Whether any principle to this effect can be brought to bear upon any large class of society in the old world, is at present the most important dispute, perhaps, that is agitating society. It will never now rest till it has been made matter of experiment. If a very low principle has served the purpose, for a time at least, in the new world, there seems much ground for expectation that a far higher one may be found to work as well in the more complicated case of English society. There is, at least, every encouragement to try. While there are large classes of people here whose condition can hardly be made worse; while the present system (if such it may be called) imposes care on the rich, excessive anxiety on the middle classes, and desperation on the poor: while the powerful are thus, as it were, fated to oppress; the strivers after power to circumvent and counteract; and the powerless to injure, it seems only reasonable that some section, at least, of this warring population should make trial of the peaceful principles whichare working successfully elsewhere. The co-operative methods of the Shakers and Rappites might be tried without any adoption of their spiritual pride and cruel superstition. These are so far from telling against the system, that they prompt the observer to remark how much has been done in spite of such obstacles.
There must be something sound in the principles on which these people differ from the rest of the world, or they would not work at all; but the little that is vital is dreadfully encumbered with that which is dead. Like all religious persuasions from which one differs, that of the Shakers appears more reasonable in conversation, and in their daily actions, than on paper and at a distance. In actual life, the absurd and peculiar recedes before the true and universal; but, I own, I have never witnessed more visible absurdity than in the way of life of the Shakers. The sound part of their principle is the same as that which has sustained all devotees; and with it is joined a spirit of fellowship which makes them more in the right than the anchorites and friars of old. This is all. Their spiritual pride, their insane vanity, their intellectual torpor, their mental grossness, are melancholy to witness. Reading is discouraged among them. Their thoughts are full of the one subject of celibacy: with what effect, may be easily imagined. Their religious exercises are disgustingly full of it. It cannot be otherwise: for they have no other interesting subject of thought beyond their daily routine of business; no objects in life, no wants, no hopes, no novelty of experience whatever. Their life is all dull work and no play.
The women, in their frightful costume, close opaque caps, and drab gowns of the last degree of tightness and scantiness, are nothing short of disgusting. They are averse to the open air andexercise; they are pallid and spiritless. They look far more forlorn and unnatural than the men. Their soulless stare at us, before their worship began, was almost as afflicting as that of the lowest order of slaves; and, when they danced, they were like so many galvanised corpses. I had been rather afraid of not being able to keep my countenance during this part of their worship; but there was no temptation to laugh. It was too shocking for ridicule. Three men stood up, shouting a monotonous tune, and dangling their crossed hands, with a pawing motion, to keep time, while the rest danced, except some old women and young children, who sat out. The men stamped, and the women jerked, with their arms hanging by their sides; they described perpetually the figure of a square; the men and boys on one side, the women and girls on the other. There were prayers besides, and singing, and a sermon. This last was of a better quality than usual, I understood. It was (of all improbable subjects) on religious liberty, and contained nothing outrageously uncommon, except the proposition that the American revolution had drawn the last of the teeth of the red dragon.
It is not to be supposed that the children who are carried in by their widowed, or indolent, or poor, or superstitious parents, are always acquiescent in their destination. I saw many a bright face within the prim cap-border, which bore a prophecy of a return to the world; and two of the boys stamped so vigorously in the dance, that it was impossible to imagine their feelings to be very devotional. The story of one often serves as an index to the hearts of many. I knew of a girl who was carried into a Shaker community by her widowed mother, and subjected early to its discipline. It was hateful to her. One Sunday, when she was, I believe, about sixteen, she feigned illness, to avoidgoing to worship. When she believed every one else gone, she jumped out of a low window, and upon the back of a pony which happened to be in the field. She rode round and round the enclosure, without saddle or bridle, and then re-entered the house. She had been observed, and was duly reprimanded. She left the community in utter weariness and disgust. A friend of mine, in a neighbouring village, took the girl into her service. She never settled well in service, being too proud for the occupation; and she actually went back to the same community, and is there still, for no better reason than the saving of her pride. Her old teachers had, it thus appeared, obtained an influence over her, notwithstanding the tyranny of their discipline; and it had not been of a wholesome moral nature. But no more words are necessary to show how pride, and all other selfishness, must flourish in a community which religiously banishes all the tenderest charities of life.
The followers of Mr. Rapp are settled at Economy, on the Ohio, eighteen miles below Pittsburgh. Their number was five hundred when I was there; and they owned three thousand acres of land. Much of their attention seems to be given to manufactures. They rear silkworms, and were the earliest silk-weavers in the United States. At my first visit they were weaving only a flimsy kind of silk handkerchief; last summer I brought away a piece of substantial, handsome black satin. They have sheep-walks, and a large woollen manufactory. Their factory was burnt down in 1834; the fire occasioning a loss of sixty thousand dollars; a mere trifle to this wealthy community. Their vineyards, corn-fields, orchards, and gardens gladden the eye. There is an abundance so much beyond their need that it is surprising that they work; except for want of something else to do. TheDutch love of flowers was visible in the plants that were to be seen in the windows, and the rich carnations and other sweets that bloomed in the garden and green-house. The whole place has a superior air to that of either of the Shaker "families" that I saw. The women were better dressed; more lively, less pallid; but, I fear, not much wiser. Mr. Rapp exercises an unbounded influence over his people. They are prevented learning any language but German, and are not allowed to converse with strangers. The superintendent keeps a close watch over them in this respect. Probationers must serve a year before they can be admitted: and the managers own that they dread the entrance of young people, who might be "unsettled;" that is, not sufficiently subservient.
I was curious to learn how five hundred persons could be kept in the necessary subjection by one. Mr. Rapp's means are such that his task is not very difficult. He keeps his people ignorant; and he makes them vain. He preaches to them their own superiority over the rest of the world so incessantly that they fully believe it; and are persuaded that their salvation is in his hands. At first I felt, with regard both to them and the Shakers, a strong respect for the self-conquest which could enable them to endure the singularity,—the one community, of its non-intercourse with strangers; the other, of its dancing exhibitions; but I soon found that my respect was misplaced. One and all, they glory in the singularity. They feel no awkwardness in it, from first to last. This vanity is the handle by which they are worked.
Mr. Rapp is now very old. His son is dead. It remains to be seen what will become of his community, with its immense accumulation of wealth, when it has lost its dictator. It does not appear that they can go on in their present state without adictator. They smile superciliously upon Mr. Owen's plan, as admitting "a wrong principle,"—marriage. The best hope for them is that they will change their minds on this point, admitting the educational improvements which will arise out of the change, and remaining in community with regard to property. This is the process now in action among the seceders from their body, settled on the opposite bank of the river, a short distance below Economy.
