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Title: The Slave Trade, Domestic and Foreign
Author: Henry Charles Carey
Posting Date: March 23, 2015 [EBook #8000]
Release Date: April, 2005
First Posted: June 10, 2003
Language: English
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THE
SLAVE TRADE,
Domestic and Foreign:
WHY IT EXISTS, AND HOW IT MAY BE EXTINGUISHED.
BY H. C. CAREY,
AUTHOR OF "PRINCIPLES OF POLITICAL ECONOMY," "THE PAST, THE PRESENT,
AND THE FUTURE," ETC. ETC.
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 I. THE WIDE EXTENT OF SLAVERY
CHAPTER II. OF SLAVERY IN THE BRITISH COLONIES
CHAPTER III. OF SLAVERY IN THE UNITED STATES
CHAPTER IV. OF EMANCIPATION IN THE BRITISH COLONIES
CHAPTER V. HOW MAN PASSES FROM POVERTY AND SLAVERY TOWARD WEALTH AND
FREEDOM
CHAPTER VI. HOW WEALTH TENDS TO INCREASE
CHAPTER VII. HOW LABOUR ACQUIRES VALUE AND MAN BECOMES FREE
CHAPTER VIII. HOW MAN PASSES FROM WEALTH AND FREEDOM TOWARD POVERTY
AND SLAVERY
CHAPTER IX. HOW SLAVERY GREW, AND HOW IT IS NOW MAINTAINED, IN THE
WEST INDIES
CHAPTER X. HOW SLAVERY GREW AND IS MAINTAINED IN THE UNITED STATES
CHAPTER XI. HOW SLAVERY GROWS IN PORTUGAL AND TURKEY
CHAPTER XII. HOW SLAVERY GROWS IN INDIA
CHAPTER XIII. HOW SLAVERY GROWS IN IRELAND AND SCOTLAND
CHAPTER XIV. HOW SLAVERY GROWS IN ENGLAND
CHAPTER XV. HOW CAN SLAVERY BE EXTINGUISHED?
CHAPTER XVI. HOW FREEDOM GROWS IN NORTHERN GERMANY
CHAPTER XVII. HOW FREEDOM GROWS IN RUSSIA
CHAPTER XVIII. HOW FREEDOM GROWS IN DENMARK
CHAPTER XIX. HOW FREEDOM GROWS IN SPAIN AND BELGIUM
CHAPTER XX. OF THE DUTY OF THE PEOPLE OF THE UNITED STATES
CHAPTER XXI. OF THE DUTY OF THE PEOPLE OF ENGLAND
THE SLAVE TRADE, DOMESTIC AND FOREIGN.
CHAPTER I.
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 II.
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 III.
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 IV.
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 V.
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 be 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 VI.
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 VII.
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 VIII.
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 IX.
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 X.
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 be 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 XI.
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 XII.
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 be 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 be 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 XIII.
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 XIV.
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 he 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 be 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 be 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 XV.
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 be 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 XVI.
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 XVII.
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 XVIII.
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 XIX.
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 XX.
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 XXI.
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?"
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