The fashionable doctrine of our day is, however, that the prosperity of a nation is to be measured by the amount of its trade with people, who are distant, as manifested by custom-house returns, and not by the quantity of exchanges among persons who live near each other, and who trade without the intervention of ships, and with little need of steamboats or wagons. If the trade of a neighbourhood be closed by the failure of a furnace or a mill, and the workman be thus deprived of the power to trade off the labour of himself or his children, or the farmer deprived of the power to trade off his food, consolation is found in the increased quantity of exports—itself, perhaps, the direct consequence of a diminished ability to consume at home. If canal-boats cease to be built, the nation is deemed to be enriched by the substitution of ocean steamers requiring fifty times the capital for the performance of the same quantity of exchanges. If the failure of mills and furnaces causes men to be thrown out of employment, the remedy is to be found, not in the revisal of the measures that have produced these effects, but in the exportation of the men themselves to distant climes, thus producing a necessity for the permanent use of ships instead of canal-boats, with diminished power to maintain trade, and every increase of thisnecessityis regarded as an evidence of growing wealth and power.
The whole tendency of modern commercial policy is to the substitution of the distant market for the near one. England exports her people to Australia that they may there grow the wool that might be grown at home more cheaply; and we export to California, by hundreds of thousands, men who enjoy themselves in hunting gold, leaving behind them untouched the real gold-mines—those of coal and iron—in which their labour would be thrice more productive. The reports of a late Secretary of the Treasury abound in suggestions as to the value of the distant trade. Steam-ships were, he thought, needed to enable us to obtain the control of the commerce of China and Japan. "With our front on both oceans and the gulf," it was thought, "we might secure this commerce, and with it, in time, command the trade of the world." England, not to be outdone in this race for "the commerce of the world," adds steadily to her fleet of ocean steamers, and the government contributes its aid for their maintenance, by the payment of enormous sums withdrawn from the people at home, and diminishing the home market to thrice the extent that it increases the foreign one. The latest accounts inform us of new arrangements about to be made with a view to competition with this country for the passenger traffic to and within the tropics, while the greatest of all trades now left to British ships is represented to be the transport of British men, women, and children, so heavily taxed at home for the maintenance of this very system that they are compelled to seek an asylum abroad. In all this there is nothing like freedom of trade, or freedom of man; as the only real difference between the freeman and the slave is, that the former exchanges himself, his labour and his products, while the latter must permit another to do it for him.
Mr. McCulloch regards himself as a disciple of Adam Smith, and so does Lord John Russell. We, too, are his disciple, but inThe Wealth of Nations, can find no warrant for the system advocated by either. The system of Dr. Smith tended to the production of that natural freedom of trade, each step toward which would have been attended with improvement in the condition of the people, and increase in thepower to trade, thus affording proof conclusive of the soundness of the doctrine; whereas every step in the direction now known as free trade is attended with deterioration of condition, andincreased necessityfor trade, withdiminished powerto trade. Those who profess to be his followers and suppose that they are carrying out his principles, find results directly the reverse of their anticipations; and the reason for this may readily be found in the fact that the English school of political economists long since repudiated the whole of the system of Dr. Smith, retaining of it little more thanthe mere words"free trade."
The basis of all commerce is to be found in production, and therefore it was that Dr. Smith looked upon agriculture, the science of production, as the first pursuit of man, and manufactures and commerce as beneficial only to the extent that they tended to aid agriculture and increase the quantity of commodities to be converted or exchanged, preparatory to their being consumed. He held, therefore, that the return to labour would be greater in a trade in which exchanges could be made once a month than in another in which they could only be made once in a year, and he was opposed to the system then in vogue, because it had, "in all cases," turned trade,
"From a foreign trade of consumption with a neighbouring, into one with a more distant country; in many cases, from a direct foreign trade of consumption, into a round-about one; and in some cases, from all foreign trade of consumption, into a carrying trade. It has in all cases, therefore," he continues, "turned it from a direction in which it would have maintained a greater quantity of productive labour, into one in which it can maintain a much smaller quantity."
All this is directly the reverse of what is taught by the modern British economists; and we have thus two distinct schools, that of Adam Smith and that of his successors. The one taught that labour directly applied to production was most advantageous, and that by bringing the consumer to take his place by the side of the producer, production and the consequent power to trade would be increased. The other teaches, that every increase of capital or labour applied to production must be attended with diminished return, whereas ships and steam-engines may be increasedad infinitumwithout such diminution: the necessary inference from which is, that the more widely the consumer and the producer are separated, with increased necessity for the use of ships and engines, the more advantageously labour will be applied, and the greater will be the power to trade. The two systems start from a different base, and tend in an opposite direction, and yet the modern school claims Dr. Smith as founder. While teaching a theory of production totally different, Mr. McCulloch informs us that "the fundamental principles on which theproductionof wealth depends" were established by Dr. Smith, "beyond the reach of cavil or dispute."
The difference between the two schools may be thus illustrated: Dr.Smith regarded commerce as forming a true pyramid, thus—
Exchanges abroad.Exchanges at home.Conversion into cloth and iron.Production of food and other raw materials.
This is in exact accordance with what we know to be true; but according to the modern school, commerce forms an inverted pyramid, thus—
Exchanges with distant men.Exchanges at home.Conversion.Production.
The difference between these figures is great, but not greater than that between two systems, the one of which regards the earth as the great and perpetually improving machine to which the labour of man may be profitably applied, while the other gives precedence to those very minute and perpetually deteriorating portions of it which go to the construction of ships, wagons, and steam-engines. An examination of these figures will perhaps enable the reader to understand the cause of the unsteadiness observed wherever the modern system is adopted.
* * * * *
It will be easy now to see why it is that the commercial policy of England has always been so diametrically opposed to that advocated by the author ofThe Wealth of Nations. He saw clearly that the man and the easily transported spindle should go to the food and the cotton, and that, when once there, 'they were there for ever; whereas the bulky food and cotton might be transported to the man and the spindle for a thousand years, and that the necessity for transportation in the thousand and first would be as great as it had been in the first; and that the more transportation was needed, the less food and cloth would fall to the share of both producer and consumer. His countrymen denied the truth of this, and from that day to the present they have endeavoured to prevent the other nations of the world from obtaining machinery of any kind that would enable them to obtain the aid of those natural agents which they themselves regard as more useful than the earth itself. "The power of water," says Mr. McCulloch—
"And of wind, which move our machinery, support our ships, and impel them over the deep—the pressure of the atmosphere, and the elasticity of steam, which enables us to work the most powerful engines, are they not the spontaneous gifts of nature? Machinery is advantageous only because it gives us the means of pressing some of the powers of nature into our service, and of making them perform the principal part of what, we must otherwise have wholly performed ourselves. In navigation is it possible to doubt that the powers of nature—the buoyancy of the water, the impulse of the wind, and the polarity of the magnet—contribute fully as much as the labours of the sailor to waft our ships from one hemisphere to another? In bleaching and fermentation the whole processes are carried on by natural agents. And it is to the effects of heat in softening and melting metals, in preparing our food, and in warming our houses, that we owe many of our most powerful and convenient instruments, and that those northern climates have been made to afford a comfortable habitation."—Principles, 165.
