In the former, we are told that
"The wheel of 'improvement' is now seizing another class, the most stationary class in England. A startling emigration movement has sprung up among the smaller English farmers, especially those holding heavy clay soils, who, with bad prospects for the coming harvest, and in want of sufficient capital to make the great improvements on their farms which would enable them to pay their old rents, have no other alternative but to cross the sea in search of a new country and of new lands. I am not speaking now of the emigration caused by the gold mania, but only of the compulsory emigration produced by landlordism, concentration of farms, application of machinery to the soil, and introduction of the modern system of agriculture on a great scale."—Correspondence of the New York Tribune.
Nevertheless, wages do not rise. Hundreds of thousands, and even millions, of the poor people of the kingdom have now been expelled, and yet there is "no regular demand for labour," and wages continue as low as ever. That such should be the case is not extraordinary, but it will be so if this diminution of the power of association do not result in lowering the reward of labour, and accelerating the dispersion of the labourers. Every man that goes was a producer of something, to be given in exchange for another thing that he required, that was produced by others; and from the moment of his departure he ceases to be a producer, with correspondent diminution in the demand for the cloth, the iron, or the salt produced by his neighbours. The less the competition for purchase the more becomes the competition for sale, and the lower must be the compensation of the labourer. A recent journal informs us that the condition of one class of operatives, the salt-boilers, has "gradually become most deplorable."
"Their wages at present do not average 15s. a week, because they are not employed full time; 2s. 6d. a day is the highest price given, and one of these days consists of fourteen or sixteen hours. In addition to this, some of the employers have latterly introduced a new mode of diminishing the actual payment in wages. As has already been stated, the salt-pans in the course of a few days require cleansing from the impurities and dross thrown down with the process of boiling. The accumulation may vary from one-eighth of an inch to one foot, according to the quality of the brine. Therefore, every fortnight the fires are let out and the pans picked and cleaned, a process which occupies a full day; and this unavoidable and necessary work it is becoming the fashion to require the men to perform without any remuneration whatever; or, in other words, to demand one month's work out of the twelve from them without giving any wages in return!"—Dawson's Merchants' Magazine, February, 1853, 98.
The more steady and active the emigration of the agricultural labourers, and the larger the remainder of factory operatives, the greater must be the necessity for depending on other countries for supplies, and the less must be the power of the nation in the community of nations, the richer must grow the great manufacturer, and the poorer must become the labourer; and, as this system is now being so vigorously carried out, the cause of weakness may readily be understood. It is a natural consequence of the purely selfish policy to which the Ricardo-Malthusian doctrines inevitably lead.
Can such a system be a natural one? Is it possible that an all-wise, all-powerful, and all-merciful Being, having constructed this world for the occupation of man, should have inflicted upon it such a curse as is found in a system of laws the study of which leads to the conclusion that men can live only "by snatching the bread out of the mouths" of their fellow-men? Assuredly not. What, then,arethe laws under which man "lives and moves and has his being?" To obtain an answer to this question, we must go back to the proposition which lies at the base of the British system—that which teaches that men begin the work of cultivation with the rich soils of the earth, and are afterward compelled to resort to inferior ones the most important one in political economy; so important, says Mr. J. S. Mill, that were it otherwise, "almost all the phenomena of the production and distribution of wealth would be other than they are."
Admitting, now, that the lawweredifferent, and that instead of commencing on the rich soils and then passing toward the poor ones, they commenced on the poor soils of the hills and gradually made their way down to the rich ones of the swamps and river-bottoms, would not one of the differences referred to by Mr. Mill consist in this, that whereas the old theory tended to establish a constant increase in thenecessitiesof man, with constant deterioration, of his condition and growing inequality among men, the new one would tend to establish a constant increase of hispowers, with constant improvement of condition and growing equality among men, wherever the laws of God were permitted to control their operations?
Again, might not another of those differences consist in the establishment of the facts that instead of there having been a mistake on the part of the Creator, there had been a serious one on that of the economists, in attributing to those little scraps of the earth that man forms into wagons, ships, and steam-engines, and which he calls capital, an importance greater than is assigned to the earth of which they are so trivial a portion; and that the latter was the real bank, the source of all capital, from which he can have loans to an extent almost unlimited, provided he recollects that theyareloans, and not gifts, and that his credit with this banker, as well as with all others, cannot be maintained without a punctual repayment of the matter borrowed when he has ceased to need it?
Further, as the old theory furnishes propositions to, which the exceptions are seen to be so numerous that every new writer finds himself compelled to modify it in some manner with a view to cover those exceptions, might not another, of the differences consist in its furnishing laws as universally true as are those of Copernicus, Kepler, or Newton—laws that gave proof of their truth by being everywhere in harmony with each other, and productive everywhere of harmony; and would not the following form a part of them?—
I. That the poor and solitary man commences everywhere with poor machinery, and that everywhere, as population and wealth increase, he obtains better machinery, and production is increased. The first poor settler has no cup, and he takes up water in his hand. He has no hogs or cattle to yield him oil, and he is compelled to depend on pine-knots for artificial light. He has no axe, and he cannot fell a tree, either to supply himself with fuel or to clear his land. He has no saw, and he is compelled to seek shelter under a rock, because he is unable to build himself a house. He has no spade, and he is compelled to cultivate land that is too poor to need clearing, and too dry to require drainage. He has no horse, and is obliged to carry his little crop of grain on his shoulders. He has no mill, and is compelled to pound his grain between stones, or to eat it unground, as did the Romans for so many centuries. With the growth of wealth and population he obtains machinery that enables him tocommandthe services of the various natural agents by which he is surrounded; and he now obtains more water, more light, more heat, and more power at less cost of labour; and he cultivates rich lands that yield food more largely, while he transports its products, by means of a wagon or a railroad car, converts it into flour by aid of steam, and exchanges it readily with, the man who converts his food and his wool into cloth, or food and ore into iron,—and thus passes from poor to better machinery of production, transportation, and exchange, with increasing reward of labour, and diminishing value of all the products of labour.