These seceders were beguiled by Count Leon, a stranger, who told the people a great deal that was true about Mr. Rapp, and a great deal that was false about himself. It is a great pity that Count Leon was a swindler; for he certainly opened the eyes of the Economy people to many truths, and might have done all that was wanted, if he had himself been honest. He drew away seventy of the people, and instigated them to demand of Mr. Rapp their share of the accumulated property. It was refused: and a suit was instituted against Mr. Rapp, in whose name the whole is invested. The lawyers compromised the affair, and Mr. Rapp disbursed 120,000 dollars. Count Leon obtained, and absconded with almost the whole, and died in Texas; the burial-place of many more such men. With the remnant of their funds, the seventy seceders purchased land, and settled themselves opposite to Beaver, on the Ohio. They live in community, but abjuring celibacy; and have been joined by some thorough-bred Americans. It will be seen how they prosper.
Though the members of these remarkable communities are far from being the only agriculturists in whom the functions of proprietor and labourer are joined, the junction is in them so peculiar as to make them a separate class, holding a place between the landowners of whom I have before spoken, and the labourers of whom I shall have to treat.
The political economists of England have long wondered why the Americans have not done what older nations would be glad to do, if the opportunity had not gone by;—reserved government lands, which, as it is the tendency of rent to rise, might obviate any future increase of taxation. There are more good reasons than one why this cannot be done in America.
The expenses of the general government are so small that the present difficulty is to reduce the taxation so as to leave no more than a safe surplus revenue in the treasury; and there is no prospect of any increase of taxation; as the taxpayers are likely to grow much faster than the expenses of the government.
The people of the United States choose to be proprietors of land, not tenants. No one can yet foresee the time when the relation of landlord and tenant (except in regard to house property) will be extensively established in America. More than a billion of acres remain to be disposed of first.
The weightiest reason of all is that, in the United States, the people of to-day are the government of to-day; the people of fifty years hence will be the government of fifty years hence; and it would not suit the people of to-day to sequestrate their property for the benefit of their successors, any better than it would suit the people of fifty years hence to be legislated for by those of to-day. A democratic government must always be left free to be operatedupon by the will of the majority of the time being. All that the government of the day can do is to ascertain what now appears to be the best principle by which to regulate the disposal of land, and then to let the demand and supply take their natural course.
The methods according to which the disposal of land is carried on are as good as the methods of government almost invariably are in America. The deficiency is in the knowledge of the relation which land bears to other capital and to labour.[14]A few clear-headed men have foreseen the evil of so great a dispersion of the people as has taken place, and have consistently advocated a higher price being set upon land than that at which it is at present sold. Such men are now convinced that evils which seem to bear no more relation to the price of land than the fall of an apple to the motions of the planets, are attributable to the reduction in the price of government lots: that much political blundering, and religious animosity; much of the illegal violence, and much of the popular apathy on the slave question, which have disgraced the country, are owing to the public lands being sold at a minimum price of a dollar and a-quarter per acre. Many excellent leaders of the democratic party think the people at large less fit to govern themselves wisely than they were five-and-twenty years ago. This seems to me improbable; but I believe there is no doubt that the dispersion has hitherto been too great; and that the intellectual and moral, and, of course, the political condition of the people has thereby suffered.
The price of the public lands was formerly two dollars per acre, with credit. It was found to be abad plan for the constituents of a government to be its debtors; and there was a reduction of the price to a dollar and a quarter, without credit. In forty years, above forty millions of acres have been sold. The government cannot arbitrarily raise the price. If any check is given to the process of dispersion, it must arise from the people perceiving the true state of their own case, and acting accordingly.
Some circumstances seem at present to favour the process of enlightenment; others are adverse to it. Those which are favourable are, the high prosperity of manufactures and commerce, the essential requisite of which is the concentration of labourers: the increasing immigration of labourers from Europe, and the happy experience which they force upon the back settler of the advantage of an increased proportion of labour to land; and the approaching crisis of the slavery question; when every one will see the necessity of measures which will keep the slaves where they are. Of the extraordinary, and I must think, often wilful error of taking for granted that all the slaves must be removed, in order to the abolition of slavery, I shall have to speak elsewhere.
The circumstances unfavourable to an understanding of the true state of the case about the disposal of land are, the deep-rooted persuasion that land itself is the most valuable wealth, in all places, and under all circumstances: and the complication of interests connected with the late acquisition of Louisiana and Florida, and the present usurpation of Texas.
Louisiana was obtained from the French, not on account of the fertile new land which it comprehended, but because it was essential to the very existence of the United States that the mouth of the Mississippi should not be in the possession of another people. The Americans obtained themouth of the Mississippi; and with it, unfortunately, large tracts of the richest virgin soil, on which slavery started into new life, and on which "the perspiration of the eastern States" (as I have heard the settlers of the west called) rested, and grew barbarous while they grew rich. A fact has lately transpired in the northern States which was already well known in the south,—that the purchase of Florida was effected for the sake of the slave-holders. It is now known that the President was overwhelmed with letters from slave-owners, complaining that Florida was the refuge of their runaways; and demanding that this retreat should be put within their power. Florida was purchased. Many and great evils have already arisen out of its acquisition. To cover these, and blind the people to the particular and iniquitous interests engaged in the affair, the sordid faction benefited raises a perpetual boast in the ears of the people about their gain of new territory, and the glory and profit of having added so many square miles to their already vast possessions.
In the eyes of those of the people who do not yet see the whole case, the only evil which has arisen out of the possession of Florida, is the Seminole warfare. They breathe an intense hatred against the Seminole Indians; and many fine young men have gone down into Florida, and lost their lives in battle, without being aware that they were fighting for oppressors against the oppressed. Probably few of the United States troops who fell in the late Seminole war knew how the strife arose. According to the laws of the slave States, the children of the slaves follow the fortunes of themother. It will be seen, at a glance, what consequences follow from this; how it operates as a premium upon licentiousness among white men; how it prevents any but mockmarriages among slaves; and also what effect it must have upon any Indians with whom slave women have taken refuge. The late Seminole war arose out of this law. The escaped slaves had intermarried with the Indians. The masters claimed the children. The Seminole fathers would not deliver them up. Force was used to tear the children from their parents' arms, and the Indians began their desperate, but very natural work of extermination. They have carried on the war with eminent success, St. Augustine, the capital, being now the only place in Florida where the whites can set their foot. Of course, the poor Indians will ultimately succumb, however long they may maintain the struggle: but, before that, the American people may possibly have learned enough of the facts of the case to silence those who boast of the acquisition of Florida, as an increase of the national glory.
