The Slave Trade

Domestic and Foreign

Why It Exists, and How it May Be Extinguished

--------------By H.C. Carey Author of Principles of Political Economy, The Past, The Present, and The Future, Etc Etc. ---------------

Philadelphia Henry Carey Baird Industrial Publisher No. 406 Walnut Street 1867

Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1853, by H.C. Carey, In the Clerks Office of the District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania --------------------------------------------Stereotyped by L. Johnson and Co. Philadelphia Digital Edition Prepared by Gary Edwards In Australia 24th July, 2006

Preface
The subject discussed in the following pages is one of great importance, and especially to the people of this country. The views presented for consideration, both as regards the cause of evil and the mode of cure; but it does not follow necessarily that they are not correct, - as the reader may readily satisfy himself by reflecting upon the fact, that there is scarcely an opinion he now holds, that has not, and at no very distant period, been deemed quite as heretical as any here advanced. In reflecting upon them, and upon the facts by which they are supported, he is requested to bear in mind that the latter are, with very few exceptions, drawn from writers holding views directly opposed to those of the author of this volume; and not therefore to be suspected of any exaggeration of the injurious effects of the system here treated as leading to slavery, or

the beneficial ones resulting from that here described as tending to establish perfect and universal freedom of thought, speech, action and trade. Philadelphia, March, 1853.

Contents
Chapter

I. II. III. IV. V. VI. VII. VIII. IX. X. XI. XII. XIII. XIV. XV. XVI. XVII. XVIII. XIX. XX. XXI.

The Wide Extent of Slavery Of Slavery in the British Colonies Of Slavery in the United States Of Emancipation in the British Colonies How Man Passes From Poverty and Slavery Toward Wealth and Freedom. How Wealth Tends to Increase. How Labour Acquires Value and man Becomes Free How Man Passes From Wealth and Freedom Towards Poverty and Slavery How Slavery Grew, and How it is Now Maintained, in the West Indies. How Slavery Grew and is Now maintained in the United States. How Slavery Grows in Portugal and Turkey How Slavery Grows in India. How Slavery Grows in Ireland and Scotland. How Slavery Grows in England. How Can Slavery be Extinguished? How Freedom Grew in Northern Germany. How Freedom Grows in Russia. How Freedom Grows in Denmark. How Freedom Grows in Spain and Belgium. Of the Duty of the People of the United States. Of the Duty of the People of England.

Page 5 8 15 21 35 43 52 62 74 95 117 130 174 209 294 308 326 340 350 363 396

The Slave Trade

Domestic and Foreign
--------------------

Chapter I.

The Wide Extent of Slavery

Slavery still exists throughout a large portion of what we are accustomed to regard as the civilized world. In some countries, men are forced to take the chance of a lottery for the determination of the question whether they shall or shall not be transported to distant and unhealthy countries, there most probably to perish, leaving behind them impoverished mothers and sisters to lament their fate. In others, they are seized on the highway and sent to sea for long terms of years, while parents, wives, and sisters, who had been dependent on their exertions, are left to perish of starvation, or driven to vice or crime to procure the means of support. In a third class, men, their wives, and children, are driven from their homes to perish in the road, or to endure the slavery of dependence on public charity until pestilence shall Bend them to their graves, and thus clear the way for a fresh supply of others like themselves. In a fourth, we see men driven to selling themselves for long periods at hard labour in distant countries, deprived of the society of parents, relatives, or friends. In a fifth, men, women, and children are exposed to sale, and wives are separated from husbands, while children are separated from parents. In some, white men, and, in others, black men, are subjected to the lash, and to other of the severest and most degrading punishments. In some places men are deemed valuable, and they are well fed and clothed. [begin page 6] In others, man is regarded as "a drug" and population as "a nuisance" and Christian men are warned that their duty to God and to society requires that they should permit their fellow-creatures to suffer every privation and distress, short of "absolute, death," with a view to prevent the increase of numbers. Among these various classes of slaves, none have recently attracted so much attention as those of the negro race; and it is in reference to that race in this country that the following paper has recently been circulated throughout England:The affectionate and Christian Address of many thousands of the Women of England to their Sisters, the Women of the United States of America: "A common origin, a common faith, and, we sincerely believe, a common cause, urge us at the present moment to address you on the subject of that system of negro slavery which still prevails so extensively, and, even under kindly-disposed masters, with such frightful results, in many of the vast regions of the Western World. We will not dwell on the ordinary topics - on the progress of civilization; on the advance of freedom everywhere; on the rights and requirements of the nineteenth century; - but we appeal to you very seriously to reflect, and to ask counsel of God, how far such a state of things is in accordance with His holy word, the inalienable rights of immortal souls, and the pure and merciful spirit of the Christian religion. "We do not shut our eyes to the difficulties, nay, the dangers, that might beset the immediate abolition of that long-established system: we see and admit the necessity of preparation for so great an event. But, in speaking of indispensable preliminaries, we cannot be silent on those laws of your country which (in direct contravention of God's own law, instituted in the time of man's innocency) deny, in effect, to the slave, the

sanctity of marriage, with all its joys, rights, and obligations; which separates, at the will of the master, the wife from the husband and the children from the parents. Nor can we be silent on that awful system which, either by statute or by custom, interdicts to any race of man, or any portion of the human family, education in the truths of the gospel and the ordinances of Christianity. A remedy applied to these two evils alone would commence the amelioration of their sad condition. We appeal, then, to you as sisters, as wives, and as mothers, to raise your voices to your fellow-citizens and your prayers to God, for the removal of this affliction from the Christian world. We do not say these things in a spirit of, selfcomplacency, as though our nation were free from the guilt it perceives in others. We acknowledge with grief and shame our heavy share in this great sin. We acknowledge that our forefathers introduced, nay, compelled the adoption of slavery in those mighty colonies. We humbly confess it before Almighty God. And it is because [begin page 7] we so deeply feel, and so unfeignedly avow our own complicity, that we now venture to implore your aid to wipe away our common crime and our common dishonour." We have here a movement that cannot fail to be productive of much good. It was time that the various nations of the world should have their attention called to the existence of slavery within their borders, and to the manifold evils of which it was the parent; and it was in the highest degree proper that woman should take the lead in doing it, as it is her sex that always suffers most in that condition of things wherein might triumphs over right, and which we are accustomed to define as a state of slavery. How shall slavery be abolished? This is the great question of our day. But a few years since it was answered in England by an order for the immediate emancipation of the black people held to slavery in her colonies; and it is often urged that we should follow her example. Before doing this, however, it would appear to be proper to examine into the past history and present situation of the negro race in the two countries, with a view to determine how far experience would warrant the belief that the course thus urged upon us would be likely to produce improvement in the condition of the objects of our sympathy. Should the result of such an examination be to prove that the cause of freedom has been advanced by the measures there pursued, our duty to our fellowmen would require that we should follow in the same direction, at whatever loss or inconvenience to ourselves. Should it, however, prove that the condition of the poor negro has been impaired and not improved, it will then become proper to enquire what have been in past times the circumstances under which men have become more free, with a view to ascertain wherein lies the deficiency, and why it is that freedom now so obviously declines in various and important portions of the earth. These things ascertained, it may be that there will be little difficulty in determining what are the measures now needed for enabling all men, black, white, and brown, to obtain for themselves, and profitably to all, the exercise of the rights of freemen. To adopt this course will be to follow in that of the skilful physician, who always determines within himself the cause of fever before he prescribes the remedy. [begin page 8]

Chapter II. Of Slavery in the British Colonies.

At the date of the surrender of Jamaica to the British arms, in 1655, the slaves, who were few in number, generally escaped to the mountains, whence they kept up a war of depredation, until at length an accommodation was effected in 1734, the terms of which were not, however, complied with by the whites - the consequences of which will be shown hereafter. Throughout the whole period their numbers were kept up by the desertion of other slaves, and to this cause must, no doubt, be attributed much of the bitterness with which the subsequent war was waged. In 1658, the slave population of the island was 1,400. By 1670 it had reached 8,000, 1 and in 1673, 9,504. From that date we have no account until 1734, when it was 86,546, giving an increase in sixty-one years of 77,000. It was in 1673 that the sugarculture was commenced; and as profitable employment was thus found for labour, there can be little doubt that the number had increased regularly and steadily, and that the following estimate must approach tolerably near the truth:Say 1702, 36,000; increase in 29 years, 26,500 1734, 77,000; 32 , 41,000

In 1775, the total number of slaves and other coloured persons on the island, was And if we now deduct from this the number in 1702, say We obtain, as the increase of 73 years. In that period the importations amounted to And the exportations to Leaving, as retained in the island [begin page 9] or about two and two-fifths persons for one that then remained alive. From 1783 to 1787, the number imported was 47,485, and 3 the number exported 14,541; showing an increase in five years of nearly 33,000, or 6,600 per annum; and by a report of the Inspector-General, it was shown that the number retained from 1778 to 1787, averaged 5345 per annum. Taking the thirteen years, 1775-1787, at that rate, we obtain nearly From 1789 to 1791, the excess of import was 32,289, or 10,763 per annum; and if we take the four years, 17881791, at the same rate, we obtain, as the total number retained in that period

194,614 36,000 158,614 497,736 137,114 2 360,622

70,000

43,000 113,000

In 1791, a committee of the House of Assembly made a report on the number of the slaves, by which it was made to be 250,000; and if to this be added the free negroes,
1 2 3

[8/*] Edwards' West Indies, vol. i. p. 255. [8/] Macpherson's Annals of Commerce, vol. iii. 575. [9/*] Macpherson's Annals of Commerce, vol. iv. 155.

amounting to 10,000, we obtain, as the total number, 260,000, - showing an increase, in fifteen years, of 65,386 - or nearly 48,000 less than the number that had been imported. We have now ascertained an import, in 89 years, of 473,000, with an increase of numbers amounting to only 224,000; thus establishing the fact that more than half of the whole import had perished under the treatment to which they had been subjected. Why it had been so may be gathered from the following extract, by which it is shown that the system there and then pursued corresponds nearly with that of Cuba at the present time. The advocates of the slave trade insisted that it was impossible to keep up the stock of negroes, without continual importations from Africa. It is, indeed, very evident, that as long as importation is continued, and two-thirds of the slaves imported are men, the succeeding generation, in the most favourable circumstances, cannot be more numerous than if there had been only half as many men; or, in other words, at least half the men may be said, with respect to population, to die without posterity."-Macpherson, vol. iv. 148. In 1792, a committee of the Jamaica House of Assembly re- [begin page 10] ported that "the abolition of the slave trade" must be followed by the "total ruin and depopulation of the island." " Suppose," said they, "A planter settling with a gang of 100 African slaves, all bought in the prime of life. Out of this gang he will be able at first to put to work, on an average, from 80 to 90 labourers. The committee will further suppose that they increase in number; yet, in the course of twenty years, this gang will be so far reduced, in point of strength, that he will not be able to work more than 30 to 40. It will therefore require a-supply of 50 new negroes to keep up his estate, and that not owing to cruelty, or want of good management on his part; on the contrary, the more humane he is, the greater the number of old people and young he will have on his estate." - Macpherson, iv. 256. In reference to this extraordinary reasoning, Macpherson says very correctly "With submission, it may be asked if people become superannuated in twenty years after being in the prime of life; and if the children of all these superannuated people are in a state of infancy? If one-half of these slaves are women, (as they ought to be, if the planter looks to futurity,) will not those fifty women, in twenty years, have, besides younger children, at least one hundred grown up to young men and women, capable of partaking the labour of their parents, and replacing the loss by superannuation or death, - as has been the case with the working people in all other parts of the world, from the creation to this day?" To this question there can be but one reply: Man .has always increased in numbers where he has been well fed, well clothed, and reasonably worked; and wherever his numbers have decreased, it has been because of a deficiency of food and clothing and an excess of work. It was at this period that the Maroon war was again in full activity, and so continued until 1796, when it was terminated by the employment of bloodhounds to track the fugitives, who finally surrendered, and were transported to Lower Canada, whence the, were soon after sent to Sierra Leone. From 1792 to 1799, the net import was 74,741; and if it continued at the same rate to 1808, the date of the abolition of the trade, the number imported in eighteen years would be nearly 180,000; and yet the number of slaves increased, in that period from

