collection of manure, which is skilfully husbanded; 3. By the

 adoption of rotations of crop. We found no plough, horse, or

 cart--only a spade, fork, wheelbarrow, and handbarrow. The farmer had

 no assistance besides that of his family. The whole land is trenched

 very deep with the spade. The stock consisted of a couple of cows, a

 calf or two, one or two pigs; sometimes a goat or two, and some

 poultry. The cows are altogether stall-fed, on straw, turnips,

 clover, rye, vetches, carrots, potatoes, and a kind of soup made by

 boiling up the potatoes, peas, beans, bran, cut-hay, &e., which,

 given warm, is said to be very wholesome, and promotive of the

 secretion of milk. Near distilleries and breweries grains are given.

 

 “Some small farmers agree to find stall-room and straw for sheep, and

 furnish fodder at the market price, for the dung. The dung and

 moisture are collected in a fosse in the stable. Lime is mingled with

 the scouring of the ditches, vegetable garbage, leaves, &c. On

 six-acre farms, plots are appropriated to potatoes, wheat, barley,

 clover, flax, rye, carrots, turnips, or parsnips, vetches, and rye,

 as green food for cattle. The flax is heckled and spun by the wife in

 winter; and three weeks at the loom in spring weaves up all the

 thread. In some districts every size, from a quarter acre to six

 acres, is found. The former holders devoted their time to weaving. As

 far as I could learn, there was no tendency to subdivision of the

 small holdings. I heard of none under five acres held by the class of

 peasant farmers; and six, seven, or eight acres is the more common

 size. The average rent is 20s. an acre. Wages, 10d. a day.

 

 “A small occupier, whose farm we examined near Ghent, paid £9 7s. 6d.

 for six acres, with a comfortable house, stabling, and other offices

 attached, all very good of their kind--being 20s. an acre for the

 land, and £3 7s. 6d. for house and offices. This farmer had a wife

 and five children, and appeared to live in much comfort. He owed

 little or nothing.”--_Nicholls’s Report_.

 

These people have employment for every hour in the year, and they find

a market close at hand for every thing they can raise. They are not

forced to confine themselves to cotton or sugar, tobacco or wheat; nor

are they forced to waste their labour in carrying their products to a

distance so great that no manure can be returned. From this country

there is no export of men, women, and children, such as we see from

Ireland. The “crowbar brigade” is here unknown, and it may be doubted

if any term conveying the meaning of the word “eviction” is to be

found in their vocabulary. With a surface only one-third as great as

that of Ireland, and with a soil naturally far inferior, Belgium

supports a population almost half as great as Ireland has ever

possessed; and yet we never hear of the cheap Belgian labour

inundating the neighbouring countries, to the great advantage of those

who desire to build up “great works” like those of Britain. The policy

of Belgium looks to increasing the value of both labour and land,

whereas that of England looks to diminishing the value of both.

 

With every advantage of soil and climate, the population of Portugal

declines, and her people become more enslaved from day to day, while

her government, is driven to repudiation of her debts. Belgium, on the

contrary, grows in wealth and population, and her people become more

free; and the cause of difference is, that the policy of the former

has always looked to repelling the artisan, and thus preventing the

growth of towns and of the habit of association; while that of the

latter has always looked to bringing the artisan to the raw material,

and thus enabling her people to combine their efforts for their

improvement in material, moral, and intellectual condition, without

which there can be no increase of freedom.

 

Russia and Spain seek to raise the value of labour and land, and they

are now attracting population. The English system, based on cheap

labour, destroys the value of both labour and land, and therefore it

is that there is so large an export of men from the countries subject

to it--Africa, India, Ireland, Scotland, England, Virginia, and

Carolina.

 

Chapter 20. Of the duty of the people of the United States

 

The slave _must_ apply himself to such labour as his master may see

fit to direct him to perform, and he must give to that master the

produce of his exertions, receiving in return whatever the master may

see fit to give him. He is limited to a single place of exchange.

 

Precisely similar to this is the system which looks to limiting all

the people of the earth, outside of England, to agriculture as the

sole means of employment; and carried out by smothering in their

infancy the manufactures of other nations, while crushing the older

ones of India by compelling her to receive British manufactures free

of duty, and refusing to permit her to have good machinery, while

taxing her spindles and looms at home, and their products when sent to

Britain. It is one which looks to allowing the nations of the world to

have but one market, in which all are to compete for the sale of their

raw products, and one market, in which all are to compete for the

purchase of manufactured ones; leaving to the few persons who control

that market the power to fix the prices of all they require to buy and

all they desire to sell. Cotton and corn, indigo and wool, sugar and

coffee, are merely the various forms in which labour is sold; and the

cheaper they are sold, the cheaper must be the labour employed in

producing them, the poorer and more enslaved must be the labourer, the

less must be the value of land, the more rapid must be its exhaustion

and abandonment, and the greater must be the tendency toward the

transport of the enslaved labourer to some new field of action, there

to repeat the work of exhaustion and abandonment. Hence it is that we

see the slave trade prevail to so great an extent in all the countries

subject to the British system, except those in which famine and

pestilence are permitted silently to keep down the population to the

level of a constantly diminishing supply of food, as in Portugal,

Turkey, and Jamaica. The system to which the world is indebted for

these results is called “free-trade;” but there can be no freedom of

trade where there is no freedom of man, for the first of all

commodities to be exchanged is labour, and the freedom of man consists

only in the exercise of the right to determine for himself in what

manner his labour shall be employed, and how he will dispose of its

products. If the British system tends toward freedom, proof of the

fact will be found in the free employment of labour where it exists,

and in the exercise by the labourer of a large control over the

application of its produce. Are these things to be found in India?

Certainly not. The labourer there is driven from the loom and forced

to raise sugar or cotton, and his whole control over what is paid by

the consumer for the products of his labour cannot exceed fifteen per

cent. Can they be found in Ireland, in Turkey, or in Portugal?

Certainly not. The labourers of those countries now stand before the

world distinguished for their poverty, and for their inability to

determine for themselves for whom they will labour or what shall be

their reward. Were it otherwise, the “free trade” system would fail to

produce the effect intended. Its object is, and has always been, that

of preventing other communities from mining the coal or smelting the

ore provided for their use by the great Creator of all things, and in

such vast abundance; from making or obtaining machinery to enable them

to avail themselves of the expansive power of steam; from calling to

their aid any of the natural agents required in the various processes

of manufacture; from obtaining knowledge that might lead to

improvement in manufactures of any kind; and, in short, from doing any

thing but raise sugar, coffee, cotton, wool, indigo, silk, and other

raw commodities, to be carried, as does the slave of Virginia or Texas

with the product of his labour, to one great purchaser, who determines

upon their value and upon the value of all the things they are to

receive in exchange for them. It is the most gigantic system of

slavery the world has yet seen, and therefore it is that freedom

gradually disappears from every country over which England is enabled

to obtain control, as witness the countries to which reference has

just been made.

 

There are, however, as has been shown, several nations of Europe in

which men are daily becoming more free; and the reason for this is to

be found in the fact that they have resisted this oppressive system.

Germany and Russia, Spain, Denmark, Belgium, and other states, have

been determined to protect their farmers in their efforts to bring the

loom and the anvil to their side, and to have towns and other places

of exchange in their neighbourhood, at which they could exchange raw

products for manufactured ones and for manure; and in every one in

which that protection has been efficient, labour and land have become,

and are becoming, more valuable and man more free.

 

In this country protection has always, to some extent, existed; but at

some times it has been efficient, and at others not; and our tendency

toward freedom or slavery has always been in the direct ratio of its

efficiency or inefficiency. In the period from 1824 to 1833, the

tendency was steadily in the former direction, but it was only in the

latter part of it that it was made really efficient. Then mills and

furnaces increased in number, and there was a steady increase in the

tendency toward the establishment of local places of exchange; and

then it was that Virginia held her convention at which was last

discussed in that State the question of emancipation. In 1833,

however, protection was abandoned, and a tariff was established by

which it was provided that we should, in a few years, have a system of

merely revenue duties; and from that date the abandonment of the older

States proceeded with a rapidity never before known, and with it grew

the domestic slave trade and the pro-slavery feeling. Then it was that

were passed the laws restricting emancipation and prohibiting

education; and then it was that the export of slaves from Virginia and

the Carolinas was so great that the population of those States

remained almost, if not quite stationary, and that the growth of black

population fell from thirty per cent., in the ten previous years, to

twenty-four percent.[203] That large export of slaves resulted in a

reduction of the price of Southern products to a point never before

known; and thus it was that the system called free trade provided

cheap cotton. Slavery grew at the South, and at the North; for with

cheap cotton and cheap food came so great a decline in the demand for

labour, that thousands of men found themselves unable to purchase this

cheap food to a sufficient extent to feed their wives and their

children. A paper by “a farm labourer” thus describes that calamitous

portion of our history, when the rapid approach of the system called

free trade, under the strictly revenue provisions of the Compromise

Tariff, had annihilated competition for the purchase of labour:--

 

 “The years 1839, 1840, and 1841 were striking elucidations of such

 cases; when the cry of sober, industrious, orderly men--’Give me

 _work_! only give me work; MAKE YOUR OWN TERMS--MYSELF AND FAMILY

 HAVE NOTHING TO EAT’--was heard in our land. In those years thousands

 of cases of the kind occurred in our populous

 districts.”--_Pittsburgh Dispatch_.

 

That such was the fact must be admitted by all who recollect the great

distress that existed in 1841-2. Throughout the whole length and

breadth of the land, there was an universal cry of “Give me work; make

your own terms--myself and family have nothing to eat;” and the

consequence of this approach toward slavery was so great a diminution

in the consumption of food, that the prices at which it was then

exported to foreign countries were lower than they had been for many

years; and thus it was that the farmer paid for the system which had

diminished the freedom of the labourer and the artisan.

 

It was this state of things that re-established protection for the

American labourer, whether in the field or in the workshop. The tariff

of 1842 was passed, and at once there arose competition for the

purchase of labour. Mills were to be built, and men were needed to

quarry the stone and get out the lumber, and other men were required

to lay the stone and fashion the lumber into floors and roofs, doors

and windows; and the employment thus afforded enabled vast numbers of

men again to occupy houses of their own, and thus was produced a new

demand for masons and carpenters, quarrymen and lumbermen. Furnaces

were built, and mines were opened, and steam-engines were required;

and the men employed at these works were enabled to consume more

largely of food, while ceasing to contend with the agricultural

labourer for employment on the farm. Mills were filled with females,

and the demand for cloths increased, with corresponding diminution in

the competition for employment in the making of shirts and coats.

Wages rose, and they rose in every department of labour; the evidence

of which is to be found in the fact that the consumption of food and

fuel greatly increased, while that of cloth almost doubled, and that

of iron trebled in the short period of five years.

 

How, indeed, could it be otherwise than that the reward of labour

should rise? The cotton manufacturer needed labourers, male and

female, and so did his neighbour of the woollens mill; and the

labourers they now employed could buy shoes and hats. The iron-

masters and the coal-miners needed workmen, and the men they employed

needed cotton and woollen cloths; and they could consume more largely

of food. The farmer’s markets tended to improve, and he could buy more

largely of hats and shoes, ploughs and harrows, and the hatmakers and

shoemakers, and the makers of ploughs and harrows, needed more hands;

and therefore capital was everywhere looking for labour, where before

labour had been looking for capital. The value of cottons, and

woollens, and iron produced in 1846, as compared with that of 1842,

was greater by a hundred millions of dollars; and all this went to the

payment of labour, for all the profits of the iron-master and of the

cotton and woollen manufacturer went to the building of new mills and

furnaces, or to the enlargement of the old ones. Unhappily, however,

for us, our legislators were smitten with a love of the system called

free trade. They were of opinion that we were, by right, an

agricultural nation, and that so we must continue; and that the true

way to produce competition for the purchase of labour was to resolve

the whole nation into a body of farmers--and the tariff of 1842 was

repealed.

 

If the reader will now turn to page 107, he will see how large must

have been the domestic slave trade from 1835 to 1840, compared with

that of the period from 1840 to 1845. The effect of this in increasing

the crop and reducing the price of cotton was felt with great severity

in the latter period,[204] and it required time to bring about a

change. We are now moving in the same direction in which we moved from

1835 to 1840. For four years past, we have not only abandoned the

building of mills and furnaces, but have closed hundreds of old ones,

and centralization, therefore, grows from day to day. The farmer of

Ohio can no longer exchange his food directly with the maker of iron.

He must carry it to New York, as must the producer of cotton in

Carolina; who sees the neighbouring factory closed. [205] Local places

of exchange decline, and great cities take their place; and with the

growth of centralization grows the slave trade, North and South.

Palaces rise in New York and Philadelphia, while droves of black

slaves are sent to Texas to raise cotton, and white ones at the North

perish of disease, and sometimes almost of famine. “We could tell,”

says a recent writer in one of the New York journals--

 

 “Of one room, twelve feet by twelve, in which were five resident

 families, comprising twenty persons of both sexes and all ages, with

 only two beds, without partition or screen, or chair or table, and

 all dependent for their miserable support upon the sale of chips,

 gleaned from the streets, at four cents a basket--of another, still

 smaller and still more destitute, inhabited by a man, a woman, two

 little girls, and a boy, who were supported by permitting the room to

 be used as a rendezvous by the abandoned women of the street--of

 another, an attic room seven feet by five, containing scarcely an

 article of furniture but a bed, on which lay a fine-looking man in a

 raging fever, without medicine or drink or suitable food, his

 toil-worn wife engaged in cleaning dirt from the floor, and his

 little child asleep on a bundle of rags in the corner--of another of

 the same dimensions, in which we found, seated on low boxes around a

 candle placed on a keg, a woman and her oldest daughter, (the latter

 a girl of fifteen, and, as we were told, a prostitute,) sewing on

 shirts, _for the making of which they were paid four cents apiece,

 and even at that price, out of which they had to support two small

 children, they could not get a supply of work_--of another of about

 the same size occupied by a street rag-picker and his family, the

 income of whose industry was eight dollars a month--of another,

 scarcely larger, into which we were drawn by the terrific screams of

 a drunken man beating his wife, containing no article of furniture

 whatever--another warmed only by a tin pail of lighted charcoal

 placed in the centre of the room, over which bent a blind man

 endeavouring to warm himself; around him three or four men and women

 swearing and quarrelling; in one corner on the floor a woman, who had

 died the day previous of disease, and in another two or three

 children sleeping on a pile of rags; (in regard to this room, we may

 say that its occupants were coloured people, and from them but a few

 days previous had been taken and adopted by one of our benevolent

 citizens a beautiful little white girl, four or five years of age,

 whose father was dead and whose mother was at Blackwell’s Island;)

 another from which not long; since twenty persons, sick with fever

 were taken to the hospital, and every individual of them died. But

 why extend the catalogue? Or why attempt to convey to the imagination

 by words the hideous squalor and the deadly effluvia; the dim,

 undrained courts, oozing with pollution; the dark narrow stairways

 decayed with age, reeking with filth, and overrun with vermin; the

 rotten floors, ceilings begrimed, crumbling, ofttimes too low to

 permit you to stand upright, and windows stuffed with rags; or why

 try to portray the gaunt shivering forms and wild ghastly faces in

 these black and beetling abodes, wherein from cellar to garret

 

    ----’All life dies, death lives, and nature breeds

    Perverse, all monstrous, all prodigious things,

    Abominable, unutterable!’” _N. York Courier and Inquirer_.