It would be a happy thing for them if they should know all soon enough to direct their national reprobation upon the Texan adventurers, and wash their hands of the iniquity of that business. This would soon be done, if they could look upon the whole affair from a distance, and see how the fair fame of their country is compromised by the avarice and craft of a faction. The probity of their people, their magnanimity in money matters, have always been conspicuous, from the time of the cession of their lands by the States to the General Government, till now: and, now they seem in danger of forfeiting their high character through the art of the few, and the ignorance of the many. The few are obtaining their end by flattering the passion of the many for new territory, as well as by engaging their best feelings on behalf of those who are supposed to be fighting for their rights against oppressors. There is yet hope. The knowledge of the real state of the case is spreading; and, if only time canbe gained, the Americans will yet be saved from the eternal disgrace of adding Texas to their honourable Union.
The brief account which I shall give of what is prematurely called the acquisition of Texas, is grounded partly on historical facts, open to the knowledge of all; and partly on what I had the opportunity of learning at New Orleans, from some leaders and agents in the Texan cause, who did what they could to enlist my judgment and sympathies on behalf of their party. I went in entire ignorance of the whole matter. My first knowledge of it was derived from the persons above-mentioned, whose objects were to obtain the good-will of such English as they could win over; to have their affairs well spoken of in London; and to get the tide of respectable English emigration turned in their direction. With me they did not succeed: with some others they did. Several English are already buried in Texas; and there are others whose repentance that they ever were beguiled into aiding such a cause will be far worse than death. The more I heard of the case from the lips of its advocates, the worse I thought of it: and my reprobation of the whole scheme has grown with every fact which has come out since.
Texas, late a province of Mexico, and then one of its confederated States, lies adjacent to Louisiana. The old Spanish government seem to have had some foresight as to what might happen, to judge by the jealousy with which they guarded this part of their country from intrusion by the Americans. The Spanish Captain-general of the internal provinces, Don Nemisio Salcedo, used to say that he would, if he could, stop the birds from flying over the boundary between Texas and the United States. Prior to 1820, however, a few adventurers, chiefly Indian traders, had dropped over the boundary lineand remained unmolested in the eastern corner of Texas. In 1820, Moses Austin, of Missouri, was privileged by the Spanish authorities to introduce three hundred orderly, industrious families, professing the Catholic religion, as settlers into Texas. Moses Austin died; and his son Stephen prosecuted the scheme. Before possession of the land was obtained, the Mexican Revolution occurred; but the new government confirmed the privilege granted by the old one, with some modifications. The chief of the settlers and his followers were liberally enriched with lands, gratis; on the conditions of their occupying them; of their professing the Catholic religion; and of their being obedient to the laws of the country.
Other persons were tempted by Austin's success to apply for grants. Many obtained them, and disposed of their grants to joint stock companies; so that Texas became the scene of much land-speculation. The companies began to be busy about "stock" and "scrip," which they proffered as preparatory titles to land; and a crowd of ignorant and credulous persons, and of gamblers, thus became greedy after lands which no more belonged to any Americans than Ireland.
Leave was given to the actual settlers by the Mexican Government to introduce, for ten years, duty free, all articles, not contraband, that were necessary for their use and comfort. Under this permission, much smuggling went on: and many adventurers settled in Texas for the very purpose of supplying the neighbouring Indian tribes with contraband articles. Arms and ammunition were plentifully furnished to the savages; and slaves to the settlers; though slavery had been abolished in the country, by whose laws the settlers had engaged to live.
The next step was, an offer on the part of theUnited States Government to purchase Texas, in order to incorporate it with the Union. The offer was instantly and indignantly rejected by the Mexicans. It may seem surprising that even with the passion for territory that the people of the United States have, they should desire to purchase Texas, while above a billion of acres of land at home were still unoccupied. Slavery is found to be the solution of this, as of almost every other absurdity and unpleasant mystery there. Slavery answers only on a virgin soil, and under certain conditions of the supply of labour. It is destined to die out of the States which it has impoverished, and which come most closely into contrast with those which are flourishing under free labour. It is evidently destined soon to be relinquished by Missouri, Kentucky, Virginia, Maryland, and Delaware; and not very long afterwards, by the Carolinas, and perhaps Tennessee. The proprietors of slaves have a double purpose in acquiring new territory: to obtain a fresh field for the labour of the slaves they possess; and, (what is at least as important,) to keep up the equality of the representation of the slave and free States in Congress. We have before seen that there is a provision against the introduction of slavery into the lands north-west of the Ohio. When to the representation of the new States of this region, shall be joined that of the old States which relinquish slavery, the remaining slave States will be in a hopeless minority in Congress, unless a representation from new slave regions can be provided. Texas is to be obtained first; and, if desirable, to be divided into several States; and afterwards, the aggressions on the Mexican territory will doubtless be repeated, as often as a new area for slave labour is wanted; and an accession of representation, for the support of slavery, is needed in Congress. Thus it happens that a host ofland-speculators, adventurers and slave-owners have, for a long series of years, been interested in the acquisition of Texas.
On the refusal of the Mexican Government to sell Texas, the newspapers of the slave-holding portion of the United States began to indicate methods of obtaining the territory, and to advocate the use of any means for so desirable an object. The agent of the United States at the Mexican capital is believed to have been instigated by his government to intrigue for the purpose which could not be obtained by negotiation. The settlers in Texas made it known along the Mississippi that they might soon be strong enough to establish slavery openly, in defiance of Mexico. This brought in an accession of slave-holding settlers, who evaded the Mexican laws, by calling their slaves "apprentices for ninety-nine years." The Mexicans took alarm; decreed in the State Legislature of Texas that no apprenticeship should, on any pretence, be for a longer term than ten years; forbade further immigration from the United States; and sent a small body of troops to enforce the prohibition. This was in 1829 and 1830.
In 1832, the Mexican troops were unfortunately wanted near the capital, and called in from the frontiers and colonies. The settlers shut up the custom-houses in their part of the country, and defied the laws as much as they pleased. Then a great number of restless, bad spirits began to pour into Texas from the whole of the United States; men who had to fly from their creditors, or from the pursuit of justice. There was probably never seen a more ferocious company of ruffians than Texas contains at this moment. These men, who had nothing to lose, now set to work to wrench the territory from the hands of the Mexicans. They actually proceeded, in 1833, to organize a StateGovernment; opposed earnestly but feebly by the honest, original settlers, who were satisfied with the contract under which they had settled, and had everything to lose by the breach of it. A Convention was called, to prepare a State Constitution, which Stephen Austin had the audacity to carry to the Mexican capital, to pray for its ratification by the Mexican Congress. After some time, he was committed to prison on a charge of treasonable conspiracy. He was still in prison when I was at New Orleans, in May, 1835; and no one of the persons who conversed with me on Texan affairs alluded to the fact. They spoke of him as if living and acting among the settlers. He wrote to the colonists from his prison, advising strict obedience to the Mexican laws; and, finally, gave his promise to the government to promote order in the colonies; and was dismissed, by the clemency of the administration, without further punishment than an imprisonment of nearly two years.