II. That the poor settler gives a largeproportionof the produce of his labour for the use of poor machinery of production, transportation, and exchange; but the produce being small, thequantityof rent then paid is very small. He is a slave to the owner of landed or other capital.
III. That with the increased productiveness of labour there is increased facility for the reproduction of machinery required for the production of water, light, fuel, and food; and that this diminution in the costof reproductionis attended with a constant diminution in the value of all such machinery previously accumulated, and diminution in the proportion of the product of labour that can be demanded as rent for their use; and thus, while labour steadily increases in its power to yield commodities of every kind required by man, capital as steadily diminishes in its power over the labourer. Present labour obtains a constantly increasing proportion of a constantly increasing quantity, while the claims of the accumulations of past labour (capital) are rewarded with an increasing quantity, but rapidly diminishing proportion; and that there is thus, with the growth of population and wealth, a daily tendency toward improvement and equality of condition.
IV. That increase in thequantityof the landlord or other capitalist is evidence of increase in the labourer'sproportion, and of large increase of his quantity, with constantly increasing tendency toward freedom of thought, speech, action, and trade, and that it is precisely as land acquires value that man becomes free.
Here is a system, all the parts of which are in perfect harmony with each other, and all tending to the production of harmony among the various portions of society, and the different nations of the earth. Under them, we see men beginning on the higher and poorer lands and gradually coming together in the valleys, with steady tendency to increase in the power of association, and in the power to assert the right Of perfect self-government. It is thus the system of freedom. Population enables men to cultivate the richer soils, and food tends to increase more rapidly than population, giving men leisure for the cultivation of their minds and those of their children. Increased intelligence enables man from year to year to obtain larger loans from the great bank—the earth—while with the increased diversification of labour he is enabled more and more to repay them by the restoration of the manure to the place from which the food had been derived.
Here are laws tending to the promotion of kindly feelings, and to the enabling of man to carry fully into effect the great law which lies at the base of Christianity—doing to his neighbours as he would that they should do unto him. They are laws whose constant and uniform truth may be seen in reference to every description of capital and of labour, and in all the communities of the world, large and small, in present and in past times. Beinglaws, they admit of no exceptions any more than do the great astronomical ones. They recognise the whole product of labour as being the property of the labourer of the past and the present; the former represented by the proprietor of the machine, and the latter by the man who uses it, and who finds himself every day more and more able to accumulate the means of becoming himself a proprietor.
The English system does not recognise the existence of universal laws. According to it, land, labour, and capital, are the three instruments of production, and they are governed by different laws. Labour, when it seeks aid from land, is supposed to begin with good machinery and to pass toward the worst, with constantly increasing power in the owner of the land; whereas, when it seeks aid from the steam-engine, it passes from poor to good, with diminishing power in the owner of capital. There is thus one set of laws for the government of the great machine itself—the earth—and another for that of all its parts. Under the first, value is supposed to increase because of the diminished productiveness of labour, whereas under the last it is supposed to diminish because of the increased productiveness of labour. The two point to opposite poles of the compass, and the only mode of reconciling them is found in the supposition that as the power of production diminishes with the increasing necessity for resorting to inferior soils, the power of accumulating capital tends to increase, and thus counterbalances the disadvantages resulting from the necessity for applying labour less and less advantageously. Who is it, however, that is to furnish this capital? Is it the labourer? He cannot do it, for he cultivates "the inferior soils," and retains for himself a constantly diminishing proportion of a constantly diminishing product. Is it the landlord? His proportion increases, it is true, but hisquantitydiminishes in its proportion to population, as his tenants are forced to resort to less productive soils. The power to accumulate is dependent on the quantity of time and labour required for obtaining present subsistence; and as that increases with the necessity for resorting to poorer machinery, the power to obtain machines to be used in aid of labour dies away. Such being the case, it is clear that if men are obliged, in obedience to a great natural law, to pass steadily from rich soils to poor ones yielding less returns to labour, no compensation can anywhere be found, and that the elder Mill was right when he said that the power of accumulation must cease, and wages must fall so low that men "would perish of want;" in preference to doing which they would, of course, sell themselves, their wives, and children, into, slavery. Of all the English writers on this subject, he is the only one that has had the courage to follow out the Ricardo-Malthusian system to its necessary conclusions, and proclaim to the world the existence of a great law of nature leadinginevitablyto the division of society into two great portions, the very rich and the very poor—the master and the slave.
There are thus two systems—one of which proclaims that men can thrive only at the expense of their neighbours, and the other that they "prosper with the prosperity of those neighbours—one that teaches utter selfishness, and another teaching that enlightened selfishness which prompts men to rejoice in the advances of their fellow-men toward wealth and civilization—one that leads to internal discord and foreign war, and another teaching peace, union, and brotherly kindness throughout—the world—one that teaches the doctrine of despair and death, and another teaching joy and hope—one that is anti-christian in all its tendencies, teaching that we mustnotdo to our neighbour in distress as we would that he should do to us, but that, on the contrary our duty requires that we should see him suffer, unrelieved, every calamity short of "positive death," and another teaching in its every page that if individuals or nations would thrive, they can do soonlyon the condition of carrying into full effect the great law of Christ—"That which ye would that others should do unto you, do ye unto them."
Both of these systems cannot be true. Which of them is so is to be settled by the determination of the great fact whether the Creator made a mistake in providing that the poor settler should commence on the low and rich lands, leaving the poor soils of the hills to his successors, who obtain from them a constantly diminishing supply of food—or whether, in his infinite wisdom, he provided that the poor man, destitute, of axe and spade, should go to the poor and dry land of the hills, requiring neither clearing nor drainage, leaving the heavily timbered and swamp lands for his wealthy successors. If the first, then the laws of God tend to the perpetuation of slavery, and the English political economy is right in all its parts, and should be maintained. If the last, then is it wrong in all its parts, and duty to themselves, to their fellow-men throughout the world, and to the great Giver of all good things, requires that it be at once and for ever abandoned.