This is all most true, but what does it prove in regard to British policy? Has not its object been that of preventing the people of the world from availing themselves of the vast deposites, of iron ore and of fuel throughout the earth, and thus to deprive them of the power to call to their aid the pressure of the atmosphere and the elasticity of steam? Has it not looked to depriving them of all power to avail themselves of the natural agents required in the processes of bleaching and fermentation, in softening woods, and melting metals, and was not that the object had in view by a distinguished statesman, since Chancellor of England, when he said, that "the country could well afford the losses then resulting from the exportation of manufactured goods, as its effect would be to smother in the cradle the manufactures of other nations?" Has not this been the object of every movement of Great Britain since the days of Adam Smith, and does not the following diagram represent exactly what would be the state of affairs if she could carry into full effect her desire to become "the workshop of the world?"
\British ships/Producers of raw materials\ / Consumers of cloth and ironEurope, Asia, Africa > < in Europe, Asia, AfricaAmerica / \ North and South America/ And rails \
Mr. McCulloch insists that agriculture is less profitable than manufactures and trade, and his countrymen insist that all the world outside of England shall be one great farm, leaving to England herself the use of all the various natural agents required in manufactures and commerce, that they may remain poor while she becomes rich. There is in all this a degree of selfishness not to be paralleled, and particularly when we reflect that it involves a necessity on the part of all other nations for abstaining from those scientific pursuits required for the development of the intellect, and which so naturally accompany the habit of association in towns, for the purpose of converting the food, the wool, the hides, and the timber of the farmer into clothing and furniture for his use. It is the policy of barbarism, and directly opposed to any advance in civilization, as will be fully seen when we examine into its working in reference to any particular trade or country.
The annual average production of cotton is probably seventeen hundred millions of pounds, or less than two pounds per head for the population of the world; and certainly not one-tenth of what would be consumed could they find means to pay for it; and not one-tenth of what would be good for them; and yet it is a drug, selling in India at two and three cents per pound, and commanding here at this moment, notwithstanding the abundance of gold, but eight or nine cents, with a certainty that, should we again be favoured, as we were a few years since, with a succession of large crops, it will fall to a lower point than it ever yet has seen: a state of things that could not exist were the people of the world to consume even one-third as much as would be good for them. Why do they not? Why is it that India, with her hundred millions of population, and with her domestic manufacture in a state of ruin, consumes of British cottons to the extent of only sixteen cents per head—or little more, probably, than a couple of yards of cloth? To these questions an answer may perhaps be found upon an examination of the circumstances which govern the consumption of other commodities; for we may be quite certain that cotton obeys precisely the same laws as sugar and coffee, wine and wheat. Such an examination would result in showing that when a commodity is at once produced at or near the place of growth in the form fitting it for use, the consumption is invariably large; and that when it has to go through many and distant hands before being consumed, it is as invariably small. The consumption of sugar on a plantation is large; but if it were needed that before being consumed it should be sent to Holland to be refined, and then brought back again, we may feel well assured that there would not be one pound consumed on any given plantation where now there are twenty, or possibly fifty. The consumption of cotton on the plantation is very small indeed, because, before being consumed, 'it has to be dragged through long and muddy roads to the landing, thence carried to New Orleans, thence to Liverpool, and thence to Manchester, after which the cloth has to be returned, the planter receiving one bale for every five he sent away, and giving the labour of cultivating an acre in exchange for fifty, sixty, or eighty pounds of its product. If, now, the people who raised the cotton were free to call to their aid the various natural agents of whose service it is the object of the British system to deprive them, and if, therefore, the work of converting it into cloth were performed on the ground where it was raised, or in its neighbourhood, is it not clear that the consumption would be largely increased? The people who made the cloth would be the consumers of numerous things raised on the plantation that are now wasted, while the facility of converting such things into cloth would be a bounty on raising them; and thus, while five times the quantity of cotton would be consumed, the real cost—that is, the labour cost—would be less than it is for the smaller quantity now used. So, too, in India. It may be regarded as doubtful if the quantity of cotton to day consumed in that country is one-half what it was half a century since—and for the reason that the number of people now interposed between the consumer and the producer is so great. The consumption of wine in France is enormous, whereas here there is scarcely any consumed; and yet the apparent excess of price is not so great as would warrant us in expecting to find so great a difference. The real cause is not so much to be found in the excess of price, though that is considerable, as in the mode of payment. A peasant in France obtains wine in exchange for much that would be wasted but for the proximity of the wine-vat, and the demand it makes for the labour of himself and others. He raises milk, eggs, and chickens, and he has fruit, cabbages, potatoes, or turnips, commodities that from their bulky or perishable nature cannot be sent to a distance, but can be exchanged at home. The farmer of Ohio cannot exchange his spare labour, or that of his horses, for wine, nor can he pay for it in peaches or strawberries, of which the yield of an acre might produce him hundreds of dollars—nor in potatoes or turnips, of which he can obtain hundreds of bushels; but he must pay in wheat, of which an acre yields him a dozen bushels, one-half of which are eaten up in the process of exchange between him and the wine-grower. Whenever the culture of the grape shall come to be established in that State, and wine shall be made at home, it will be found that thegallonsconsumed will be almost as numerous as are now thedrops. Look where we may, we shall find the same result. Wherever the consumer and the producer are brought into close connection with each other, the increase of consumption is wonderful, even where there is no reduction in the nominal price; and wherever they are separated, the diminution of consumption is equally wonderful, even where there is a reduction of the nominal price—and it is so because the facility of exchange diminishes as the distance increases. A man who has even a single hour's labour to spare may exchange it with his neighbour for as much cotton cloth as would make a shirt; but if the labour market is distant, he may, and will, waste daily as much time as would buy him a whole piece of cotton cloth, and may have to go shirtless while cotton is a drug. When the labour market is near, land acquires value and men become rich and free. When it is distant, land is of little value and men continue poor and enslaved.
Before proceeding further, it would be well for the reader to look around his own neighbourhood, and see how many exchanges are even now made that could not be made by people that were separated even ten or twenty miles from each other, and how many conveniences and comforts are enjoyed in exchange for both labour and commodities that would be wasted but for the existence of direct intercourse between the parties—and, then to satisfy himself if the same law which may be deduced from the small facts of a village neighbourhood, will not be found equally applicable to the great ones of larger communities.