250,000 to only 323,827 - being an annual average increase of about 4,500, and exhibiting a loss of fifty percent. [begin page 11] In the thirty-four years, 1775-1808, the number of negroes added to the population of the island, by importation, would seem to have been more than 260,000, and within about 50,000 of the number that, a quarter of a century later, was emancipated. In 1817, nine years after importation had been declared illegal, the number is stated at 346,150; from which it would appear that the trade must have been in some measure continued up to that date, as there is no instance on record of any natural increase in any of the Islands, under any circumstances. It is indeed quite clear that no such increase has taken place; for had it once commenced, it would have continued, which was not the case, as will be seen by the following figures:In 1817, the number was, as we see 346,150. In 1820, it was only 342,382; and if to this we add the manumissions for the same period, (1016,) we have a net loss of 2,752. In 1826, they had declined in numbers to 331,119, to which must be added 1,848 manumissions - showing a loss, in six years, of 9415, or nearly three per cent. The number shown by the last registration, 1833, was only 311,692; and if to this we add 2,000 that had been manumitted, we shall have a loss, in seven years, of 19,275, or more than five percent. In sixteen years, there had been a diminution of ten percent, one-fifth of which may be attributed to manumission; and thus is it clearly established that in 1830, as in 1792, a large annual importation would have been required, merely to maintain the number of the population. That the condition of the negroes was in a course of deterioration in this period, is clearly shown by the fact that the proportion of births to deaths was in a steady course of diminution, as is here shown:From 1817 to 1820, were registered 25,104 deaths, 24,348 births. " 1823 to 1826, 25,171 23,026 " 1826 to 1829, 25,137 21,728 The destruction of life was thus proceeding with constantly acceler- [begin page 12] rating rapidity; and a continuance of the system, as it then existed, must have witnessed the total annihilation of the negro race within half a century. Viewing these facts, not a doubt can, I think, be entertained that the number of negroes imported into the island and retained for its consumption was more than double the number that existed there in 1817, and could scarcely have been less than 750,000, and certainly, at the most moderate estimate, not less than 700,000. If to these we were to add the children that must have been born on the island in the long period of 178 years, and then to reflect that all who remained for emancipation amounted to only 311,000, we should find ourselves forced to the conclusion that slavery was here attended with a destruction of life almost without a parallel in the history of any civilized nation. With a view to show that Jamaica cannot be regarded as an un favourable specimen of the system, the movement of population in other colonies will now be given.
4

[11/*] Martin's Colonial Library, West Indies, vol. i. 90.

In 1764, the slave population of St. Vincents was 7,414. In 1787, twenty-three years after, it was 11,853, having increased 4,439; whereas, in four only of those years, 5 1784-87, the net import of negroes had been no less than 6,100. In 1805, the number was 16,500, the increase having been 4,647; whereas the net import in three only, out of eighteen years, had been 1,937. What was the cause of this, may be seen by the comparative view of deaths, and their compensation by births, at a later period:Year 1822 1825 1828 1831 Deaths 4,205 2,106 2,020 2,266 Births 2,656 1,852 1,829 1,781

The births, it will be observed, steadily diminished in number. At the peace of 1763, Dominica contained 6000 slaves. The net amount of importation, 6 in four years, 1784 to 1787, was 23,221; and yet the total population in 1788 was but 14,967. Here we have a waste of life so far exceeding that of Jamaica that [begin page 13] we might almost feel ourselves called upon to allow five imported for everyone remaining on the island. Forty-four years afterwards, in 1832, the slave emancipation returns gave 14,834 as remaining out of the vast number that had been imported. The losses by and death and the gains by births, for a part of the period preceding emancipation, are thus given:Deaths 1,748 1,527 1,493
7

1817 to 1820 1820 to 1823 1823 to 1826

Births 1,433 1,491 1,309

If we look to British Guiana, we find the same results.

In 1820, Demerara and Essequibo had a slave population of 77,376 By 1826, it had fallen to 71,382 And by 1832, it had still further fallen to 65,517 The deaths and births of this colony exhibit a waste of life that would be deemed almost incredible, had not the facts been carefully registered at the moment:Deaths 7,140 7,188 7,634 5,731 7,016 Births 4,868 4,512 4,494 4,689 4,086

1817 to 1820 1820 to 1828 1823 to 1826 1826 to 1829 1829 to 1882

We have here a decrease, in fifteen years, of fifteen percent, or 12,000 out of 77,000. Each successive period, with a single exception presents a diminished number of births, while the average of deaths in the last three periods is almost the same as in the first one.
5 6 7

[12/*] Macpherson, vol. iv. 155. [12/] Ibid. [13/*] Montgomery's West Indies, vol. ii. 114.

Barbadoes had, in 1753, a slave population of 69,870. In 1817, sixty-four years after, although importation appears to have been regularly continued on a small scale, it amounted to only 77,493. In this case, the slaves appear to have been better treated than elsewhere, as here we find, m the later years, the births to have exceeded the deaths - the former having been, from 1826 to [begin page 14] 1829, 9250, while the latter were 6814. There were here, also, in the same period, 670 manumissions. In Trinidad, out of a total slave population of 23,537, the deaths, in twelve years, were no less than 8,774, while the births were only 6,001. Grenada surrendered to the British forces in 1762. Seven years after, in 1769, there were 35,000 negroes on the island. In 1778, notwithstanding the importation, they appear to have been reduced to 25,021. In the four years from 1784 to 1787, and the three from 1789 to 1791, (the only ones for which I can find an account,) the number imported and retained for consumption on 8 the island amounted to no less than 16,222; and yet the total number finally emancipated was but 23,471. The destruction of life appears here to have been enormous; and that it continued long after the abolition of the slave trade, is shown by the following comparison of births and deaths:Deaths 451 657 Births 902 1070

1817 1818

The total births from 1817 to 1831, were 10,144 in number, while the deaths were 12,764 - showing a loss of about ten percent. The number of slaves emancipated in 1834 in all the British possessions, was 780,993; and the net loss in the previous five years had been 38,811, or almost one percent per annum. The number emancipated in the West Indies was 660,000; and viewing the facts that have been placed before the reader, we can scarcely err much assuming that the number imported and retained for consumption in those colonies had amounted to 1,700,000. This would give about two and a half imported for one that was emancipated; and there is some reason to think that it might be placed as high as three for one, which would give a total import of almost two millions. While thus exhibiting the terrific waste of life In the British colo- [begin page 15] nies, it is not intended either to assert or to deny any voluntary severity on the part of the landholders. They were, themselves, as will hereafter be shown, to a great extent, the slaves of circumstances over which they had no control; and it cannot be doubted that much, very much, of the responsibility, must rest on other shoulders.

[14/*] Macpherson, vol. iv. 155, 228.

Chapter III.

Of Slavery in the United States.

In the North American provinces, now the United States, negro slavery existed from a very early period, but on a very limited scale, as the demand for slaves was mainly supplied from England. The exports of the colonies were bulky, and the whites could be imported as return cargo; whereas the blacks would have required a voyage to the coast of Africa, with which little trade was maintained. The export from England ceased after the revolution of 1688, and thenceforward negro slaves were somewhat more freely imported; yet the trade appears to have been so small as scarcely to have attracted notice. The only information on the subject furnished by Macpherson in his Annals of Commerce is that, in the eight months ending July 12, 1753, the negroes imported into Charleston, S.C., were 511 in number; and that in the year 1765-66, the value of negroes imported from Africa into Georgia was 14,820 - and this, if they be valued at only 10 each, would give only 1,482. From 1783 to 1787, the number exported from an the West India Islands to this country was 1392 9 - being an average of less than 300 per annum; and there is little reason for believing that this number was increased by any import direct from Africa. The British West Indies were then the 10 entrepot of the trade, and thence they were supplied to the other islands [begin page 16] and the settlements on the Main; and had the demand for this country been considerable, it cannot be doubted that a larger portion of the thousands then annually exported would have been sent in this direction. Under these circumstances, the only mode of arriving at the history of slavery prior to the first census, in 1790, appears to be to commence at that date and go forward, and afterwards employ the information so obtained in endeavouring to elucidate the operations of the previous period. The number of negroes, free and enslaved, at that date, was 757,263 And at the second census, in 1801, it was 1,001,436 showing an increase of almost thirty-three percent. How much of this, however, was due to importation, we have now to inquire. The only two States that then tolerated the import of slaves were South Carolina and Georgia, the joint black population of which, in 1790, was whereas, in 1800, it had risen to . Increase In the same period the white population increased 104,762, requiring an immigration from the Northern slave States to the extent of not less than 45,000, even allowing more than thirty percent for the natural increase by births. Admitting, now, that for every family of five free persons there came one slave, this would account for . And if we take the natural increase of the slave population at only twentyfive percent, we have further Making a total from domestic sources of And leaving, for the import from abroad .

136,358 205,555 69,197

9,000 34,000 43,000 26,197

9 10

[15/*] Macpherson, vol. iv. 155. [15/] The export to the foreign West Indies, from 1783 to 1787, is given by Macpherson at nearly 20,000.

Deducting these from the total number added; we obtain, for the natural increase, about 29 percent. Macpherson, treating of this period, says"That importation is not necessary for keeping up the stock is proved by the example of North America - a country less congenial to the constitution of the negro than the West Indies - where, notwithstanding the destruction and desertion of the slaves occasioned by the [begin page 17] war, the number of negroes, though perhaps not of slaves, has greatly increased - because, since the war they have imported very few, and of late years none at all, except in the Southern States." - Annals, vol. iv. 150. The number of vessels employed in the slave trade, in 1795, is stated to have been twenty, all of them small; and the number of slaves to be carried was limited to one for each ton of their capacity. From 1800 to 1810, the increase was 378,374, of which nearly 30,000 were found in Louisiana at her incorporation into the Union, leaving about 350,000 to come from other sources; being an increase of 35 percent. In this period the increase of Georgia and South Carolina, the two importing States, was only 96,000, while that of the white population was 129,073, carrying with them perhaps 25,000. If to this be added the natural increase at the rate of 25 percent, we obtain about 75,000, leaving only 21,000 for importation. It is probable, however, that it was somewhat larger, and that it might be safe to estimate it at the same amount as in the previous period, making a total of about 52,000 in the twenty years. Deducting 26,000 from the 350,000, we obtain 324,000 as the addition from domestic sources, which would be about 32 percent on the population of 1800. This may be too high; and yet the growth of the following decennial period - one of war and great commercial and agricultural distress - was almost thirty percent. In 1810, the number had been 1,379,800. In 1820 it was 1,779,885; increase 30 percent. " 1830 " 2,328,642; " 30.8 " " 1840 " 2,873,703; " 24 " * 11 " 1850 " 3,591,000; " 25 " * Having thus ascertained, as far as possible, the ratio of increase subsequent to the first census, we may now proceed to an examination of the course of affairs in the period which had preceded it. In 1714, the number of blacks was 58,850, and they were dispersed throughout the provinces from New Hampshire to Carolina, engaged, to a large extent, in labours similar to those in which were engaged the whites by whom they were owned. Onehalf of [begin page 18] them may have been imported. Starting from this point, and taking the natural increase of each decennial period at 25 percent, as shown to have since been the case, we should obtain, for 1750, about 130,000. The actual quantity was 220,000; and the difference, 90,000, may be set down to importation. Adding, now, 25 percent to 220,000, we obtain, for 1760, 275,000; whereas the actual number was 310,000, which would give 35,000 for importation. Pursuing the same course with the following periods, we obtain the following results:Actual Number 310,000 Natural increase 77,500 Actual Increase 152,000

Years 1760
11

Importations 74,500

[17/*] The causes of this diminution will be exhibited in a future chapter.