It is time that enlightened Englishmen should examine into this question. When they shall do so, it will require little time to satisfy themselves that every portion of their own island furnishes proof that cultivation commenced on the poor soils, and that from the day when King Arthur held his court in a remote part of Cornwall to that on which Chatfield Moss was drained, men have been steadily obtainingmore productivesoils atless costof labour, and that not only are they now doing so, but that it is difficult to estimate how far it may be carried. Every discovery in science tends to facilitate the making of those combinations of matter requisite for the production of food, giving better soils at diminished cost. Every new one tends to give to man increased power to command the use of those great natural agents provided for his service, and to enable him to obtain more and better food, more and better clothing, more and better house-room, in exchange for less labour, leaving him more time for the improvement of his mind, for the education of his children, and for the enjoyment of those recreations which tend to render life pleasurable. The reverse of all this is seen under the English system. The more numerous the discoveries in science, and the greater the command of man over the powerful natural agents given for diminishing labour, the more severe and unintermitting becomes his toil, the less becomes his supply of food, the poorer becomes his clothing, the more wretched becomes his lodging, the less time can be given to the improvement of his mind, the more barbarous grow up his children, the more is his wife compelled to work in the field, and the less is his time for enjoyment;—as witness all those countries over which England now exercises dominion, and as witness to so great an extent the present condition of her own people, as exhibited by those of her own writers quoted in a former chapter.
Selfishness and Christianity cannot go together, nor can selfishness and national prosperity. It is purely selfish in the people of England to desire to prevent the people of the various nations of the world from profiting by their natural advantages, whether of coal, iron ore, copper, tin, or lead. It is injurious to themselves, because it keeps their neighbours poor, while they are subjected to vast expense in the effort to keep them from rebelling against taxation. They maintain great fleets and armies, at enormous expense, for the purpose of keeping up a system that destroys their customers and themselves; and this they must continue to do so long as they shall hold to the doctrine which teaches that the only way to secure a fair remuneration to capital is to keep the price of labour down, because it is one that produces discord and slavery, abroad and at home; whereas, under that of peace, hope, and freedom, they would need neither fleets nor armies.
It is to the country of Hampden and Sidney that the worldshouldbe enabled to look for advice in all matters affecting the cause of freedom; and it is to her that allwouldlook, could her statesmen bring themselves to understand how destructive to herself and them is the system of centralization she now seeks to establish. As it is, slavery grows in all the countries under her control, and freedom grows in no single country of the world but those which protect themselves against her system. It is time that the enlightened and liberal men of England should study the cause of this fact; and whenever they shall do so they will find a ready explanation of the growing pauperism, immorality, gloom, and slavery of their own country; and they will then have little difficulty in understanding that the protective tariffs of all the advancing nations of Europe are but measures of resistance to a system of enormous oppression, and that it is in that direction that the people of this country are to look forthe true and only road to freedom of trade and the freedom of man.
It is time that such men should ask themselves whether or not their commercial policy can, by any possibility, aid the cause of freedom, abroad or at home. The nations of the world are told of the "free and happy people" of England; but when they look to that country to ascertain the benefits of freedom, they meet with frightful pauperism, gross immorality, infanticide to an extent unknown in any other part of the civilized world, and a steadily increasing division of the people into two great classes—the very rich and the very poor—with an universal tendency to "fly from ills they know," in the hope of obtaining abroad the comfort and happiness denied them at home. Can this benefit the cause of freedom?—The nations are told of the enlightened character of the British government, and yet, when they look to Ireland, they can see nothing but poverty, famine, and pestilence, to end in the utter annihilation of a nation that has given to England herself many of her most distinguished men. If they look to India, they see nothing but poverty, pestilence, famine, and slavery; and if they cast their eyes toward China, they see the whole power of the nation put forth to compel a great people to submit to the fraudulent introduction of a commodity, the domestic production of which is forbidden because of its destructive effects upon the morals, the happiness, and the lives of the community.[217]
—The nations are told that England
"Is the asylum of nations, and that itwill defend the asylum to the last ounce of its treasure and the last drop of its blood. There is," continuesThe Times, "no point whatever on which we are prouder or more resolute."
Nevertheless, when they look to the countries of Europe that furnish the refugees who claim a place in this asylum, they see that England is everywhere at work to prevent the people from obtaining the means of raising themselves in the social scale. So long as they shall continue purely agricultural, they must remain poor, weak, and enslaved, and their only hope for improvement is from that association of the loom and the plough which gave to England her freedom; and yet England is everywhere their opponent, seeking to annihilate the power of association.—The nations are told of the vast improvement of machinery, by aid of which man is enabled to call to his service the great powers of nature, and thus improve not only his material but his intellectual condition; but, when they look to the colonies and to the allies of England, they see everywhere a decay of intellect; and when they look to the independent countries, they see her whole power put forth to prevent them from doing any thing but cultivate the earth and exhaust the soil. It is time that enlightened Englishmen should look carefully at these things, and answer to themselves whether or not they are thus promoting the cause of freedom. That they are not, must be the answer of each and every such man. That question answered, it will be for them to look to see in which direction lies the path of duty; and fortunate will it be if they can see that interest and duty can be made to travel in company with each other.