Having reflected upon these things, let him next look at the present condition of the cotton trade, and remark the fact that scarcely any of the wool produced is consumed without first travelling thousands of miles, and passing through almost hundreds of hands. The places of production are India, Egypt, Brazil, the West Indies, and our Southern States. In the first, the manufacture is in a state of ruin. In the second, third, and fourth, it has never been permitted to have an existence; and in the last it has but recently made an effort to struggle into life, but from month to month we hear of the stoppage or destruction of Southern mills, and the day is apparently now not far distant when we shall have again to say that no portion of the cotton crop can be consumed in the cotton-growing region until after it shall have travelled thousands of miles in quest of hands to convert it into cloth.
Why is this? Why is it that the light and easily transported spindle and loom are not placed in and about the cotton fields? The planters have labour,that is now wasted, that would be abundant for the conversion of half their crops, if they could but bring the machinery to the land, instead of taking the produce of the land to the machinery. Once brought there, it would be there for ever; whereas, let them carry the cotton to the spindle as long as they may, the work must still be repeated. Again, why is it that the people of India, to whom the world was so long indebted for all its cotton goods, have not only ceased to supply distant countries, but have actually ceased to spin yarn or make cloth for themselves? Why should they carry raw cotton on the backs of bullocks for hundreds of miles, and then send it by sea for thousands of miles, paying freights, commissions, and charges of all kinds to an amount so greatly exceeding the original price, to part with sixty millions of pounds of raw material, to receive in exchange eight or ten millions of pounds of cloth and yarn? Is it not clear that the labour of converting the cotton into yarn is not one-quarter as great as was the labour of raising, the cotton itself? Nevertheless, we here see them giving six or eight pounds of cotton for probably a single one of yarn, while labour unemployed abounds throughout India. Further, Brazil raises cotton, and she has spare labour, and yet she sends her cotton to look for the spindle, instead of bringing the spindle to look for the cotton, as she might so readily do. Why does she so? The answer to these questions is to be found in British legislation, founded on the idea that the mode of securing to the people of England the highest prosperity is to deprive all mankind, outside of her own limits, of the power to mine coal, make iron, construct machinery, or use steam, in aid of their efforts to obtain food, clothing, or any other of the necessaries of life. This system is directly opposed to that advocated by Adam Smith. Not only, said he, is it injurious to other nations, but it must be injurious to yourselves, for it will diminish the productiveness of both labour and capital, and will, at the same time, render you daily more and more dependent upon the operations of other countries, when you should be becoming more independent of them. His warnings were then, as they are now, unheeded; and from his day to the present, England has been engaged in an incessant effort utterly to destroy the manufactures of India, and tocrush every attempt elsewhere to establish any competition with her for the purchase of cotton. The reader will determine for himself if this is not a true picture of the operations of the last seventy years. If it is, let him next determine if the tendency of the system is not that of enslaving the producers of cotton, white, brown, and black, and compelling them to carry all their wool to a single market, in which one set of masters dictates the price at which theymustsell the raw material andmustbuy the manufactured one. Could there be a greater tyranny than this?
To fully understand the working of the system in diminishing the power to consume, let us apply elsewhere the same principle, placing in Rochester, on the Falls of the Genesee, a set of corn-millers who had contrived so effectually to crush all attempts to establish mills in other parts of the Middle States, that no man could eat bread that had not travelled up to that place in its most bulky form, coming back in its most compact one, leaving at the mill all the refuse that might have been applied to the fattening of hogs and cattle—and let us suppose that the diagram on the following page represented the corn trade of that portion of the Union.
\ Wagons and /Producers of food \ / Consumers of foodin those states > < in those states/ \/Rochester mills\
Now, suppose all the grain of half a dozen States had to make its way through such a narrow passage as is above indicated, is it not clear that the owners of roads, wagons, and mills would be masters of the owners of land? Is it not clear that the larger the crops the higher would be freights, and the larger the charge for the use of mills, the smaller would be the price of a bushel of wheat as compared with that of a bag of meal? Would not the farmers find themselves to be mere slaves to the owners of a small quantity of mill machinery? That such would be the case, no one can even for a moment doubt—nor is it at all susceptible of doubt that the establishment of such a system would diminish by one-half the consumption of food, throughout those States, and also the power to produce it, for all the refuse would be fed at and near Rochester, and the manure yielded by it would be totally lost to the farmer who raised the food. The value of both labour and land would thus be greatly diminished. Admitting, for a moment, that such a system existed, what would be the remedy? Would it not be found in an effort to break down the monopoly, and thus to establish among the people the power to trade among themselves without paying, toll to the millers of Rochester? Assuredly it would; and to that end they would be seen uniting among themselves to induce millers to come and settle among them, precisely as we see men every where uniting to bring schools and colleges to their neighbourhood, well assured that a small present outlay is soon made up, even in a pecuniary point of view, in being enabled to keep their children at home while being educated, instead of sending them abroad, there to be boarded and lodged, while food is wasted at home that they might eat, and chambers are empty that they might occupy. Education thus obtained costs a parent almost literally nothing, while that for which a child must go to a distance is so costly that few can obtain it. Precisely so is it with food and with cloth. The mere labour of converting grain into flour is as nothing when compared with that required for its transportation hundreds of miles; and the mere labour required for the conversion of cotton into cloth is as nothing compared with the charges attendant upon its transportation from the plantation to Manchester and back again. Commercial centralization looks, however, to compelling the planter to pay treble the cost of conversion, in the wages and profits of the people employed in transporting and exchanging the cotton.
Admitting that the grain and flour trade were thus centralized, what would be the effect of a succession of large crops, or even of a single one? Would not the roads be covered with wagons whenever they were passable, and even at times when, they were almost impassable? Would not every one be anxious to anticipate the apprehended fall of prices by being early in the market? Would not freights be high? Would not the farmer, on his arrival in Rochester, find that every store-house was filled to overflowing? Would not storage be high? Would he not approach the miller, cap in hand, and would not the latter receive him with his hat on his head? Assuredly such would be the case, and he would hear everywhere of the astonishing extent of "the surplus"—of how rapidly production was exceeding consumption—of the length of time his grain must remain on hand before it could be ground—of the low price of flour, &c. &c.;—and the result would be that the more grain carried to market the less would be carried back, andthe less he would be able to consume; and at last he would arrive at the conclusion that the only effect of large crops granted him by the bounty of Heaven was that of enriching the miller at his expense, by compelling him to allow more toll for the privilege of creeping through the hole provided for him by the miller. He would pray for droughts and freshets—for storms and frosts—as the only means of escape from ruin.
The reader may determine for himself if this is not a fair picture of the cotton trade? Do the planters profit by good crops? Assuredly not. The more they send to market the less they receive for it. Do they profit by improvements in the transportation of their commodity? Certainly not. With the growth of railroads, cotton has fallen in price, and will not this day command on the plantation near as much, per pound, as it did before the railroad was invented. In India, the cost of transportation from the place of production to England has fallen in the last forty years sevenpence,[142] and yet the grower of cotton obtains for it one-third less than he did before—receiving now little more than two cents, when before he had from three to four. Who profits by the reduction of cost of transportation and conversion?The man who keeps the toll-gate through which it passes to the world, and who opens it only gradually, so as to permit the increased quantity to pass through slowly, paying largely for the privilege. That all this is perfectly in accordance with the facts of the ease must be obvious to every reader. The planter becomes rich when crops are short, but then the mill-owner makes but little profit. He is almost ruined when crops are large, but then it is that the mill-owner is enriched—and thus it is that the system produces universal discord, whereas under a natural system there would be as perfect harmony of national, as there is of individual interests.