 

Our shops are now everywhere filled with the products of the cheap

labour of England--of the labour of those foreign women who make

shirts at a penny apiece, finding the needles and the thread, and of

those poor girl’s who spend a long day at making artificial flowers

for which they receive two pence, and then eke out the earnings of

labour by the wages of prostitution; and our women are everywhere

driven from employment--the further consequences of which may be seen

in the following extract from another journal of the day:--

 

 “A gentleman who had been deputed to inquire into the condition of

 this class of operatives, found one of the most expert of them

 working from five o’clock in the morning until eleven at night, yet

 earning only about three dollars a week. Out of this, she had to pay

 a dollar and a half for board, leaving a similar amount for fuel,

 clothing, and all other expenses. Her condition, however, as compared

 with that of her class generally, was one of opulence. The usual

 earnings were but two dollars a week, which, as respectable board,

 could be had nowhere for less; than a dollar and a half, _left only

 fifty cents for everything else_. The boarding-houses, even at this

 price, are of the poorest character, always noisome and unhealthy,

 and not unfrequently in vile neighbourhoods. With such positive and

 immediate evils to contend with, what wonder that so many needlewomen

 take ‘the wages of sin?’”

 

 “Among the cases brought to light in New York, was that of an

 intelligent and skilful dressmaker, who was found in the garret of a

 cheap boarding-house, out of work, and nor are such instances

 unfrequent. The small remuneration which these workwomen receive

 keeps them living from hand to mouth, so that, in case of sickness,

 or scarcity of work, _they are sometimes left literally without a

 crust_.”--_Philada. Evening-Bulletin_.

 

If females cannot tend looms, make flowers, or do any other of those

things in which mind takes in a great degree the place of physical

power, they must make shirts at four cents apiece, or resort to

prostitution--or, they may work in the fields; and this is nearly the

latitude of choice allowed to them under the system called free trade.

Every furnace that is closed in Pennsylvania by the operation of this

system, lessens the value of labour in the neighbourhood, and drives

out some portion of the people to endeavour to sell elsewhere their

only commodity, labour. Some seek the cities and some go West to try

their fortunes. So, too, with the closing of woollens mills in New

York, and cotton mills in New England. Every such ease _compels_

people to leave their old homes and try to find new ones--and in this

form the slave trade now exists at the North to a great extent. The

more people thus _driven_ to the cities, the cheaper is labour, and

the more rapid is the growth of drunkenness and crime; and these

effects are clearly visible in the police reports of all our

cities.[206] Centralization, poverty, and crime go always hand in hand

with each other.

 

The closing of mills and furnaces in Maryland lessens the demand for

labour there, and the smaller that demand the greater _must_ be the

necessity on the part of those who own slaves to sell them to go

South; and here we find the counterpart of the state of things already

described as existing in. New York. The Virginian, limited to negroes

as the only commodity into which he can manufacture his corn and thus

enable it to travel cheaply to market, sends his crop to Richmond, and

the following extract of a letter from that place shows how the system

works:--

 

 “_Richmond, March_ 3, 1853.

 

 “I saw several children sold; the girls brought the highest price.

 Girls from 12 to 18 years old brought from $500 to $800.

 

 “I must say that the slaves did not display as much feeling as I had

 expected, as a general thing--but there was _one_ noble

 exception--God bless her! and save her, too!! as I hope he will in

 some way, for if he does not interpose, there were no men there that

 would.

 

 “She was a fine-looking woman about 25 years old, with three

 _beautiful_ children. Her children as well as herself were neatly

 dressed. She attracted my attention at once on entering the room, and

 I took my stand near her to learn her answers to the various

 questions put to her by the traders. _One_ of these traders asked her

 what was the matter with her eyes? Wiping away the tears, she

 replied, ‘I s’pose I have been crying.’ ‘Why do you cry?’ ‘Because I

 have left my man behind, and his master won’t let him come along.’

 ‘Oh, if I buy you, I will furnish you with a better husband, or man,

 as you call him, than your old one.’ ‘I don’t want any _better_ and

 won’t have any _other_ as long as he lives.’ ‘Oh, but you will

 though, if I buy you,’ ‘_No, massa, God helping me, I never

 will_.’”--_New York Tribune_.

 

At the North, the poor girl driven out from the cotton or the woollens

mill is forced to make shirts at four cents each, or sell herself to

the horrible slavery of prostitution. At the South, this poor woman,

driven put from Virginia, may perhaps at some time be found making one

of the _dramatis personæ_ in scenes similar to those here described by

Dr. Howe:--

 

 “If Howard or Mrs. Fry ever discovered so ill-administered a den of

 thieves as the New Orleans prison, they never described it. In the

 negro’s apartment I saw much which made me blush that I was a white

 man; and which for a moment stirred up an evil spirit in my animal

 nature. Entering a large paved court-yard, around which ran galleries

 filled with slaves of all ages, sexes, and colours, I heard the snap

 of a whip, every stroke of which sounded like the sharp crack of a

 pistol. I turned my head, and beheld a sight which absolutely chilled

 me to the marrow of my bones, and gave me, for the first time in my

 life, the sensation of my hair stiffening at the roots. There lay a

 black girl flat upon her face on a board, her two thumbs tied, and

 fastened to one end, her feet tied and drawn tightly to the other

 end, while a strap passed over the small of her back, and fastened

 around the board, compressed her closely to it. Below the strap she

 was entirely naked. By her side, and six feet off, stood a huge

 negro, with a long whip, which he applied with dreadful power and

 wonderful precision. Every stroke brought away a strip of skin, which

 clung to the lash, or fell quivering on the pavement, while the blood

 followed after it. The poor creature writhed and shrieked, and in a

 voice which showed alike her fear of death and her dreadful agony,

 screamed to her master who stood at her head, ‘Oh, spare my life;

 don’t cut my soul out!’ But still fell the horrid lash; still strip

 after strip peeled off from the skin; gash after gash was cut in her

 living flesh, until it became a livid and bloody mass of raw and

 quivering muscle.

 

 “It was with the greatest difficulty I refrained from springing upon

 the torturer, and arresting his lash; but alas, what could I do, but

 turn aside to hide my tears for the sufferer, and my blushes for

 humanity!

 

 “This was in a public and regularly organized prison; the punishment

 was one recognised and authorized by the law. But think you the poor

 wretch had committed a heinous offence, and had been convicted

 thereof, and sentenced to the lash? Not at all! She was brought by

 her master to be whipped by the common executioner, without trial,

 judge, or jury, just at his beck or nod, for some real or supposed

 offence, or to gratify his own whim or malice. And he may bring her

 day after day, without cause assigned, and inflict any number of

 lashes he pleases, short of twenty-five, provided only he pays the

 fee. Or if he choose, he may have a private whipping-board on his own

 premises, and brutalize himself there.

 

 “A shocking part of |his horrid punishment was its publicity, as I

 have said; it was in a court-yard, surrounded by galleries, which

 were filled with coloured persons of all sexes--runaway slaves

 committed for some crime, or slaves up for sale. You would naturally

 suppose they crowded forward and gazed horror-stricken at the brutal

 spectacle below; but they did not; many of them hardly noticed it,

 and many were entirely indifferent to it. They went on in their

 childish pursuits, and some were laughing outright in the distant

 parts of the galleries;--so low can man created in God’s image be

 sunk in brutality.”

 

Where, however, lies the fault of all this? Cheap cotton cannot be

supplied to the world unless the domestic slave trade be maintained,

and all the measures of England are directed toward obtaining a cheap

and abundant supply of that commodity, to give employment to that

“cheap and abundant supply of labour” so much desired by the writers

in the very journal that furnished to its readers this letter of Dr.

Howe.[207] To produce this cheap cotton the American labourer must be

expelled from his home in Virginia to the wilds of Arkansas, there to

be placed, perhaps, under the control of a _Simon Legree_.[208] That

he may be expelled, the price of corn must be cheapened in Virginia;

and that it may be cheapened, the cheap labourer of Ireland must be

brought to England there, to compete with the Englishman for the

reduction of labour to such a price as will enable England to “smother

in their infancy” all attempts at manufacturing corn into any thing

but negroes for Arkansas. That done, should the Englishman’s “blood

boil” on reading Uncle Tom’s Cabin, he is told to recollect that it is

“to his advantage that the slave should be permitted to wear his

chains in peace.” And yet this system, which looks everywhere to the

enslavement of man, is dignified by the name of “free trade.”

 

The cheap-labour system of England produces the slave trade of

America, India, and Ireland; and the manner in which it is enabled to

produce that effect, and the extent of its “advantage” to the people

of England itself, is seen in the following extract from a speech

delivered at a public meeting in that country but a few weeks since:--

 

 “The factory-law was so unblushingly violated that the chief

 inspector of that part of the factory district, Mr. Leonard Horner,

 had found himself necessitated to write to the Home Secretary, to say

 that he dared not, and would not send any of his sub-inspectors into

 certain districts until he had police protection. * * * And

 protection against whom? Against the factory-masters! Against the

 richest men in the district, against the most influential men in the

 district, against the magistrates of the district, against the men

 who hold her Majesty’s commission, against the men who sat in the

 Petty Sessions as the representatives of royalty. * * * _And did the

 masters suffer for their violation of the law?_ In his own district

 it was a settled custom of the male, and to a great extent of the

 female workers in factories, to be in bed from 9, 10 or 11 o’clock on

 Sunday, because they were tired out by the labour of the week. Sunday

 was the only day on which they could rest their wearied frames. * *

 It would generally be found that, the longer the time of work, the

 smaller the wages. * * _He would rather be a slave in South Carolina,

 than a factory operative in England.”_--_Speech of Rev, Dr. Bramwell,

 at Crampton_.

 

The whole profit, we are told, results from “the last hour,” and were

that hour taken from the master, then the people of Virginia might be

enabled to make their own cloth and iron, and labour might there

become so valuable that slaves would cease to be exported to Texas,

and cotton _must_ then rise in price; and in order to prevent the

occurrence of such unhappy events, the great cotton manufacturers set

at defiance the law of the land! The longer the working hours the more

“cheap and abundant” will be the “supply of labour,”--and it is only

by aid of this cheap, or slave, labour that, as we are told, “the

supremacy of England in manufactures can be maintained.” The cheaper

the labour, the more rapid must be the growth of individual fortunes,

and the more perfect the consolidation of the land. Extremes thus

always meet. The more splendid the palace of the trader, whether in

cloth, cotton, negroes, or Hindoos, the more squalid will be the

poverty of the labourer, his wife and children,--and the more numerous

the diamonds on the coat of Prince Esterhazy, the more ragged will be

his serfs. The more that local places of exchange are closed, the

greater will be the tendency to the exhaustion and abandonment of the

land, and the more flourishing will be the slave trade, North and

South,--and the greater will be the growth of pro-slavery at the

South, and anti-slavery at the North. The larger the export of negroes

to the South, the greater will be their tendency to run from their

masters to the North, and the greater will be the desire at the North

to shut them out, as is proved by the following law of Illinois, now

but a few weeks old, by which negro slavery is, as is here seen,

re-established in the territory for the government of which was passed

the celebrated ordinance of 1787:--

 

 “_Be it enacted by the People of the State of Illinois, represented

 in the General Assembly._

 

 3. If any negro, or mulatto, bond or free, shall come into this

 State, and remain ten days, with the evident intention of residing in

 the same, every such negro or mulatto shall be deemed guilty of a

 high misdemeanour, and for the first offence shall Be fined the sum

 of fifty dollars, to be recovered before any justice of the peace, in

 the county where said negro or mulatto may be found; said proceeding

 shall he in the name of the people Of the State of Illinois, and

 shall be tried by a jury of twelve men.

 

 4. If said negro or mulatto shall be found guilty, and the fine

 assessed be not paid forthwith to the justice of the peace before

 whom said proceedings were had, said justice shall forthwith

 advertise said negro or mulatto, by posting up notices thereof in at

 least three of the most public places in his district; which said

 notices shall be posted up for ten days; and on the day, and at the

 time and place mentioned in said advertisement, the said justice

 shall at PUBLIC AUCTION proceed TO SELL said negro or mulatto to any

 person who will pay said fine and costs.”

 

Slavery now travels North, whereas only twenty years ago freedom was

travelling South. That such is the case is the natural consequence of

our submission, even in part, to the system that looks to _compelling_

the export of raw products, the exhaustion of the land, the cheapening

of labour, and the export of the labourer. Wherever it is submitted

to, slavery grows. Wherever it is resisted, slavery dies away, and

freedom grows, as is shown in the following list of--

 

  Countries whose policy looks    Countries whose policy looks

  to cheapening labour.        to raising the value of labour.

  ---------------------------- -------------------------------

  The West Indies,             Northern-Germany,

  Portugal,                    Russia,

  Turkey,                      Denmark,

  India,                       Spain,

  Ireland,                     Belgium,

  United States under the      United States under the

    Compromise, and the          tariffs of 1828 and 1842.

    tariff of 1846.

 

Population declines in all the foreign countries in the first column,

and it became almost stationary in the Northern Slave States, as it is

now likely again to do, because of the large extent of the domestic

slave trade. Population grows in the foreign countries of the second

column, and it grew rapidly in the Northern Slave States, because of

the limited export of negroes at the periods referred to. The first

column gives the--so-called--free-trade countries, and the other

those which have protected themselves against the system; and yet

slavery grows in all those of the first column, and freedom in all

those of the second. The first column gives us the countries in which

education diminishes and intellect declines, and the period in our own

history in which were passed the laws prohibiting the education of

negroes. The second, those countries in which education advances, with

great increase of intellectual activity; and in our own history it

gives the period at which the Northern Slave States held conventions

having in view the adoption of measures looking to the abolition of

slavery. The first gives those foreign countries in which women and

children must labour in the field or remain unemployed. The second

those in which there is a daily increasing demand for the labour of

women, to be employed in the lighter labour of manufactures. The first

gives those in which civilization advances; and the second those in

which there is a daily increasing tendency toward utter barbarism. We

are now frequently invited to an alliance with Great Britain, and for

what? For maintaining and extending the system whose effects are found

in all the nations enumerated in the first column. For increasing the

supply of cheap cotton, cheap corn, and cheap sugar, all of which

require cheap, or slave, labour, and in return for these things we are

to have cheap cloth, the produce of the cheap, or slave, labour of

England, Scotland, and Ireland.

 

It is as the advocate of freedom that Britain calls upon us to enter

into more intimate relations with her. Her opponents are, as we are

told, the despots of Europe, the men who are trampling on the rights

of their subjects, and who are jealous of her because her every

movement looks, as we are assured, to the establishment of freedom

throughout the world. Were this so, it might furnish some reason for

forgetting the advice of Washington in regard to “entangling

alliances;” but, before adopting such a course, it would be proper to

have evidence that the policy of Britain, at any time since the days

of Adam Smith, has tended to the enfranchisement of man in any part of

the world, abroad or at home. Of all the despots now complained of,

the King of Naples stands most conspicuous, and it is in relation to

him that a pamphlet has recently been published by the present

Chancellor of the Exchequer, in which are found the following

passages:--

 

 “The general belief is, that the prisoners for political offences in

 the kingdom of the Two Sicilies are between fifteen or twenty and

 thirty thousand. The government withholds all means of accurate

 information, and accordingly there can be no certainty on the point.

 I have, however, found that this belief is shared by persons the most

 intelligent, considerate, and well informed. It is also, supported by

 what is known of the astonishing crowds confined in particular

 prisons, and especially by what is accurately known in particular

 provincial localities, as to the numbers of individuals missing from

 among the community. I have heard these numbers, for example, at

 Reggio and at Salerno; and from an effort to estimate them in

 reference to population, I do believe that twenty thousand is no

 unreasonable estimate. In Naples alone some hundreds are at this

 moment under indictment _capitally_; and when I quitted it a trial

 was expected to come on immediately, (called that of the fifteenth of

 May,) in which the number charged was between four and five hundred;

 including (though this is a digression) at least one or more persons

 of high station whoso opinions would in this country be considered

 more conservative than your own.” * * * “In utter defiance of this

 law, the government, of which the Prefect of Police is an important

 member, through the agents of that department, watches and dogs the

 people, pays domiciliary visits, very commonly at night, ransacks

 houses, seizing papers and effects, and tearing up floors at pleasure

 under pretence of searching for arms, and imprisons men by the score,

 by the hundred, by the thousand, without any warrant whatever,

 sometimes without even any written authority at all, or any thing

 beyond the word of a policeman; constantly without any statement

 whatever of the nature of the offence.