To the women of England much credit is due for having brought this question before the world. It is one that should have for them the deepest interest. Wherever man is unable to obtain machinery, he is forced to depend on mere brute labour; and he is then so poor that his wife must aid him in the labours of the field, to her own degradation, and to the neglect of her home, her husband, her children, and herself. She is then the most oppressed of slaves. As men obtain machinery, they obtain command of great natural agents, and mind gradually takes the place of physical force; and then labour in the field becomes more productive, and the woman passes from out-of-door to in-door employments, and with each step in this direction she is enabled to give more care to her children, her husband, and herself. From being a slave, and the mother of slaves, she passes to becoming a free woman, the mother of daughters that are free, and the instructor of those to whom the next generation is to look for instruction.
The English system looks to confining the women of the world to the labours of the field, and such is its effect everywhere. It looks, therefore, to debasing and enslaving them and their children. The other looks to their emancipation from slavery, and their elevation in the social scale; and it can scarcely fail to be regarded by the women as well as by the men of England as a matter of duty to inquire into the grounds upon which their policy is based, and to satisfy themselves if it can be possible that there is any truth in a system which tends everywhere to the production of slavery, and therefore to the maintenance of the slave trade throughout the world.
[1] Edwards' West Indies, vol. i. p. 255.
[2] Macpherson's Annals of Commerce, vol. iii. 575.
[3] Macpherson's Annals of Commerce, vol. iv. 155.
[4] Martin's Colonial Library, West Indies, vol. i. 90.
[5] Macpherson, vol. iv. 155.
[6] Ibid.
[7] Montgomery's West Indies, vol. ii. 114
[8] Macpherson, vol. iv. 155, 228.
[9] Macpherson, vol. iv. 155.
[10] The export to the foreign West Indies, from 1783 to 1787, is given by Macpherson at nearly 20,000.
[11] The causes of these diminutions will be exhibited in a future chapter.
[12] Macpherson, vol. iv. 144.
[13] The Cape and the Kaffirs, by Harriet Ward, London, 1852.
[14] Notes on Jamaica in 1850, p. 64.
[15] Ibid. 68.
[16] State and Prospects of Jamaica.
[17] The Corentyne.
[18] East bank of Berbice river.
[19] West ditto.
[20] West coast of Berbice.
[21] Prospective Review, Nov. 1852, 504.
[22] The Celt, the Roman, and the Saxon, by Thomas Wright, p. 87.
[23] Ibid. p. 56.
[24] Where population and wealth diminish, the rich soils are abandoned and men retire to the poorer ones, as is seen in the abandonment of the delta of Egypt, of the Campagna, of the valley of Mexico, and of the valleys of the Tigris and the Euphrates.
[25] The land of England itself has become and is becoming more consolidated, the cause of which will be shown in a future chapter.
[26] Dallas's History of the Maroons, vol. i. page c.
[27] Macpherson, vol. iii. 394.
[28] Ibid. 574.
[29] Ibid. vol. iv. 255.
[30] Dallas's History of the Maroons, vol. i. cvii.
[31] Ibid. cv.
[32] Dallas's History of the Maroons, vol. ii. 358.
[33] See page 14,ante.
[34] Coleridge's "Six Months in the West Indies," 131.
[35] See pages 71-2,ante.
[36] Martin's West Indies.
[37] Tooke's History of Prices, vol. ii. 412.
[38] The reader who may desire to see this law fully demonstrated, may do so on referring to the author's Principles of Political Economy, vol. i. chap. v.
[39] Bigelow, Notes, 129.
[40] Ibid, 31.
[41] Ibid, 69.
[42] Bigelow, 125.
[43] Speech of Mr. James Wilson, December 10, 1852. On the same occasion it was stated that "the lower orders" are daily "putting aside all decency," while "the better class appear to have lost all hope," and that the Governor, Sir Charles Grey, "described things as going on from bad to worse." The cholera had carried off, as was stated, 40,000 persons.
[44] The following case illustrates in a very striking manner the value that is given to things that must be wasted among an exclusively agricultural population,—and it is but one of thousands that might be adduced:
WHAT OLD BONES AND BITS OF SKIN MAY BE GOOD FOR.—How to get a penny-worth of beauty out of old bones and bits of skin, is a problem which the French gelatine makers have solved very prettily. Does the reader remember some gorgeous sheets of colored gelatine in the French department of the Great Exhibition? We owed them to the slaughter-houses of Paris. These establishments are so well organized and conducted, that all the refuse is carefully preserved, to be applied to any purposes for which it may be deemed fitting. Very pure gelatine is made from the waste fragments of skin, bone, tendon, ligature, and gelatinous tissue of the animals slaughtered in the Parisianabbatoirs, and thin sheets of this gelatine are made to receive very rich and beautiful colors. As a gelatinous liquid, when melted, it is used in the dressing of woven stuffs, and in the clarification of wine; and as a solid, it is cut into threads for the ornamental uses of the confectioner, or made into very thin white sheets ofpapier glace, for copying, drawing, or applied to the making of artificial flowers, or used as a substitute for paper, on which gold printing may be executed. In good sooth, when an ox has given us our beef, and our leather, and our tallow, his career of usefulness is by no means ended; we can get a penny out of him as long as there is a scrap of his substance above ground—Household Words.
[45] The superficial area of the State is 64,000 square miles, being greater than that of England, and double that of Ireland.
[46] Despotism in America, 127.
[47] De Bow's Commercial Review, new series, vol. ii. 137.
[48] The tobacco grower "has the mortification of seeing his tobacco, bought from him at sixpence in bond, charged three shillings duty, and therefore costing the broker but 3s. 6d. and selling in the shops of London at ten, twelve, and sixteen shillings." (Urquhart's Turkey, 194.) The same writer informs his readers that the tobacco dealers were greatly alarmed when it was proposed that the duty should be reduced, because then everybody with £10 capital could set up a shop. The slave who works in the tobacco-field is among the largest taxpayers for the maintenance of foreign traders and foreign governments.
[49] Statistique de l'Agriculture de la France, 129.
[50] Urquhart's Resources of Turkey, 179.
[51] Equivalent to light port-charges, the anchorage being only sixteen cents per ship.