We may now inquire how this would affect the farmers around Rochester. The consumption of the Middle States would be largely diminished because of the heavy expense of transporting the wheat to mill and the flour back again, and this would cause a great increase of the surplus for which a market must be elsewhere found. This, of course, would reduce prices, and prevent increase, if it did not produce large diminution in the value of land. The millers would becomemillionaires—great men among their poorer neighbours—and they would purchase large farms to be managed by great farmers, and fine houses surrounded by large pleasure-grounds. Land would become everywhere more and more consolidated, because people who could do so would fly from a country in which such a tyranny existed. The demand for labour would diminish as the smaller properties became absorbed. Rochester itself would grow, because it would be filled with cheap labour from the country, seeking employment, and because there would be great numbers of wagoners and their horses to be cared for, while porters innumerable would be engaged in carrying wheat in one direction and flour in another. Hotels would grow large, thieves and prostitutes would abound, and morals would decline. From year to year the millers would become greater men, and the farmers and labourers smaller men, and step by step all would find themselves becoming slaves to the caprices of the owners of a little machinery, the whole cost of which would scarcely exceedthe daily lossresulting from the existence of the system. By degrees, the vices of the slave would become more and more apparent. Intemperance would grow, and education would diminish, as the people of the surrounding country became more dependent on the millers for food and clothing in exchange for cheap grain and cheaper labour. The smaller towns would everywhere decline, and from day to day the millers would find it more easy so to direct the affairs of the community as to secure a continuance of their monopoly. Local newspapers would pass away, and in their stead the people throughout the country would be supplied with the RochesterTimes, which would assure the farmers that cheap food tended to produce cheaper labour, and the land-owners that if they did not obtain high rents it was their own fault, the defect being in their own bad cultivation—and the more rapid the augmentation of the millers' fortunes, and of the extent of their pleasure-grounds, the greater, they would be assured, must be the prosperity of the whole people; even although the same paper might find itself obliged to inform its readers that the overgrown capital presented it as
"A strange result of the terrible statistics of society, that there was upon an average one person out of twenty of the inhabitants of the luxurious metropolis every day destitute of food and employment, and every night without a place for shelter or repose?"—LondonTimes.
We have here slavery at home as a consequence of the determination, to subject to slavery people abroad. With each step in the growth of the millers' fortunes, and of the splendour of their residences, land would have become consolidated and production would have diminished, and the whole population would have tended more and more to become a mass of mere traders, producing nothing themselves, but buying cheaply and selling dearly, and thus deriving their support from the exercise of the power to tax the unfortunate people forced to trade with them; a state of things in the highest degree adverse to moral, intellectual, or political improvement.
The reader may now turn to the extracts from Mr. McCulloch's works already given, (page 240ante,) and compare with them this view of the effects of supposed commercial centralization on this side of the Atlantic. Doing so, he will find it there stated that it is to the consolidation of the land, and to the luxury of the style of living of the great landlords, surrounded, as they, "in most cases" are, by "poor and needy dependants," whose necessities finally compel them to seek in large cities a market for their own labour, and that of their wives and children, that we are to look for an augmentation of "the mass of wealth and the scale of enjoyment!" Modern British political economy holds no single idea that is in harmony with the real doctrines of Adam Smith, and yet it claims him as its head!
* * * * *
The reader is requested now to remark—
I. That the system of commercial centralization sought to be established by Great Britain is precisely similar to the one here ascribed to the millers of Rochester, with the difference only, that it has for its object to compel all descriptions of raw produce to pass through England on its way from the consumer and the producer, even when the latter are near neighbours to each other, and England distant many thousand of miles from both.
II. That to carry out that system it was required that all other nations should be prevented from obtaining either the knowledge or the machinery required for enabling them cheaply to mine coal, smelt iron ore, or manufacture machines by aid of which they could command the services of the great natural agents whose value to man is so well described by Mr. McCulloch. (See page 249ante.)
III. That this was at first accomplished by means of prohibitions, and that it is now maintained by the most strenuous efforts for cheapening labour, and thus depriving the labourer at home of the power to determine for whom he will work or what shall be his wages.
IV. That the more perfectly this system can be carried out, the more entirely must all other nations limit themselves, men, women and children, to the labour of the field, and the lower must be the standard of intellect.
V. That while the number of agriculturists in other countries must thus be increased, the power to consume their own products must be diminished, because of the great increase of the charges between the producer and the consumer.
VI. That this, in turn, must be attended with an increase in the quantity of food and other raw materials thrown on the market of Britain, with great increase in the competition between the foreign and domestic producers for the possession of that market, and great diminution of prices.
VII. That this tends necessarily to "discourage agriculture" in Britain, and to prevent the application of labour to the improvement of the land.
VIII. That it likewise tends to the deterioration of the condition of the foreign agriculturist, who is thus deprived of the power to improve his land, or to increase the quantity of his products.
IX. That the smaller the quantity of commodities produced, the less must be the power to pay for labour, and the less the competition for the purchase of the labourer's services.
X. That with the decline in the demand for labour, the less must be the power of consumption on the part of the labourer, the greater must be the tendency to a glut of foreign and domestic produce, in the general market of the world, and the greater the tendency to a further diminution of the labourer's reward.
XI. That, the greater the quantity of raw produce seeking to pass through the market of England, the greater must be the tendency to a decline in the value of English land, and the larger the charges of the owners of the mills, ships, and shops, through which the produce must pass, and the greater their power of accumulation, at the cost of both labour and land.
XII. That the less the labour applied to the improvement of the soil, the more must the population of the country be driven from off the land, the greater must be the tendency of the latter toward consolidation, and the greater the tendency toward absenteeism and the substitution of great farmers and day-labourers for small proprietors, with further decline in production and in the demand for labour.
XIII. That with the reduction of the country population, local places of exchange must pass away; and that labour and land must decline in power as ships, mills, and their owners become more united and more powerful.
XIV. That the tendency of the whole system is, therefore, toward diminishing the value and the power of land, and toward rendering the labourer a mere slave to the trading community, which obtains from day to day more and more the power to impose taxes at its pleasure, and to centralize in its own hands the direction of the affairs of the nation; to the destruction of local self-government, and to the deterioration of the physical, moral, intellectual, and political condition of the people.
In accordance with these views, an examination of the productive power of the United Kingdom should result in showing that production has not kept pace with population; and that such had been the ease we should be disposed to infer from the increasing demand for cheap labour, and from the decline that has unquestionably taken place in the control of the labourer over his own operations. That the facts are in accordance with this inference the reader may perhaps be disposed to admit after having examined carefully the following figures.