The wilder adventurers among the settlers had chafed at his advice, but found it necessary to be quiet for a time. The Mexican government put too much trust in them on this account, and restored, during Austin's imprisonment, the freedom of immigration, on the old conditions. The liberty was again shamelessly abused. Slaves were importedfrom Africa, via Cuba, and illegal land speculations were carried on with more vigour than ever. Troops were again sent from the capital to re-open the custom-houses, and enforce their regulations. But it was now too late.
It had long been a settled agreement between the Texan adventurers and many slave-holders of the south, that if slavery could no otherwise be perpetuated in Texas, it should be done by the seizure of that province; all possible aid being given by the residents in the United States, whowere a party to the agreement. This was avowed by the adventurers in Texas; and the avowal has been justified by the subscriptions of money, arms, and stores, which have been sent through New Orleans; the companies of volunteers that have given their strength to the bad cause; and the efforts of members of Congress from the south to hurry on the recognition of the independence of Texas by the United States Government. It was with shame and grief that I heard, while I was in New York, last spring, of the public meeting there, which had been got up by men who should have put the influence of their names to a better use,—a public meeting in behalf of the Texan adventurers, where high-sounding common-places had been played off about patriotism, fighting for the dearest rights of man, and so forth. The purpose was, I believe, answered for the time. The price of stock rose; and subscriptions were obtained. The Texan cause was then in the lowest state of depression. It soon revived, in consequence of an unfortunate defeat of the Mexicans, and the capture of the President of their republic, Santa Anna. This, again, was made to serve as the occasion of a public dinner at New York, when some eminent members of Congress were passing through, to the Springs, in the summer. The time will come when those gentlemen will look back upon their speeches at that dinner as among the deeds which, dying, they would most wish to blot. By this time, however, the true character of the struggle was beginning to be extensively recognised: and, day by day, the people of the United States have been since awakening to the knowledge of how they have been cheated in having their best sympathies called forth in behalf of the worst of causes. The great fear is, lest this should prove to be too late; lest, the United States having furnished the meansby which the usurpation of Texas has been achieved, the people of the Union should be persuaded that they must follow their common, and otherwise fair rule, of acknowledging the independence of all States that arede factoindependent, without having anything to do with the questionde jure.
What has been the national conduct of the United States on this great question? The government has been very nearly impartial. It must be allowed that factions and individuals were already doing so much that, if the government wished all possible success to the Texans, it could hardly do better than be quiet while they were receiving the aid of its constituents. While the theft of Texas has been achieved, (if it be achieved,) by United States men, money and arms, the general government has been officially regarding it as ostensibly and actually a foreign affair. However much may be true of the general belief in the interest of its members in the success of the Texan aggression, the government has preserved a cool and guarded tone throughout; and the only act that I know of for which it can be blamed is for not removing General Gaines from his command on the frontier, on his manifestation of partisanship on the Texan side. General Gaines was ordered to protect the settlers on the south-western frontier, who might be in danger from the Mexicans, and from the fierce Indians who were engaged on the Mexican side of the quarrel. General Gaines wrote to head quarters of his intentions of crossing, to attack the Mexicans, not only the inner bounds of the United States territory, but the disputed boundary, claimed by the United States, and disallowed by Mexico. Immediate orders were despatched to him to do no such thing; to confine himself, except in a strong emergency, to the inner boundary; and on no account whatever to cross the disputed line. Thiswas not enough. An officer who had shown himself so indisposed to the neutrality professed by his government, should have been sent where he could indulge his partialities with less hazard to the national honour.
Some senators from the south pressed, last session, with indecent haste, for the recognition of the independence of Texas. The speech of Ex-President Adams remains as an eternal rebuke to such.[15]This speech was the most remarkable individual act of the session; and no session has been distinguished by one more honourable. There was no attempt at a reply to it, in or out of either House. Mr. Adams left no resource to the advocates of the Texan cause but abuse of himself: the philosophy of which he, no doubt, understood as well as other people. Various public men, in various public assemblies, have declared their desire for the success of the Texans; and have joined with this the avowal that the value of slaves will rise fifty per cent, as soon as the independence of Texas is acknowledged.
The war is not yet over. The vicissitudes have been so great,—each party has appeared at times in so hopeless a condition, that the friends of American honour, and the foes of slavery, do not yet despair of the ultimate expulsion of the aggressors, and the restoration of Texas to Mexico. If these hopes must be surrendered,—if slavery is to be re-established on a constitutional basis, in a vast territory where it had been actually abolished,—if a new impulse is thus to be given to the traffic in native Africans,[16]—if the fair fame of theAnglo-Americans is to be thus early, and thus deeply stained, good men must rouse themselves the more to enlighten the ignorance through which the misfortune has happened. They must labour to exhibit the truth, keeping unshaken their faith in the theory of their constitution that "the majority will be in the right."
It is much to be feared that, even if Texas were acknowledged to-morrow to be a Mexican State, an injury would be found to have been done to the American people, which it will take a long time and much experience to repair. No pains have been spared to confirm the delusion, that the possession of more and more land is the only thing to be desired, alike by the selfish and the patriotic; by those who would hastily build up their own fortunes, and by those who desire the aggrandisement of their country. No one mourned with me more earnestly over this popular delusion than a member of Congress, who has since been one of the most vehement advocates of the Texan cause, and has thereby done his best to foster the delusion. He told me that the metaphysics of society in the southafford a curious study to the observer; and that they are humbling to a resident. He told me that, so far from the honour and happiness of any region being supposed to lie in the pursuit of the higher objects of life, any man would be pronounced "imbecile" who, having enough for his moderate wants, should prefer the enjoyment of his patrimony, his family relations, and intercourse with the society in which he was brought up, to wandering away in pursuit of more land. He complained that he was heart-sick when he heard of American books: that there was no character of permanence in anything;—all was fluctuation, except the passion for land, which, under the name of enterprise, or patriotism; or something else that was creditable, would last till his countrymen had pushed their out-posts to the Pacific. He insisted that the only consolation arose from what was to be hoped when pioneering must, perforce, come to a stop. He told me of one and another of his intelligent and pleasant young neighbours, who were quitting their homes and civilised life, and carrying their brides "as bondwomen" into the wilderness, because fine land was cheap there. If all this be true of the young gentry of the south, as I believe it is, what hope is there that the delusion will not long remain among those who have no other guides than Experience;—that slowest of all teachers?