1770 1780 1790

462,000 582,000 752,000

115,500 140,500

120,000 170,000

34,000

number given by first census

For a large portion of the period from 1770 to 1790, there must have been a very small importation; for during nearly half the time the trade with foreign countries was almost altogether suspended by the war of the revolution. If we add together the quantities thus obtained, we shall obtain a tolerable approximation to the number of slaves imported into the territory now constituting the Union, as follows:Prior to 1714 1715 to 1750 1751 to 1760 1761 to 1770 1771 to 1790 And if we now estimate the import subsequent to 1790 at even We obtain as the total number .. 30,000 90,000 35,000 74,500 34,000 70,000 333,500

The number now in the Union exceeds 3,800,000; and even if we estimate the import as high as 380,000, we then have more than ten for one; whereas in the British Islands we can find not more than two for five, and perhaps even not more than one for three. Had the slaves of the latter been as well fed, clothed, [begin page 19] lodged, and otherwise cared for, as were those of these provinces and States, their numbers would have reached seventeen or twenty millions. Had the blacks among the people of these States experienced the same treatment as did their fellows of the islands, we should now have among us less than one hundred and fifty thousand slaves. The prices paid by the British Government averaged 25 per head. Had the number in the colonies been allowed to increase as they increased here, it would have required, even at that price, the enormous sum of 500,000,000 Had the numbers in this country been reduced by the same process there practised, emancipation could now be carried out at cost of less than 4,000,000. To emancipate them now, paying for them at the same rate, would require nearly I00,000,000 If or almost five hundred millions of dollars. The same course, however, that has increased their numbers, has largely increased their value to the owners and to themselves. Men, when well fed, well clothed, well lodged, and otherwise well cared for, always increase rapidly in numbers, and in such cases labour always increases rapidly in value; and hence it is that the average price of the negro slave of this country is probably four times greater than that which the planters of the West Indies were compelled to receive. Such being the case, it would follow that to pay for their full value would require probably four hundred millions of pounds sterling, or nearly two thousand millions of dollars. It will now be seen that the course of things in the two countries has been entirely different. In the islands the slave trade had been cherished as a source of profit. Here, it had been made the subject of repeated protests on the part of several of the provinces, and had been by all but two prohibited at the earliest moment at which they possessed the power so to do. In the islands it was held to be cheaper to buy slaves than to raise them, and the sexes were out of all proportion to each other. Here, importation was small, and almost the whole increase, large as it has been, has

resulted from the excess of births over deaths. In the islands, the [begin page 20] slave was generally a barbarian, speaking an unknown tongue, and working with men like himself, in gangs, with scarcely a chance for improvement. Here, he was generally a being born on the soil, speaking the same language with his owner, and often working in the field with him, with many advantages for the development of his faculties. In the islands, the land-owners clung to slavery as the sheet-anchor of their hopes. Here, on the contrary, slavery bad gradually been abolished in all the States north of Mason & Dixon's line, and Delaware, Maryland, Virginia, and Kentucky were all at the date of emancipation in the islands, preparing for the early adoption of measures looking to its entire abolition. In the islands, the connection with Africa had been cherished as a means of obtaining cheap labour, to be obtained by fomenting discord among the natives. Here, on the contrary, had originated a grand scheme for carrying civilization into the heart of Africa by mean of the gradual transplantation of some of the already civilized blacks. In the islands, it has been deemed desirable to carry out "the European policy," of preventing the Africans "from arriving at perfection" in the art of preparing their cotton, sugar, indigo, or other articles, "from a fear of interfering with established branches of commerce elsewhere." 12 Here, on the contrary, efforts had been made for disseminating among them the knowledge required for perfecting themselves in the modes of preparation and manufacture. In the islands, every thing looked toward the permanency of slavery. Here, every thing looked toward the gradual and gentle civilisation and emancipation of the negro throughout the world. In the islands, however, by a prompt measure forced on the people by a distant government, slavery was abolished, and the planters, or their representatives in England, received twenty millions of pounds sterling as compensation in full for the services of the few who remained in existence out of the large number that had been imported. Here, the planters are now urged to adopt for themselves measures of a similar kind. The whole course of proceeding in the two countries in reference to the negro having been so widely different, [begin page 21] there are, however, difficulties in the way that seem to be almost insuperable. The power to purchase the slaves of the British colonies was a consequence of the fact that their numbers had not on been permitted to increase. The difficulty of purchasing them here is great, because of their having been well fed, well clothed, and otherwise well provided for, and having therefore increased so rapidly. If, nevertheless, it can be shown that by abandoning the system under which the negro race has steadily increased in numbers and advanced towards civilization, and adopting that of a nation under whose rule there has been a steady decline of numbers, and but little, If any, tendency toward civilization, we shall benefit the race, it will become our duty to make the effort, however great may be the cost. With a view to ascertain how far duty may be regarded as calling upon us now to follow in the footsteps of that nation, it is proposed to examine into the working of the act by which the whole negro population of the British colonies was, almost at once and without preparation, invested with the right to at determine for whom they would work and what should be their or wages - or were, in other words, declared to be free.

12

[20/*] Mcpherson, vol. iv. 144.

Chapter IV
Of Emancipation in the British Colonies.
The small number of slaves held-in the British colonies and a their small value having enabled the people of England to discharge them from all compulsory labour, on payment to their owners of a portion of that small value, the question now arises Has that measure tended to the advancement of the negro in numbers, wealth, happiness, or civilization?" Reasoning a priori, we should be led to doubt if such could be its results. The savage is indolent; he labours only when compelled to do so. He may shoot the deer, but he leaves to his squaw the labour of carrying it home and preparing it for his supper. Look at him where we may, we find him idle and improvident. If [begin page 22] he kill more game than is required for the day, it is allowed to spoil. If he obtain money, it is wasted in the purchase of rum. He is a gambler, and always ready to stake whatever he possesses, even to life itself, on the chances of the die. Not only does he not accumulate any thing for the future, but he wastes and destroys around him; and therefore it is that we find him steadily declining in numbers and in condition. That the negroes of the islands and the Main had been kept nearly in a state of barbarism, was a necessary consequence of the fact that constant importation of barbarians had been required to replace those who died of exhaustion from excess of labour, or from poverty of food, clothing, and lodging. Their condition generally had been similar to that now observed on many of the estates in Cuba. Five men to one woman is stated by Macpherson to have been the relation of the numbers of the sexes on many of the estates; and under such circumstances any advance toward civilization must have been impossible. Up to the day of emancipation these men had been forced to work, and the great object of desire had been exemption from labour. Under such circumstances, it was greatly to be feared that if suddenly emancipated from control, they would, like children, be disposed to make a little labour answer their purpose, giving the rest of their time to idleness; and the direct effect and intent of the measure adopted was to give them the power to determine for themselves for whom they would work, and how much work they would agree to give for any give amount of compensation. The larger the wages for a day the more days they could spend in idleness, and they could not but know that the planters were entirely in their power. If they idle for a week, their late master lost his crop. If they worked six hours out of twenty-four, not only did capital employed in the steam-engine fail to pay interest, but the planter lost his market for his sugar. Emancipation, under such circumstances, change them at once from the condition of absolute slaves to absolute masters of the fortunes of those whom they had lately serve. They could live on the produce of little labour, and the less they were disposed to work the greater must become the necessities of [begin page 23] the planters, and the greater their own power to determine the conditions upon which they would work. The harmony of the universe is the result of a contest between equal and opposing powers. The earth is attracted to the sun and from the sun; and were either of these forces to be diminished or destroyed, chaos would be the inevitable result. So is it everywhere on the earth. The apple falls toward the centre of the earth, but in its passage it encounters resistance; and the harmony of every thing we see around us is dependent on the equal balance of these opposing forces. So is it among men. The man who has food to sell wishes to have a high price for it, whereas he who needs to buy desires to have it cheaply; and the selling price depends on the relation between

the necessity to buy on one hand, or to sell on the other. Diminish suddenly and largely the competition for the purchase of food, and the farmer becomes the prey of the mechanic. Increase it suddenly and, largely, and the mechanic becomes the prey of the farmer; whereas a gradual and gentle increase in the demand for food is accompanied by a similar increase in the demand for the products of the loom and the anvil, and both farmer and mechanic prosper together, because the competition for purchase and the competition for sale grow together and balance each other. So, too, with labour. Wages are dependent upon the relation between the number of those who desire to buy and to sell labour. Diminish suddenly the number of those who desire to sell it, and the farmer may be ruined. Diminish suddenly the number of those who desire to buy it, and the labourer may become the slave of the farmer. For almost two centuries, men possessed of capital and desirous to purchase labour had been induced to transfer it to the colonies, and the government secured to them the right to obtain labourers on certain specified terms - such terms as made the labourer a mere instrument in the hands of the capitalist, and prevented him from obtaining any of those habits or feelings calculated to inspire him with a love for labour. At once, all control over him was withdrawn, and the seller of labour was converted into the master of him who was thus, by the action of the government, placed in such a situation that he must buy it or be ruined. Here was a disturb- [begin page 24] ance of the order of things that had existed, almost as great as that which occurs when the powerful steam, bursting the boiler in which it is enclosed, ceases to be the servant and becomes the master of man; and it would have required but little foresight to enable those who had the government of this machine to see that it must prove almost as ruinous. How it operated in Southern Africa, where the slave was most at home, is shown by the 13 following extracts from the work of recent traveller and settler in that colony:"The chain was broken, and the people of England hurried to their heart's content. And the slave! What, in the meanwhile, became of him? If he was young and vicious, away he went - he was his own master. He was at liberty to walk to and fro upon the earth, 'seeking whom he might devour.' He was free: he had the world before him where to choose, though, squatted beside the Kaffir's fire, probably thinking his meal of parched corn but poor stuff after the palata dishes he had been permitted to cook for himself in the Boer's tradesman's kitchen. But he was fain to like it - he could get nothing else - and this was earned at the expense of his own soul; for it was given him as an inducement to teach the Kaffir the easiest mode plundering his ancient master. If inclined to work, he had no certain prospect of employment; and the Dutch, losing so much by the sudden Emancipation Act, resolved on working for themselves. So the virtuous, redeemed slave, had too many temptations to remain virtuous; he was hungry - so was his wife - so were his children; and he must feed them. How? No matter." These people will work at times, but they must have wages that will enable them to play much of their time. "When we read of the distress of our own country, and of wretched earnings of our mechanics, we are disgusted at the idea these same Fingoes striking work (as Coolies) at Waterloo Bay, being dissatisfied with the pay of 2s. a day. As their services are necessary in landing cargo, their
13

[24/*] The Cape and the Kaffirs, by Harriet Ward London, 1852.

demand of 3s. a day has been acceded to, they have consented to work when it suits them! - for they take occasional holidays, for dancing and eating. At Algoa Bay, the Fingoes are often paid 6s. a day for working as Coolies." These men have all the habits of the savage. They leave to women the tilling of the ground, the hoeing of the corn, the carrying of water, and all the heavy work; and to the boys and old men the tending of the cattle, while they themselves spend the year in hunting, dancing, eating, and robbing their neighbours [begin page 25] except when occasionally they deem it expedient to do a few days' work at such wages as they may think proper to dictate. How it has operated in the West Indies we may next inquire, and with that view will take Jamaica, one of the oldest, and, until recently, one of the most prosperous of the colonies. That island embraces about four millions of acres of land, " of which," says Bigelow,"There are not, probably, any ten lying adjacent to each other which are not susceptible of the highest cultivation, while not more than 500,000 acres 14 have ever been reclaimed, or even appropriated." It is traversed by over two hundred streams, forty of which are twenty-five to one hundred feet in breadth; and, it deserves to be mentioned, furnish water-power sufficient to manufacture everything produced by the soil, or consumed by the inhabitants. Far less expense than is usually incurred on the same surface in the United States for manure, would irrigate all the dry lands of the island, and enable them to defy the most protracted droughts 15 by which it is ever visited." The productiveness of the soil is immense. Fruits of every variety abound; vegetables of every kind for the table, and Indian corn, grow abundantly. The island is rich in dyestuffs, drugs, and spices of the greatest value; and the forests furnish the most celebrated woods in the greatest variety. In addition to this, it possesses copper-mines inferior to none in the world, and coal will probably be mined extensively before many years. "Such," says Mr. Bigelow,"Are some of the natural resources of this dilapidated and poverty-stricken country. Capable as it is of producing almost every thing, and actually producing nothing which might not become a staple with proper application of capital and skill, its inhabitants are miserably poor, and daily sinking deeper and deeper into the utter helplessness abject want"Magnus inter opes inops." Shipping has deserted her ports; her magnificent plantations of sugar and coffee are running to weeds; her private dwellings are falling into decay; the comforts and luxuries which belong to industrial prosperity have been cut off, one by one, from her inhabitants; and the day, I think, is at hand when there will be, none left to represent the wealth, intelligence, and hospitality for which the Jamaica planter was once so distinguished."