[52] Beaujour's Tableau du Commerce de la Greece, quoted by Urquhart, 47.
[53] Urquhart, 150.
[54] The recent proceedings in regard to the Turkish loan are strikingly illustrative of the exhausting effects of a system that looks wholly to the export of the raw produce of the earth, and thus tends to the ruin of the soil and of its owner.
[55] Urquhart, 257.
[56] Ibid. 202.
[57] Turkey, and its Destiny, by C. Mac Farlane, Esq., 1850.
[58] Mac Farlane, vol. i, 46.
[59] Mac Farlane, vol. ii, 242.
[60] Ibid. 296.
[61] Ibid. vol. i. 37.
[62] History of British India, vol. i. 46.
[63] Historical Fragments, 402.
[64] "The country was laid waste with fire and sword, and that land distinguished above most others by the cheerful face of fraternal government and protected labour, the chosen seat of cultivation and plenty, is now almost throughout a dreary desert covered with rushes and briers, and jungles full of wild beasts. * * * That universal, systematic breach of treaties, which had made the British faith proverbial in the East! These intended rebellions are one of the Company's standing resources. When money has been thought to be hoarded up anywhere, its owners are universally accused of rebellion, until they are acquitted of their money and their treasons at once! The money once taken, all accusation, trial, and punishment ends."—Speech on Fox's East India Bill.
[65] Quoted in Thompson's Lectures on India, 61.
[66] Colonel Sykes states the proportion collected in the Deccan as much less than is above given
[67] Rickards, vol. i. 288.
[68] Vol. ii. 218.
[69] Rickards, vol i. 500.
[70] Ibid. 559.
[71] Ibid. 558.
[72] Ibid. 558.
[73] Campbell's Modern India, London, 1852, 356.
[74] Campbell's Modern India, 357.
[75] Baines's History of the Cotton Manufacture.
[76] Campbell's Modern India, 332.
[77] Ibid. 381.
[78] Campbell's Modern India, 105.
[79] Rambles in India, by Col. Sleeman, vol. i. p. 296.
[80] Speech of Mr. G. Thompson in the House of Commons.
[81] See page 133ante.
[82] Chapman's Commerce and Cotton of India, 74.
[83] Chapman, Cotton and Commerce of India, 28.
[84] Taking the last six of the thirteen years, the price of cotton was 2d. a pound, and if the produce of a beegah was 6s. 6d., of this the government took sixty-eight per cent. of the gross produce; and taking the two years 1841 and 1842, cotton was 1-3/4 d. a pound, and the produce of a beegah was 5s. 8d. On this the assessment was actually equal to seventy-eight per cent. on the gross produce of the land.—Speech of Mr. Bright in the House of Commons.
[85] Chapman's Commerce and Cotton of India, 110.
[86] Chapman, 167.
[87] Rambles, vol. i. 205.
[88] Ibid. 268.
[89] Ibid. vol. ii. 147.
[90] Ibid. 153.
[91] Ibid. 185.
[92] Ibid. 199.
[93] Chapman, 97.
[94] Thompson's Lectures on India, 57.
[95] Ibid. 185.
[96] Chapman, 22.
[97] Ibid, 25.
[98] Rambles in India, vol. ii. 109.
[99] Modern India, 394
[100] Thompson, Lectures on India, 25.
[101] The destruction of life in China from this extension of the market for the produce of India is stated at no less than 400,000 per annum. How this trade is regarded in India itself, by Christian men, may be seen from the following extract from a review, recently published in the BombayTelegraph, of papers in regard to it published in Hunt's Merchants' Magazine, in which the review is now republished:—
"That a professedly Christian government should, by its sole authority and on its sole responsibility, produce a drug which is not only contraband, but essentially detrimental to the best interests of humanity; that it should annually receive into its treasury crores of rupees, which, if they cannot, save by a too licentious figure, be termed 'the price of blood,' yet are demonstrably the price of the physical waste, the social wretchedness, and moral destruction of the Chinese; and yet that no sustained remonstrances from the press, secular or spiritual, nor from society, should issue forth against the unrighteous system, is surely an astonishing fact in the history of our Christian ethics.
"An American, accustomed to receive from us impassioned arguments against his own nation on account of slavery, might well be pardoned were he to say to us, with somewhat of intemperate feeling, 'Physician, heal thyself,' and to expose with bitterness the awful inconsistency of Britain's vehement denunciation of American slavery, while, by most deadly measures, furthering Chinese demoralization."
The review, in referring to the waste of human life, closes as follows:-.
"What unparalleled destruction! The immolations of an Indian Juggernauth dwindle into insignificance before it! We again repeat, nothing but slavery is worthy to be compared for its horrors with this monstrous system of iniquity. As we write, we are amazed at the enormity of its unprincipledness, and the large extent of its destructiveness. Its very enormity seems in some measure to protect it. Were it a minor evil, it seems as though one might grapple with it. As it is, it is beyond the compass of our grasp. No words are adequate to expose its evil, no fires of indignant feeling are fierce enough to blast it.
"The enormous wealth it brings into our coffers is its only justification, the cheers of vice-enslaved wretches its only welcome; the curses of all that is moral and virtuous in an empire of three hundred and sixty millions attend its introduction; the prayers of enlightened Christians deprecate its course; the indignation of all righteous minds is its only 'God-speed.'
"It takes with it fire and sword, slaughter and death; it leaves behind it bankrupt fortunes, idiotized minds, broken hearts, and ruined souls. Foe to all the interests of humanity, hostile to the scanty virtues of earth; and warring against the overflowing benevolence of heaven, may we soon have to rejoice over its abolition!"
[102] Campbell, 390.
[103] Ibid. 393.
[104] Campbell, 384.
[105] Ibid. 377.
[106] Campbell, 359.
[107] Ibid. 332.
[108] Ibid. 345
[109] Chapman on the Commerce of India, 88.