The people of the United States have, however, kept their eyes open to one great danger, arising from this love of land. They have always had in view the disadvantage of rich men purchasing tracts larger than they could cultivate. They saw that it was contrary to the public interest that individuals should be allowed to interpose a desert between other settlers whose welfare depends much on their having means of free communication, and a peopled neighbourhood; and that it is inconsistent withrepublican modes that overgrown fortunes should arise by means of an early grasping of large quantities of a cheap kind of property, which must inevitably become of the highest value in course of time. The reduction in the price of land would probably have been greater, but for the temptation which the cheapening would hold out to capitalists. Another reason assigned for not still further lowering the price is, the danger of depreciating a kind of property held by the largest proportion of the people. This is obviously unsound; since the property held by this large proportion of the people is improved land, whose relation in value to other kinds of property is determined by quite other circumstances than the amount of the original purchase-money. The number of people who sell again unimproved land is so small as not to be worthy to enter into the account.
Large grants of land have been made to schools and colleges. Upwards of eight millions of acres have, I believe, been thus disposed of. There seems no objection to this, at the time it was done; as there can be no doubt that grants will be cultivated that have such an interest hanging on their cultivation. These grants were made while there was a national debt. Now, there is a surplus revenue; and appropriations of this kind had better be made henceforth from the money which has arisen from the sale of land than in a way which would force more land into the market. It is to be hoped, too, that no more recompenses for public service will be offered in land, like the large grants which were made to soldiers after the revolutionary war. The soldiers have disposed of their lands much under the governmental price, in order to obtain a sale; and the hurtful dispersion of settlers, and the sale of tracts too large to be well-cultivated, have been thereby assisted.
The great question incessantly repeated throughout the United States is, what is to be done with the immense amount of land remaining unsold; and with the perpetually increasing revenue arising from the sale, as it proceeds? Various propositions are afloat,—none of which appear to me so wise as some which remain to be offered. One proposition is to divide the lands again among the States, apportioning the amount according to the representation in Congress, or to the population as given by the last census. Besides the difficulty of making the apportionment fairly, this plan would afford fatal inducements to a greater dispersion of people than has yet taken place. It is also argued that no constitutional power exists by which the cession of 1787 can be reversed.
Another proposition is, to let the sale of lands go on as it does now, and divide the proceeds among the several States, for purposes of Education, Colonisation of the coloured race, and Internal Improvements. Under such a plan, there would be endless disputes about the amounts to be paid over to the different States. The general government would have a new and dangerous function assigned to it. Besides, as much of the surplus revenue is derived from duties, it seems a shorter and more natural method to leave off levying money that is not wanted, than to levy it, use it, and make a distribution of other funds among the States. This subject will, however, come under consideration hereafter.
Others propose that nothing should be done: that the lands should go on being sold according to the present demand, and the proceeds to accumulate, till some accident happens,—a war, or other expensive adventure,—to help to dissipate them. The first part of the proposition will probably stand good: for it seems a difficult thing to raisethe price of land again:—an impossible thing, till the people shall show that they understand the case by demanding an increase of price: but the second part of the proposition cannot be acceded to. It is inconsistent with the first principles of democracy that large sums of money should accumulate in the hands of the general government. The accumulation must be disposed of, and the sources of revenue restrained.
There are modes of advantageously disposing of the surplus revenue which are obvious to those whose economical experience is precisely the reverse of that of the people of the United States. They are not likely to be at present assented to,—perhaps even to be tolerated by the inhabitants of the new world. Such as they are, they will be presented in the next section.
The lowest price given of late for land, that I heard of, was a quarter-dollar per acre; (for these are not times when three thousand acres are to be had for a rifle; and a whole promontory for a suit of clothes.) Some good land may be still had, at a distance from roads and markets, from those who want to turn their surplus land into money, for a quarter-dollar per acre. Some that I saw in New Hampshire under these circumstances has advanced in five years to a dollar and a half per acre: and some of about equal quality, about fifteen miles nearer to a market, sold at the same time for ten dollars per acre. I saw some low land, on the banks of the river, near Pittsburg, which would not sell at any price a few years ago, when salt was brought over the mountains on pack-horses, and sold at a dollar a quart. Now salt is obtained in any quantity by digging near this land; and the meadow is parted into lots of ten acres each, which sell at the rate of one thousand dollars per acre. This is, no doubt, in prospect of the salt-workswhich are destined to flourish here. The highest price I heard of being given (unless in a similar case in New York) was for street lots in Mobile; one hundred and ten dollars per foot frontage.
For agricultural purposes, the price of land varies, according to its fertility, and, much more, to its vicinity to a market, in a manner which cannot easily be specified. I think the highest price I heard of was fifteen hundred dollars per acre. This was in the south. In the north and west, I heard of prices varying from thirty to one hundred dollars, even in somewhat retired situations. One thing seems to be granted on all hands: that a settler cannot fail of success, if he takes good land, in a healthy situation, at the government price. If he bestows moderate pains on his lot, he may confidently reckon on its being worth at least double at the end of the year: much more, if there are growing probabilities of a market.
The methods according to which the sales of the public lands in the United States are conducted are excellent. The lots are so divided as to preclude all doubt and litigation about boundaries. There is a general land-office at Washington, and a subordinate one in each district, where all business can be transacted with readiness and exactitude. Periodical sales are made of lands which it is desirable to bring into the market. These are disposed of to the highest bidder. The advance of the population into the wilderness is thus made more regular than it would be if there were not a rendezvous in each district, where it could be ascertained how the settlement of the neighbouring country was going on; titles are made more secure; and less impunity is allowed to fraud.
The pre-emption laws, originally designed for the benefit of poor settlers, have been the greatest provocatives to fraud. It seemed hard that asquatter, who had settled himself on unoccupied land, and done it nothing but good, should be turned off without remuneration, or compelled to purchase his own improvements; and in 1830, a bill was therefore passed, granting a pre-emption right to squatters who had taken such possession of unsold lands. It provided that when two individuals had cultivated a quarter section of land, (one hundred and sixty acres,) each should have a pre-emption right with regard to half the cultivated portion: and each also to a pre-emption of eighty acres anywhere else in the same land district. Of course, abundance of persons took advantage of this law to get the best land very cheap. Two men, by merely cutting down, or blazing a few trees, or "camping out" for a night or two, on a good quarter-section, have secured it at the minimum price. A Report to Congress states that there is reason to believe that "large companies have been founded, who procure affidavits of improvements to be made, get the warrants issued upon them, and whenever a good tract of land is ready for sale, cover it over with theirfloats, (warrants of the required habitation,) and thus put down competition. The frauds upon the public, within the past year, (1835,) from this single source, have arisen to many millions of dollars." Such errors in matters of detail are sure to be corrected soon after being discovered. The means will speedily be found of showing a due regard to the claims of squatters, without precipitating the settlement of land by unfairly reducing its price in the market. Whatever methods may tend to lessen rather than to increase the facilities for occupying new land, must, on the whole, be an advantage, while the disproportion between land and labour is so great as it now is in the western regions of the United States.