In 1815, now thirty-eight years since, the declared value of the exports of the United Kingdom, of British produce and manufacture, was as follows:—
Of woollen manufactures…………… £9,381,426" cotton " …………… 20,620,000" silk " …………… 622,118" linen " …………… 1,777,563And of other commodities………….. 19,231,684—————Total…………………………… 51,632,791
In the same year there were imported of
Wool……………………………. 13,634,000 lbs.Cotton………………………….. 99,306,000 "Silk……………………………. 1,807,000 "Flax……………………………. 41,000,000 "Grain…………………………… 267,000 qrs.Flour…………………………… 202,000 cwts.Butter………………………….. 125,000 "Cheese………………………….. 106,000 "
If to the raw cotton, wool, silk, and flax that were re-exported in a manufactured state, and to the dyeing materials and other articles required for their manufacture, we now add the whole foreign food, as above shown, we can scarcely make, of foreign commodities re-exported, an amount exceeding twelve, or at most thirteen millions, leaving thirty-eight millions as the value of the British produce exported in that year; and this divided among the people of the United Kingdom would give nearly £2 per head.
In 1851 the exports, were as follows:—
Manufactures of wool……………….. £10,314,000" cotton……………… 30,078,000" silk……………….. 1,329,000" flax……………….. 5,048,000All other commodities………………. 21,723,569—————-Total…………………………….. £68,492,569
We see thus that nearly the whole increase that had taken place in the long period of thirty-six years was to be found in four branches of manufacture, the materials of which were wholly drawn from abroad, as is shown in the following statement of imports for that year:—
Wool……………………………… 83,000,000 lbs.Cotton……………………………. 700,000,000 "Silk……………………………… 5,020,000 "Flax……………………………… 135,000,000 "Eggs……………………………… 115,000,000 "Oxen, cows, calves, sheep, hogs, &c….. 300,000 "Corn……………………………… 8,147,675 qrs.Flour…………………………….. 5,384,552 cwts.Potatoes………………………….. 635,000 "Provisions………………………… 450,000 "Butter……………………………. 354,000 "Cheese……………………………. 338,000 "Hams and lard……………………… 130,000 "
The wool imported was more than was required to produce the cloth exported, and from this it follows that the whole export represented foreign wool. The cotton, silk, flax, dyeing-materials, &c. exported were all foreign, and the food imported was adequate, or nearly so, to feed the people who produced the goods exported. Such being the case, it would follow that the total exports of British and Irish produce could scarcely have amounted to even £15,000,000, and it certainly could not have exceeded that sum—and that would give about 10s. per head, or one-fourth as much as in 1815.
The difference between the two periods is precisely the same as that between the farmer and the shoemaker. The man who, by the labour of himself and sons, is enabled to send to market the equivalent of a thousand bushels of wheat, has firstfed himself and them, and therefore he hasthe whole proceedsof his sales to apply to the purchase of clothing, furniture, or books, or to add to his capital. His neighbour buys food and leather, and sells shoes. Hehas been fed, and the first appropriation to be made of the proceeds of his sales is to buy more food and leather; and all he has to apply to other purposes isthe differencebetween the price at which he buys and that at which he sells. Admitting that difference to be one-sixth, it would follow that his sales must be six times as large to enable him to have the same value to be applied to the purchase of other commodities than food, or to the increase of his capital. Another neighbour buys and sells wheat, or shoes, at a commission of five per cent., out of which he hasto be fed. To enable him to have an amount of gross commissions equal to the farmer's sales, he must do twenty times as much business; and if, we allow one-half of it for the purchase of food, he must do forty times as much to enable him to have the same amount with which to purchase other commodities, or to increase his capital. Precisely so is it with a nation. When it sells its own food and leather,it has fed itself, and may dispose as it will of the whole amount of sales. When it buys food and leather, and sells shoes,it has been fed, and must first pay the producers of those commodities; and all that it can appropriate to the purchase of clothing or furniture, or to the increase, of its capital, is thedifference; and, to enable it to have the same amount to be so applied, it must sell six times as much in value. When it acts as a mere buyer and seller of sugar, cotton, cloth, or shoes, it hasto be fedout of the differences, and then it may require forty times the amount of sales to yield the same result.
These things being understood, we may now compare the two years above referred to. In the first, 1815, the sales of domestic produce amounted to……………….. £38,600,000
And if to this we add the difference on£13,000,000………………………………. 2,166,667—————-We obtain the amount, applicable to the purchaseof other commodities than food…………….. £40,766,667
In the second, 1851, the sales of domestic produce were ……………………………………. £15,000,000 To which add differences on £53,492,000, say…. 9,000,000 ————— We have, as applicable to other purposes than the purchase of food…………………………. £24,000,000
Divided among the population, of those years, it gives £2 per head in the first, and 16s. in the other; but even this, great as it is, does not represent in its full extent the decline that has taken place. The smaller the change of form made in the commodity imported before exporting it, the more nearly does the business resemble that of the mere trader, and the larger must be the quantity of merchandise passing, to leave behind the same result. In 1815, the export of yarn of any kind was trivial, because other countries were then unprovided with looms. In 1851 the export of mere yarn, upon which the expenditure of British labour had been only that of twisting it, was as follows:—
Cotton……………………………. 144,000,000 lbs.Linen…………………………….. 19,000,000 "Silk……………………………… 390,000 "Woollen…………………………… 14,800,000 "
The reader will readily perceive that in all these cases the foreign raw material bears a much larger proportion to the value than would have been the case had the exports taken place in the form of cloth. An examination of these facts can scarcely fail to satisfy him how deceptive are any calculations based upon statements of the amount of exports and imports; and yet it is to them we are always referred for evidence of the growing prosperity of England. With every year there must be an increasing tendency in the same direction, as the manufacturers of India are more and more compelled to depend on England for yarn, and as the nations of Europe become more and more enabled to shut out cloth and limit their imports to yarn. From producer, England has become, or is rapidly becoming, a mere trader, and trade has not grown to such an extent as was required to make amends for the change. She is therefore in the position of the man who has substituteda tradeof a thousand dollars a year fora productionof five hundred. In 1815, the people of the United Kingdom had to divide among themselves, then twenty millions in number, almost forty millions, the value of their surplus products exported to all parts of the earth. In 1851, being nearly thirty millions in number, they had to divide only fifteen millions, whereas had production been maintained, it should have reached sixty millions, or almost the total amount of exports. In place of this vast amount ofproductsfor sale, they had only thedifferencesupon an excess trade of £40,000,000, and this can scarcely be estimated at more than eight or ten, toward making up a deficit of forty-five millions. Such being the facts, it will not now be difficult for the reader to understand why it is that there is a decline in the material and moral condition of the people.