[110] Lawson's Merchants' Magazine, January, 1853, 58.
[111] Ibid. 51.
[112] See page 140,ante.
[113] Backhouse's Visit to the Mauritius, 35.
[114] The danger of interference, even with the best intentions, when unaccompanied by knowledge, is thus shown by the same author, in speaking of Madagascar:—
"Dreadful wars are waged by the queen against other parts of the island, in which all the male prisoners above a certain stature are put to death, and the rest made slaves. This she is enabled to effect, by means of the standing army which her predecessor Radama was recommended to keep by the British. * * How lamentable is the reflection that the British nation, with the good intention of abolishing the slave trade, should have strengthened despotic authority and made way for all its oppressive and depopulating results, by encouraging the arts of war instead of those of peace!"—P. 24.
[115] Thompson's Lectures on British India, 187.
[116] Lawson's Merchants' Magazine, January, 1853, 14.
[117] Bigelow's "Jamaica in 1850," 17.
[118] Sophisms of Free Trade, by J. Barnard Byles, Esq.
[119] Speech of Mr. T. F. Meagher, 1847.
[120] The following paragraph from an Irish journal exhibits strikingly the amount of political freedom exercised at the scene of these evictions:—
"Lord Erne held his annual show in Ballindreat, on Monday, the 25th ult, and after having delivered himself much as usual in regard to agricultural matters, he proceeded to lecture the assembled tenants on the necessity of implicit obedience to those who were placed over them, in reference not only to practical agriculture, but the elective franchise. To such of the tenants as his lordship considered to be of the right stamp, and who proved themselves so by voting for Sir Edmund Hayes and Thomas Connolly, Esq., the 15 per cent. in full would be allowed—to those who split their votes between one or other of these gentlemen and Campbell Johnston, Esq., 7-1/2 per cent.; but to the men who had the manliness to 'plump' for Johnston, no reduction of rents would be allowed this year, or any other until such parties might redeem their character at another election."—Cork Examiner, Nov. 8, 1852.
[121] Thornton on Over-population, 248.
[122] Ibid. 250.
[123] McCulloch, Stat. Acct. of British Empire, vol. I. 315.
[124] Times Newspaper, June 7th, 1844.
[125] Report of Highland Emigration Committee, 1841.
[126] Lectures on the Social and Moral Condition of the People, by various Ministers of the Gospel. Glasgow.
[127] See page 71,ante.
[128] Kay's Social Condition of England and of Europe, vol. i. 70
[129] Ibid. 359.
[130] Kay's Social Condition of England and of Europe, vol. 1, 183.
[131] On a recent occasion in the House of Lords, it was declared to be important to retain Canada, on the express ground that it greatly facilitated smuggling.
[132] Alton Locke.
[133] Lord Ashley informs us that there are 30,000 poor children such as these in London alone.
[134] Reports of the Health of Towns Commission, vol. i. 127.
[135] City Mission Magazine, Oct. 1847.
[136] See page 224,ante.
[137] The import of 1850 was 103,713 lbs., and that of 1852, 251,792 lbs.
[138] The reader who may desire to see this more fully exhibited is referred to the author's work, "The Past, the Present, and the Future."
[139] See page 59,ante.
[140] "It may be doubted, considering the circumstances under which most Irish landlords acquired their estates, the difference between their religious tenets and those of their tenants, the peculiar tenures under which the latter hold their lands, and the political condition of the country, whether their residence would have been of any considerable advantage. * * * The question really at issue refers merely to thespendingof revenue, and has nothing to do with the improvement of estates; and notwithstanding all that has been said to the contrary, I am not yet convinced that absenteeism is, in this respect, at all injurious."—Principles, 157.
[141] Treatises and Essays on Subjects connected with Economical Policy.
[142] Chapman, Commerce of India.
[143] During all this time there was a large increase in the import of food from Ireland; and this, of course, constituted a portion of domestic produce exported in the shape of manufactures, the whole proceeds of which were to be retained at home. Since 1846, the change in that country has been so great that she is now a large importer of foreign grain. The official return for 1849 shows a diminution in the quantity raised, as compared with 1844, of no less than 9,304,607 quarters; and instead of sending to England, as she had been accustomed to do, more than three millions of quarters, she was an importer in that year and the following one of more than a million. This deficiency had to be made up from abroad, and thus was the United Kingdom transformed from the position of seller of four or five millions of quarters—say about 40 millions of our bushels—of which it retained thewhole proceeds, to that of the mere shopkeeper, who retains only theprofiton the same quantity. A similar state of things might be shown in regard to many of the other articles of produce above enumerated.
[144] in 1834, Mr. McCulloch estimated the produce of the land of great Britain at 146 millions, but at that time wheat was calculated at 50s. A quarter, or almost one-half more than the average of the last two or three years. Other and larger calculations may readily be found; but it would be difficult to determine what becomes of the product if it be not found in rent, farmers' profits, or labourers' wages.
[145] By reference to the report of the Assistant Commissioner, charged with the inquiry into the condition of women and children employed in agriculture, it will be seen that a change of clothes seems to be out of the question. The upper parts of the under-clothes of women at work, even their stays, quickly become wet with perspiration, while the lower parts cannot escape getting equally wet in nearly every kind of work in which they are employed, except in the driest weather. It not unfrequently happens that a woman, on returning from work, is obliged to go to bed for an hour or two to allow her clothes to be dried. It is also by no means uncommon for her, if she does not do this, to put them on again the next morning nearly as wet as when she took them off.
[146]London Labour and London Poor.
[147] The returns of imports into Great Britain are given according to an official value, established more than a century since, and thus the sum of the values is an exact measure of the quantities imported.
[148] The reader will remark that of all the machinery of England but a small portion is required for theforcedforeign trade that is thus produced.