English farmers settling in the United States used to be a joke to their native neighbours. The Englishman began with laughing, or being shocked, at the slovenly methods of cultivation employed by the American settlers: he was next seen to look grave on his own account; and ended by following the American plan.
The American ploughs round the stumps of the trees he has felled, and is not very careful to measure the area he ploughs, and the seed he sows. The Englishman clears half the quantity of land,—clears it very thoroughly; ploughs deep, sows thick, raises twice the quantity of grain on half the area of land, and points proudly to his crop. But the American has, meantime, fenced, cleared, and sown more land, improved his house and stock, and kept his money in his pocket. The Englishman has paid for the labour bestowed on his beautiful fields more than his fine crop repays him. When he has done thus for a few seasons, till his money is gone, he learns that he has got to a place where it answers to spend land to save labour; the reverse of his experience in England; and he soon becomes as slovenly a farmer as the American, and begins immediately to grow rich.
It would puzzle a philosopher to compute how long some prejudices will subsist in defiance of, not only evidence, but personal experience. These same Americans, who laugh (reasonably enough) at the prejudiced English farmer, seem themselves incapable of being convinced on a point quite asplain as that between him and themselves. The very ground of their triumph over him is their knowledge of the much smaller value of land, and greater value of labour, in America than in England: and yet there is no one subject on which so many complaints are to be heard from every class of American society as the immigration of foreigners. The incapacity of men to recognise blessings in disguise has been the theme of moralists in all ages: but it might be expected that the Americans, in this case, would be an exception. It is wonderful, to a stranger, to see how they fret and toil, and scheme and invent, to supply the deficiency of help, and all the time quarrel with the one means by which labour is brought to their door. The immigration of foreigners was the one complaint by which I was met in every corner of the free States; and I really believe I did not converse with a dozen persons who saw the ultimate good through the present apparent evil.
It is not much to be wondered at that gentlemen and ladies, living in Boston and New York, and seeing, for the first time in their lives, half-naked and squalid persons in the street, should ask where they come from, and fear lest they should infect others with their squalor, and wish they would keep away. It is not much to be wondered at that the managers of charitable institutions in the maritime cities should be weary of the claims advanced by indigent foreigners: but it is surprising that these gentlemen and ladies should not learn by experience that all this ends well, and that matters are taking their natural course. It would certainly be better that the emigrants should be well clothed, educated, respectable people; (except that, in that case, they would probably never arrive;) but the blame of their bad condition rests elsewhere, while their arrival is, generally speaking,almost a pure benefit. Some are intemperate and profligate; and such are, no doubt, a great injury to the cities where they harbour; but the greater number show themselves decent and hardworking enough, when put into employment. Every American acknowledges that few or no canals or railroads would be in existence now, in the United States, but for the Irish labour by which they have been completed: and the best cultivation that is to be seen in the land is owing to the Dutch and Germans it contains. What would housekeepers do for domestic service without foreigners? If the American ports had been barred against immigration, and the sixty thousand foreigners per annum, with all their progeny, had been excluded, where would now have been the public works of the United States, the agriculture, the shipping?
The most emphatic complainers of the immigration of foreigners are those who imagine that the morals of society suffer thereby. My own conviction is that the morals of society are, on the whole, thereby much improved. It is candidly allowed, on all hands, that the passion of the Irish for the education of their children is a great set-off against the bad qualities some of them exhibit in their own persons; and that the second and third generations of Irish are among the most valuable citizens of the republic. The immigrant Germans are more sober and respectable than the Irish; but there is more difficulty in improving them and their children. The Scotch are in high esteem. My own opinion is that most of the evils charged upon the immigrants are chargeable upon the mismanagement of them in the ports. The atrocious corruption of the New York elections, where an Irishman, just landed, and employed upon the drains, perjures himself, and votes nine times over, is chargeable, not upon immigration, nor yet upon universalsuffrage, but upon faults in the machinery of registration. Again, if the great pauper-palace, over the Schuylkill, near Philadelphia, be half full of foreigners; if it be true that an Irish woman was seen to walk round it, and heard to observe that she should immediately write over for all her relations; the evil is chargeable upon there being a pauper-palace, with the best of food and clothing, and no compulsion to work, in a country where there is far more work and wages than there are hands to labour and earn. There is in New York a benevolent gentleman who exercises a most useful and effectual charity. He keeps a kind of registry office for the demand and supply of emigrant labour; takes charge of the funds of such emigrants as are fortunate enough to have any; and befriends them in every way. He declares that he has an average of six situations on his list ready for every sober, able-bodied man and woman that lands at New York.
The bad moral consequences of a dispersion of agricultural labour, and the good moral effects of an adequate combination, are so serious as to render it the duty of good citizens to inform themselves fully of the bearings of this question before they attempt to influence other minds upon it. Those who have seen what are the morals and manners of families who live alone in the wilds, with no human opinion around them, no neighbours with whom to exchange good offices, no stimulus to mental activity, no social amusements, no church,no life, nothing but the pursuit of the outward means of living,—any one who has witnessed this will be ready to agree what a blessing it would be to such a family to shake down a shower of even poor Irish labourers around them. To such a family no tidings ought to be more welcome than of the arrival of ship-load after ship-load of immigrants at the ports, somefew of whom may wander hitherwards, and by entering into a combination of labour to obtain means of living, open a way to the attainment of the ends. Sixty thousand immigrants a-year! What are these spread over so many thousand square miles? If the country could be looked down upon from a balloon, some large clusters of these would be seen detained in the cities, because they could not be spared into the country; other clusters would be seen about the canals and railroads; and a very slight sprinkling in the back country, where their stations would be marked by the prosperity growing up around them.
The expedients used in the country settlements to secure a combination of labour when it is absolutely necessary, show how eminently deficient it is. Every one has heard of the "frolic" or "bee," by means of which the clearing of lots, the raising of houses, the harvesting of crops is achieved. Roads are made, and kept by contributions of labour and teams, by settlers. For the rest, what can be done by family labour alone is so done, with great waste of time, material, and toil. The wonderful effects of a "frolic," in every way, should serve, in contrast with the toil and difficulty usually expended in producing small results, to incline the hearts of settlers towards immigrants, and to plan how an increase of them may be obtained.
Minds are, I hope, beginning to turn in this direction. In New England, where there is the most combination of labour, and the poorest land, it is amusing to see the beginning of discoveries on this head. I find, in the United States' Almanack for 1835, an article on agricultural improvements, (presupposing a supply of labour as the primary requisite,) which bears all the marks of freshness and originality, of having been a discovery of the writer's.