 

 “Nor is this last fact wonderful. Men are arrested, not because they

 have committed, or are believed to have committed, any offence; but

 because they are persons whom it is thought convenient to confine and

 to get rid of, and against whom, therefore, some charge must be found

 or fabricated.”[209]

 

Why is it that the king is enabled to do these things? Obviously,

because his people are poor and weak. If they were strong, he could

not do them. Men, however, never have anywhere become strong to resist

power, except where the artisan has come to the side of the farmer;

and it is because he has not done so in Naples and Sicily that the

people are so poor, ignorant, and weak as we see them to be. Has

England ever endeavoured to strengthen the Neapolitan people by

teaching them how to combine their efforts for the working of their

rich ores, or for the conversion of their wool into cloth? Assuredly

not. She desires that wool and sulphur, and all other raw materials,

may be cheap, and that iron may be dear; and, that they may be so, she

does all that is in her power to prevent the existence in that country

of any of that diversification of interests that would find employment

for men, women, and children, and would thus give value to labour and

land. That she may do this, she retains Malta and the Ionian Islands,

as convenient places of resort for the great reformer of the age--the

smuggler--whose business it is to see that no effort at manufactures

shall succeed, and to carry into practical effect the decree that all

such attempts must be “smothered in their infancy.” If, under these

circumstances, King Ferdinand is enabled to play the tyrant, upon whom

rests the blame? Assuredly, on the people who refuse to permit the

farmers of the Two Sicilies to strengthen themselves by forming that

natural alliance between the loom and the plough to which the people

of England were themselves indebted for their liberties. Were the

towns of that country growing in size, and were the artisan everywhere

taking his place by the side of the farmer, the people would be daily

becoming stronger and more free, whereas they are now becoming weaker

and more enslaved.

 

So, too, we are told of the tyranny and bad faith prevailing in Spain.

If, however, the people of that country are poor and weak, and

compelled to submit to measures that are tyrannical and injurious, may

it not be traced to the fact that the mechanic has never been

permitted to place himself among them? And may not the cause of this

be found in the fact that Portugal and Gibraltar have for a century

past been the seats of a vast contraband trade, having for _its

express object_ to deprive the Spanish people of all power to do any

thing but cultivate the soil? Who, then, are responsible for the

subjection of the Spanish people? Those, assuredly, whose policy looks

to depriving the women and children of Spain of all employment except

in the field, in order that wool may be cheap and that cloth may be

dear.

 

Turkey is poor and weak, and we hear much of the designs of Russia, to

be counteracted by England; but does England desire that Turkey shall

grow strong and her people become free? Does she desire that

manufactures shall rise, that towns shall grow, and that the land

shall acquire value? Assuredly not. The right to inundate that country

with merchandise is “a golden privilege” never to be abandoned,

because it would raise the price of silk and lower the price of silk

goods.

 

The people of Austria and Hungary are weak, but has England ever tried

to render them strong to obtain their freedom? Would she not now

oppose any measures calculated to enable the Hungarians to obtain the

means of converting their food and their wool into cloth--to obtain

mechanics and machinery, by aid of which towns could grow, and their

occupants become strong and free? To render any aid of that kind would

be in opposition to the doctrine of cheap food and cheap labour.

 

Northern Germany is becoming strong and united, and the day is now at

hand when all Germany will have the same system under which the North

has so much improved; but these things are done in opposition to

England, who disapproves of them because they tend to raise the price

of the raw products of the earth and lower that of manufactured ones,

and to enable the agricultural population to grow rich and strong; and

the more exclusively she depends on trade, the greater is her

indisposition to permit the adoption of any measures tending to limit

her power over the people of the world.

 

The people of China are weak, but does the consumption of opium to the

extent of forty millions of dollars a year tend to strengthen them?

The government, too, is weak, and therefore is Hong Kong kept for the

purpose of enabling “the great reformer” to evade the laws against the

importation of a commodity that yields the East India Company a profit

of sixteen millions of dollars a year, and the consumption of which is

so rapidly increasing.

 

Burmah, too, is weak, and therefore is her territory to be used for

the purpose of extending the trade in opium throughout the interior

provinces of China. Will this tend to strengthen, or to free, the

Chinese people?

 

Can the people of this country become parties to a system like

this--one that looks to cheapening labour every where? Can they be

parties to any system that can be maintained only on the condition of

“an abundant and cheap supply of labour?” Or, can they be parties to

an alliance that, wherever it is found, so far cheapens man as to

render him a profitable article for the export trade?

 

Who, then, are our natural allies? Russia, Prussia, and Denmark are

despotisms, we are told. They are so; but yet so beautiful and so

perfect is the harmony of interests under a natural system, that that

which despots do in their own defence strengthens the people, and

carries them on toward freedom. Denmark is a despotism, and yet her

people are the freeest and most happy of any in Europe. It is time

that we emancipated ourselves from “the tyranny of words”[210] under

which we live, and looked to things. England has what is called a free

government, and yet Ireland, the West Indies, and India have been

prostrated under the despotism of the spindle and loom, while despotic

Denmark protects her people against that tyranny, and thus enables her

women and her children to find other employments than those of the

field. The King of Prussia desires to strengthen himself against

France, Austria, and Russia; and, to do this, he strengthens his

people by enabling them to find employment for all their time, to find

manure for their farms, and to find employment for their minds; and he

strengthens Germany by the formation of a great Union, that gives to

thirty millions of people the same advantage of freedom of internal

trade that subsists among ourselves. The Emperor of Russia desires to

strengthen himself, and he, in like manner, adopts measures leading to

the building of towns, the diversification of labour, and the habit of

association among men; and thus does he give value to land and labour.

He is a despot, it is true, but he is doing what is required to give

freedom to sixty millions of people; while all the measures of England

in India tend to the enslavement of a hundred millions. We are told of

his designs upon Turkey--but what have the _people_ of that country to

lose by incorporation within the Russian Empire? Now, they are poor

and enslaved, but were they once Russian the spindle would be brought

to the wool, towns would cease to decline, labour and land would

acquire value, and the people would begin to become free. It may be

doubted if any thing would so much tend to advance the cause of

freedom in Europe as the absorption of Turkey by Russia, for it would

probably be followed by the adoption of measures that would secure

perfect freedom of trade throughout all Middle and Eastern Europe,

with large increase in the value of man. The real despotism is that

which looks to cheapening labour, and the real road to freedom is that

which looks toward raising the value of labour and land.

 

The natural allies of this country are the agricultural nations of the

world, for their interests and ours look in the same direction, while

those of England look in one directly opposite. They and we need that

the prices of all agricultural products should be high, and those of

manufactured articles low, while England desires that the latter may

be high and the former low. That they and we may be gratified, it is

required that machinery shall take its place by the food and the wool;

that towns shall arise, and that man shall everywhere become strong

and free. That she may be gratified, it is required that the food and

the wool shall go to the spindle and the loom; that men, women, and

children shall be confined to the labours of the field, and that men

shall remain poor, ignorant, and enslaved. The more Russia makes a

market for her wheat, the higher will be its price, to the great

advantage of the farmers of the world; and the more cotton and sugar

she will require, and the higher will be their prices, to the great

advantage of the planters of the world. The more Germany makes a

market for her wool, the higher will be its price, and the cheaper

will be cloth, and the more cotton and sugar she will need. The more

we make a market for cotton, the better will it be for the people of

India; and the more we consume our own grain, the better will it be

for the farmers of Germany. Our interests and theirs are one and the

same; but it is to the interest of the British manufacturer to have

all the world competing with each other to sell in his one limited

market, and the more competition he can create, the cheaper will be

products of the plough, and the larger will be the profits of the

loom. He wishes to buy cheaply the things we have to sell, and to sell

dearly those we have to buy. We wish to sell dearly and buy cheaply,

and as our objects are directly the reverse of his, it would be as

imprudent for us to be advised by him, as it would be for the farmer

to enter into a combination with the railroad for the purpose of

keeping up the price of transportation.

 

Russia and Germany, Denmark, Spain, and Belgium are engaged in

resisting a great system of taxation, and they grow rich and strong,

and therefore their people become from year to year more free.

Portugal and India, Turkey and Ireland yield to the system, and they

become from year to year poorer and weaker, and their people more

enslaved. It is on the part of the former a war for peace, and

fortunately it is a war that involves no expense for fleets and

armies, and one under which both wealth and population grow with great

rapidity--and one, therefore, in which we may, and must, unite, if we

desire to see the termination of the slave trade at home or abroad.

 

Russia and Germany, Denmark, Spain, and Belgium are engaged in an

effort to raise the value of man _at home_, wherever that home may be,

and thus to stop the forced export of men, whether black, brown, or

white: England is engaged in an effort to destroy everywhere the value

of man _at home_, and therefore it is that the slave trade flourishes

in the countries that submit to her system. We desire to increase the

value of man in Virginia, and thus to terminate the domestic slave

trade. We desire that corn and cotton, rice, sugar, and tobacco may be

high, and cloth and iron low; that labour may be largely paid, and

that man may become free; and the less our dependence on the market of

England, the sooner will our desires be gratified.

 

       *       *       *       *       *

 

Are we then to adopt a system of measures tending to the injury of the

people of England? By no means. Her _real_ interests and ours are the

same, and by protecting ourselves against her system, we are

benefiting her. The harmony of interests is so perfect, that nations

_cannot_ be benefited by measures tending to the injury of other

nations; and when they allow themselves to be led away by the belief

that they can be so, they are always themselves the heaviest

sufferers. The sooner that all the agricultural communities of the

earth shall come to an understanding, that it is to their interest to

withdraw from the present insane contest for the privilege of

supplying a single and limited market, and determine to create markets

for themselves, the sooner will the English labourer, land-owner, and

capitalist find themselves restored to freedom. That the reader may

understand this, we must look once more to Ireland. The closing of the

demand for labour in that country drove the poor people to England in

search of employment. “For half a century back”--that is, since the

Union--”the western shores of our island,” says a British journalist--

 

 “Especially Lancashire and Glasgow have been flooded with crowds of

 half clad, half fed, half civilized Celts, many thousands of whom

 have settled permanently in our manufacturing towns, reducing wages

 by their competition, and what is worse, reducing the standard of

 living and comfort among our people by their example--spreading

 squalor and disease by their filthy habits--inciting to turbulence

 and discontent by their incorrigible hostility to law, incalculably

 increasing the burden of our poor rates--and swelling the registry of

 crime, both in police courts and assizes; to the great damage of the

 national character and reputation. The abundant supply of cheap

 labour which they furnished had no doubt the effect of enabling our

 manufacturing industry to increase at a rate and, to a height which,

 without them, would have been unattainable; and so far they have been

 of service.”--_North British Review_, No. 35.

 

The essential error of this passage is found in the supposition that

any set of people or any species of industry, is to profit by the

cheapening of labour and the enslavement of man. Nothing of this kind

can take place. The true interests of all men are promoted by the

elevation, and they all suffer by whatever tends to the depression, of

their fellow-men. The master of slaves, whether wearing a crown or

carrying a whip, is himself a slave; and that such is the case with

nations as well as individuals, the reader may perhaps be satisfied if

he will follow out the working of the British system as here described

by the reviewer. For half a century Irish labour has been, as we are

here told, poured into England, producing a glut in the market, and

lowering not only the wages, but also the standard of comfort among

English labourers. This is quite true; but why did these men come?

Because labour was cheaper in Ireland than in England. Why was it so?

Because, just half a century since, it was provided by the Act of

Union that the women and children of Ireland should either remain idle

or work in the field. Prior to the centralization by that act of all

power in the British Parliament, the people of that country had been

vigorously engaged in the effort to produce competition for the

purchase of labour _at home_; and had they been permitted to continue

on in that direction, it would have risen to a level with English

labour, and then it could not have been profitably exported. This,

however, they were not permitted to do. Their furnaces and factories

were closed, and the people who worked in them were driven to England

to seek their bread, and wages fell, because the price of all

commodities, labour included, tends to a level, and whatever reduces

them anywhere tends to reduce them everywhere. The price of English

labour fell because the Act of Union had diminished the value of that

of Ireland.

 

If we desire to know to what extent it had this effect, we must look

to the consequences of an over-supply of _perishable_ articles. Of all

commodities, labour is _the most perishable_, because it must be sold

on the instant or it is wasted, and if wasted, the man who has it to

sell may perish himself. Now we know that an over-supply of even iron,

equal to ten per cent., will reduce prices thirty, forty, or fifty per

cent., and that an excess of a single hundred thousand bales in the

crop of cotton makes a difference of ten per cent. upon three millions

of bales, whereas a diminution to the same extent will make a

difference of ten per cent. in the opposite direction. Still more is

this the case with oranges and peaches, which must be sold at once or

wasted. With an excess in the supply of either, they are often

abandoned as not worth the cost of gathering and carrying to market. A

small excess in the supply of men, women, and children so far reduces

their value in the eyes of the purchaser of labour, that he finds

himself, as now in England, induced to regard it as a mercy of Heaven

when famine, pestilence, and emigration clear them out of his way; and

he is then disposed to think that the process “cannot be carried too

far nor continued too long.”

 

Irish labour, having been cheapened by the provisions of the Act of

Union, was carried to the market of England for sale, and thus was

produced _a glut of the most perishable of all commodities_; and the

effect of that glut must have been a diminution in the general price

of labour in England that far more than compensated for the increased

number of labourers. Admitting, however, that the diminution was no

more than would be so compensated, it would follow, of course, that

the quantity of wages paid after a year’s immigration was the same

that it had previously been. That it was not, and could not have been

so great, is quite certain; but it is not needed to claim more than

that there was no increase. It follows, necessarily, that while the

quantity of wages to be expended in England against food and clothing

remained the same, the number of persons among whom it was to be

divided had increased, and each had less to expend. This of course

diminished the power to purchase food, and to a much greater degree

diminished the demand for clothing, for the claims of the stomach are,

of all others, the most imperious. The reader will now see that the

chief effect thus produced by cheap labour is a reduction in the

domestic demand for manufactured goods. As yet, however, we are only

at the commencement of the operation. The men who had been driven from

Ireland by the closing of Irish factories, had been consumers of

food,[211] but as they could no longer consume at home, it became now

necessary that that food should follow them to England, and the

necessity for this transportation tended largely to diminish the

prices of all food in Ireland, and of course the value of labour and

land. Each new depression in the price of labour tended to swell the

export of men, and the larger that export the greater became, of

course, the necessity for seeking abroad a market for food. Irish food

came to swell the supply, but the English market for it did not grow,

because the greater the glut of men, the smaller became the sum of

wages to be laid out against food; and thus Irish and English food

were now contending against each other, to the injury, of English and

Irish labour and land. The lower the price of food in England, the

less was the inducement to improve the land, and the less the demand

for labour the less the power to buy even food, while the power to pay

for clothing diminished with tenfold rapidity. With each step in this

direction the labourer lost more and more the control over his own

actions, and became more and more enslaved. The decline in the home

demand for manufactures then produced a necessity for seeking new

markets, for underworking the Hindoo, and for further cheapening

labour; and the more labour was cheapened the less became the demand

for, and the return to capital. Land, labour, and capital thus

suffered alike from the adoption of a policy having for its object to

prevent the people of Ireland from mining coal, making iron, or

availing themselves of the gratuitous services of those powerful

agents so abundantly provided by nature for their use.