How this state of things has been brought about is shown by the steady diminution in the proportion of the population engaged in the work of production. Adam Smith cautioned his countrymen that "if the whole surplus produce of America in grain of all sorts, salt provisions, and fish," were "forced into the market of Great Britain," it would "interfere too much with the prosperity of our own people." He thought it would be a "great discouragement to agriculture." And yet, from that hour to the present, no effort has been spared to increase in all the nations of the world the surplus of raw produce, to be poured into the British market, and thus to produce competition between the producers abroad and the producers at home, to the manifest injury of both. The more the linen manufacture, or those of wool, hemp, or iron, could be discouraged abroad, the greater was the quantity of raw products to be sent to London and Liverpool, and the less the inducement for applying labour to the improvement of English land. For a time, this operation, so far as regarded food, was restrained by the corn-laws; but now the whole system is precisely that which was reprobated by the most profound political economist that Britain has ever produced. Its consequences are seen in the following figures:—In 1811, the proportion of the population of England engaged in agriculture was 35 per cent. In 1841 it had fallen to 25 per cent., and now it can scarcely exceed 22 per cent., and even in 1841 the actual number was less than it had been thirty years before.[143]
Thus driven out from the land, Englishmen had to seek other employment, while the same system was annually driving to England tens of thousands of the poor people of Scotland and Ireland; and thus forced competition for the sale in England of the raw products of the earth produced competition there for the sale of labour; the result of which is seen in the fact that agricultural wages have been from 6s. to 9s. a week, and the labourer has become from year to year more a slave to the caprices of his employer, whether the great farmer or the wealthy owner of mills or furnaces. The total population of theUnited Kingdomdependent upon agriculture cannot be taken at more than ten millions; and as agricultural wages cannot be estimated at a higher average than 5s. per week, there cannot be, including the earnings of women, more than 6s. per family; and if that be divided among four, it gives 1s. 6d. per head, or £3 18s. per annum, and a total amount, to be divided among ten millions of people, of 40 millions of pounds, or 192 millions of dollars. In reflecting upon this, the reader is requested to bear in mind that it provides wages for every week in the year, whereas throughout a considerable portion of the United Kingdom very much of the time is unoccupied.
Cheap labour has, in every country, gone hand in hand with cheap land. Such having been the case, it may not now be difficult to account for the small value of land when compared with the vast advantages it possesses in being everywhere close to a market in which to exchange its raw products for manufactured ones, and also for manure. The reader has seen the estimate ofM. Thunen, one of the best agriculturists of Germany, of the vast difference in the value of land in Mecklenburgh close to market, as compared with that distant from it; but he can everywhere see for himself that that which is close to a city will command thrice as much rent as that distant twenty miles, and ten times as much as that which is five hundred miles distant. Now, almost the whole land of the United Kingdom is in the condition of the best of that here described. The distances are everywhere small, and the roads are, or ought to be, good; and yet the total rental of land, mines, and minerals, is but £55,000,000, and this for an area of 70 millions of acres, giving an average of only about $3.60 per acre, or $9—less than £2,—per head of the population. This is very small indeed, and it tends to show to how great an extent the system must have discouraged agriculture. In 1815, with a population of only twenty millions, the rental amounted, exclusive of houses, mines, minerals, fisheries, &c., to fifty-two and a half millions, and the exports of the produce of British and Irish land were then almost three times as great as they are now, with a population almost one-half greater than it was then.
The very small value of the land of the United Kingdom, when compared with its advantages, can be properly appreciated by the reader only after an examination of the course of things elsewhere. The price of food raised in this country is dependent, almost entirely, on what can be obtained for the very small quantity sent to England. "Mark Lane," as it is said, "governs the world's prices." It does govern them in New York and Philadelphia, where prices must be as much below those of London or Liverpool as the cost of transportation, insurance, and commissions, or there could be no export. Their prices, in turn, govern those of Ohio and Pennsylvania, Indiana and Illinois, which must always be as much below those of New York as the cost of getting the produce there. If, now, we examine into the mere cost of transporting the average produce of an acre of land from the farm to the market of England, we shall find that it would be far more than the average rental of English land; and yet that rental includes coal, copper, iron, and tin mines that supply a large portion of the world.
Under such circumstances, land in this country should be of very small value, if even of any; and yet the following facts tend to show that the people of Massachusetts, with a population of only 994,000, scattered over a surface of five millions of acres, with a soil so poor that but 2,133,000 are improved, and possessed of no mines of coal, iron, tin, lead, or copper, have, in the short period they have occupied it, acquired rights in land equal, per acre, to those acquired by the people of England in their fertile soils, with their rich mines, in two thousand years. The cash value of the farms of that State in 1850 was $109,000,000, which,divided over the whole surface, would give $22 per acre, and this, at six per cent., would yield $1.32. Add to this the difference between wages of four, six, and eight shillings per week in the United Kingdom, and twenty or twenty-five dollars per month in Massachusetts, and it will be found that the return in the latter is quite equal to that in the former; and yet the price of agricultural produce generally, is as much below that of England as the cost of freight and commission, which alone are greater than the whole rent of English land.
New York has thirty millions of acres, of which only twelve millions have been in any manner improved; and those she has been steadily exhausting, because of the absence of a market on or near the land, such as is possessed by England. She has neither coal nor other mines of any importance, and her factories are few in number; and yet the cash value of farms, as returned by the Marshal, was 554 millions of dollars, and that was certainly less than the real value. If we take the latter at 620 millions, it will gives $50 per acre for the improved land, or an average of $20 for all. Taking the rent at six per cent. on $50, we obtain $3 per acre, or nearly the average of the United Kingdom; and it would be quite reasonable to make the mines and minerals of the latter a set-off against the land that is unimproved.
If the reader desire to understand the cause of the small value, of English land when compared with its vast advantages, he may find it in the following passage:—
"Land-owners possess extensive territories which owe little or nothing to the hand of the improver; where undeveloped sources of production lie wasting and useless in the midst of the most certain and tempting markets of the vast consuming population of this country."—Economist, London.
Unfortunately, however, those markets are small, while the tendency of the whole British system is toward converting the entire earth into one vast farm for their supply, and thus preventing the application of labour to the improvement of land at home. The tendency of prices, whether of land, labour, or their products, is toward a level, and whatever tends to lessen the price of any of those commodities in Ireland, India, Virginia, or Carolina, tends to produce the same effect in England; and we have seen that such is the direct tendency of English policy with regard to the land of all those countries. With decline in value, there must ever be a tendency to consolidation, and thus the policy advocated by theEconomistproduces the evil of which it so much and so frequently complains.