"If such improvements as are possible, or even easy," (where there is labour at hand,) "were made in the husbandry of this country, many and great advantages would be found to arise. As twice the number of people might be supported on the same quantity of land, all our farming towns would become twice as populous as they are likely to be in the present state of husbandry. There would be, in general, but half the distance to travel to visit one's friends and acquaintances. Friends might oftener see and converse with each other. Half the labour would be saved in carrying the corn to mill, and the produce to market; half the journeying saved in attending our courts; and half the expense in supporting government, and in making and repairing roads; half the distance saved in going to the smith, weaver, clothier, &c.; half the distance saved in going to public worship, and most other meetings; for where steeples are four miles apart, they would be only two or three. Much time, expense and labour would, on these accounts, be saved; and civilisation, with all the social virtues, would, perhaps, be proportionally promoted and increased."
Before this can be done, there must be hands to do it. Steeples must remain four or fourteen miles apart, till there are beings enough in the intervening space to draw them together. I saw, on the Mississippi, a woman in a canoe, paddling up against the stream; probably, as I was told, to visit a neighbour twenty or thirty miles off. The only comfort was that the current would bring her back four times as quickly as she went up. What a blessing would a party of emigrant neighbours be to a woman who would row herself twenty miles against the stream of the Mississippi for companionship!
Instead of complaining of the sixty thousandemigrants per annum, and lowering the price of land, so as to induce dispersion, it would be wise, if it were possible, in the people of the United States to bring in sixty thousand more labourers per annum, and raise the price of land. This last cannot, perhaps, be done: but why should not the other? With a surplus revenue that they do not know what to do with, and a scarcity of the labour which they do not know how to do without, why not use the surplus funds accruing from the lands in carrying labour to the soil?
It is true, Europeans have the same passion for land as the Americans; and such immigrants would leave their employers, and buy for themselves, as soon as they had earned the requisite funds: but these, again, would supply the means of bringing over more labour; and the intermediate services of the labourers would be so much gained. If the arrangements were so made as to bring over sober, respectable labourers, without their being in any way bound to servitude, (as a host of poor Germans once were made white slaves of,) if, the land and labour being once brought together, and repayment from the benefited parties being secured, (if desired,) things were then left to take their natural course, a greater blessing could hardly befal the United States than such an importation of labourers.
I was told, in every eastern city, that it was a common practice with parish officers in England to ship off their paupers to the United States. I took some pains to investigate the grounds of this charge, and am convinced that it is a mistake; that the accusation has arisen out of some insulated case. I was happy to be able to show my American friends how the supposed surplus population of the English agricultural counties has shrunk, and in most cases disappeared, under the operation of thenew Poor Law, so that, even if the charge had ever been true, it could not long remain so. By the time that we shall be enabled to say the same of the parishes of Ireland, the Americans will, doubtless, have discovered that they would be glad of all the labourers we had ever been able to spare; if only we could send them in the form of respectable men and women, instead of squalid paupers, looking as if they were going from shore to shore, to rouse the world to an outcry against the sins and sorrows of our economy.
It will scarcely be credited by those who are not already informed on the subject, that a proposition has been made to send out of the country an equal number of persons to the amount brought into it; ship loads of labourers going to and fro, like buckets in a well: that this proposition has been introduced into Congress, and has been made the basis of appropriations in some State legislatures: that itinerant lecturers are employed to advocate the scheme: that it is preached from the pulpit, and subscribed for in the churches, and that in its behalf are enlisted members of the administration, a great number of the leading politicians, clergy, merchants, and planters, and a large proportion of the other citizens of the United States. It matters little how many or how great are the men engaged in behalf of a bad scheme, which is so unnatural that it cannot but fail:—it matters little, as far as the scheme itself is concerned; but it is of incalculable consequence as creating an obstruction. For itself, the miserable abortion—the Colonisation scheme—might be passed over; for its active results will be nothing; but it is necessary to refer to it in its passive character of an obstruction. It is necessary to refer thus to it, not only as a matter of fact, but because, absurd and impracticable asthe scheme clearly is, when viewed in relation to the whole state of affairs in America, it is not so easy on the spot to discern its true character. So many perplexing considerations are mixed up with it by its advocates; so many of those advocates are men of earnest philanthropy, and well versed in the details of the scheme, while blind to its general bearing, that it is difficult to have general principles always in readiness to meet opposing facts; to help adopting the partial views of well-meaning and thoroughly persuaded persons; and to know where to doubt, and what to disbelieve. I went to America extremely doubtful about the character of this institution. I heard at Baltimore and Washington all that could be said in its favour, by persons conversant with slavery, which I had not then seen. Mr. Madison, the President of the Colonisation Society, gave me his favourable views of it. Mr. Clay, the Vice-President, gave me his. So did almost every clergyman and other member of society whom I met for some months. Much time, observation, and reflection were necessary to form a judgment for myself, after so much prepossession, even in so clear a case as I now see this to be. Others on the spot must have the same allowance as was necessary for me: and, if any pecuniary interest be involved in the question, much more. But, I am firmly persuaded that any clear-headed man, shutting himself up in his closet for a day's study of the question, or taking a voyage, so as to be able to look back upon the entire country he has left,—being careful to take in the whole of its economical aspect, (to say nothing, at present, of the moral,) can come to no other conclusion than that the scheme of transporting the coloured population of the United States to the coast of Africa is absolutely absurd; and, if it were not so, would be absolutely pernicious. But, in matters of economy,the pernicious and the absurd are usually identical.
No one is to be blamed for the origin of slavery. Because it is now, under conviction, wicked, it does not follow that it was instituted in wickedness. Those who began it, knew not what they did. It has been elsewhere[17]ably shown how slavery has always, and, to all appearance, unavoidably existed, in some form or other, wherever large new tracts of land have been taken possession of by a few agricultural settlers. Let it be granted that negro slavery was begun inadvertently in the West India islands, and continued, by an economical necessity, in the colonies of North America.