 

The reader may, perhaps, appreciate more fully the evil effects of

this course upon an examination of the reverse side of the picture.

Let us suppose that the Irishman could at once be raised from being

the slave of the landholder to becoming a freeman, exercising control

over the application of his labour, and freely discussing with his

employer what should be his reward,--and see what would be the effect.

It would at once establish counter-attraction, and instead of a

constant influx of people _from_ Ireland into England, there would be

a constant afflux _to_ that country, and in a little time the whole

mass of Irish labour that now weighs on the English market would be

withdrawn, and wages would rise rapidly. At the cost of the

landholder, it will be said. On the contrary, to his profit. The

Irishman at home, fully employed, would consume thrice the food he can

now obtain, and Irish food would at once cease to press on the English

market, and the price of English food would rise. This, of course,

would offer new inducements to improve the land, and, this would make

a demand for labour and capital, the price of both of which would

rise. These things, however, it will be said, would be done at the

cost of the manufacturer. On the contrary, to his advantage Ireland

now consumes but little of English manufactures. “No one,” says the

Quarterly Review, “ever saw an English scarecrow with such rags” as

are worn by hundreds of thousands of the people of Ireland. Raise the

value of Irishmen at home, make them free, and the Irish market will

soon require more manufactured goods than now go to all India. Raise

the value of man in Great Britain, and the domestic market will absorb

an amount of commodities that would now be deemed perfectly

incredible.

 

How can this be done for Ireland? By the same process under which the

man of Germany, Russia, Denmark, and Spain is now passing gradually

toward freedom. By providing that she shall be _protected_ in her

efforts to bring the consumer to the side of the producer, and thus be

enabled to provide at home demand for all her labour and all her food,

and for all the capital now deemed surplus that weighs on the market

of England. It will, however, be said that this would deprive the

English manufacturer of the market he now has in that country. It

would not. He would sell more in value, although it would certainly be

less in bulk. If Ireland spun her own yarn and made her own coarse

cloths, she would need to buy fine ones. If she made her woollen cloth

she could afford to buy silks. If she made her own pig-iron she would

have occasion to purchase steam-engines. If she mined her own coal she

would require books; and the more her own labourer was elevated in the

scale of material comfort, and moral and intellectual improvement, the

larger would be her demands on her neighbours for those commodities

requiring for their production the exercise of mind, to their

advantage as well as her own.

 

The error in the whole British system is, that it looks to preventing

everywhere local association and local commerce; and this it does

because it seeks to locate in England the workshop of the world. The

natural effect of this is a desire to compel all nations to transport

their products to market in their rudest form, at greatest cost to

themselves, and greatest exhaustion of their land; and the poorer they

become, the greater are her efforts at competing with them in the

rudest manufactures, to the great injury of her own people. The man

who is constantly competing with men below himself, will be sure

eventually to fall to their level; whereas, he who looks upward and

determines upon competition with those who are above him, will be very

likely to rise to their level. If all the world were engaged in

perfecting their products, the standard of man would be everywhere

rising, and the power to purchase would grow everywhere, with rapid

increase in the amount of both internal and external commerce, but the

commodities, exchanged would be of a higher character--such as would

require for their preparation a higher degree of intellect. At

present, all the nations outside of England are to be stimulated to

the adoption of a system that affords to their men, women, and

children no employment but that of the rude operations of the field,

while those in England are to be kept at work mining coal, making pig

metal; and converting cotton into yarn; and thus the tendency of the

system is toward driving the whole people of the world into pursuits

requiring little more than mere brute labour, and the lowest grade of

intellect, to the destruction of commerce, both internal and external.

The more this is carried into effect the more must the people of

England and the world become brutalized and enslaved, and the greater

must be the spread of intemperance and immorality. To this, Ireland,

India, and all other countries that find themselves forced to press

their products on the English market, are largely contributing, and

the only people that are doing any thing for its correction are those

who are labouring to make a market at home for their products, and

thus diminish the competition for their sale in the English market.

Were Germany and Russia now to abolish protection, the direct effect

would be to throw upon England an immense amount of food they now

consume at home, and thus diminish the price to such an extent as to

render it impracticable to apply labour to the improvement of English

land. This would of course diminish the wages of English labour, and

diminish the power of the labourers to purchase manufactured goods,

and the diminution thus produced in the domestic demand would be twice

as great as the increase obtained abroad. It is time that the people

of England should learn that the laws which govern the community of

nations are precisely the same as those which govern communities of

individuals, and that neither nations nor individuals can benefit

permanently by any measures tending to the injury of their neighbours.

The case of Ireland is one of oppression more grievous than is to be

found elsewhere in the records of history; and oppression has brought

its punishment in the enslavement of the English labourer, land-owner,

and capitalist. The first has small wages, the second small rents, and

the third small profits, while the intermediate people, bankers,

lawyers, and agents, grow rich. The remedy for much of this would be

found in the adoption of measures that would raise the value of

labour, capital, and land, in Ireland, and thus permit the two former

to remain at home, to give value to the last.

 

The evil under which the people of England labour is that they are

borne down under the weight of raw produce forced into their market,

and the competition for its sale. This, in turn, reacts upon the

world--as prices in that market fix the prices of all other markets.

What is now needed is to raise _there_ the price of labour and its

products, as would at once be done were it possible for all the

agricultural nations to become so much masters of their own actions as

to be able to say that from this time forward they would have such a

demand at home as would free them from the slavery incident to a

_necessity_ for going to that market. Could that now be said, the

instant effect would be so to raise the price of food as to make a

demand for labour and capital in England that would double the price

of both, as will be seen on an examination of the following facts. The

United Kingdom contains seventy millions of acres, and an average

expenditure of only three days labour per acre, at 12s. per week,

would amount to twenty-one millions of pounds, or half as much as the

whole capital engaged in the cotton trade. No one who studies the

reports on the agriculture of the British islands can doubt that even

a larger quantity might annually, and most profitably, be employed on

the land; and when we reflect that this would be repeated year after

year, it will be seen how large a market would thus be made for both

labour and capital. The rise of wages would put an end to the export

of men from either England or Ireland, and the increase in the home

demand for manufactures would be great.

 

It may be said that the rise in the price of food would give large

rents, without improvement in the land, and that the profit of this

change would go to the land-owner. In all other trades, however, high

wages _compel_ improvements of machinery, and it is only when they are

low that men can profitably work old machines. Were the wages of

England this day doubled, it would be found that they would eat up the

whole proceeds of all badly farmed land, leaving no rent, and then the

owners of such land would find themselves as much obliged to improve

their machinery of production as are the mill-owners of Manchester. If

they could not improve the whole, they would find themselves compelled

to sell a part; and thus dear labour would produce division of the

land and emancipation of the labourer, as cheap labour has produced

the consolidation of the one and the slavery of the other.

 

To enable Russia and Germany to refrain from pressing their products

on the market that now regulates and depresses prices, it would be

required that they should have great numbers of mills and furnaces, at

which their now surplus food could be consumed, and their effect would

be to create among them a new demand for labour with rise of wages, a

better market for food to the benefit of the farmer, a better market

for capital, and a greatly increased power to improve the land and to

make roads and build schools. This would, of course, make demand for

cotton, to the benefit of the cotton-grower, while improved prices for

food would benefit the farmer everywhere. Maryland, Virginia, and the

Carolinas, too, would then have their factories, at which food and

cotton would be converted into cloth, and the value of man in those

States would rise to a level with that of Mississippi and Alabama--and

our domestic slave trade would be brought to an end by precisely the

same measures that would relieve England, Ireland, and Scotland from

any _necessity_ for exporting men to distant regions of the earth.

 

Nothing of this kind could at once be done; but Russia, Germany, and

other countries of Europe are now, under protection, doing much toward

it; and it is in the power of the people of this country to contribute

largely toward bringing about such a state of things. Much was being

done under the tariff of 1842, but it is being undone under the act of

1846. The former tended to _raise_ the value of man at home, and hence

it was that under it the domestic slave trade so much diminished. The

latter tends to _diminish_ the value of man at home, and hence it is

that under it that trade so rapidly increases. The former tended to

diminish the quantity of food to be forced on the market of England,

to the deterioration of the value of English labour and land. The

latter tends to increase the quantity for which a market must be

sought abroad; and whatever tends to force food into that country

tends to lessen the value of its people, and to produce their _forced

export_ to other countries. As yet, however, we have arrived only at

the commencement of the working of the “free trade” system. We are now

where we were in 1836, when the making of railroads by aid of large

purchases, _on credit_, of cloth and iron, stimulated the consumption

of food and diminished the labour applied to its production. After the

next revulsion, now perhaps not far distant, the supply of food will

be large, and then it will be that the low prices of 1841-2, for both

food and labour, will be repeated.

 

In considering what is the duty of this country, every man should

reflect that whatever tends to increase the quantity of raw produce

forced on the market of England, tends to the cheapening of labour and

land everywhere, to the perpetuation of slavery, and to the extension

of its domain--and that whatever tends to the withdrawal of such

produce from that market tends to raising the value of land and labour

everywhere, to the extinction of slavery, and to the elevation of man.

 

The system commonly called free trade tends to produce the former

results; and where man is enslaved there can be no real freedom of

trade. That one which looks to protection against this extraordinary

system of taxation, tends to enable men to determine for themselves

whether they will make their exchanges abroad or at home; and it is in

this power of choice that consists the freedom of trade and of man. By

adopting the “free trade,” or British, system we place ourselves side

by side with the men who have ruined Ireland and India, and are now

poisoning and enslaving the Chinese people. By adopting the other, we

place ourselves by the side of those whose measures tend not only to

the improvement of their own subjects, but to the emancipation of the

slave everywhere, whether in the British Islands, India, Italy, or

America.

 

It will be said, however, that protection tends to destroy commerce,

the civilizer of mankind. Directly the reverse, however, is the fact.

It is the system now called free trade that tends to the destruction

of commerce, as is shown wherever it obtains. Protection looks only to

resisting a great scheme of foreign taxation that everywhere limits

the power of man to combine his efforts with those of his neighbour

man for the increase of his production, the improvement of his mind,

and the enlargement of his desires for, and his power to procure, the

commodities produced among the different nations of the world. The

commerce of India does not grow, nor does that of Portugal, or of

Turkey; but that of the protected, countries does increase, as has

been shown in the case of Spain, and can now be shown in that of

Germany. In 1834, before the formation of the _Zoll-Verein_, Germany

took from Great Britain,

 

  of her own produce and manufactures, only........ £4,429,727

  Whereas in 1852 she took......................... £7,694,059

 

And as regards this country, in which protection has always to some

extent existed, it is the best customer that England ever had, and our

demands upon her grow most steadily and regularly under protection,

because the greater our power to make coarse goods, the greater are

those desires which lead to the purchase of fine ones, and the greater

our ability to gratify them.

 

Whatever tends to increase the power of man to associate with his

neighbour man, tends to promote the growth of commerce, and to produce

that material, moral, and intellectual improvement which leads to

freedom. To enable men to exercise that power is the object of

protection. The men of this country, therefore, who desire that all

men, black, white, and brown, shall at the earliest period enjoy

perfect freedom of thought, speech, action, and trade, will find, on

full consideration, that duty to themselves and to their fellow-men

requires that they should advocate efficient protection, as the true

and only mode of abolishing the domestic trade in slaves, whether

black or white.

 

       *       *       *       *       *

 

It will, perhaps, be said that even although the slave trade were

abolished, slavery would still continue to exist, and that the great

object of the anti-slavery movement would remain unaccomplished. One

step, at all events, and a great one, would have been made. To render

men _adscripti glebæ_, thus attaching them to the soil, has been in

many countries, as has so recently been the case in Russia, one of the

movements toward emancipation; and if this could be here effected by

simple force of attraction, and without the aid of law, it would be

profitable to all, both masters and slaves; because whatever tends to

attract population tends inevitably to increase the value of land, and

thus to enrich its owner. There, however, it could not stop, as the

reader will readily see. Cheap food enables the farmer of Virginia to

raise cheap labour for the slave market. Raise the price of food, and

the profit of that species of manufacture would diminish. Raise it

still higher, and the profit would disappear; and then would the

master of slaves find it necessary to devolve upon the parent the

making of the _sacrifice_ required for the raising of children, and

thus to enable him to bring into activity all the best feelings of the

heart.

 

Cheap food and slavery go together; and if we desire to free ourselves

from the last, we must commence by ridding ourselves of the first.

Food is cheap in Virginia, because the market for it is distant, and

most of its value there is swallowed up in the cost of transportation.

Bring the consumer close to the door of the farmer, and it will be

worth as much there as it now commands in the distant market. Make a

demand everywhere around him for all the food that is raised, and its

value will everywhere rise, for then we shall cease to press upon the

limited market of England, which fixes the price of our crop, and is

now borne down by the surplus products of Germany and Russia, Canada

and ourselves; and the price will then be higher in the remote parts

of Virginia than can now be obtained for it in the distant market of

England. It will then become quite impossible for the farmer

profitably to feed his corn to slaves.

 

With the rise in the price of food the land would quadruple in value,

and that value would continue to increase as the artisan more and more

took his place by the side of the producer of food and wool, and as

towns increased in number and in size; and with each step in this

direction the master would attach less importance to the ownership of

slaves; while the slave would attach more importance to freedom. With

both, the state of feeling would, improve; and the more the negro was

improved the more his master would be disposed to think of slavery, as

was thought of old by Jefferson and Madison, that it was an evil that

required to be abated; and the more rapid the growth of wealth, the

greater the improvement in the value of land, the more rapid would be

the approach of freedom to all, the master and the slave.

 

It will be said, however, that if food should so much increase in

value as to render it desirable for Virginia to retain the whole

growth of her population, black and white, the necessary effect would,

be a great rise in the price of cotton, and a great increase in the

wealth of the planters further South, who would be desirous to have

negroes, even at greatly increased prices. That the price of cotton

would rise is quite certain. Nothing keeps it down but the low price

of food, which forces out the negroes of the Northern States, and

thus, maintains the domestic slave trade; and there is no reason to

doubt that not only would there be a large increase in its price, but

that the power to pay for it would increase with equal rapidity. More

negro labour would then certainly be needed, and then would exist

precisely the state of things that leads inevitably to freedom. When

two masters seek one labourer, the latter becomes free; but when two

labourers seek one master, the former become enslaved. The increased

value of negro labour would render it necessary for the owners of

negroes to endeavour to stimulate the labourer to exertion, and this

could be done only by the payment of wages for over-work, as is even

now done to a great extent. At present, the labour of the slave is in

a high degree unproductive, as will be seen by the following passage

from a letter to the New York _Daily Times_, giving the result of

information derived from a gentleman of Petersburgh, Virginia, said to

be “remarkable for accuracy and preciseness of his information:”--

 

 “He tells me,” says the writer, “he once very carefully observed how

 mush labour was expended in securing a crop of very thin wheat, and

 found that it took four negroes one day to cradle, rake, and bind one

 acre. (That is, this was the rate at which the field was harvested.)

 In the wheat-growing districts of Western New York, four men would be

 expected to do five acres of a similar crop.

 

 “Mr. Griscom further states, as his opinion, that four negroes do

 not, in the ordinary agricultural operations of this State,

 accomplish as much as one labourer in New Jersey. Upon my expressing

 my astonishment, he repeated it as his deliberately formed opinion.

 

 “I have since again called on Mr. Griscom, and obtained permission to

 give his name with the above statement. He also wishes me to add,

 that the ordinary waste in harvesting, by the carelessness of the

 negroes, above that which occurs in the hands of Northern labourers,

 is large enough to equal what a Northern farmer would consider a

 satisfactory profit on the crop.”