[149] The whole appropriation for the education of ten millions of people in Western India is stated, in recent memorial from Bombay, to be only £12,500, or $60,000, being six cents for every ten persons.
[150] North British Review, Nov. 1852.
[151] Edinburgh Review, Oct. 1849. The italics are those of the reviewer.
[152] See page 160,ante.
[153] Lawson's Merchants' Mag., Dec. 1852.
[154] Senior, Outlines of Political Economy, 152.
[155] At a recent discussion in the London Statistical Society, land in England was valued at thirty years' purchase, houses at fifteen, and land in Ireland at eighteen.
[156] This will appear a very small estimate when compared with those usually made, but it is equal to the total production of the land and labour of the country for a year and a half, if not for a longer period; and it would be difficult to prove that if the whole labour and capital of the country were applied to that purpose—food and clothing being supplied from abroad—it could not produce a quantity of commodities equal in value to those now accumulated in England. Even, however, were the amount placed at a thousand millions, the amount of wealth would still be small, under the circumstances of the case.
[157] See page 105ante.
[158] The latest number of the Bankers' Magazine contains statements of two banks whose joint capitals and reserved funds are about £200,000, while their investments are about a million!—and this, would seem to be about the usual state of affairs with most of the English banks.
[159] Bankers' Magazine, Sept. 1852
[160] The amount of expenditure for English railroads is put down at from two to three hundreds of millions of pounds; and yet the real investment was only that of the labour employed in grading the roads, building the bridges, driving the tunnels, and making the iron; and if we take that at £8000 per mile, we obtain only 54 millions. All the balance was merely a transfer of property already existing from one owner to another, as in the case of the land, which in some cases cost ten or twelve thousands of pounds per mile.
[161] See page 240,ante.
[162] North British Review, Nov. 1852.
[163] This tendency is exhibited in most of the books that treat of the system. Thus, Mr. McCulloch insists on the beneficial effect ofthe fearof taxation, as will be seen in the following passage:—
"To the desire of rising in the world, implanted in the breast of every individual, an increase of taxation superadds the fear of being cast down to a lower station, of being deprived of conveniences and gratifications which habit has rendered all but indispensable—and the combined influence of the two principles produces results that could not be produced by the unassisted agency of either."
This is only the lash of the slave-driver in another form.
[164] Barter, The Dorp and the Veld.
[165] Estimating the average cost of raising men and women at only $1000 each, the present forced export is equal to sending abroad a capital of four hundred millions of dollars, no return from which is to be looked for.
[166] The recent movement of this institution in raising the rate of interest affords a striking example of its power, and of the absence of the judgment required for its exercise. For two years past the bank has aided in raising prices, but now it desires to reduce them, and at the cost, necessarily, of the weaker portions of the community, for the rich can always take care of themselves. The whole tendency of its operations is toward making the rich richer and the poor poorer. Sir Robert Peel undertook to regulate the great machine, but his scheme for that purpose failed, because he totally misconceived the cause of the evil, and of course applied the wrong remedy. It was one that could only aggravate the mischief, as he could scarcely have failed to see, had he studied the subject with the care its importance merited.
[167] Page 230,ante.
[168] Chap. VII.ante.
[169] Message of President Roberts, Dec. 1849
[170] Lecture on the Relations of Free and Slave Labour, by DavidChristy, p. 46.
[171] The Social Condition and Education of the People of England andEurope, i. 256.
[172] Handbuch der Allgemeinen Staatskunde, vol. ii. 5, quoted by Kay,vol. i., 120.
[173] Until recently, the increase of Great Britain has been slightly greater than that of Prussia, the former having grown at the rate of 1.95 per cent. per annum, and the latter at that of 1.84; but the rate of growth of the former has recently much diminished, and all growth has now probably ceased.
[174] Die Agrarfrage.
[175] Etudes sur l'Economie Politique.
[176] Page 51,ante.
[177] In no other country than England would the editor of a daily journal inflict upon his readers throughout the kingdom whole columns occupied with the names of persons present at a private entertainment, and with the dresses of the ladies. Where centralization has reached a height like this, we need scarcely be surprised to learn that there is but onepayingdaily newspaper for a population of more than seventeen millions.
[178] Rural and Domestic Life in Germany, 27.
[179] Pictures from St. Petersburg, by E. Jerrmann, 22.
[180] Pictures from St. Petersburg, 23.
[181] The cargo of a ship that has recently sailed is stated to have consisted of more than a thousand females.
[182] Laing's Denmark and the Duchies, London, 1852, 299.
[183] Quoted by Kay, Social and Political Condition of England and the Continent, vol. i. 91.
[184] Denmark and the Duchies, 42.
[185] Ibid. 136.
[186] Denmark and the Duchies, 368.
[187] Ibid. 394.
[188] Ibid. 388.
[189] Denmark and the Duchies, 362.
[190] Denmark and the Duchies, 294.
[191] Denmark and the Duchies, 269.
[192]L'Espàgne en1850, par M. Maurice Block, 145.
[193] Ibid. pp. 157-159.
[194] Bayard Taylor, in theN. Y. Tribune.
[195]L'Espàgne en1850, 160.
[196] Spain, her Institutions, her Politics, and her Public Men, byS. T. Wallis, 341.
[197] The exact amount given by M. Block is 2,194,269,000 francs, buthe does not state in what year the return was made.
[198] By an official document published in 1849, it appears that while wheat sold in Barcelona and Tarragona (places of consumption) at an average of more than 25 francs, the price at Segovia, in Old Castile, (a place of production,) not 300 miles distant, was less than 10 francs for the same quantity.—L'Espàgne en1850, 131.
[199] North British Review, Nov. 1852, art.The Modern Exodus.
[200] M. de Jonnes, quoted by Mr. Wallis, p. 295.
[201] Wallis's Spain, chap: ix.