What is now the state of the case? Slavery, of a very mild kind, has been abolished in the northern parts of the Union, where agricultural labour can be carried on by whites, and where such employments bear a very reduced proportion to manufacturing and commercial occupations. Its introduction into the north-western portions of the country has been prohibited by those who had had experience of its evils. Slavery, generally of a very aggravated character, now subsists in thirteen States out of twenty-six, and those thirteen are the States which grow the tobacco, rice, cotton and sugar; it being generally alleged that rice and sugar cannot be raised by white labour, while some maintain that they may. I found few who doubted that tobacco and cotton may be grown by white labour, with the assistance from brute labour and machinery which would follow upon the disuse of human capital; The amount of the slave population is now above two millions and a half. It increases rapidly in the States which have been impoverished by slavery; and is killed off; but not with equal rapidity, on the virgin soilsto which alone it is, in any degree, appropriate. It has become unquestionably inappropriate in Maryland, Delaware, Virginia, and Kentucky. To these I should be disposed to add Missouri, and North Carolina, and part of Tennessee and South Carolina. The States which have more slave labour than their deteriorated lands require, sell it to those which have a deficiency of labour to their rich lands. Virginia, now in a very depressed condition, derives her chief revenue from the rearing of slaves, as stock, to be sent to Alabama, Mississippi, and Louisiana. The march of circumstance has become too obvious to escape the attention of the most short-sighted. No one can fail to perceive that slavery, like an army of locusts, is compelled to shift its place, by the desolation it has made. Its progress is southwards; and now, having reached the sea there, south-westwards. If there were but an impassable barrier there, its doom would be certain, and not very remote. This doom was apparently sealed a while ago, by the abolition of slavery in Mexico, and the fair chance there seemed of Missouri and Arkansas being subjected to a restriction of the same purport with that imposed on the new States, north-west of the Ohio. This doom has been, for the present, cancelled by the admission of slavery into Missouri and Arkansas, and by the seizure of Texas by American citizens. The open question, however, only regards its final limits. Its speedy abolition in many of the States may be, and is, regarded as certain.
The institution of slavery was a political anomaly at the time of the Revolution. It has now become an economical one also. Nothing can prevent the generality of persons from seeing this, however blind a few, a very few persons on the spot may be to the truth.[18]
It has thus obviously become the interest of all to whom slavery still is, or is believed to be, a gain; of those who hold the richest lands; of those who rear slaves for such lands; of all who dread change; of all who would go quietly through life, and leave it to a future generation to cope with their difficulty,—it has become the interest of all such to turn their own attention and that of others from the fact that the time has come when the slaves ought to be made free labourers. They cannot put down the fact into utter silence. Some sort of compromise must be made with it. A tub must be thrown to the whale. A tub has been found which will almost hold the whale.
It is proposed by the Colonisation Society that free persons of colour shall be sent to establish and conduct a civilised community on the shores of Africa. The variety of prospects held out by this proposition to persons of different views is remarkable. To the imaginative, there is the picture of the restoration of the coloured race to their paternal soil: to the religious, the prospect of evangelising Africa. Those who would serve God and Mammon are delighted at being able to work their slaves during their own lives, and then leave them to the Colonisation Society with a bequest of money, (when money must needs be left behind,) to carry them over to Africa. Those who would be doing, in a small way, immediately, let certain of their slaves work for wages which are to carry themover to Africa. Those who have slaves too clever or discontented to be safe neighbours, can ship them off to Africa. Those who are afraid of the rising intelligence of their free coloured neighbours, or suffer strongly under the prejudice of colour, can exercise such social tyranny as shall drive such troublesome persons to Africa. The clergy, public lecturers, members of legislatures, religious societies, and charitable individuals, both in the north and south, are believed to be, and believe themselves to be, labouring on behalf of slaves, when they preach, lecture, obtain appropriations, and subscribe, on behalf of the Colonisation Society. Minds and hearts are laid to rest,—opiated into a false sleep.
Here are all manner of people associated for one object, which has the primary advantage of being ostensibly benevolent. It has had Mr. Madison for its chief officer: Mr. Clay for its second. It has had the aid, for twenty years, of almost all the presses and pulpits of the United States, and of most of their politicians, members of government, and leading professional men and merchants, and almost all the planters of twelve states, and all the missionary interest. Besides the subscriptions arising from so many sources, there have been large appropriations made by various legislatures. What is the result?—Nothing.Ex nihilo nihil fit.Out of a chaos of elements no orderly creation can arise but by the operation of a sound principle: and sound principle here, there is none.
In twenty years, the Colonisation Society has removed to Africa between two and three thousand persons;[19]while the annual increase of the slave population is, by the lowest computation,sixty thousand; and the number of free blacks is upwards of three hundred and sixty-two thousand.
The chief officers of the Colonisation Society look forward to being able, in a few years, to carry off the present annual increase, and a few more; by which time the annual increase will amount to many times more than the Society will have carried out from the beginning.
The leading Colonisation advocates in the south object to abolition, invariably on the ground that they should be left without labourers: whereas it is the Colonisation scheme which would carry away the labourers, and the abolition scheme which would leave them where they are. To say nothing of the wilfulness of this often-confuted objection, it proves that those who urge it are not in earnest in advocating Colonisation as ultimate emancipation.
As far as I could learn, no leading member of the Colonisation Society has freed any of his slaves. Its president had sold twelve, the week before I first saw him. Its vice-president isobsédéby his slaves; but retains them all. And so it is, through the whole hierarchy.
The avowal of a southern gentleman,—"We have our slaves, and we mean to keep them,"—is echoed onpoliticaloccasions by the same gentlemen of the Colonisation Society, who, onpoliticor religious occasions, treat of colonisation as ultimate emancipation.
While labourers are flocking into other parts of the country, at the rate of sixty thousand per annum, and are found to be far too few for the wants of society, the Colonisation scheme proposes to carry out more than this number; and fails of all its ostensible objects till it does so. A glance at the causes of slavery, and at the present economy of the United States, shows such a scheme to be a bald fiction.
It alienates the attention and will of the people, (for the purposes of the few,) from the principle of the abolition of slavery, which would achieve any honest objects of the Colonisation Society, and many more. Leaving, for the present, the moral consideration of the case, abolition would not only leave the land as full of labourers as it is now, but incalculably augment the supply of labour by substituting willing and active service, and improved methods of husbandry, for the forced, inferior labour, and wasteful arrangements which are always admitted to be co-existent with slavery.
The greater number of eminent Abolitionists,—eminent for talents, zeal and high principle,—are converted Colonisationists.
This is surely enough.
It appears to me that the Colonisation Society could never have gained any ground at all, but for the common supposition that the blacks must go somewhere. It was a long while before I could make anything of this. The argument always ran thus.
"Unless they remain as they are, Africa is the only place for them.—It will not do to give them a territory; we have seen enough of that with the Indians. We are heart-sick of territories: the blacks would all perish.—Then, the climate of Canada would not suit them: they would perish there. The Haytians will not take them in: they have a horror of freed slaves.—There is no rest for the soles of their feet, anywhere but in Africa!"
"Why should they not stay where they are?"
"Impossible. The laws of the States forbid freed negroes to remain."
"At present,—on account of the slaves who remain. In case of abolition, such laws would be repealed, of course: and then, why should not the blacks remain where they are?"
"They could never live among the whites in a state of freedom."
"Why? You are begging the question."
"They would die of vice and misery."
"Why more than the German labourers?"
"They do in the free States. They are dying out there constantly."