14 15

[25/*] Notes on Jamaica in 1850, p. 64. [25/] Ibid. 68.

"The cause of all this, say the planters, is that wages are too high [begin page 26] for the price of sugar. This Mr. Bigelow denies - not conceding that a shilling a day is high wages; but all the facts he adduces tend to show that the labourer gives very little labour for the money he receives; and that, as compared with the work done, wages are really far higher than in any part of the Union. Like the Fingo of Southern Africa, he can obtain from a little patch of land ail that is indispensably necessary for his subsistence, and he will do little more work than is needed for accomplishing that object. The consequence of this is that potatoes sell for six cents a pound, eggs from three to five cents each, milk at eighteen cents a quart, and corn-meal at twelve or fourteen dollars a barrel; and yet there are now more than a hundred thousand of these small proprietors, being almost one for every three people on the island. All cultivators, they yet produce little to sell, and the consequence of this is seen in the fact that the mass of the flour, rice, corn, peas, butter, lard, herrings, &c. needed for consumption requires to be imported, as well as all the lumber, although millions of acres of timber are to be found among the unappropriated lands of the island. It is impossible to read Mr. Bigelow's volume, without arriving at the conclusion that the freedom granted to the negro has had little effect except that of enabling him to live at the expense of the planter so long as any thing remained. Sixteen years of freedom did not appear to its author to have "advanced the dignity of labour or of the labouring classes one particle," while it had ruined the proprietors of the land; and thus great damage had been done to the one class without benefit of any kind to the other. From a statistical table published in August last, it appears, says the New York Herald, that since 1846 "The number of sugar-estates on the island that have been totally abandoned amounts to one hundred and sixty-eight, and the number partially abandoned to sixty-three; the value of which two hundred and thirty-one estates was assessed, in 1841, at 1,655,140, or nearly eight millions and a half of dollars. Within the same period, two hundred and twenty-three coffee-plantations have been totally, and twenty partially abandoned, the assessed value of which was, in 1841, 500,000, or two millions and a half of dollars; and of cattle-pen (grazing-farms,) one hundred and twenty-two have been totally, and ten partially abandoned, the value of which was a million and a half of dollars. The aggregate value of these six hundred and six estates [begin page 27] which have been thus ruined and abandoned in the island of Jamaica, within the last seven or eight years, amounted by the regular assessments, ten years since, to the sum of nearly two and a half millions of pounds sterling, or twelve and a half million of dollars." As a necessary consequence of this, "there is little heard of," says Dr. King, "but 16 ruin." " In many districts," he adds"The marks of decay abound. Neglected fields, crumbling houses, fragmentary fences, noiseless machinery - these are common sights, and soon become familiar to observation. I sometimes rode for miles in succession over fertile ground which used to be cultivated, and which is now lying waste. So rapidly has cultivation retrograded, and the wild luxuriance of nature replaced the conveniences of art, that parties still inhabiting these desolated districts, have sometimes, in the strong language of a speaker at Kingston, to seek about the bush to find the entrance into their houses!
16

[27/*] State and Prospects of Jamaica.

"The towns present a spectacle not less gloomy. A great part of Kingston was destroyed, some years ago, by an extensive conflagration: yet multitudes of the houses which escaped that visitation are standing empty, though the population is little, if at all diminished. The explanation is obvious. Persons who have nothing, and can no longer keep up their domestic establishments, take refuge in the abodes of others, where some means of subsistence are still left: and in the absence of any discernible trade or occupation, the lives of crowded thousands appear to be preserved from day to day by a species of miracle. The most busy thoroughfares of former times have now almost the quietude of a Sabbath." "The finest land in the world," says Mr. Bigelow, "may be had at any price, and almost for the asking." Labour, he adds, receives no compensation, and the product of labour does not seem to know how to find the way to market." Properties which were formerly valued at 40,000 would not now command 4000, others, after having been sold at six, eight, or ten percent of their former value, have been finally abandoned. The following is from a report made in 1849 and signed by various missionaries:"Missionary efforts in Jamaica are beset at the present time with many and great discouragements. Societies at home have withdrawn or diminished the amount of assistance afforded by them to chapels and schools throughout this island. The prostrate condition of its agriculture and commerce disables its own population from doing as much as formerly for maintaining the Worship of God and the tuition [begin page 28] of the young, and induces numbers of negro labourers to retire from estates which have been thrown up, to seek the means of subsistence in the mountains, where they are removed in general from moral training and superintendence. The consequences of this state of matters are very disastrous. Not a few missionaries and teachers often struggling with difficulties which they could not overcome, have returned to Europe, and others are preparing to follow them. Chapels and schools are abandoned, or they have passed into the charge of very incompetent instructors." - Quoted in King's Jamaica, p. 111. Population gradually diminishes, furnishing another evidence that the tendency of every thing is adverse to the progress of civilization. In 1841, the island contained a little short of 400,000 persons. In 1844, the census returns gave about 380,000; and a recent journal states that of those no less than forty thousand have in the last two years been carried off by cholera, and that small-pox, which has succeeded that disease, is now sweeping away thousands whom that disease had spared. Increase of crime it adds, keeps pace with the spread of misery throughout the island The following extracts from a Report of a Commission appointed in 1850 to inquire into the state and prosperity of Guiana are furnished by Lord Stanley in his second letter to Mr. Gladstone, [London, 1851.] Of Guiana generally they say"It would be but a melancholy task to dwell upon the misery and ruin which so alarming a change must have occasioned to the proprietary body; but your Commissioners feel themselves called upon to notice the effects which this wholesale abandonment of property has produced upon the colony at large. Where whole districts are fast relapsing into bush, and occasional patches of provisions around the huts of village settlers are all that remain

to tell of once flourishing estates, it is not to be wondered at that the most ordinary marks of civilization are rapidly disappearing, and that in many districts of the colony all travelling communication by land will soon become utterly impracticable.' "Of the Abary district "Your Commissioners find that the line of road is nearly impassable, and that a long succession of formerly cultivated estates presents now a series of pestilent swamps, overrun with bush, and productive malignant fevers.' "Nor are matters," says Lord Stanley, "much better farther south Proceeding still lower down, your Commissioners find that the public roads and bridges are in such a condition, that the few estates still remaining on the upper west bank of Mahaica Creek are completely [begin page 29] cut off in the very dry season; and that with regard to the whole district, unless something be done very shortly, travelling by land will entirely cease. In such a state of things it cannot be wondered at that the herdsman has a formidable enemy to encounter in the jaguar and other beasts of prey, and that the keeping of cattle is attended with considerable loss, from the depredations committed by these animals.' It may be worth noticing," continues Lord Stanley, "that this district now overrun with wild beasts of the forest, was formerly the very garden of the colony. The estates touched one another along the whole line of the road, leaving no interval of uncleared land. The east coast, which is next mentioned by the Commissioners, is better off'. Properties once of immense value had there been bought at nominal prices, and the one railroad of Guiana passing through that tract a comparatively industrious population, composed of former labourers on the line, enabled the planters still to work these to some profit. Even of this favoured spot, however, they report that it "feels most severely the want of continuous labour.' The Commissioners next visit the east bank of the Demerara river, thus described:Proceeding up the east bank of the river Demerary, the generally prevailing features of ruin and distress are everywhere perceptible. Roads and bridges almost impassable are fearfully significant exponents of the condition of the plantations which they traverse; and Canal No. 3, once covered with plantains and coffee, presents now a scene of almost rotal desolation.' "Crossing to the west side, they find prospects somewhat brighter: 'a few estates' are still 'keeping up a cultivation worthy of better times.' But this prosperous neighbourhood is not extensive, and the next picture presented to our notice is less agreeable:"Ascending the river still higher, your Commissioners learn that the district between Hobaboe Creek and 'Stricken Heuvel' contained, in 1829, eight sugar and five coffee and plantain estates, and now there remain but three in sugar and four partially cultivated with plantains by petty settlers: while the roads, with one or two exceptions, are in a state of utter abandonment. Here, as on the opposite bank of the river, hordes of squatters have located

themselves, who avoid all communication with Europeans, and have seemingly given themselves up altogether to the rude pleasures of a completely savage life.' "The west coast of Demerara - the only part of that country which still remains unvisited - is described as showing only a diminution of fifty percent upon its produce of sugar: and with this fact the evidence concludes as to one of the three sections into which the colony is divided. Does Demerara stand alone in its misfortune? Again hear the report; If the present state of the county of Demerary affords cause for deep apprehension, your Commissioners find that Essequebo has retrograded to a still more alarming extent. In fact, unless a large and speedy supply of labour be obtained to cultivate the deserted fields of [begin page 30] this once-flourishing district, there is great reason to fear that it will , relapse into total abandonment.' Describing another portion of the colony "They say of one district, 'unless a fresh supply of labour be very soon obtained, there is every reason to fear that It will become completely abandoned.' Of a second, 'speedy immigration alone can save this island from total ruin.' 'The prostrate condition of this once beautiful part of the coast,' are the words which begin another paragraph, describing another tract of country. Of a fourth, the proprietors on this coast seem to be keeping up a hopeless struggle against approaching ruin. Again, 'the once famous Arabian coast, so long the boast of the colony, presents now but a mournful picture of departed prosperity. Here were formerly situated some of the finest estates in the country, and a large resident body of proprietors lived in the district, and freely expended their incomes on the spot whence they derived them.' Once more, the lower part of the coast, after passing Devonshire Castle to the river Pomeroon, presents a scene of almost total desolation.' Such is Essequibo! "Berbice," says Lord Stanley, "has fared no better: its rural population amounts to 18,000. Of these, 12,000 have withdrawn from the estates, and mostly from the neighbourhood of the white man, to enjoy a savage freedom of ignorance and idleness, beyond the reach of example and sometimes of control. But, on the condition of the negro; I shall dwell more at length hereafter; at present it is the state of property with which I have to do. What are the districts which together form the county of Berbice? The Corentyne coast - the Canje Creek - East and West banks of the Berbice River - and the West coast, where, however, cotton was formerly the chief article produced. To each of these respectively the following passages, quoted in order, apply:"The abandoned plantations on this coast, which if capital and labour could be procured, might easily be made very productive, are either wholly deserted or else appropriated by hordes of squatters, who of course are unable to keep up at their own expense the public road and bridges, and consequently all communication by land between the Corentyne and New Amsterdam is nearly at an end. The roads are impassable for horses or carriages, while for foot-passengers, they are extremely dangerous. The
17 17

[30/*] The Corentyne.