[202] It is a striking evidence of the injurious moral effect produced by the system which looks to the conversion of all the other nations of the world into mere farmers and planters, that Mr. Macgregor, in his work of Commercial Statistics, says, in speaking of the Methuen treaty, "we do not deny that there were advantages in having a market for our woollens in Portugal, especially one, of which, if not the principal, was the means afforded of sending them afterward by contraband into Spain."—Vol. ii. 1122.
[203] In the first half of this period the export was small, whereas in the last one, 1836 to 1840, it must have been in excess of the growth of population.
[204] From 1842 to 1845 the average crop was 2,250,000 bales, or half a million more than the average of the four previous years. From 1847 to 1850 the average was only 2,260,000 bales, and the price rose, which could not have been the case had the slave trade been as brisk between 1840 and 1845 as it had been between 1835 and 1840.
[205] See page 108,ante, for the sale of the negroes of the Saluda Manufacturing Company.
[206] The following passage from one of the journals of the day is worthy of careful perusal by those who desire to understand the working of the present system of revenue duties, under which the mills and furnaces of the country have to so great an extent been closed, and the farmers and planters of the country to so great an extent been driven to New York to make all their exchanges:—
"Mr. Matsell [chief of police, New York] tells us that during the six months ending 31st December, 1852, there have been 19,901 persons arrested for various offences, giving a yearly figure of nearly 40,000 arrests. * * * The number of arrests being 40,000, or thereabouts, in a population of say 600,000, gives a percentage of 6.6 on the whole number of inhabitants. We have no data to estimate the state of crime in Paris under the imperialrégime; but in London the returns of the metropolitan police for 1850, show 70,827 arrests, out of a population of some two millions and a half, giving a percentage of less than three on the whole number of inhabitants. Thus crimes are in New York rather more than twice as frequent as in London. Indeed, if we make proper allowance for the superior vigilance, and organization of the metropolitan police of London, and for the notorious inefficiency of our own police force, we shall probably find that, in proportion to the population, there is in New York twice as much crime as in London. This is an appalling fact—a disgraceful disclosure."—New York Herald, March 21, 1853.
[207] North British Review, Nov. 1852.
[208] See Uncle Tom's Cabin, chap. xxxi.
[209] Letters to Lord Aberdeen, by the Right Hon. W. E. Gladstone, 9, 10, 12.
[210] Rev. Sidney Smith.
[211] See page 109,ante.
[212] It is commonly supposed that the road toward freedom lies through cheapening the products of slave labour; but the reader may readily satisfy himself that it is in that direction lies slavery. Freedom grows with growing wealth, not growing poverty. To increase the cost of raising slaves, and thus toincrease the value of man at home, produces exactly the effect anticipated from the other course of operation, because the value of the land and its produce grows more rapidly than the value of that portion of the negro's powers that can be obtained from him as a slave—that is, without the payment of wages.
[213] See page 280,ante.
[214] The following statement of the operations of the past year completes the picture presented in Chapter IV.:—
"A tabular return, prepared by order of the House of Assembly of Jamaica, exhibiting the properties in that island 'upon which cultivation has been wholly or partially abandoned since the 1st day of January, 1852,' presents in a striking light one of the many injurious consequences that have followed the measure of negro emancipation in the British West Indies. The return, which is dated January 27, 1853, shows that 128 sugar estates have been totally abandoned during the year, and 71 partially abandoned; of coffee plantations, 96 have been totally, and 56 partially, abandoned; of country seats—residences of planters or their agents—30 have been totally, and 22 partially, abandoned. The properties thus nearly or wholly ruined by the ill-considered legislation of the British Parliament cover an area of 391,187 acres."
[215]Economist, (London,) Feb. 12, 1863.
[216] Spectator, Feb. 12, 1853.
[217] The net revenue from the opium trade, for the current year, is stated to be no less than four millions of pounds sterling, or nearly twenty millions of dollars; and it is to that revenue, saysThe Friend of India, Nov. 25, 1852, that the Indian government has been indebted for its power to carry on the wars since 1838, those of Affghanistan, Seinde, Gwalior, the Punjab, and that now existing with Burmah. Well is it asked by Dr. Allen, in his pamphlet on "The Opium Trade," (Lowell, 1853,) "Can such an unrighteous course in a nation always prosper?" "How," says the same author, "can the Chinese
"Regard the English in any other light than wholesale smugglers and wholesale dealers in poison? The latter can expend annually over two millions of dollars on the coast of Great Britain to protect its own revenue laws, but at the same time set at bold defiance similar laws of protection enacted by the former. The English are constantly supplying the Chinese a deadly poison, with which thousands yearly put an end to their existence. In England, even the druggists are expressly forbidden to sell arsenic, laudanum, or other poison, if they have the least suspicion that their customer intends to commit suicide. But in China every facility is afforded and material supplied under the British flag, and sanctioned by Parliament itself, for wholesale slaughter. How long will an enlightened and Christian nation continue to farm and grow a means of vice, with the proceeds of which, even when in her possession, a benighted and pagan nation disdains to replenish her treasury, being drawn from the ruin and misery of her people? Where is the consistency or humanity of a nation supporting armed vessels on the coast of Africa to intercept and rescue a few hundreds of her sons from a foreign bondage, when, at the same time, she is forging chains to hold millions on the coast of China in a far more hopeless bondage? And what must the world think of the religion of a nation that consecrates churches, ordains ministers of the gospel, and sends abroad missionaries of the cross, while, in the mean time, it encourages and upholds a vice which is daily inflicting misery and death upon more than four millions of heathen? And what must be the verdict of future generations, as they peruse the history of these wrongs and outrages? Will not the page of history, which now records £20,000,000 as consecrated on the altar of humanity to emancipate 800,000 slaves, lose all its splendour and become positively odious, when it shall be known that this very money was obtained from the proceeds of a contraband traffic on the shores of a weak and defenceless heathen empire, at the sacrifice, too, of millions upon millions of lives?"