The profits of farmers are generally estimated at half the rental, which would give for a total of rents and profits about 85 millions; and if to this be added the wages of agricultural labour, we obtain but about 125 millions, of which less than one-third goes to the labourer.[144]
We have here the necessary result of consolidation of land—itself the result of an attempt to compel the whole people of the world to compete with each other in a single and limited market for the sale of raw produce. With every increase of this competition, the small proprietor has found himself less and less able to pay the taxes to which he was subjected, and has finally been obliged to pass into the condition of a day-labourer, to compete with the almost starving Irishman, or the poor native of Scotland, driven into England in search of employment; and hence have resulted the extraordinary facts that in many parts of that country, enjoying, as it does, every advantage except a sound system of trade, men gladly labour for six shillings ($1.44) a week; that women labour in the fields; and that thousands of the latter, destitute of a change of under-clothing, are compelled to go to bed while their chemises are being washed.[145]
Driven from the land by the cheap food and cheap labour of Ireland, the English labourer has to seek the town, and there he finds himself at the mercy of the great manufacturer; and thus, between the tenant-farmer on the one hand, and the large capitalist on the other, he is ground as between the upper and the nether millstone. The result is seen in the facts heretofore given. He loses gradually all self-respect, and he, his wife, and his children become vagrants, and fall on the public for support. Of the wandering life of great numbers of these poor people some idea may be formed from the following statement of Mr. Mayhew[146] :—
"I happened to be in the country a little time back, and it astonished me to find, in a town with a population of 20,800, that no less than 11,000 vagabonds passed through the town in thirteen weeks. We have large classes known in the metropolis as the people of the streets."
It will, however, be said that if cheap corn tend to drive him from employment, he has a compensation in cheaper sugar, cotton, coffee, rum, and other foreign commodities—and such is undoubtedly the case; but he enjoys these things at the cost of his fellow labourers, black, white, and brown, in this country, the West Indies, India, and elsewhere. The destruction of manufactures in this country in 1815 and 1816 drove the whole population to the raising of food, tobacco, and cotton; and a similar operation in India drove the people of that country to the raising of rice, indigo, sugar, and cotton, thatmustgo to the market of England, because of the diminution in the domestic markets for labour or its products. The diminished domestic consumption of India forces her cotton into the one great market, there to compete with that of other countries, and to reduce their prices. It forces the Hindoo to the Mauritius, to aid in destroying the poor negroes of Jamaica, Cuba, and Brazil; but the more the sugar and cotton thatmustgo to the distant market, the higher will be the freights, the lower will be the prices, the larger will be the British revenue, the greater will be the consumption, and the greater will be the "prosperity" of England, but the more enslaved will be the producers of those commodities. Competition for their sale tends to produce low prices, and the more the people of the world, men, women, and children, can be limited to agriculture, the greater must be the necessity for dependence on England for cloth and iron, the higher will be their prices, and the more wretched will be the poor labourer everywhere.
The reader may perhaps understand the working of the system after an examination of the following comparative prices of commodities:—
1815. 1852.——- ——-England sells—Bar iron, per ton…. £13 5s. 0d. ….. £9 0s. 0d.Tin, per cwt……… 7 0 0 ….. 5 2 0Copper " ……… 6 5 0 ….. 5 10 0Lead " ……… 1 6 6 ….. 1 4 0
England buys—Cotton, per lb……. 0 1 6 ….. 0 0 6Sugar, per cwt……. 3 0 0 ….. 1 0 0
While these principal articles of raw produce have fallen to one-third of the prices of 1815, iron, copper, tin, and lead, the commodities that she supplies to the world, have not fallen more than twenty-five per cent. It is more difficult to exhibit the changes of woven goods, but that the planters are constantly giving more cotton for less cloth will be seen on an examination of the following facts in relation to a recent large-crop year, as compared with the course of things but a dozen years before. From 1830 to 1835, the price of cotton here was about eleven cents, which we may suppose to be about what it would yield in England, free of freight and charges. In those years our average export was about 320,000,000, yielding about $35,000,000, and the average price of cotton cloth, per piece of 24 yards, weighing 5 lbs. 12 oz., was 7s. 10d., ($1.88,) and that of iron £6 10s. ($31.20.) Our exports would therefore have produced, delivered in Liverpool, 18,500,000 pieces of cloth, or about 1,100,000 tons of iron. In 1845 and 1846, thehome consumptionof cotton by the people of England was almost the same quantity, say 311,000,000 pounds, and the average price here was 6-1/2 cents, making the product $20,000,000. The price of cloth then was 6s. 6-3/4 d., ($1.57 1/2,) and that of iron about £10, ($48;) and the result was, that the planters could have, for nearly the same quantity of cotton, about 12,500,000 pieces of cloth, or about 420,000 tons of iron, also delivered in Liverpool. Dividing the return between the two commodities, it stands thus:—
Average from: 1830 to 1835. 1845-6. Loss.——————- ——————- ———- ——-Cloth, pieces…. 9,250,000 … 6,250,000 … 3,000,000And iron, tons… 550,000 … 210,000 … 340,000
The labour required for converting cotton into cloth had been greatly diminished, and yet the proportion, retained by the manufacturers had greatly increased, as will now be shown:—
Weight of Cotton RetainedWeight of given to the by theCotton used. planters. manufacturers.—————— ———————— ———————1830 to 1835… 320,000,000… 110,000,000… 210,000,0001845 and 1846.. 311,000,000… 74,000,000…. 237,000,000
In the first period, the planter would have had 34 per cent. of his cotton returned to him in the form of cloth, but in the second only 24 per cent. The grist miller gives the farmer from year to year a larger proportion of the product of his grain, and thus the latter has all the profit of every improvement. The cotton miller gives the planter from year to year a smaller proportion of the cloth produced. The one miller comes daily nearer to the producer. The other goes daily farther from him, for with the increased product the surface over which it is raised is increased.
How this operates on a large scale will now be seen on an examination of the following facts:—
The declared or actualvalueof exports of British produce in manufactures in 1815 was.. £51,632,971 And thequantityof foreign merchandise retained for consumption in that year was……. £17,238,841 [147]
This shows, of course, that the prices of the raw products of the earth were then high by comparison with those of the articles that Great Britain had to sell.
In 1849, thevalueof British exports was….. £63,596,025And thequantityof foreign merchandiseretained for consumption was no less than……. £80,312,717
We see thus that while the value of exports had increased onlyone-fourth, the produce received in exchange wasalmost five times greater; and here it is that we find the effect of thatunlimitedcompetition for the sale in England of the raw products of the world, andlimitedcompetition for the purchase of the manufactured ones, which it is the object of the system to establish. The nation is rapidly passing from the strong and independent position of one that produces commodities for sale, into the weak and dependent one of the mere trader who depends for his living upon the differences between the prices at which he sells and those at which he buys—that is, upon his power to tax the producers and consumers of the earth. It is the most extraordinary and most universal system of taxation ever devised, and it is carried out at the cost of weakening and enfeebling the people of all the purely agricultural countries. The more completely all the world, outside of England, can be rendered one great farm, in which men, women, and children, the strong and the weak, the young and the aged, can be reduced to field labour as the only means of support, the larger will be the sum of thosedifferencesupon which the English people are now to so great an extent maintained, but the more rapid will be the tendency everywhere toward barbarism and slavery. The more, on the other hand, that the artisan can be brought to the side of the farmer, the smaller must be the sum of thesedifferences, or taxes, and the greater will everywhere be the tendency toward civilization and freedom; but the greater will be that English distress which is seen always to exist when the producers of the world obtain much cloth and iron in exchange for their sugar and their cotton. The English system is therefore a war for the perpetuation and extension of slavery.