 

To bring into activity all this vast amount of labour now wasted, it

is needed to raise the _cost of man_, by raising the price of food;

and that is to be done by bringing the farmer’s market to his door,

and thus giving value to labour and land. Let the people of Maryland

and Virginia, Carolina, Kentucky, and Tennessee be enabled to bring

into activity their vast treasures of coal and iron ore, and to render

useful their immense water-powers--free the masters from their present

dependence on distant markets, in which they _must_ sell all they

produce, and _must_ buy all they consume--and the negro slave becomes

free, by virtue of the same great law that in past times has freed the

serf of England, and is now freeing the serf of Russia. In all

countries of the world man has become free as land has acquired value,

and as its owners have been enriched; and in all man has become

enslaved as land has lost its value, and its owners have been

impoverished.[212]

 

Chapter 21. Of the duty of the people of England

 

The English politico-economical system denounced by Adam Smith had not

failed before the close of the last century to be productive of

results in the highest degree unfavourable to man; and to account for

them it became necessary to discover that they were the inevitable

result of certain great natural laws; and to this necessity it was

that the world was indebted for the Ricardo-Malthusian system, which

may be briefly stated in the following propositions:--

 

First: That in the commencement of cultivation, when population is

small and land consequently abundant, the best soils--those capable of

yielding the largest return, say one hundred quarters to a given

quantity of labour--alone are cultivated.

 

Second: That with the progress of population, the fertile lands are

all occupied, and there arises a necessity for cultivating those

yielding a smaller return; and that resort is then had to a second,

and afterward to a third and a fourth class of soils, yielding

respectively ninety, eighty, and seventy quarters to the same quantity

of labour.

 

Third: That with the necessity for applying labour less productively,

which thus accompanies the growth of population, rent arises: the

owner of land No. 1 being enabled to demand and to obtain, in return

for its use, ten quarters when resort is had to that of second

quality; twenty when No. 3 is brought into use, and thirty when it

becomes necessary to cultivate No. 4.

 

Fourth: That the _proportion_ of the landlord tends thus steadily to

increase as the productiveness of labour decreases, the division being

as follows, to wit:--

 

                                             Total

  At the:                                    Product Labour Rent

  -------                                    ------- ------ ----

  first period, when No. 1 alone is cultivated..  100  100   00

  second period     No. 1 and 2 are cultivated.  190  180   10

  third period      No. 1, 2, and 3         “..  270  240   30

  fourth period     No. 1, 2, 3 and 4       “..  340  280   60

  fifth period      No. 1, 2, 3, 4, and 5   “..  400  300  100

  sixth period      No. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, and 6”..  450  300  150

  seventh period    No. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7 “..  490  280  210

 

and that there is thus a tendency to the ultimate absorption of the

whole produce by the owner of the land, and to a steadily increasing

inequality of condition; the power of the labourer to consume the

commodities which he produces steadily diminishing, while that of the

land-owner to claim them, as rent, is steadily increasing.

 

Fifth: That this tendency toward a diminution in the return of labour,

and toward an increase of the landlord’s proportion, always exists

where population increases, and most exists where population increases

most rapidly; but is in a certain degree counteracted by increase of

wealth, producing improvement of cultivation.

 

Sixth: That every such improvement tends to retard the growth of

rents, while every obstacle to improvement tends to increase that

growth: and that, therefore, the interests of the land-owner and

labourer are always opposed to each other, rents rising as labour

falls, and _vice-versa_.

 

A brief examination of these propositions will satisfy the reader that

they tend inevitably to the centralization of all power in the hands

of the few at the cost of the many, who are thus reduced to the

condition of slaves, mere hewers of wood and drawers of water for

their masters, as will now be shown.

 

I. In the commencement of cultivation labour is largely productive,

and the labourer takes for himself the whole of his product, paying no

rent.

 

II. With the increase of population, and the increased power to

associate, labour becomes less productive, and the labourer is

required to give a part of the diminished product to the land-owner,

who thus grows rich at his expense.

 

III. With further growth of population land acquires further value,

and that value increases with every increase of the _necessity_ for

applying labour less productively; and the less the product, the

larger becomes the proportion of the proprietor, whose wealth and

power increase precisely as the labourer becomes poorer and less able

to defend his rights, or, in other words, as he becomes enslaved.

 

This state of things leads of course to the expulsion of poor men, to

seek at a distance those rich soils which, according to the theory,

are the first cultivated. The more they are expelled, the greater must

of course be the consolidation of the land, the larger the income of

the few great farmers and land-owners, and the poorer the labourers.

Hence universal discord, such as is seen in England, and has recently

been so well described by the _Times_.[213]

 

The poorer the people, the greater must be the necessity for

emigration; and the greater the anxiety of the landed or other

capitalist for their expulsion, because they are thus relieved from

the necessity for supporting them; and the greater the rejoicing of

the trader, because he supposes they go from the cultivation of poor

to that of rich soils. Here we have dispersion, the opposite of that

association to which man has everywhere been indebted for his wealth;

for the development of his moral and intellectual faculties, and for

his freedom.

 

The soils left behind being supposed to be the poor ones, and those

first appropriated abroad being supposed to be the rich ones, it is

next held that all the people who go abroad, should do nothing but

cultivate the land, sending their corn and their wool to a distance of

thousands of miles in search of the little spindle and the loom; and

thus does the Ricardo system lead to the adoption of a policy directly

the reverse of that taught by Adam Smith.

 

The necessary effect of this is the discouragement of English

agriculture, and the closing of the market for English capital; and

the smaller the market for it at home the less must be the demand for

labour, and the greater must be the tendency of the labourer to become

the mere slave of those who do employ capital. This of course produces

further expulsion of both labour and capital; and the more they go

abroad, the less, as a matter of course, is the power of the community

that is left behind: and thus the Ricardo-Malthusian system tends

necessarily to the diminution of the importance of the nation in the

eyes of the world.

 

That system teaches that God in his infinite wisdom has given to

matter in the form of man a reproductive power greater than he has

given to the source from which that matter is derived, the earth

itself; and that, with a view to the correction of that error, man

must close his ear and his heart to the tale of suffering--must forget

that great law of Christ, “Do unto others as ye would that others

should do unto you,”--must persuade himself that it is “to his

advantage” that the negro slave “shall wear his chains in peace,”--and

must always recollect that if men _will_ marry; and have children, and

he “stands between the error and its consequence,” granting relief to

the poor or the sick in their distress, except so far as to prevent

“positive death,” he “perpetuates the sin.” This is the science of

repulsion, despair, and death; and it has been well denominated “the

dismal science.” It is taught in many of the schools of Europe, but

England alone has made it the basis of a system of policy; and the

result is seen in the fact that throughout all that portion of the

world subject to her influence, we see nothing but repulsion, slavery,

despair, and death, with steadily increasing weakness of the

communities in the general system of the world, as witness Ireland and

India, from, which men are flying as from pestilence--the West Indies,

Portugal, and Turkey, in all of which population declines, and the

communities themselves seem likely soon to perish of inanition.[214]

 

From every country that is strong enough to protect itself, she is

being gradually shut out; and in every one that is strong enough to

carry into effect the exclusion, we see a steady increase of the power

and the habit of association, and of the strength of the nation. The

little German Union of 1827 led to the great one of 1835; and at this

moment we have advices of the completion of the still greater one that

is to give freedom of internal trade to sixty millions of people, and

that is to do for all Germany what the _Zoll-Verein_ has done for its

northern portion. The habit of peace and of combined action thus grows

in all the countries of the world which protect themselves, while

repulsion and discord increase in every one that is unprotected. In

one we see a daily tendency toward freedom, while in the other slavery

grows from day to day.

 

It is the complaint of England that, much as she has done for other

countries, she receives no kindness in return. She stands at this day

without a friend; and this is not so much the fault of any error of

intention as of error of doctrine. Many of those who have directed her

affairs have been men of generous impulses--men who would scorn to do

what they thought to be wrong--but they have, been led away by a

system that teaches the rankest selfishness. The Creator of man

provided for his use great natural agents, the command of which was to

be obtained as the reward of the cultivation of his intellectual

powers; and that he might obtain leisure for their improvement, great

stores of fuel were accumulated, and iron ore was furnished in

unlimited quantity, to enable him, by combining the two, to obtain

machinery to aid him in the cultivation of the soil and the conversion

of its products. England, however, desires to restrict the use of

those great natural agents; and whenever or wherever other nations

undertake to call them to their aid, she is seen using every effort in

her power to annihilate competition, and thus maintain her monopoly.

Of this, the recent proceedings in relation to steam intercourse

between this country and Europe present a striking instance; but the

maintenance of numerous colonies, avowedly for the purpose of

“stifling in its infancy” every effort on the part of other nations to

obtain power to convert their coal and their ore into iron, or to

convert their iron into machinery that would enable them to command

the aid of steam, and thus lighten the labours of their people, while

increasing the efficiency of their exertions, is a thing not only not

disavowed, but gloried in by her most eminent and enlightened men. The

exceeding selfishness of this effort to retain a monopoly of those

great natural agents should, of itself, afford proof conclusive to

every Englishman that the system that is to be so maintained could not

be right; and it would do so, were it not that their system of

political economy teaches that every man must live by “snatching the

bread from his neighbour’s mouth” that the land-owner grows rich at

the expense of the labourer; that profits rise only at the cost of

wages, and wages only at the cost of profits; and, therefore, that the

only way to ensure a fair rate for the use of capital is to keep the

price of labour down.

 

This system is to be carried out by producing “unlimited competition”

and in what is it to exist? In the sale of labour; and the greater

that competition, the greater will be the profits of the capitalist,

and the lower will be the wages of the labourer. The more the

competition for the sale of cotton, the cheaper will be the labourer

who produces it; and the more perfect the monopoly of machinery, the

cheaper must be the labourer who performs the work of spinning the

wool and weaving the cloth, but the larger will be the share of the

man who owns the spindles and the looms. The fewer the spindles and

looms of the world, the cheaper will be cotton and the dearer will be

cloth, and the greater the profits of what is called capital; but the

less will be the value of the stock in that great bank from which all

capital is derived--the earth; and the poorer and more enslaved must

be all those who have shares in it, and all who desire to obtain loans

from it--the land-owners and the labourers. Such being the tendencies

of the system, need we wonder, that it produces repulsion abroad, or

that England is now so entirely without friends that in this age of

the world--one that should be so enlightened--she talks of increased

armaments with a view to defending herself from invasion, and calls on

other nations for help? Certainly not. Were it otherwise, it would be

wonderful. She is expelling her whole people from the land, and the

more they go, the more she is rejoiced. “Extensive as has been the

emigration from Ireland which has already taken place, there is,” we

are told--

 

 “A remarkable proof that it has not been carried too far. There is

 still no regular demand for labour in the West of Ireland, and wages

 are still at the low starvation rate which prevailed before the

 famine.”--_Economist_, (London,) Feb. 12, 1853.

 

Again, we are told that

 

 “The departure of the redundant population of the Highlands of

 Scotland is an indispensable preliminary to every kind of

 improvement.”--_Ibid_.

 

Further, we are informed that the emigration from England, Wales, and

the Lowlands of Scotland has “almost entirely consisted of able-bodied

agricultural labourers,” and that few or none of the manufacturing

population have emigrated, except “a few Spitalfields and Paisley

hand-loom weavers.”[215] The loss of all these agriculturists, and the

rapid conversion of the whole people of the kingdom into mere buyers

and sellers of the products of other nations, is regarded as not only

not to be regretted, but as a thing to be rejoiced at; and another

influential journal assures its readers that the “mere anticipation”

of any deficiency in the export of man from the kingdom “would lead to

the most disastrous suspension of industry and enterprise,” and that

“the emigration must not only continue, but it must be maintained with

all possible steadiness and activity.”[216]

 

Little effort would seem to be required to bring about the abandonment

of England, as well as of Ireland. Of the latter the latest journals

furnish accounts of which the following is a fair specimen:--

 

 “The people are fast passing away from the land in the West of

 Ireland. The landlords of Connaught are tacitly combined to weed out

 all the smaller occupiers, against whom a regular systematic war of

 extermination is being waged. * * * The most heart-rending cruelties

 are daily practised in this province, of which the public are not at

 all aware.”--_Galway Mercury_.

 

In the former, we are told that

 

 “The wheel of ‘improvement’ is now seizing another class, the most

 stationary class in England. A startling emigration movement has

 sprung up among the smaller English farmers, especially those holding

 heavy clay soils, who, with bad prospects for the coming harvest, and

 in want of sufficient capital to make the great improvements on their

 farms which would enable them to pay their old rents, have no other

 alternative but to cross the sea in search of a new country and of

 new lands. I am not speaking now of the emigration caused by the gold

 mania, but only of the compulsory emigration produced by landlordism,

 concentration of farms, application of machinery to the soil, and

 introduction of the modern system of agriculture on a great

 scale.”--_Correspondence of the New York Tribune_.

 

Nevertheless, wages do not rise. Hundreds of thousands, and even

millions, of the poor people of the kingdom have now been expelled,

and yet there is “no regular demand for labour,” and wages continue as

low as ever. That such should be the case is not extraordinary, but it

will be so if this diminution of the power of association do not

result in lowering the reward of labour, and accelerating the

dispersion of the labourers. Every man that goes was a producer of

something, to be given in exchange for another thing that he required,

that was produced by others; and from the moment of his departure he

ceases to be a producer, with correspondent diminution in the demand

for the cloth, the iron, or the salt produced by his neighbours. The

less the competition for purchase the more becomes the competition for

sale, and the lower must be the compensation of the labourer. A recent

journal informs us that the condition of one class of operatives, the

salt-boilers, has “gradually become most deplorable.”

 

 “Their wages at present do not average 15s. a week, because they are

 not employed full time; 2s. 6d. a day is the highest price given, and

 one of these days consists of fourteen or sixteen hours. In addition

 to this, some of the employers have latterly introduced a new mode of

 diminishing the actual payment in wages. As has already been stated,

 the salt-pans in the course of a few days require cleansing from the

 impurities and dross thrown down with the process of boiling. The

 accumulation may vary from one-eighth of an inch to one foot,

 according to the quality of the brine. Therefore, every fortnight the

 fires are let out and the pans picked and cleaned, a process which

 occupies a full day; and this unavoidable and necessary work it is

 becoming the fashion to require the men to perform without any

 remuneration whatever; or, in other words, to demand one month’s work

 out of the twelve from them without giving any wages in

 return!”--_Dawson’s Merchants’ Magazine_, February, 1853, 98.

 

The more steady and active the emigration of the agricultural

labourers, and the larger the remainder of factory operatives, the

greater must be the necessity for depending on other countries for

supplies, and the less must be the power of the nation in the

community of nations, the richer must grow the great manufacturer, and

the poorer must become the labourer; and, as this system is now being

so vigorously carried out, the cause of weakness may readily be

understood. It is a natural consequence of the purely selfish policy

to which the Ricardo-Malthusian doctrines inevitably lead.

 

Can such a system be a natural one? Is it possible that an all-wise,

all-powerful, and all-merciful Being, having constructed this world

for the occupation of man, should have inflicted upon it such a curse

as is found in a system of laws the study of which leads to the

conclusion that men can live only “by snatching the bread out of the

mouths” of their fellow-men? Assuredly not. What, then, _are_ the laws

under which man “lives and moves and has his being?” To obtain an

answer to this question, we must go back to the proposition which lies

at the base of the British system--that which teaches that men begin

the work of cultivation with the rich soils of the earth, and are

afterward compelled to resort to inferior ones the most important one

in political economy; so important, says Mr. J. S. Mill, that were it

otherwise, “almost all the phenomena of the production and

distribution of wealth would be other than they are.”

