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 ofemployéas 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 ofany rightto 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 LondonTimes, 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.
Theapparentwealth 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 paidno 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 aréunionin 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 LondonTimessuggests 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 theTimes, 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 theDaily 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 LondonTimes:—
"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 theTimes, 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 peoplecapable of feeding themselves and others, and in the increasing proportionrequiring 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 thecheapenedlabourer 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 theChronicleassures 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 ofThe 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."
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 thetradein 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 manin Africa. To terminate the forced export of men, women, and children from Ireland, we need only to raise the value of menin Ireland; and to put an end to our own domestic slave trade, nothing is needed except that we raise the value of manin 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 manat 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.Westopped the natural progress of civilization in Africa.Wecut her off from the opportunity of improvement.Wekept 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,purchasedfor 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 Englishphilanthropywill 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 ofCommerce.
This trade is sanctioned by the British government because it provides an outlet for Hindoo labour,rendered surplusby 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 ofcheap labour. Where there is nothing but agriculture, the men must be idle for very much of their time, and the women and childrenmustbe 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 theBritish 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 aredailywasting 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 younowdo, 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.
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 theZoll-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 onlyelevenpounds per head, in 1847 it had risen totwenty-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 theNeckar, 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—