number of villagers in this deserted region must be upward of 2,500, and as the country abounds with fish an game, they have no difficulty in making a subsistence; in fact, the Corentyne coast is fast relapsing into a state of nature.' " 'Canje Creek was formerly considered a flourishing district of the county, and numbered on its east bank seven sugar and three coffee estates, and on its west bank eight estates, of which two were in sugar and six in coffee, making a total of eighteen plantations. The coffee cultivation has long since been entirely abandoned, and of the sugar estates but eight still now remain. They are suffering severely for [begin page 31] want of labour, and being supported principally by African and Coolie immigrants, it is much to be feared that if the latter leave and claim their return passages to India, a great part of the district will become abandoned.' " 'Under present circumstances, so gloomy is the condition of affairs here, that the two gentlemen whom your Commissioners have examined with respect to this district, both concur in predicting "its slow but sure approximation to the condition in which civilized man first found it. "A district that in 1829, gave employment to 3,635 registered slaves, but at the present moment there are not more than 600 labourers at work on the few estates still in cultivation, although it is estimated there are upwards of 2,000 people idling in villages of their own. The roads are in many parts several feet under water, and perfect swamps; while in some places the bridges are wanting altogether. In fact, the whole district is fast becoming a total wilderness, with the exception of the one or two estates which yet continue to struggle on, and which are hardly accessible now but by water.' "Except in some of the best villages, they care not for back or front dams to keep off the water; their side-lines are disregarded, and consequently the drainage is gone; while in many instances the public road is so completely flooded that canoes have to be used as a means of transit. The Africans are unhappily following the example of the Creoles in this district, and buying land, on which they settle in contented idleness; and your Commissioners cannot view instances like these without the deepest alarm, for if this pernicious habit of squatting is allowed to extend to the immigrants also, there is no hope for the colony. Under these circumstances it is that the London Times furnishes its readers with the following paragraph, - and as that journal cannot be regarded as the opponent of the classes which have lately controlled the legislation of England, we may feel assured that its information is to be relied upon:"Our legislation has been dictated by the presumed necessities of the African slave. After the Emancipation Act, a large charge was assessed upon the colony in aid of civil and religious institutions for the benefit of the enfranchised negro, and it was hoped that those coloured subjects of the British Crown would soon be assimilated to their fellow-citizens. From all the information which has reached us, no less than from the visible probabilities of the case, we are constrained to believe that these hopes
18 19 20 20 19 18

[31/*] East bank of Berbice river. [31/] West ditto. [31/] West coast of Berbice.

have been falsified. The negro has not obtained with his freedom any habits of industry or morality. His independence is little better than that of an uncaptured brute. Having accepted none of the restraints of civilization, he is amenable to few of its necessities, [begin page 32] and the wants of his nature are so easily satisfied, that at the present rate of wages he is called upon for nothing but fitful or desultory exertion. The blacks, therefore, instead of becoming intelligent husbandmen, have become vagrants and squatters, and it is now apprehended that with the failure of cultivation in the island will come the failure of its resources for instructing or controlling its population. So imminent does this consummation appear, that memorials have been signed by classes of colonial society, hitherto standing aloof from politics, and not only the bench and the bar, but the bishop, clergy, and the ministers of all denominations in the island, without exception, have recorded their conviction that in the absence of timely relief, the religious and educational institutions of the island must be abandoned, and the masses of the population retrograde to barbarism!' The Prospective Review, (Nov. 1852,) seeing what has happened in the British colonies, and speaking of the possibility of a similar course of action on this side of the Atlantic, says"We have had experience enough in our own colonies, not to wish to see the experiment tried elsewhere on a larger scale. It is true that from some of the smaller islands, where there is a superabundance of negro population and no room for squatters, the export of sugar has not been diminished: it is true that in Jamaica and Demerara, the commercial distress is largely attributable to the folly of the planters - who doggedly refuse to accommodate themselves to the new state of things, and to entice the negroes from the back settlements by a promise of fair wages. But we have no reason to suppose that the whole tragi-comedy would not be reenacted in the Slave States of America, if slavery were summarily abolished by act of Congress tomorrow. Property among the plantations consists only of land and negroes: emancipate the negroes - and the planters have no longer any capital for the cultivation of the land. Put the case of compensation: though it be difficult to see whence it could come: there is every probability that the planters of Alabama, accustomed all their lives to get black labour for nothing, would be as unwilling to pay for it as their compeers in Jamaica: and there is plenty of unowned land on which the disbanded gangs might settle and no one question their right. It is allowed on all hands that the negroes as a race will not work longer than is necessary to supply the simplest comforts of life. It would be wonderful were it otherwise. A people have been degraded and ground down for a century and a half: systematically kept in ignorance for five generations of any needs and enjoyments beyond those of the savage: and then it is made matter of complaint that they will not apply themselves to labour for their higher comforts and more refined luxuries, of which they cannot know the value! The systematic degradation here referred to is probably quite true as regards the British Islands, where 660,000 were all that remained of almost two millions that had been imported; but it is quite a mistake to suppose it so in regard to this country, in which [begin page 33] there are now found ten persons for everyone ever imported, and all advancing by gradual steps toward civilization and freedom; and yet were the reviewer discoursing of the conduct of the Spanish settlers of Hispaniola, he could scarcely speak more disparagingly of them than he does in regard to a people that

alone has so treated the negro race as to enable it to increase in numbers, and improve in its physical, moral, and intellectual condition. Had he been more fully informed in relation to the proceedings in the British colonies, and in these colonies and states, he could scarcely have ventured to assert that "the responsibility of having degraded the African race rests upon the American people," - the only people among whom they have been improved. Nevertheless, it is right and proper to give due weight to all opinions in regard to the existence of an evil, and to all recommendations in regard to the mode of removal, let them come from what source they may; and the writer of the article from which this passage is taken is certainly animated by a somewhat more liberal and catholic spirit than is found animating many of his countrymen. That the English system in regard to the emancipation of the negro has proved a failure is now admitted even by those who most warmly advocated the measures that have been pursued. "There are many," says the London Times, "who think that, with proper regulations, and particularly with a system for the self-enfranchisement of slaves, we might have brought about the entire emancipation of the British West Indies, with much less injury to the property of the planter and to the character of the negro than have resulted from the Abolition Act. Perhaps," it continues, "the warning will not be lost on the Americans, who may see the necessity of putting things in train for the ultimate abolition of slavery, and thereby save the sudden shock which the abolitionists may one day bring on all the institutions of the Union and the whole fabric of American society." The Falmouth [Jamaica] Post, of December 12,1852, informs us that, even now, "in every parish of the island preparations are being made for the abandonment of properties that were once valuable, but on which cultivation can no longer be continued." [begin page 34] "In Trelawny," it continues, "many estates have been thrown up during the last two years, and the exportation to the United States of America, within a few months, of upward of 80,000 tons of copper, which was used for the manufacture of sugar and rum, is one of the 'signs of the times,' to which the attention of the legislature should be seriously directed, in providing for the future maintenance of our various institutions, both public and parochial. Unless the salaries of all official characters are reduced, it will be utterly impossible to carry on the government of the colony." Eighty thousand tons of machinery heretofore used in aid of labour, or nearly one ton for every four persons on the island, exported within a few months! The Bande Noire of France pulled down dwelling-houses and sold the materials, but as they left the machinery used by the labourers, their operations were less injurious than have been those of the negroes of Jamaica, the demand for whose labour must diminish with every step in the progress of the abandonment of land and the destruction of machinery. Under such circumstances we can feel little surprise at learning that every thing tends towards barbarism; nor is it extraordinary that a writer already quoted, and who is not to be suspected of any pro-slavery tendencies, puts the question, "Is it enough that they [the Americans] simply loose their chain and turn them adrift lower," as he is pleased to say, "than they found them?" 21 It is not enough. They need to be prepared for freedom. "Immediate emancipation," as he says, "solves only the simplest forms of the problem." The land-owner has been ruined and the labourer is fast relapsing into barbarism, and yet in face of this fact the land-owners of the Southern States are branded throughout the world as "tyrants" and "slave-breeders," because they will not follow in the same
21

[34/*] Prospective Review, Nov. 1852, 504.

direction. It is in face of this great fact that the people of the North are invited to join in a crusade against their brethren of the South because they still continue to hold slaves, and that the [begin page 35] men of the South are themselves so frequently urged to assent to immediate and unconditional emancipation. In all this there may be much philanthropy, but there is certainly much error, -- and with a view to determine where it lies, as well as to show what is the true road to emancipation, it is proposed to inquire what has been, in the various countries of the world, the course by which men have passed from poverty to wealth, from ignorance and barbarism to civilization, and from slavery to freedom. That done, we may next inquire for the causes now operating to prevent the emancipation of the negro of America and the occupant of "the sweater's den" in London; and if they can once be ascertained, it will be then easy to determine what are the measures needful to be adopted with a view to the establishment of freedom throughout the world.

Chapter V.
How Man Passes From Poverty and Slavery Toward Wealth and Freedom.
The first poor cultivator is surrounded by land unoccupied. The more of it at his command the poorer he is. Compelled to work alone, he is a slave to his necessities, and he can neither roll nor raise a log with which to build himself a house. He makes himself a hole in the ground, which serves in place of one. He cultivates the poor soil of the hills to obtain a little corn, with which to eke out the supply of food derived from snaring the game in his neighbourhood. His winter's supply is deposited in another hole, liable to injury from the water which filters through the light soil into which alone he can penetrate. He is in hourly danger of starvation. At length, however, his sons grow up. They combine their exertions with his, and now obtain something like an axe and a spade. They can sink deeper into the soil; and can cut logs, and build something like a house. They obtain [begin page 36] more corn and more game, and they can preserve it better. The danger of starvation is diminished. Being no longer forced to depend for fuel upon the decayed wood which was all their father could command, they are in less danger of perishing from cold in the elevated ground which, from necessity, they occupy. With the growth of the family new soils are cultivated, each in succession yielding a larger return to labour, and they obtain a constantly increasing supply of the necessaries of life from a surface diminishing in its ratio to the number to be fed; and thus with every increase in the return to labour the power of combining their exertions is increased. If we look now to the solitary settler of the West, even where provided with both axe and spade, we shall see him obtaining, with extreme difficulty, the commonest log hut. A neighbour arrives, and their combined efforts produce a new house with less than half the labour required for the first. That neighbour brings a horse, and he makes something like a cart. The product of their labour is now ten times greater than was that of the first man working by himself. More neighbours come, and new houses are needed. A "bee" is made, and by the combined effort of the neighbourhood the third house is completed in a day; whereas the first cost months, and the second weeks, of far more severe exertion. These new neighbours have brought ploughs and horses, and now better soils are cultivated, and the product of labour is again increased, as is the power to preserve the surplus for winter's use. The path becomes a road. Exchanges increase. The store makes its appearance. Labour is rewarded by larger returns, because aided by better machinery applied to better soils. The town grows up. Each successive addition to the population brings a consumer and a producer. The shoemaker desires leather and corn in exchange for his shoes. The blacksmith requires fuel and food, and the farmer wants shoes for his horses; and with the increasing facility of exchange more labour is applied to production, and the reward of labour rises, producing new desires, and requiring more and larger exchanges. The road becomes a turnpike, and the wagon and horses are seen upon it. The town becomes a city, and better [begin page 37] soils are cultivated for the supply of its markets, while the railroad facilitates exchanges with towns and cities yet more distant. The tendency to union and to combination of exertion thus grows with the growth of wealth. In a state of extreme poverty it cannot be developed. The insignificant tribe of savages that starves on the product of the superficial soil of hundreds of thousands of acres of land, looks with jealous eye on every intruder, knowing that each new mouth requiring to be fed tends to increase the difficulty of obtaining subsistence; whereas the farmer rejoices in the arrival of the blacksmith and the shoemaker, because they come