 

Admitting, now, that the law _were_ different, and that instead of

commencing on the rich soils and then passing toward the poor ones,

they commenced on the poor soils of the hills and gradually made their

way down to the rich ones of the swamps and river-bottoms, would not

one of the differences referred to by Mr. Mill consist in this, that

whereas the old theory tended to establish a constant increase in the

_necessities_ of man, with constant deterioration, of his condition

and growing inequality among men, the new one would tend to establish

a constant increase of his _powers_, with constant improvement of

condition and growing equality among men, wherever the laws of God

were permitted to control their operations?

 

Again, might not another of those differences consist in the

establishment of the facts that instead of there having been a mistake

on the part of the Creator, there had been a serious one on that of

the economists, in attributing to those little scraps of the earth

that man forms into wagons, ships, and steam-engines, and which he

calls capital, an importance greater than is assigned to the earth of

which they are so trivial a portion; and that the latter was the real

bank, the source of all capital, from which he can have loans to an

extent almost unlimited, provided he recollects that they _are_ loans,

and not gifts, and that his credit with this banker, as well as with

all others, cannot be maintained without a punctual repayment of the

matter borrowed when he has ceased to need it?

 

Further, as the old theory furnishes propositions to, which the

exceptions are seen to be so numerous that every new writer finds

himself compelled to modify it in some manner with a view to cover

those exceptions, might not another, of the differences consist in its

furnishing laws as universally true as are those of Copernicus,

Kepler, or Newton--laws that gave proof of their truth by being

everywhere in harmony with each other, and productive everywhere of

harmony; and would not the following form a part of them?--

 

I. That the poor and solitary man commences everywhere with poor

machinery, and that everywhere, as population and wealth increase, he

obtains better machinery, and production is increased. The first poor

settler has no cup, and he takes up water in his hand. He has no hogs

or cattle to yield him oil, and he is compelled to depend on

pine-knots for artificial light. He has no axe, and he cannot fell a

tree, either to supply himself with fuel or to clear his land. He has

no saw, and he is compelled to seek shelter under a rock, because he

is unable to build himself a house. He has no spade, and he is

compelled to cultivate land that is too poor to need clearing, and too

dry to require drainage. He has no horse, and is obliged to carry his

little crop of grain on his shoulders. He has no mill, and is

compelled to pound his grain between stones, or to eat it unground, as

did the Romans for so many centuries. With the growth of wealth and

population he obtains machinery that enables him to _command_ the

services of the various natural agents by which he is surrounded; and

he now obtains more water, more light, more heat, and more power at

less cost of labour; and he cultivates rich lands that yield food more

largely, while he transports its products, by means of a wagon or a

railroad car, converts it into flour by aid of steam, and exchanges it

readily with, the man who converts his food and his wool into cloth,

or food and ore into iron,--and thus passes from poor to better

machinery of production, transportation, and exchange, with increasing

reward of labour, and diminishing value of all the products of labour.

 

II. That the poor settler gives a large _proportion_ of the produce of

his labour for the use of poor machinery of production,

transportation, and exchange; but the produce being small, the

_quantity_ of rent then paid is very small. He is a slave to the owner

of landed or other capital.

 

III. That with the increased productiveness of labour there is

increased facility for the reproduction of machinery required for the

production of water, light, fuel, and food; and that this diminution

in the cost _of reproduction_ is attended with a constant diminution

in the value of all such machinery previously accumulated, and

diminution in the proportion of the product of labour that can be

demanded as rent for their use; and thus, while labour steadily

increases in its power to yield commodities of every kind required by

man, capital as steadily diminishes in its power over the labourer.

Present labour obtains a constantly increasing proportion of a

constantly increasing quantity, while the claims of the accumulations

of past labour (capital) are rewarded with an increasing quantity, but

rapidly diminishing proportion; and that there is thus, with the

growth of population and wealth, a daily tendency toward improvement

and equality of condition.

 

IV. That increase in the _quantity_ of the landlord or other

capitalist is evidence of increase in the labourer’s _proportion_, and

of large increase of his quantity, with constantly increasing tendency

toward freedom of thought, speech, action, and trade, and that it is

precisely as land acquires value that man becomes free.

 

Here is a system, all the parts of which are in perfect harmony with

each other, and all tending to the production of harmony among the

various portions of society, and the different nations of the earth.

Under them, we see men beginning on the higher and poorer lands and

gradually coming together in the valleys, with steady tendency to

increase in the power of association, and in the power to assert the

right Of perfect self-government. It is thus the system of freedom.

Population enables men to cultivate the richer soils, and food tends

to increase more rapidly than population, giving men leisure for the

cultivation of their minds and those of their children. Increased

intelligence enables man from year to year to obtain larger loans from

the great bank--the earth--while with the increased diversification of

labour he is enabled more and more to repay them by the restoration of

the manure to the place from which the food had been derived.

 

Here are laws tending to the promotion of kindly feelings, and to the

enabling of man to carry fully into effect the great law which lies at

the base of Christianity--doing to his neighbours as he would that

they should do unto him. They are laws whose constant and uniform

truth may be seen in reference to every description of capital and of

labour, and in all the communities of the world, large and small, in

present and in past times. Being _laws_, they admit of no exceptions

any more than do the great astronomical ones. They recognise the whole

product of labour as being the property of the labourer of the past

and the present; the former represented by the proprietor of the

machine, and the latter by the man who uses it, and who finds himself

every day more and more able to accumulate the means of becoming

himself a proprietor.

 

The English system does not recognise the existence of universal laws.

According to it, land, labour, and capital, are the three instruments

of production, and they are governed by different laws. Labour, when

it seeks aid from land, is supposed to begin with good machinery and

to pass toward the worst, with constantly increasing power in the

owner of the land; whereas, when it seeks aid from the steam-engine,

it passes from poor to good, with diminishing power in the owner of

capital. There is thus one set of laws for the government of the great

machine itself--the earth--and another for that of all its parts.

Under the first, value is supposed to increase because of the

diminished productiveness of labour, whereas under the last it is

supposed to diminish because of the increased productiveness of

labour. The two point to opposite poles of the compass, and the only

mode of reconciling them is found in the supposition that as the power

of production diminishes with the increasing necessity for resorting

to inferior soils, the power of accumulating capital tends to

increase, and thus counterbalances the disadvantages resulting from

the necessity for applying labour less and less advantageously. Who is

it, however, that is to furnish this capital? Is it the labourer? He

cannot do it, for he cultivates “the inferior soils,” and retains for

himself a constantly diminishing proportion of a constantly

diminishing product. Is it the landlord? His proportion increases, it

is true, but his _quantity_ diminishes in its proportion to

population, as his tenants are forced to resort to less productive

soils. The power to accumulate is dependent on the quantity of time

and labour required for obtaining present subsistence; and as that

increases with the necessity for resorting to poorer machinery, the

power to obtain machines to be used in aid of labour dies away. Such

being the case, it is clear that if men are obliged, in obedience to a

great natural law, to pass steadily from rich soils to poor ones

yielding less returns to labour, no compensation can anywhere be

found, and that the elder Mill was right when he said that the power

of accumulation must cease, and wages must fall so low that men “would

perish of want;” in preference to doing which they would, of course,

sell themselves, their wives, and children, into, slavery. Of all the

English writers on this subject, he is the only one that has had the

courage to follow out the Ricardo-Malthusian system to its necessary

conclusions, and proclaim to the world the existence of a great law of

nature leading _inevitably_ to the division of society into two great

portions, the very rich and the very poor--the master and the slave.

 

There are thus two systems--one of which proclaims that men can thrive

only at the expense of their neighbours, and the other that they

“prosper with the prosperity of those neighbours--one that teaches

utter selfishness, and another teaching that enlightened selfishness

which prompts men to rejoice in the advances of their fellow-men

toward wealth and civilization--one that leads to internal discord and

foreign war, and another teaching peace, union, and brotherly kindness

throughout--the world--one that teaches the doctrine of despair and

death, and another teaching joy and hope--one that is anti-christian

in all its tendencies, teaching that we must _not_ do to our neighbour

in distress as we would that he should do to us, but that, on the

contrary our duty requires that we should see him suffer, unrelieved,

every calamity short of “positive death,” and another teaching in its

every page that if individuals or nations would thrive, they can do so

_only_ on the condition of carrying into full effect the great law of

Christ--”That which ye would that others should do unto you, do ye

unto them.”

 

Both of these systems cannot be true. Which of them is so is to be

settled by the determination of the great fact whether the Creator

made a mistake in providing that the poor settler should commence on

the low and rich lands, leaving the poor soils of the hills to his

successors, who obtain from them a constantly diminishing supply of

food--or whether, in his infinite wisdom, he provided that the poor

man, destitute, of axe and spade, should go to the poor and dry land

of the hills, requiring neither clearing nor drainage, leaving the

heavily timbered and swamp lands for his wealthy successors. If the

first, then the laws of God tend to the perpetuation of slavery, and

the English political economy is right in all its parts, and should be

maintained. If the last, then is it wrong in all its parts, and duty

to themselves, to their fellow-men throughout the world, and to the

great Giver of all good things, requires that it be at once and for

ever abandoned.

 

It is time that enlightened Englishmen should examine into this

question. When they shall do so, it will require little time to

satisfy themselves that every portion of their own island furnishes

proof that cultivation commenced on the poor soils, and that from the

day when King Arthur held his court in a remote part of Cornwall to

that on which Chatfield Moss was drained, men have been steadily

obtaining _more productive_ soils at _less cost_ of labour, and that

not only are they now doing so, but that it is difficult to estimate

how far it may be carried. Every discovery in science tends to

facilitate the making of those combinations of matter requisite for

the production of food, giving better soils at diminished cost. Every

new one tends to give to man increased power to command the use of

those great natural agents provided for his service, and to enable him

to obtain more and better food, more and better clothing, more and

better house-room, in exchange for less labour, leaving him more time

for the improvement of his mind, for the education of his children,

and for the enjoyment of those recreations which tend to render life

pleasurable. The reverse of all this is seen under the English system.

The more numerous the discoveries in science, and the greater the

command of man over the powerful natural agents given for diminishing

labour, the more severe and unintermitting becomes his toil, the less

becomes his supply of food, the poorer becomes his clothing, the more

wretched becomes his lodging, the less time can be given to the

improvement of his mind, the more barbarous grow up his children, the

more is his wife compelled to work in the field, and the less is his

time for enjoyment;--as witness all those countries over which England

now exercises dominion, and as witness to so great an extent the

present condition of her own people, as exhibited by those of her own

writers quoted in a former chapter.

 

Selfishness and Christianity cannot go together, nor can selfishness

and national prosperity. It is purely selfish in the people of England

to desire to prevent the people of the various nations of the world

from profiting by their natural advantages, whether of coal, iron ore,

copper, tin, or lead. It is injurious to themselves, because it keeps

their neighbours poor, while they are subjected to vast expense in the

effort to keep them from rebelling against taxation. They maintain

great fleets and armies, at enormous expense, for the purpose of

keeping up a system that destroys their customers and themselves; and

this they must continue to do so long as they shall hold to the

doctrine which teaches that the only way to secure a fair remuneration

to capital is to keep the price of labour down, because it is one that

produces discord and slavery, abroad and at home; whereas, under that

of peace, hope, and freedom, they would need neither fleets nor

armies.

 

It is to the country of Hampden and Sidney that the world _should_ be

enabled to look for advice in all matters affecting the cause of

freedom; and it is to her that all _would_ look, could her statesmen

bring themselves to understand how destructive to herself and them is

the system of centralization she now seeks to establish. As it is,

slavery grows in all the countries under her control, and freedom

grows in no single country of the world but those which protect

themselves against her system. It is time that the enlightened and

liberal men of England should study the cause of this fact; and

whenever they shall do so they will find a ready explanation of the

growing pauperism, immorality, gloom, and slavery of their own

country; and they will then have little difficulty in understanding

that the protective tariffs of all the advancing nations of Europe are

but measures of resistance to a system of enormous oppression, and

that it is in that direction that the people of this country are to

look for _the true and only road to freedom of trade and the freedom

of man_.

 

It is time that such men should ask themselves whether or not their

commercial policy can, by any possibility, aid the cause of freedom,

abroad or at home. The nations of the world are told of the “free and

happy people” of England; but when they look to that country to

ascertain the benefits of freedom, they meet with frightful pauperism,

gross immorality, infanticide to an extent unknown in any other part

of the civilized world, and a steadily increasing division of the

people into two great classes--the very rich and the very poor--with

an universal tendency to “fly from ills they know,” in the hope of

obtaining abroad the comfort and happiness denied them at home. Can

this benefit the cause of freedom?--The nations are told of the

enlightened character of the British government, and yet, when they

look to Ireland, they can see nothing but poverty, famine, and

pestilence, to end in the utter annihilation of a nation that has

given to England herself many of her most distinguished men. If they

look to India, they see nothing but poverty, pestilence, famine, and

slavery; and if they cast their eyes toward China, they see the whole

power of the nation put forth to compel a great people to submit to

the fraudulent introduction of a commodity, the domestic production of

which is forbidden because of its destructive effects upon the morals,

the happiness, and the lives of the community.[217]

 

--The nations are told that England

 

 “Is the asylum of nations, and that it _will defend the asylum to the

 last ounce of its treasure and the last drop of its blood_. There

 is,” continues _The Times_, “no point whatever on which we are

 prouder or more resolute.”

 

Nevertheless, when they look to the countries of Europe that furnish

the refugees who claim a place in this asylum, they see that England

is everywhere at work to prevent the people from obtaining the means

of raising themselves in the social scale. So long as they shall

continue purely agricultural, they must remain poor, weak, and

enslaved, and their only hope for improvement is from that association

of the loom and the plough which gave to England her freedom; and yet

England is everywhere their opponent, seeking to annihilate the power

of association.--The nations are told of the vast improvement of

machinery, by aid of which man is enabled to call to his service the

great powers of nature, and thus improve not only his material but his

intellectual condition; but, when they look to the colonies and to the

allies of England, they see everywhere a decay of intellect; and when

they look to the independent countries, they see her whole power put

forth to prevent them from doing any thing but cultivate the earth and

exhaust the soil. It is time that enlightened Englishmen should look

carefully at these things, and answer to themselves whether or not

they are thus promoting the cause of freedom. That they are not, must

be the answer of each and every such man. That question answered, it

will be for them to look to see in which direction lies the path of

duty; and fortunate will it be if they can see that interest and duty

can be made to travel in company with each other.

 

To the women of England much credit is due for having brought this

question before the world. It is one that should have for them the

deepest interest. Wherever man is unable to obtain machinery, he is

forced to depend on mere brute labour; and he is then so poor that his

wife must aid him in the labours of the field, to her own degradation,

and to the neglect of her home, her husband, her children, and

herself. She is then the most oppressed of slaves. As men obtain

machinery, they obtain command of great natural agents, and mind

gradually takes the place of physical force; and then labour in the

field becomes more productive, and the woman passes from out-of-door

to in-door employments, and with each step in this direction she is

enabled to give more care to her children, her husband, and herself.

From being a slave, and the mother of slaves, she passes to becoming a

free woman, the mother of daughters that are free, and the instructor

of those to whom the next generation is to look for instruction.

 

The English system looks to confining the women of the world to the

labours of the field, and such is its effect everywhere. It looks,

therefore, to debasing and enslaving them and their children. The

other looks to their emancipation from slavery, and their elevation in

the social scale; and it can scarcely fail to be regarded by the women

as well as by the men of England as a matter of duty to inquire into

the grounds upon which their policy is based, and to satisfy

themselves if it can be possible that there is any truth in a system

which tends everywhere to the production of slavery, and therefore to

the maintenance of the slave trade throughout the world.