On a recent occasion the Chancellor of the Exchequer congratulated the House of Commons on the flourishing state of the revenue, notwithstanding, that, they had
"In ten years repealed or reduced the duties on coffee, timber, currants, wool, sugar, molasses, cotton wool, butter, cheese, silk manufactures, tallow, spirits, copper ore, oil and sperm, and an amazing number of other articles, which produced a small amount of revenue, with respect to which it is not material, and would be almost preposterous, that I should trouble the House in detail. It is sufficient for me to observe this remarkable fact, that the reduction of your customs duties from 1842 has been systematically continuous; that in 1842 you struck off nearly £1,500,000 of revenue calculated from the customs duties; that in 1843 you struck off £126,000; in 1844, £279,000; in 1845, upwards of £3,500,000; in 1846, upwards of £1,150,000; in 1847, upwards of £343,000; in 1848, upwards of £578,000; in 1849, upwards of £384,000; in 1850, upwards of £331,000; and in 1851, upwards of £801,000—making an aggregate, in those ten years, of nearly £9,000,000 sterling."
The reason of all this is, that the cultivator abroad is steadily giving more raw produce for less cloth and iron. The more exclusively the people of India can be forced to devote themselves to the raising of cotton and sugar, the cheaper they will be, and the larger will be the British revenue. The more the price of corn can be diminished, the greater will be the flight to Texas, and the cheaper will be cotton, but the larger will be the slave trade of America, India, and Ireland; and thus it is that the prosperity of the owners of mills and furnaces in England is always greatest when the people of the world are becoming most enslaved.
It may be asked, however, if this diminution of the prices of foreign produce is not beneficial to the people of England. It is not, because it tends to reduce the general price of labour, the commodity they have to sell. Cheap Irish labour greatly diminishes the value of that of England, and cheap Irish grain greatly diminishes the demand for labour in England, while increasing the supply by forcing the Irish people to cross the Channel. The land and labour of the world have one common interest, and that is to give as little as possible to those who perform the exchanges, and to those who superintend them—the traders and the government. The latter have everywhere one common interest, and that is to take as much as possible from the producers and give as little as possible to the consumers, buying cheaply and selling dearly. Like fire and water, they are excellent servants, but very bad masters. The nearer the artisan comes to the producer of the food and the wool, the less is the power of the middleman to impose taxes, and the greater the power of the farmer to protect himself. The tendency of the British system, wherever found, is to impoverish the land-owner and the labourer, and to render both from year to year more tributary to the owners of an amount of machinery so small that its whole value would be paid by the weekly—if not even by the daily—loss inflicted upon the working population of the world by the system.[148] The more the owners of that machinery become enriched, the more must the labourer everywhere become enslaved.
That such must necessarily be the case will be obvious to any reader who will reflect how adverse is the system to the development of intellect. Where all are farmers, there can be little association for the purpose of maintaining schools, or for the exchange of ideas of any kind. Employment being limited to the labours of the field, the women cannot attend to the care of their children, who grow up, necessarily, rude and barbarous; and such we see now to be the case in the West Indies, whence schools are rapidly disappearing. In Portugal and Turkey there is scarcely any provision for instruction, and in India there has been a decline in that respect, the extent of which is almost exactly measured by the age of the foreign occupation.[149] In the Punjab, the country last acquired, men read and write, but in Bengal and Madras they are entirely uneducated. Ireland had, seventy years since, a public press of great efficiency, but it has almost entirely disappeared, as has the demand for books, which before the Union was so great as to warrant the republication of a large portion of those that appeared in England. Scotland, too, seventy years since, gave to the Empire many of its best writers, but she, like Ireland, has greatly declined. How bad is the provision for education throughout England, and how low is the standard of intellect among a large portion of her manufacturing population, the reader has seen, and he can estimate for himself how much there can be of the reading of books, or newspapers among an agricultural population hiredby the dayat the rate of six, eight, or even nine shillings a week—and it will, therefore not surprise him to learn that there is no daily newspaper published out of London. Itis, however, somewhat extraordinary that in that city, there should be, as has recently been stated, but a single one that is not "published at a loss." That one circulates 40,000 copies, or more than twice the number of all the other daily papers united. This is a most unfavourable sign, for centralization and progress have never gone hand in hand with each other.
The system, too, is repulsive in its character. It tends to the production of discord among individuals and nations, and hence it is that we see the numerous strikes and combinations of workmen, elsewhere so little known. Abroad it is productive of war, as is now seen in India, and as was so recently the case in China. In Ireland it is expelling the whole population, and in Scotland it has depopulated provinces. The vast emigration now going on, and which has reached the enormous extent of 360,000 in a single year, bears testimony to the fact that the repulsive power has entirely overcome the attractive one, and that the love of home, kindred, and friends is rapidly diminishing. How, indeed, could it be otherwise, in a country in which labour has been so far cheapened that the leading journal assures its readers that during a whole generation "man has been a drug, and population a nuisance?"
The fact that such a declaration should be made, and that that and other influential journals should rejoice in the expulsion of a whole nation, is evidence how far an unsound system can go toward steeling the heart against the miseries of our fellow-creatures. These poor people do not emigrate voluntarily. They are forced to leave their homes, precisely as is the case with the negro slave of Virginia; but they have not, as has the slave, any certainty of being fed and clothed at the end of the journey. Nevertheless, throughout England there is an almost universal expression of satisfaction at the idea that the land is being rid of what is held to be its superabundant population; and one highly respectable journal,[150] after showing that at the same rate Ireland would be entirely emptied in twenty-four years, actually assures its readers that it views the process "without either alarm or regret," and that it has no fear of the process being "carried too far or continued too long."
We see thus, on one hand, the people of England engaged inshuttingin the poor people of Africa, lest they should be forced to Cuba; and, on the other, rejoicing at evictions, as the best means ofdriving outthe poor people of Ireland. In all this there is a total absence of consistency; but so far as the Irish people are concerned, it is but a natural consequence of that "unsound social philosophy," based upon the Ricardo-Malthusian doctrine, which after having annihilated the small land-owner and the small trader, denies that the Creator meant that every man should find a place at his table, and sees no more reason why a poor labourer should have any more right to be fed, if willing to work, than the Manchester cotton-spinner should have to find a purchaser for his cloth. "Labour," we are told, is "a commodity," and if menwillmarry and bring up children "to an overstocked and expiring trade," it is for them to take the consequences—and "if we stand between the error and its consequences, we stand between the evil and its cure—if we intercept the penalty (where it does not amount to positive death) we perpetuate the sin."[151]