to eat on the spot the corn which heretofore he has carried ten, twenty, or thirty miles to market, to exchange for shoes for himself and his horses. With each new consumer of his products that arrives he is enabled more and more to concentrate his action and his thoughts upon his home, while each new arrival tends to increase his power of consuming commodities brought from a distance, because it tends to diminish his necessity for seeking at a distance a market for the produce of his farm. Give to the poor tribe spades, and the knowledge how to use them, and the power of association will begin. The supply of food becoming more abundant, they hail the arrival of the stranger who brings them knives and clothing to be exchanged for skins and corn; wealth grows, and the habit of association -- the first step toward civilization -- arises. The little tribe is, however, compelled to occupy the higher lands. The lower ones are a mass of dense forests and dreary swamps, while at the foot of the hill runs a river, fordable but for a certain period of the year. On the hillside, distant a few miles, is another tribe; but communication between them is difficult, because, the river bottom being yet uncleared, roads cannot be made, and bridges are as yet unthought of. Population and wealth, however, continue to increase, and the lower lands come gradually into cultivation, yielding larger returns to labour, and enabling the tribe to obtain larger supplies of food with less exertion, and to spare labour to be employed for other purposes. Roads are made in the direction of the river bank. Population increases more rapidly because of the increased supplies of food and the increased [begin page 38] power of preserving it, and wealth grows still more rapidly. The river bank at length is reached, and some of the best lands are now cleared. Population grows again, and a new element of wealth is seen in the form of a bridge; and now the two little communities are enabled to communicate more freely with each other. One rejoices in the possession of a wheelwright, while the other has a windmill. One wants carts, and the other has corn to grind. One has cloth to spare, while the other has more leather than is needed for its purpose. Exchanges increase, and the little town grows because of the increased amount of trade. Wealth grows still more rapidly, because of new modes of combining labour, by which that of all is rendered more productive. Roads are now made in the direction of other communities, and the work is performed rapidly, because the exertions of the two are now combined, and because the machinery used is more efficient. One after another disappear forests and swamps that have occupied the fertile lands, separating ten, twenty, fifty, or five hundred communities, which now are brought into connection with each other; and with each step labour becomes more and more productive, and is rewarded with better food, clothing, and shelter. Famine and disease disappear, life is prolonged, population is increased, and therewith the tendency to that combination of exertion among the individuals composing these communities, which is the distinguishing characteristic of civilization in all nations and in all periods of the world. With further increase of population and wealth, the desires of man, and his ability to gratify them, both increase. The nation, thus formed, has more corn than it needs; but it has no cotton, and its supply of wool is insufficient. The neighbouring nation has cotton and wool, and needs corn. They are still divided, however, by broad forests, deep swamps, and rapid rivers. Population increases, and the great forests and swamps disappear, giving place to rich farms, through which broad roads are made, with immense bridges, enabling the merchant to transport his wool and his cotton to exchange with his now-rich neighbours for their surplus corn or sugar. Nations now combine their exertions, and wealth grows with still increased rapidity, facilitating the drainage [begin page 39] of marshes, and thus bringing into activity the richest soils; while coal-mines cheaply furnish the fuel for converting limestone into lime, and iron ore into axes and spades, and into rails for the new roads needed for transporting to market the vast products of the fertile soils now in use, and to bring back the large supplies of sugar, tea, coffee, and the thousand other products of distant lands with which intercourse now exists. At each step population and wealth and happiness and prosperity take a new bound; and men realize with

difficulty the fact that the country, which now affords to tens of millions all the necessaries, comforts, conveniences, and luxuries of life, is the same that, when the superabundant land was occupied by tens of thousands only, gave to that limited number scanty supplies of the worst food; so scanty that famines were frequent and sometimes so severe that starvation was followed in its wake by pestilence, which, at brief intervals, swept from the earth the population of the little and scattered settlements, among which the people were forced to divide themselves when they cultivated only the poor soils of the hills. The course of events here described is in strict accordance with the facts observed in every country as it has grown in wealth and population. The early settlers of all the countries of the world are seen to have been slaves to their necessities - and often slaves to their neighbours; whereas, with the increase of numbers and the increased power of cultivation, they are seen passing from the poorer soils of the hills to the fertile soils of the river bottoms and the marshes, with constant increase in the return to labour, and constantly increasing power to determine for themselves for whom they will work, and what shall be their reward. This view is, however, in direct opposition to the theory of the occupation of land taught in the politico-economical school of which Malthus and Ricardo were the founders. By them we are assured that the settler commences always on the low and rich lands, and that, as population increases, men are required to pass toward the higher and poorer lands -- and of course up the hill -with constantly diminishing return to labour, and thus that, as population grows, man becomes more and more a slave to his necessities, and to those [begin page 40] who have power to administer to his wants, involving a necessity for dispersion throughout the world in quest of the rich lands upon which the early settler is supposed to commence his operations. It is in reference to this theory that Mr. J.S. Mill says-"This general law of agricultural industry is the most important proposition in political economy. If the law were different, almost all the phenomena of the production and distribution of wealth would be other than they are." In the view thus presented by Mr. Mill there is no exaggeration. The law of the occupation of the land by man lies at the foundation of all political economy; and if we desire to know what it is that tends to the emancipation of the people of the earth from slavery, we must first satisfy ourselves that the theory of Messrs. Malthus and Ricardo has not only no foundation in fact, but that the law is directly the reverse, and tends, therefore, toward the adoption of measures directly opposed to those that would he needed were that theory true. The great importance of the question will excuse the occupation of a few minutes of the reader's attention in placing before him some facts tending to enable him to satisfy himself in regard to the universality of the law now offered for his consideration. Let him inquire where he may, he will find that the early occupant did not commence in the flats, or on the heavily timbered-land, but that he did commence on the higher land, where the timber was lighter, and the place for his house was dry. With increasing ability, he is found draining the swamps, clearing the heavy timber, turning up the marl, or burning the lime, and thus acquiring control over more fertile soils, yielding a constant increase in the return to labour. Let him then trace the course of early settlement, and he will find that while it has often followed the course of the streams, it has always avoided the swamps and river bottoms. The earliest settlements of this country were on the poorest lands of the Union -- those of New England. So was it in New York, where we find the railroads running through the lower and richer, and yet uncultivated, lands, while the higher lands right and left have long been cultivated. So is it now in Pennsylvania, Virginia, and Ohio. In South Carolina it has been made [begin page 41] the subject of remark, in a recent discourse, that their predecessors did

not select the rich lands, and that millions of acres of the finest meadow-land in that State still remain untouched. The settler in the prairies commences on the higher and drier land, leaving the wet prairie and the slough -- the richest soil -- for his successors. The lands below the mouth of the Ohio are among the richest in the world; yet they are unoccupied, and will continue so to be until wealth and population shall have greatly increased. So is it now with the low and rich lands of Mexico. So was it in South America, the early cultivation of which was upon the poor lands of the western slope, Peru and Chili, while the rich lands of the Amazon and the La Plata remained, as most of them still remain, a wilderness. In the West Indies, the small dry islands were early occupied, while Porto Rico and Trinidad, abounding in rich soils, remained untouched. The early occupants of England were found on the poorer lands of the centre and south of the kingdom, as were those of Scotland in the Highlands, or on the little rocky islands of the Channel. Mona's Isle was celebrated while the rich soil of the Lothians remained an almost unbroken mass of forest, and the morasses of Lancashire were the terror of travellers long after Hampshire had been cleared and cultivated. If the reader desire to find the birthplace of King Arthur and the earliest seat of English power, he must look to the vicinity of the royal castle of Tintagel, in the high and dry Cornwall. Should he desire other evidence of the character of the soil cultivated at the period when land abounded and men were few in number, he may find it in the fact that in some parts of England there is scarcely a hill top that does not bear evidence of early occupation, 22 and in the further fact that the mounds, or barrows, are almost uniformly composed of stone, because those memorials "are found most frequently 23 where stone was more readily obtained than earth." Caesar found the Gauls occupying the high lands surrounding the Alps, while the rich Venetia remained a marsh. The occupation of the Campagna [begin page 42] followed long after that of the Samnite hills, and the earliest settlers of the Peloponnesus cultivated the high and dry Arcadia, while the cities of the Argive kings of the days of Homer, Mycenae and Tiryns, are found in eastern Argolis, a country so poor as to have been abandoned prior to the days of the earliest authentic history. The occupation of the country around Mero, and of the Thebaid, long preceded that of the lower lands surrounding Memphis, or the still lower and richer ones near Alexandria. The negro is found in the higher portions of Africa, while the rich lands along the river courses are uninhabited. The little islands of Australia, poor and dry, are occupied by a race far surpassing in civilization those of the neighbouring continent, who have rich soils at command. The poor Persia is cultivated, while the rich soils of the ancient Babylonia are only ridden over by straggling hordes of robbers. 24 Layard had to seek the hills when he desired to find a people at home. Affghanistan and Cashmere were early occupied, and thence were supplied the people who moved toward the deltas of the Ganges and the Indus, much of both of which still remains, after so many thousands of years, in a state of wilderness. Look where we may, it is the same. The land obeys the same great and universal law that governs light, power, and heat. The man who works alone and has poor machinery must cultivate poor land, and content himself with little light, little power, and little heat, and those, like his food, obtained in exchange for much labour; while he who works in combination with his fellow-men may have good machinery, enabling him to clear and cultivate rich land, giving him much food, and enabling him to obtain much light, much heat, and much power, in exchange for little labour. The first is a creature of necessity -- a slave -- and as such is man universally regarded by Mr. Ricardo and his followers. The second is a being of power -- a freeman -- and as such was man regarded by
22 23 24

[41/*] The Celt, the Roman, and the Saxon, by Thomas Wright, p. 87. [41/] Ibid. p. 56. [42/*] 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.

Adam Smith, who taught that the more men worked in combination with each other, the greater would be the facility of obtaining food and all other of the necessaries and comforts of life -- and the more widely they were separated, the less would be the return to labour and capital, and the smaller the power of production, as common sense teaches every man must necessarily be the case. It will now readily be seen how perfectly accurate was Mr. Mill in his assertion that, "if the law were different, almost all the phenomena of the production and distribution of wealth would be other than they are." The doctrine of Malthus and Ricardo tends to make the labourer a slave to the owner of landed or other capital; but happily it has no foundation in fact, and therefore the natural laws of the production and distribution of wealth tend not to slavery, but to freedom.