 

 

 

 

FOOTNOTES:

 

 

[1] Edwards’ West Indies, vol. i. p. 255.

 

[2] Macpherson’s Annals of Commerce, vol. iii. 575.

 

[3] Macpherson’s Annals of Commerce, vol. iv. 155.

 

[4] Martin’s Colonial Library, West Indies, vol. i. 90.

 

[5] Macpherson, vol. iv. 155.

 

[6] Ibid.

 

[7] Montgomery’s West Indies, vol. ii. 114

 

[8] Macpherson, vol. iv. 155, 228.

 

[9] Macpherson, vol. iv. 155.

 

[10] The export to the foreign West Indies, from 1783 to 1787, is

    given by Macpherson at nearly 20,000.

 

[11] The causes of these diminutions will be exhibited in a future

        chapter.

 

[12] Macpherson, vol. iv.  144.

 

[13] The Cape and the Kaffirs, by Harriet Ward, London, 1852.

 

[14] Notes on Jamaica in 1850, p. 64.

 

[15] Ibid. 68.

 

[16] State and Prospects of Jamaica.

 

[17] The Corentyne.

 

[18] East bank of Berbice river.

 

[19] West ditto.

 

[20] West coast of Berbice.

 

[21] Prospective Review, Nov. 1852, 504.

 

[22] The Celt, the Roman, and the Saxon, by Thomas Wright, p. 87.

 

[23] Ibid. p. 56.

 

[24] Where population and wealth diminish, the rich soils are

    abandoned and men retire to the poorer ones, as is seen in the

    abandonment of the delta of Egypt, of the Campagna, of the valley

    of Mexico, and of the valleys of the Tigris and the Euphrates.

 

[25] The land of England itself has become and is becoming more

    consolidated, the cause of which will be shown in a future

    chapter.

 

[26] Dallas’s History of the Maroons, vol. i. page c.

 

[27] Macpherson, vol. iii. 394.

 

[28] Ibid. 574.

 

[29] Ibid. vol. iv. 255.

 

[30] Dallas’s History of the Maroons, vol. i. cvii.

 

[31] Ibid. cv.

 

[32] Dallas’s History of the Maroons, vol.  ii. 358.

 

[33] See page 14, _ante_.

 

[34] Coleridge’s “Six Months in the West Indies,” 131.

 

[35] See pages 71-2, _ante_.

 

[36] Martin’s West Indies.

 

[37] Tooke’s History of Prices, vol. ii. 412.

 

[38] The reader who may desire to see this law fully demonstrated, may

    do so on referring to the author’s Principles of Political

    Economy, vol. i. chap. v.

 

[39] Bigelow, Notes, 129.

 

[40] Ibid, 31.

 

[41] Ibid, 69.

 

[42] Bigelow, 125.

 

[43] Speech of Mr. James Wilson, December 10, 1852. On the same

     occasion it was stated that “the lower orders” are daily “putting

     aside all decency,” while “the better class appear to have lost

     all hope,” and that the Governor, Sir Charles Grey, “described

     things as going on from bad to worse.” The cholera had carried

     off, as was stated, 40,000 persons.

 

[44] The following case illustrates in a very striking manner the

     value that is given to things that must be wasted among an

     exclusively agricultural population,--and it is but one of

     thousands that might be adduced:

 

     WHAT OLD BONES AND BITS OF SKIN MAY BE GOOD FOR.--How to get a

     penny-worth of beauty out of old bones and bits of skin, is a

     problem which the French gelatine makers have solved very

     prettily. Does the reader remember some gorgeous sheets of

     colored gelatine in the French department of the Great

     Exhibition? We owed them to the slaughter-houses of Paris. These

     establishments are so well organized and conducted, that all the

     refuse is carefully preserved, to be applied to any purposes for

     which it may be deemed fitting. Very pure gelatine is made from

     the waste fragments of skin, bone, tendon, ligature, and

     gelatinous tissue of the animals slaughtered in the Parisian

     _abbatoirs_, and thin sheets of this gelatine are made to receive

     very rich and beautiful colors. As a gelatinous liquid, when

     melted, it is used in the dressing of woven stuffs, and in the

     clarification of wine; and as a solid, it is cut into threads for

     the ornamental uses of the confectioner, or made into very thin

     white sheets of _papier glace_, for copying, drawing, or applied

     to the making of artificial flowers, or used as a substitute for

     paper, on which gold printing may be executed. In good sooth,

     when an ox has given us our beef, and our leather, and our

     tallow, his career of usefulness is by no means ended; we can get

     a penny out of him as long as there is a scrap of his substance

     above ground--_Household Words_.

 

[45] The superficial area of the State is 64,000 square miles, being

    greater than that of England, and double that of Ireland.

 

[46] Despotism in America, 127.

 

[47] De Bow’s Commercial Review, new series, vol. ii. 137.

 

[48] The tobacco grower “has the mortification of seeing his tobacco,

     bought from him at sixpence in bond, charged three shillings

     duty, and therefore costing the broker but 3s. 6d. and selling in

     the shops of London at ten, twelve, and sixteen shillings.”

     (Urquhart’s Turkey, 194.) The same writer informs his readers

     that the tobacco dealers were greatly alarmed when it was

     proposed that the duty should be reduced, because then everybody

     with £10 capital could set up a shop. The slave who works in the

     tobacco-field is among the largest taxpayers for the maintenance

     of foreign traders and foreign governments.

 

[49] Statistique de l’Agriculture de la France, 129.

 

[50] Urquhart’s Resources of Turkey, 179.

 

[51] Equivalent to light port-charges, the anchorage being only

    sixteen cents per ship.

 

[52] Beaujour’s Tableau du Commerce de la Greece, quoted by Urquhart,

     47.

 

[53] Urquhart, 150.

 

[54] The recent proceedings in regard to the Turkish loan are

    strikingly illustrative of the exhausting effects of a system that

    looks wholly to the export of the raw produce of the earth, and

    thus tends to the ruin of the soil and of its owner.

 

[55] Urquhart, 257.

 

[56] Ibid. 202.

 

[57] Turkey, and its Destiny, by C. Mac Farlane, Esq., 1850.

 

[58] Mac Farlane, vol. i, 46.

 

[59] Mac Farlane, vol. ii, 242.

 

[60] Ibid. 296.

 

[61] Ibid. vol. i. 37.

 

[62] History of British India, vol. i. 46.

 

[63] Historical Fragments, 402.

 

[64] “The country was laid waste with fire and sword, and that land

     distinguished above most others by the cheerful face of fraternal

     government and protected labour, the chosen seat of cultivation

     and plenty, is now almost throughout a dreary desert covered with

     rushes and briers, and jungles full of wild beasts.  * * * That

     universal, systematic breach of treaties, which had made the

     British faith proverbial in the East! These intended rebellions

     are one of the Company’s standing resources. When money has been

     thought to be hoarded up anywhere, its owners are universally

     accused of rebellion, until they are acquitted of their money and

     their treasons at once! The money once taken, all accusation,

     trial, and punishment ends.”--_Speech on Fox’s East India Bill_.

 

[65] Quoted in Thompson’s Lectures on India, 61.

 

[66] Colonel Sykes states the proportion collected in the Deccan as

    much less than is above given

 

[67] Rickards, vol. i. 288.

 

[68] Vol. ii. 218.

 

[69] Rickards, vol i. 500.

 

[70] Ibid. 559.

 

[71] Ibid. 558.

 

[72] Ibid. 558.

 

[73] Campbell’s Modern India, London, 1852, 356.

 

[74] Campbell’s Modern India, 357.

 

[75] Baines’s History of the Cotton Manufacture.

 

[76] Campbell’s Modern India, 332.

 

[77] Ibid. 381.

 

[78] Campbell’s Modern India, 105.

 

[79] Rambles in India, by Col.  Sleeman, vol. i. p. 296.

 

[80] Speech of Mr. G. Thompson in the House of Commons.

 

[81] See page 133 _ante_.

 

[82] Chapman’s Commerce and Cotton of India, 74.

 

[83] Chapman, Cotton and Commerce of India, 28.

 

[84] Taking the last six of the thirteen years, the price of cotton

    was 2d. a pound, and if the produce of a beegah was 6s. 6d., of

    this the government took sixty-eight per cent. of the gross

    produce; and taking the two years 1841 and 1842, cotton was 1-3/4

    d. a pound, and the produce of a beegah was 5s. 8d. On this the

    assessment was actually equal to seventy-eight per cent. on the

    gross produce of the land.--_Speech of Mr. Bright in the House of

    Commons_.

 

[85] Chapman’s Commerce and Cotton of India, 110.

 

[86] Chapman, 167.

 

[87] Rambles, vol. i. 205.

 

[88] Ibid. 268.

 

[89] Ibid. vol. ii. 147.

 

[90] Ibid. 153.

 

[91] Ibid. 185.

 

[92] Ibid. 199.

 

[93] Chapman, 97.

 

[94] Thompson’s Lectures on India, 57.

 

[95] Ibid.  185.

 

[96] Chapman, 22.

 

[97] Ibid, 25.

 

[98] Rambles in India, vol. ii. 109.

 

[99] Modern India, 394

 

[100] Thompson, Lectures on India, 25.

 

[101] The destruction of life in China from this extension of the

     market for the produce of India is stated at no less than 400,000

     per annum. How this trade is regarded in India itself, by

     Christian men, may be seen from the following extract from a

     review, recently published in the Bombay _Telegraph_, of papers

     in regard to it published in Hunt’s Merchants’ Magazine, in which

     the review is now republished:--

 

     “That a professedly Christian government should, by its sole

     authority and on its sole responsibility, produce a drug which is

     not only contraband, but essentially detrimental to the best

     interests of humanity; that it should annually receive into its

     treasury crores of rupees, which, if they cannot, save by a too

     licentious figure, be termed ‘the price of blood,’ yet are

     demonstrably the price of the physical waste, the social

     wretchedness, and moral destruction of the Chinese; and yet that

     no sustained remonstrances from the press, secular or spiritual,

     nor from society, should issue forth against the unrighteous

     system, is surely an astonishing fact in the history of our

     Christian ethics.

 

     “_An American, accustomed to receive from us impassioned

     arguments against his own nation on account of slavery, might

     well be pardoned were he to say to us, with somewhat of

     intemperate feeling, ‘Physician, heal thyself_,’ and to expose

     with bitterness the awful inconsistency of Britain’s vehement

     denunciation of American slavery, while, by most deadly measures,

     furthering Chinese demoralization.”

 

    The review, in referring to the waste of human life, closes as

    follows:-.

 

     “What unparalleled destruction! The immolations of an Indian

     Juggernauth dwindle into insignificance before it! We again

     repeat, nothing but slavery is worthy to be compared for its

     horrors with this monstrous system of iniquity. As we write, we

     are amazed at the enormity of its unprincipledness, and the large

     extent of its destructiveness. Its very enormity seems in some

     measure to protect it. Were it a minor evil, it seems as though

     one might grapple with it. As it is, it is beyond the compass of

     our grasp. No words are adequate to expose its evil, no fires of

     indignant feeling are fierce enough to blast it.

 

     “The enormous wealth it brings into our coffers is its only

     justification, the cheers of vice-enslaved wretches its only

     welcome; the curses of all that is moral and virtuous in an

     empire of three hundred and sixty millions attend its

     introduction; the prayers of enlightened Christians deprecate its

     course; the indignation of all righteous minds is its only

     ‘God-speed.’

 

     “It takes with it fire and sword, slaughter and death; it leaves

     behind it bankrupt fortunes, idiotized minds, broken hearts, and

     ruined souls. Foe to all the interests of humanity, hostile to

     the scanty virtues of earth; and warring against the overflowing

     benevolence of heaven, may we soon have to rejoice over its

     abolition!”

 

[102] Campbell, 390.

 

[103] Ibid. 393.

 

[104] Campbell, 384.

 

[105] Ibid.  377.

 

[106] Campbell, 359.

 

[107] Ibid. 332.

 

[108] Ibid. 345

 

[109] Chapman on the Commerce of India, 88.

 

[110] Lawson’s Merchants’ Magazine, January, 1853, 58.

 

[111] Ibid. 51.

 

[112] See page 140, _ante_.

 

[113] Backhouse’s Visit to the Mauritius, 35.

 

[114] The danger of interference, even with the best intentions, when

     unaccompanied by knowledge, is thus shown by the same author, in

     speaking of Madagascar:--

 

     “Dreadful wars are waged by the queen against other parts of the

     island, in which all the male prisoners above a certain stature

     are put to death, and the rest made slaves. This she is enabled

     to effect, by means of the standing army which her predecessor

     Radama was recommended to keep by the British. * * How lamentable

     is the reflection that the British nation, with the good

     intention of abolishing the slave trade, should have strengthened

     despotic authority and made way for all its oppressive and

     depopulating results, by encouraging the arts of war instead of

     those of peace!”--P. 24.

 

[115] Thompson’s Lectures on British India, 187.

 

[116] Lawson’s Merchants’ Magazine, January, 1853, 14.

 

[117] Bigelow’s “Jamaica in 1850,” 17.

 

[118] Sophisms of Free Trade, by J. Barnard Byles, Esq.

 

[119] Speech of Mr. T. F. Meagher, 1847.

 

[120] The following paragraph from an Irish journal exhibits

     strikingly the amount of political freedom exercised at the scene

     of these evictions:--

 

     “Lord Erne held his annual show in Ballindreat, on Monday, the

     25th ult, and after having delivered himself much as usual in

     regard to agricultural matters, he proceeded to lecture the

     assembled tenants on the necessity of implicit obedience to those

     who were placed over them, in reference not only to practical

     agriculture, but the elective franchise. To such of the tenants

     as his lordship considered to be of the right stamp, and who

     proved themselves so by voting for Sir Edmund Hayes and Thomas

     Connolly, Esq., the 15 per cent. in full would be allowed--to

     those who split their votes between one or other of these

     gentlemen and Campbell Johnston, Esq., 7-1/2 per cent.; but to

     the men who had the manliness to ‘plump’ for Johnston, no

     reduction of rents would be allowed this year, or any other until

     such parties might redeem their character at another

     election.”--_Cork Examiner_, Nov. 8, 1852.

 

[121] Thornton on Over-population, 248.

 

[122] Ibid. 250.

 

[123] McCulloch, Stat.  Acct. of British Empire, vol. I. 315.

 

[124] Times Newspaper, June 7th, 1844.

 

[125] Report of Highland Emigration Committee, 1841.

 

[126] Lectures on the Social and Moral Condition of the People, by

    various Ministers of the Gospel. Glasgow.

 

[127] See page 71, _ante_.

 

[128] Kay’s Social Condition of England and of Europe, vol. i. 70

 

[129] Ibid. 359.

 

[130] Kay’s Social Condition of England and of Europe, vol. 1, 183.

 

[131] On a recent occasion in the House of Lords, it was declared to

    be important to retain Canada, on the express ground that it

    greatly facilitated smuggling.

 

[132] Alton Locke.

 

[133] Lord Ashley informs us that there are 30,000 poor children such

     as these in London alone.

 

[134] Reports of the Health of Towns Commission, vol. i. 127.

 

[135] City Mission Magazine, Oct. 1847.

 

[136] See page 224, _ante_.

 

[137] The import of 1850 was 103,713 lbs., and that of 1852, 251,792

    lbs.

 

[138] The reader who may desire to see this more fully exhibited is

    referred to the author’s work, “The Past, the Present, and the

    Future.”

 

[139] See page 59, _ante_.