Chapter VI.
How Wealth Tends To Increase.
The first poor cultivator commences, as we have seen, his operations on the hillside. Below him are lands upon which have been carried by force of water the richer portions of those above, as well as the leaves of trees, and the fallen trees themselves, all of which have from time immemorial rotted and become incorporated with the earth, and thus have been produced soils fitted to yield the largest returns to labour; yet for this reason are they inaccessible. Their character exhibits itself in the enormous trees with which they are covered, and in their power of retaining the water necessary to aid the process of decomposition, but the poor settler wants the power either to clear them of their timber, or to drain them of the superfluous moisture. He begins on the hillside, but by degrees he obtains better machinery of cultivation, and with each step in this direction we find him descending the hill and obtaining larger return to labour. He has more food for himself, and he has now the means of feeding a horse or an ox. Aided by the manure [begin page 44] that is thus yielded to him by the better lands, we see him next retracing his steps, improving the hillside, and compelling it to yield a return double that which he at first obtained. With each step down the hill, he obtains still larger reward for his labour, and at each he returns, with increased power, to the cultivation of the original poor soil. He has now horses and oxen, and while by their aid he extracts from the new soils the manure that had accumulated for ages, he has also carts and wagons to carry it up the hill; and at each step his reward is increased, while his labours are lessened. He goes back to the sand and raises the marl, with which he covers the surface; or he returns to the clay and sinks into the limestone, by aid of which he doubles its product. He is all the time making a machine which feeds him while he makes it, and which increases in its powers the more he takes from it. At first it was worthless. Having now fed and clothed him for years, it has acquired a large value, and those who might desire to use it would pay him a large rent for permission so to do. The earth is a great machine given to man to be fashioned to his purpose. The more he works it, the better it feeds him, because each step is but preparatory to a new one more productive than the last -- requiring less labour and yielding larger return. The labour of clearing is great, yet the return is small. The earth is covered with stumps, and filled with roots. With each year the roots decay, and the ground becomes enriched, while the labour of ploughing is diminished. At length, the stumps disappear, and the return is doubled, while the labour is less by one-half than at first. To forward this process the owner has done nothing but crop the ground, nature having done the rest. The aid he thus obtains from her yields him as much food as in the outset was obtained by the labour of felling the trees. This, however, is not all. The surplus thus yielded has given him means of improving the poorer lands, by furnishing manure with which to enrich them, and thus has he trebled his original return without further labour; for that which he saves in working the new soils suffices to carry the manure to the older ones. He is obtaining a daily increased power over the various treasures of the earth. [begin page 45] With every operation connected with the fashioning of the earth, the result is the same. The first step is, invariably, the most costly one, and the least productive. The first drain commences near the stream, where the labour is heaviest. It frees from water but a few acres. A little higher, the same quantity of labour, profiting by what has been already done, frees twice the number. Again the number is doubled; and now the most perfect system of thorough drainage may be established with less labour than was at

first required for one of the most imperfect kind. To bring the lime into connection with the clay, upon fifty acres, is lighter labour than was the clearing of a single one, yet the process doubles the return for each acre of fifty. The man who needs a little fuel for his own use, expends much labour in opening the neighbouring vein of coal; but to enlarge this, so as to double the product, is a work of comparatively small labour. To sink a shaft to the first vein below the surface, and erect a steam-engine, are expensive operations; but these once accomplished, every future step becomes more productive, while less costly. To sink to the next vein below, and to tunnel to another, are trifles in comparison with the first, yet each furnishes a return equally large. The first line of railroad runs by houses and towns occupied by two or three hundred thousand persons. Half a dozen little branches, costing together far less labour than the first, bring into connection with it half a million, or perhaps a million. The trade increases, and a second track, a third, or a fourth, may be required. The original one facilitates the passage of the materials and the removal of the obstructions, and three new ones may now be made with less labour than was at first required for a single one. All labour thus expended in fashioning the great machine is but the prelude to the application of further labour, with still increased returns. With each such application, wages rise, and hence it is that portions of the machine, as it exists, invariably exchange, when brought to market, for far less labour than they have cost. There is thus a steady decline of the value of capital in labour, and a daily increase in the power of labour over capital, and with each step in this direction man becomes more free. The man who [begin page 46] cultivated the thin soils was happy to obtain a hundred bushels for his year's work. With the progress of himself and his neighbour down the hill into the more fertile soils, wages have risen, and two hundred bushels are now required. His farm will yield a thousand bushels; but it requires the labour of four men, who must have two hundred bushels each, and the surplus is but two hundred bushels. At twenty years' purchase this gives a capital of four thousand bushels, or the equivalent of twenty years' wages; whereas it has cost, in the labour of himself, his sons, and his assistants, the equivalent of a hundred years of labour, or perhaps far more. During all this time, however, it has fed and clothed them all, and the farm has been produced by the insensible contributions made from year to year, unthought of and unfelt. It has become worth twenty years' wages, because its owner has for years taken from it a thousand bushels annually; but when it had lain for centuries accumulating wealth it was worth nothing. Such is the case with the earth everywhere. The more that is taken from it the more there is to be returned, and the greater our power to draw upon it. When the coal-mines of England were untouched, they were valueless. Now their value is almost countless; yet the land contains abundant supplies for thousands of years. Iron ore, a century since, was a drug, and leases were granted at almost nominal rents. Now, such leases are deemed equivalent to the possession of large fortunes, notwithstanding the great quantities that have been removed, although the amount of ore now known to exist is probably fifty times greater than it was then. The earth is the sole producer. From her man receives the corn and the cotton-wool, and all that he can do is to change them in their form, or in their place. The first he may convert into bread, and the last into cloth, and both maybe transported to distant places, but there his power ends. He can make no addition to their quantity. A part of his labour is applied to the preparation and improvement of the great machine of production, and this produces changes that are permanent. The drain, once cut, remains a drain; and the limestone, once reduced to lime, never again becomes limestone. It passes into the food of man and animals, and ever [begin page 47] after takes its part in the same round with the clay with which it has been incorporated. The iron rusts and gradually passes into soil, to take its part with the clay and the lime. That

portion of his labour gives him wages while preparing the machine for greater future production. That other portion which he expends on fashioning and exchanging the products of the machine, produces temporary results and gives him wages alone. Whatever tends to diminish the quantity of labour required for the production of food tends to enable him to give more to the preparation of machinery required for the fashioning and exchanging of the products; and that machinery in its turn tends to augment the quantity that may be given to increasing the amount of products, and to preparing the great machine; and thus, while increasing the present return to labour, preparing for a future further increase. The first poor cultivator obtains a hundred bushels for his year's wages. To pound this between two stones requires many days of labour, and the work is not half done. Had he a mill in the neighbourhood he would have better flour, and he would have almost the whole of those days to bestow upon his land. He pulls up his grain. Had he a scythe, he would have more time for the preparation of the machine of production. He loses his axe, and it requires days of himself and his horse on the road, to obtain another. His machine loses the time and the manure, both of which would have been saved had the axe-maker been at hand. The real advantage derived from the mill and the scythe, and from the proximity of the axe-maker, consists simply in the power which they afford him to devote his labour more and more to the preparation of the great machine of production, and such is the case with all the machinery of conversion and exchange. The plough enables him to do as much in one day as with a spade he could do in five. He saves four days for drainage. The steam-engine drains as much as, without it, could be drained by thousands of days of labour. He has more leisure to marl or lime his land. The more he can extract from his property the greater is its value, because every thing he takes is, by the very act of taking it, fashioned to aid further production. The machine, therefore, [begin page 48] improves by use, whereas spades, and ploughs, and steam-engines, and all other of the instruments used by man, are but the various forms into which he fashions parts of the great original machine, to disappear in the act of being used; as much so as food, though not so rapidly. The earth is the great labour-savings' bank, and the value to man of all other machines is in the direct ratio of their tendency to aid him in increasing his deposites in that only bank whose dividends are perpetually increasing, while its capital is perpetually doubling. That it may continue for ever so to do, all that it asks is that it shall receive back the refuse of its produce, the manure; and that it may do so, the consumer and the producer must take their places by each other. That done, every change that is effected becomes permanent, and tends to facilitate other and greater changes. The whole business of the farmer consists in making and improving soils, and the earth rewards him for his kindness by giving him more and more food the more attention he bestows upon her. All that he receives from her must be regarded as a loan, and when he fails to pay his debts, she starves him out. The absolute necessity for returning to the land the manure yielded by its products is so generally admitted that it would appear scarcely necessary to do more than state the fact; for every land-owner knows that when he grants the lease of a farm, one of the conditions he desires to insert is, that all the hay that is made shall be fed upon the land, and that manure shall be purchased to supply the waste resulting from the sale of corn or flax from off the land. In order, however, that it may be so supplied, it is indispensable that the place of consumption shall not be far distant from the place of production, as otherwise the cost of transportation will be greater than the value of the manure. In a recent work on the agriculture of Mecklenburgh, it is stated that a quantity of grain that would be worth close to market fifteen hundred dollars would be worth nothing at a distance of fifty German, or about two hundred English miles, from it, as the whole value would be absorbed in the cost of transporting the grain to market and the manure from market -- and that the manure which close to [begin page 49] the town

would be worth five dollars to the farmer, would be worth nothing at a distance of 4 German, or 19 English miles from it -- and that thus the whole question of the value of land and the wealth of its owner was dependent upon its distance from the place at which its products could be exchanged. At a greater distance than 28 German, or 112 English miles, in Mecklenburgh, the land ceases to yield rent, because it cannot be cultivated without loss. As we approach the place of exchange the value of land increases, from the simultaneous action of two causes: First, a greater variety of commodities can be cultivated, and the advantage resulting from a rotation of crops is well known. At a distance, the farmer can raise only those of which the earth yields but little, and which are valuable in proportion to their little bulk -- as, for instance, wheat or cotton; but near the place of exchange he may raise potatoes, turnips, cabbages, and hay, of which the bulk is great in proportion to the value. Second, the cost of returning the manure to the land increases as the value of the products of land diminishes with the increase of distance; and from the combination of these two causes, land in Mecklenburgh that would be worth, if close to the town or city, an annual rent of 29,808 dollars, would be worth at a distance of but 4 German, or 16 English, miles, only 7,467 dollars. We see thus, how great is the tendency to the growth of wealth as men are enabled more and more to combine their exertions with those of their fellow-men, consuming on or near the land the products of the land, and enabling the farmer, not only to repair readily the exhaustion caused by each successive crop, but also to call to his aid the services of the chemist in the preparation of artificial manures, as well as to call into activity the mineral ones by which he is almost everywhere surrounded. We see, too, how much it must be opposed to the interests of every community to have its products exported in their rude state, and thus to have its land exhausted. The same author from whom the above quotations have been made informs us that when the manure is not returned to the land the yield must diminish from year to year, until at length it will not be more than one-fourth of what it had originally been: and this is in accordance with all observation. [begin page 50] The natural tendency of the loom and the anvil to seek to take their place by the side of the plough and harrow, is thus exhibited by ADAM SMITH:-"An inland country, naturally fertile and easily cultivated, produces a great surplus of provisions beyond what is necessary for maintaining the cultivators; and on account of the expense of land carriage, and inconveniency of river navigation, it may frequently be difficult to send this surplus abroad. Abundance, therefore, renders provisions cheap, and encourages a great number of workmen to settle in the neighbourhood, who find that their industry can there procure them more of the necessaries and conveniences of life than in other places. They work up the materials of manufacture which the land produces, and exchange their finished work, or, what is the same thing, the price of it, for more materials and provisions. They give a new value to the surplus part of the rude produce, by saving the expense of carrying it to the waterside, or to some distant market; and they furnish the cultivators with something in exchange for it, that is either useful or agreeable to them, upon easier terms than they could have obtained it before. The cultivators get a better price for their surplus produce, and can purchase cheaper other conveniences which they have occasion for. They are thus both encouraged and enabled to increase this surplus produce by a further improvement and better cultivation of the land; and as the fertility of the land has given birth to the manufacture, so the progress of the manufacture reacts upon the land, and increases still further its fertility. The manufacturers first supply the neighbourhood, and

afterward, as their work improves and refines, more distant markets. For though neither the rude produce, nor even the coarse manufacture, could, without the greatest difficulty, support the expense of a considerable land carriage, the refined and improved manufacture easily may. In a small bulk it frequently contains the price of a great quantity of the raw produce. A piece of fine cloth, for example, which weighs, only eighty pounds, contains in it the price, not only of eighty pounds of wool, but sometimes of several thousand weight of corn, the maintenance of the different working people, and of their immediate employers. The corn which could with difficulty have been carried abroad in its own shape, is in this manner virtually exported in that of the complete manufacture, and may easily be sent to the remotest corners of the world." Again: "The greater the number and revenue of the inhabitants of the town, the more extensive is the market which it affords to those of the country; and the more extensive that market, it is always the more advantageous to a great number. The corn which grows within a mile of the town, sells there for the same price with that which comes from twenty miles distance. But the price of the latter must, generally, not only pay the expense of raising it and bringing it to market, but afford, too, the ordinary profits, of [begin page 51] agriculture to the farmer. The proprietors and cultivators of the country, therefore, which lies in the neighbourhood of the town, over and above the ordinary profits of agriculture, gain, in the price of what they sell, the whole value of the carriage of the like produce that is brought from more distant parts; and they save, besides, the whole value of this carriage in the price of what they buy. Compare the cultivation of the lands in the neighbourhood of any considerable town, with that of those which lie at some distance from it, and you will easily satisfy yourself how much the country is benefited by the commerce of the town." These views are in perfect accordance with the facts. The labourer rejoices when the market for his labour is brought to his door by the erection of a mill or a furnace, or the construction of a road. The farmer rejoices in the opening of a market for labour at his door giving him a market for his food. His land rejoices in the home consumption of the products it has yielded, for its owner is thereby enabled to return to it the refuse of its product in the form of manure. The planter rejoices in the erection of a mill in his neighbourhood, giving him a market for his cotton and his food. The parent rejoices when a market for their labour enables his sons and his daughters to supply themselves with food and clothing. Every one rejoices in the growth of a home market for labour and its products, for trade is then increasing daily and rapidly; and every one mourns the diminution of the home market, for it is one the deficiency of which cannot be supplied. With each step in this direction man becomes more and more free as land becomes more valuable and labour becomes more productive, and as the land becomes more divided. The effect of this upon both the man and the land is thus exhibited by Dr. Smith:-"A small proprietor, who knows every part of his little territory, views it with all the affection which property, especially small property, naturally inspires, and who upon that account takes pleasure not only in cultivating, but in adorning it, is generally of all improvers the most industrious, the most intelligent, and the most successful."