 

[140] “It may be doubted, considering the circumstances under which

     most Irish landlords acquired their estates, the difference

     between their religious tenets and those of their tenants, the

     peculiar tenures under which the latter hold their lands, and the

     political condition of the country, whether their residence would

     have been of any considerable advantage. * * * The question

     really at issue refers merely to the _spending_ of revenue, and

     has nothing to do with the improvement of estates; and

     notwithstanding all that has been said to the contrary, I am not

     yet convinced that absenteeism is, in this respect, at all

     injurious.”--_Principles_, 157.

 

[141] Treatises and Essays on Subjects connected with Economical

     Policy.

 

[142] Chapman, Commerce of India.

 

[143] During all this time there was a large increase in the import of

    food from Ireland; and this, of course, constituted a portion of

    domestic produce exported in the shape of manufactures, the whole

    proceeds of which were to be retained at home. Since 1846, the

    change in that country has been so great that she is now a large

    importer of foreign grain. The official return for 1849 shows a

    diminution in the quantity raised, as compared with 1844, of no

    less than 9,304,607 quarters; and instead of sending to England,

    as she had been accustomed to do, more than three millions of

    quarters, she was an importer in that year and the following one

    of more than a million. This deficiency had to be made up from

    abroad, and thus was the United Kingdom transformed from the

    position of seller of four or five millions of quarters--say about

    40 millions of our bushels--of which it retained the _whole

    proceeds_, to that of the mere shopkeeper, who retains only the

    _profit_ on the same quantity. A similar state of things might be

    shown in regard to many of the other articles of produce above

    enumerated.

 

[144] in 1834, Mr. McCulloch estimated the produce of the land of

    great Britain at 146 millions, but at that time wheat was

    calculated at 50s. A quarter, or almost one-half more than the

    average of the last two or three years. Other and larger

    calculations may readily be found; but it would be difficult to

    determine what becomes of the product if it be not found in rent,

    farmers’ profits, or labourers’ wages.

 

[145] By reference to the report of the Assistant Commissioner,

    charged with the inquiry into the condition of women and children

    employed in agriculture, it will be seen that a change of clothes

    seems to be out of the question. The upper parts of the

    under-clothes of women at work, even their stays, quickly become

    wet with perspiration, while the lower parts cannot escape getting

    equally wet in nearly every kind of work in which they are

    employed, except in the driest weather. It not unfrequently

    happens that a woman, on returning from work, is obliged to go to

    bed for an hour or two to allow her clothes to be dried. It is

    also by no means uncommon for her, if she does not do this, to put

    them on again the next morning nearly as wet as when she took them

    off.

 

[146] _London Labour and London Poor_.

 

[147] The returns of imports into Great Britain are given according to

      an official value, established more than a century since, and

      thus the sum of the values is an exact measure of the quantities

      imported.

 

[148] The reader will remark that of all the machinery of England but

    a small portion is required for the _forced_ foreign trade that is

    thus produced.

 

[149] The whole appropriation for the education of ten millions of

    people in Western India is stated, in recent memorial from Bombay,

    to be only £12,500, or $60,000, being six cents for every ten

    persons.

 

[150] North British Review, Nov.  1852.

 

[151] Edinburgh Review, Oct.  1849. The italics are those of the

reviewer.

 

[152] See page 160, _ante_.

 

[153] Lawson’s Merchants’ Mag., Dec. 1852.

 

[154] Senior, Outlines of Political Economy, 152.

 

[155] At a recent discussion in the London Statistical Society, land

    in England was valued at thirty years’ purchase, houses at

    fifteen, and land in Ireland at eighteen.

 

[156] This will appear a very small estimate when compared with those

    usually made, but it is equal to the total production of the land

    and labour of the country for a year and a half, if not for a

    longer period; and it would be difficult to prove that if the

    whole labour and capital of the country were applied to that

    purpose--food and clothing being supplied from abroad--it could

    not produce a quantity of commodities equal in value to those now

    accumulated in England. Even, however, were the amount placed at a

    thousand millions, the amount of wealth would still be small,

    under the circumstances of the case.

 

[157] See page 105 _ante_.

 

[158] The latest number of the Bankers’ Magazine contains statements

    of two banks whose joint capitals and reserved funds are about

    £200,000, while their investments are about a million!--and this,

    would seem to be about the usual state of affairs with most of the

    English banks.

 

[159] Bankers’ Magazine, Sept. 1852

 

[160] The amount of expenditure for English railroads is put down at

     from two to three hundreds of millions of pounds; and yet the

     real investment was only that of the labour employed in grading

     the roads, building the bridges, driving the tunnels, and making

     the iron; and if we take that at £8000 per mile, we obtain only

     54 millions. All the balance was merely a transfer of property

     already existing from one owner to another, as in the case of the

     land, which in some cases cost ten or twelve thousands of pounds

     per mile.

 

[161] See page 240, _ante_.

 

[162] North British Review, Nov. 1852.

 

[163] This tendency is exhibited in most of the books that treat of

    the system. Thus, Mr. McCulloch insists on the beneficial effect

    of _the fear_ of taxation, as will be seen in the following

    passage:--

 

     “To the desire of rising in the world, implanted in the breast of

     every individual, an increase of taxation superadds the fear of

     being cast down to a lower station, of being deprived of

     conveniences and gratifications which habit has rendered all but

     indispensable--and the combined influence of the two principles

     produces results that could not be produced by the unassisted

     agency of either.”

 

    This is only the lash of the slave-driver in another form.

 

[164] Barter, The Dorp and the Veld.

 

[165] Estimating the average cost of raising men and women at only

    $1000 each, the present forced export is equal to sending abroad a

    capital of four hundred millions of dollars, no return from which

    is to be looked for.

 

[166] The recent movement of this institution in raising the rate of

     interest affords a striking example of its power, and of the

     absence of the judgment required for its exercise.  For two years

     past the bank has aided in raising prices, but now it desires to

     reduce them, and at the cost, necessarily, of the weaker portions

     of the community, for the rich can always take care of

     themselves. The whole tendency of its operations is toward making

     the rich richer and the poor poorer. Sir Robert Peel undertook to

     regulate the great machine, but his scheme for that purpose

     failed, because he totally misconceived the cause of the evil,

     and of course applied the wrong remedy. It was one that could

     only aggravate the mischief, as he could scarcely have failed to

     see, had he studied the subject with the care its importance

     merited.

 

[167] Page 230, _ante_.

 

[168] Chap. VII. _ante_.

 

[169] Message of President Roberts, Dec.  1849

 

[170] Lecture on the Relations of Free and Slave Labour, by David

    Christy, p. 46.

 

[171] The Social Condition and Education of the People of England and

    Europe, i. 256.

 

[172] Handbuch der Allgemeinen Staatskunde, vol. ii. 5, quoted by Kay,

     vol. i., 120.

 

[173] Until recently, the increase of Great Britain has been slightly

    greater than that of Prussia, the former having grown at the rate

    of 1.95 per cent. per annum, and the latter at that of 1.84; but

    the rate of growth of the former has recently much diminished, and

    all growth has now probably ceased.

 

[174] Die Agrarfrage.

 

[175] Etudes sur l’Economie Politique.

 

[176] Page 51, _ante_.

 

[177] In no other country than England would the editor of a daily

     journal inflict upon his readers throughout the kingdom whole

     columns occupied with the names of persons present at a private

     entertainment, and with the dresses of the ladies. Where

     centralization has reached a height like this, we need scarcely

     be surprised to learn that there is but one _paying_ daily

     newspaper for a population of more than seventeen millions.

 

[178] Rural and Domestic Life in Germany, 27.

 

[179] Pictures from St. Petersburg, by E.  Jerrmann, 22.

 

[180] Pictures from St. Petersburg, 23.

 

[181] The cargo of a ship that has recently sailed is stated to have

    consisted of more than a thousand females.

 

[182] Laing’s Denmark and the Duchies, London, 1852, 299.

 

[183] Quoted by Kay, Social and Political Condition of England and the

    Continent, vol. i. 91.

 

[184] Denmark and the Duchies, 42.

 

[185] Ibid. 136.

 

[186] Denmark and the Duchies, 368.

 

[187] Ibid. 394.

 

[188] Ibid. 388.

 

[189] Denmark and the Duchies, 362.

 

[190] Denmark and the Duchies, 294.

 

[191] Denmark and the Duchies, 269.

 

[192] _L’Espàgne en_ 1850, par M. Maurice Block, 145.

 

[193] Ibid. pp. 157-159.

 

[194] Bayard Taylor, in the _N. Y. Tribune_.

 

[195] _L’Espàgne en_ 1850, 160.

 

[196] Spain, her Institutions, her Politics, and her Public Men, by

    S. T. Wallis, 341.

 

[197] The exact amount given by M.  Block is 2,194,269,000 francs, but

    he does not state in what year the return was made.

 

[198] By an official document published in 1849, it appears that while

     wheat sold in Barcelona and Tarragona (places of consumption) at

     an average of more than 25 francs, the price at Segovia, in Old

     Castile, (a place of production,) not 300 miles distant, was less

     than 10 francs for the same quantity.--_L’Espàgne en_ 1850, 131.

 

[199] North British Review, Nov. 1852, art. _The Modern Exodus_.

 

[200] M. de Jonnes, quoted by Mr.  Wallis, p. 295.

 

[201] Wallis’s Spain, chap: ix.

 

[202] It is a striking evidence of the injurious moral effect produced

     by the system which looks to the conversion of all the other

     nations of the world into mere farmers and planters, that

     Mr. Macgregor, in his work of Commercial Statistics, says, in

     speaking of the Methuen treaty, “we do not deny that there were

     advantages in having a market for our woollens in Portugal,

     especially one, of which, if not the principal, was the means

     afforded of sending them afterward by contraband into

     Spain.”--Vol. ii. 1122.

 

[203] In the first half of this period the export was small, whereas

    in the last one, 1836 to 1840, it must have been in excess of the

    growth of population.

 

[204] From 1842 to 1845 the average crop was 2,250,000 bales, or half

     a million more than the average of the four previous years. From

     1847 to 1850 the average was only 2,260,000 bales, and the price

     rose, which could not have been the case had the slave trade been

     as brisk between 1840 and 1845 as it had been between 1835 and

     1840.

 

[205] See page 108, _ante_, for the sale of the negroes of the Saluda

    Manufacturing Company.

 

[206] The following passage from one of the journals of the day is

     worthy of careful perusal by those who desire to understand the

     working of the present system of revenue duties, under which the

     mills and furnaces of the country have to so great an extent been

     closed, and the farmers and planters of the country to so great

     an extent been driven to New York to make all their exchanges:--

 

     “Mr. Matsell [chief of police, New York] tells us that during the

      six months ending 31st December, 1852, there have been 19,901

      persons arrested for various offences, giving a yearly figure of

      nearly 40,000 arrests. * * * The number of arrests being 40,000,

      or thereabouts, in a population of say 600,000, gives a

      percentage of 6.6 on the whole number of inhabitants. We have no

      data to estimate the state of crime in Paris under the imperial

      _régime_; but in London the returns of the metropolitan police

      for 1850, show 70,827 arrests, out of a population of some two

      millions and a half, giving a percentage of less than three on

      the whole number of inhabitants. Thus crimes are in New York

      rather more than twice as frequent as in London. Indeed, if we

      make proper allowance for the superior vigilance, and

      organization of the metropolitan police of London, and for the

      notorious inefficiency of our own police force, we shall

      probably find that, in proportion to the population, there is in

      New York twice as much crime as in London. This is an appalling

      fact--a disgraceful disclosure.”--_New York Herald_, March 21,

      1853.

 

[207] North British Review, Nov. 1852.

 

[208] See Uncle Tom’s Cabin, chap. xxxi.

 

[209] Letters to Lord Aberdeen, by the Right Hon. W. E. Gladstone, 9,

     10, 12.

 

[210] Rev. Sidney Smith.

 

[211] See page 109, _ante_.

 

[212] It is commonly supposed that the road toward freedom lies

     through cheapening the products of slave labour; but the reader

     may readily satisfy himself that it is in that direction lies

     slavery. Freedom grows with growing wealth, not growing

     poverty. To increase the cost of raising slaves, and thus to

     _increase the value of man at home_, produces exactly the effect

     anticipated from the other course of operation, because the value

     of the land and its produce grows more rapidly than the value of

     that portion of the negro’s powers that can be obtained from him

     as a slave--that is, without the payment of wages.

 

[213] See page 280, _ante_.

 

[214] The following statement of the operations of the past year

     completes the picture presented in Chapter IV.:--

 

     “A tabular return, prepared by order of the House of Assembly of

     Jamaica, exhibiting the properties in that island ‘upon which

     cultivation has been wholly or partially abandoned since the 1st

     day of January, 1852,’ presents in a striking light one of the

     many injurious consequences that have followed the measure of

     negro emancipation in the British West Indies. The return, which

     is dated January 27, 1853, shows that 128 sugar estates have been

     totally abandoned during the year, and 71 partially abandoned; of

     coffee plantations, 96 have been totally, and 56 partially,

     abandoned; of country seats--residences of planters or their

     agents--30 have been totally, and 22 partially, abandoned. The

     properties thus nearly or wholly ruined by the ill-considered

     legislation of the British Parliament cover an area of 391,187

     acres.”

 

[215] _Economist_, (London,) Feb. 12, 1863.

 

[216] Spectator, Feb. 12, 1853.

 

[217] The net revenue from the opium trade, for the current year, is

     stated to be no less than four millions of pounds sterling, or

     nearly twenty millions of dollars; and it is to that revenue,

     says _The Friend of India_, Nov. 25, 1852, that the Indian

     government has been indebted for its power to carry on the wars

     since 1838, those of Affghanistan, Seinde, Gwalior, the Punjab,

     and that now existing with Burmah. Well is it asked by Dr. Allen,

     in his pamphlet on “The Opium Trade,” (Lowell, 1853,) “Can such

     an unrighteous course in a nation always prosper?” “How,” says

     the same author, “can the Chinese

 

     “Regard the English in any other light than wholesale smugglers

     and wholesale dealers in poison? The latter can expend annually

     over two millions of dollars on the coast of Great Britain to

     protect its own revenue laws, but at the same time set at bold

     defiance similar laws of protection enacted by the former. The

     English are constantly supplying the Chinese a deadly poison,

     with which thousands yearly put an end to their existence. In

     England, even the druggists are expressly forbidden to sell

     arsenic, laudanum, or other poison, if they have the least

     suspicion that their customer intends to commit suicide. But in

     China every facility is afforded and material supplied under the

     British flag, and sanctioned by Parliament itself, for wholesale

     slaughter. How long will an enlightened and Christian nation

     continue to farm and grow a means of vice, with the proceeds of

     which, even when in her possession, a benighted and pagan nation

     disdains to replenish her treasury, being drawn from the ruin and

     misery of her people? Where is the consistency or humanity of a

     nation supporting armed vessels on the coast of Africa to

     intercept and rescue a few hundreds of her sons from a foreign

     bondage, when, at the same time, she is forging chains to hold

     millions on the coast of China in a far more hopeless bondage?

     And what must the world think of the religion of a nation that

     consecrates churches, ordains ministers of the gospel, and sends

     abroad missionaries of the cross, while, in the mean time, it

     encourages and upholds a vice which is daily inflicting misery

     and death upon more than four millions of heathen? And what must

     be the verdict of future generations, as they peruse the history

     of these wrongs and outrages? Will not the page of history, which

     now records £20,000,000 as consecrated on the altar of humanity

     to emancipate 800,000 slaves, lose all its splendour and become

     positively odious, when it shall be known that this very money

     was obtained from the proceeds of a contraband traffic on the

     shores of a weak and defenceless heathen empire, at the

     sacrifice, too, of millions upon millions of lives?”

 


See Agrarian Crisis in India by Rajani Palme-Dutt here.