The tendency of the land to become divided as wealth and population increase will be obvious to the reader on an examination of the facts of daily occurrence in and near a growing town or city; and the contrary tendency to the consolidation of land in few hands may be seen in the neighbourhood of all declining towns or cities, and 25 throughout all declining states.

25

[51/*] The land of England itself has become and is becoming more consolidated, the cause of which will be shown in a future chapter.

Chapter VII.
How Labour Acquires Value and Man Becomes Free.
The proximity of the market enables the farmer not only to enrich his land and to obtain from it far more than he could otherwise do, but it also produces a demand for many things that would otherwise be wasted. In the West, men set no value upon straw, and in almost every part of this country the waste arising out of the absence of a market for any commodities but those which can be carried to a distance, must strike every traveller. Close to the town or city, almost every thing has some value. So too with labour, the value of which, like that of land, tends to increase with every increase in the facility of exchanging its products. The solitary settler has to occupy the spots that, with his rude machinery, he can cultivate. Having neither horse nor cart, he carries home his crop upon his shoulders, as is now done in many parts of India. He carries a hide to the place of exchange, distant, perhaps, fifty miles, to obtain for it leather, or shoes. Population increases, and roads are made. The fertile soils are cultivated. The store and the mill come nearer to him, and he obtains shoes and flour with the use of less machinery of exchange. He has more leisure for the improvement of his land, and the returns to labour increase. More people now obtain food from the same surface, and new places of exchange appear. The wool is, on the spot, converted into cloth, and he exchanges directly with the clothier. The saw-mill is at hand, and he exchanges with the sawyer. The tanner gives him leather for his hides, and the papermaker gives him paper for his rags. With each of these changes he has more and more of both time and manure to devote to the preparation of the great food-making machine, and with each year the returns are larger. His power to command the use of the machinery of exchange increases, but his necessity therefor dimi- [begin page 53] nishes, for with each there is an increasing tendency toward having the consumer placed side by side with the producer, and with each he can devote more and more of his time and mind to the business of fashioning the great machine to which he is indebted for food and clothing; and thus the increase of a consuming population is essential to the progress of production. Diversification of employments, resulting from combination of action, thus enables men to economize labour and to increase production. Increased production, on the other hand, makes a demand for labour. The more wheat raised and the more cloth made, the more there will be to give in exchange for labour, the greater will be the number of persons seeking for labourers, and the greater will be the power of men to determine for themselves the mode in which they will employ their time or their talents. If, therefore, we desire to see men advance in freedom, we must endeavour to increase the productive power; and that, as we see, grows with the growth of the power to improve the land, while it diminishes with every diminution in the power to return to the land the manure yielded by its products. In purely agricultural countries there is little demand for labour, and it always tends to diminish, as may be proved by any reader of this volume who may chance to occupy a purely agricultural neighbourhood. Let him look around him, and he will, without difficulty, find hundreds of men, and hundreds of women and children, wasting more time than would, if properly employed, purchase twice the clothing and twice the machinery of production they are now enabled to obtain. Why, however, he will probably ask, is it that they do so waste it? Because there is no demand for it, except in agriculture; and when that is the case, there must necessarily be great waste of time. At one season of the year the farm requires much labour, while at another it needs but little; and if its neighbours are all farmers, they are

all in the same situation. If the weather is fit for ploughing, they and their horses and men are all employed. If it is not, they are all idle. In winter they have all of them little to do; in harvest-time they are all overrun with work; and crops frequently perish on the ground for want of the aid required for making them. Now, it [begin page 54] would seem to be quite clear that if there existed some other mode of employment that would find a demand for the surplus labour of the neighbourhood, all would be benefited. The man who had a day's labour to sell could sell it, and, with the proceeds of the labour of a very few days, now wasted, could purchase clothing for his children, if, indeed, the labour of those children, now also wasted, did not more than pay for all the clothing, not only of themselves, but of his wife and himself. In order that the reader may see clearly how this state of things affects all labourers, even those who are employed, we must now ask him to examine with us the manner in which the prices of all commodities are affected by excess of supply over demand, or of demand over supply. It is well known to every farmer, that when the crop of peaches, or of potatoes, is, in even a very small degree, in excess of the regular demand, the existence of that small surplus so far diminishes the price that the larger crop will not yield as much as a much smaller one would have done. It is also known to them that when the crop is a little less than is required to supply the demand, the advance in price is large, and the farmer then grows rich. In this latter case the purchasers are looking for the sellers, whereas in the former one the sellers have to seek the buyers. Now, labour is a commodity that some desire to sell, and that others desire to buy, precisely as is the case with potatoes; but it has this disadvantage when compared with any other commodity, that it is less easily transferred from the place where it exists to that at which it is needed, and that the loss resulting from the absence of demand on the spot is greater than in reference to any other commodity whatsoever. The man who raises a hundred bushels of peaches, of which only seventy are needed at home, can send the remainder to a distance of a hundred or a thousand miles, and the loss he sustains is only that which results from the fact that the price of the whole is determined by what he can obtain for the surplus bushels, burdened as they are with heavy cost of transportation, that he must lose; for the man that must go to a distant market must always pay the expense of getting there. This is a heavy loss certainly, but it is trivial when compared with [begin page 55] that sustained by him who has labour to sell, because that, like other very perishable commodities, cannot be carried to another market, and must be wasted. If he has two spare hours a day to sell, he finds that they waste themselves in the very act of seeking a distant market, and his children may go in rags, or even suffer from hunger, because of his inability to find a purchaser for the only commodity he has to sell. So, too, with the man who has days, weeks, or months of labour for which he desires to find a purchaser. Unwilling to leave his wife and his children, to go to a distance, he remains to be a constant weight upon the labour market, and must continue so to remain until there shall arise increased competition for the purchase of labour. It is within the knowledge of every one who reads this, whether he be shoemaker, hatter, tailor, printer, brickmaker, stonemason, or labourer, that a very few unemployed men in his own pursuit keep down the wages of all shoemakers, all hatters, all tailors, or printers; whereas, wages rise when there is a demand for a few more than are at hand. The reason for this is to be found in the difficulty of transferring labour from the place at which it exists to that at which it is needed; and it is to that we have to attribute the fact that the tendency to depression in the wages of all labour is so very great when there is even a very small excess of supply, and the tendency to elevation so great when there is even a very small excess of demand. Men starve in Ireland for want of employment, and yet the distance between them and the people who here earn a dollar a day, is one that could be overcome at the expense of fifteen or twenty dollars. Wages may be high in one part of the Union and low in another, and yet thousands must remain to work at low ones, because of the difficulty of transporting themselves, their wives, and their

families, to the places at which their services are needed. Every such man tends to keep down the wages, of all other men who have labour to sell, and therefore every man is interested in having all other men fully employed, and to have the demand grow faster than the supply. This is the best state of things for all, capitalists and labourers; whereas, to have the supply in excess of the demand is injurious to all, employers and employed. All profit by increase [begin page 56] in the competition for the purchase of labour, and all suffer from increased competition for the sale of it. We had occasion, but a little while since, to visit a factory in which were employed two hundred females of various ages, from fourteen to twenty, who were earning, on an average, three dollars per week, making a total of six hundred dollars per week, or thirty thousand dollars a year; or as much as would, buy five hundred thousand yards of cotton cloth. Now supposing these two hundred females to represent one hundred families, it would follow that their labour produced five thousand yards of cloth per family, being probably three times as much in value as the total consumption of clothing by all its members, from, the parent down to the infant child. Let us now suppose this factory closed; what then would be the value of the labour of these girls, few of whom have strength for field-work even if our habits of thought permitted that it should be so employed? It would be almost nothing, for they could do little except house-work, and the only effect of sending them home would be that, whereas one person, fully employed, performs now the labour of the house, it would henceforth be divided between two or three, all of whom would gradually lose the habit of industry they have been acquiring. The direct effect of this would be a diminution in the demand for female labour, and a diminution of its reward. While the factory continues in operation there is competition for the purchase of such labour. The parent desires to retain at least one child. A neighbour desires to hire another, and the factory also desires one. To supply these demands requires all the females of the neighbourhood capable of working and not provided with families of their own, and thus those who are willing to work have the choice of employers and employment; while the competition for the purchase of their services tends to raise the rate of wages. If, now, in the existing state of things, another factory were established in, the same neighbourhood, requiring a hundred or a hundred and fifty more females, the effect would be to establish increased competition for the purchase of labour, attended by increased power of choice on the part of the labourer, and in- [begin page 57] creased reward of labour -- and it is in this increased power of choice that freedom consists. If, on the contrary, the factories were closed, the reverse effect would be produced, the competition for the purchase of labour being diminished, with corresponding diminution of the power of choice on the part of the labourer, diminution in his compensation, and diminution of freedom. What is true with regard to the females of this neighbourhood is equally true with regard to the men, women, and children of the world. Wherever there exists competition for the purchase of labour, there the labourer has his choice among employers, and the latter are not only required to pay higher wages, but they are also required to treat their workmen and workwomen with the consideration that is due to fellow-beings equal in rights with themselves: but wherever there is not competition for the purchase of labour, the labourer is compelled to work for any who are willing to employ him, and to receive at the hands of his employer low wages and the treatment of a slave, for slave he is. Here is a plain and simple proposition, the proof of which every reader can test for himself. If he lives in a neighbourhood in which there exists competition for the purchase of labour, he knows that he can act as becomes a freeman in determining for whom he will work, and the price he is willing to receive for his services; but if he lives in one in which there is competition for the sale of labour, he

knows well that it does not rest with him to determine either where he will work or what shall be his wages. Where all are farmers, there can be no competition for the purchase of labour, except for a few days in harvest; but there must be competition for the sale of labour during all the rest of the year. Of course, where all are farmers or planters, the man who has labour to sell is at the mercy of the few who desire to buy it, as is seen in our Southern States, where the labourer is a slave; and in Ireland, where his condition is far worse than that of the slaves of the South; and in India, where men sell themselves for long terms of years to labour in the West Indies; and in Portugal, where competition for the purchase of labour has no existence. Where, on the contrary, there is a diversification of employments, there is [begin page 58] a steady improvement in the condition of men, as they more and more acquire the power to determine for themselves for whom they will work and what shall be their reward, as is seen in the rapid improvement in the condition of the people of France, Belgium, and Germany, and especially of those of Russia, where competition for the purchase of labour is increasing with wonderful rapidity. Diversification of employment is absolutely necessary to produce competition for the purchase of labour. The shoemaker does not need to purchase shoes, nor does the miner need to buy coal, any more than the farmer needs to buy wheat or potatoes. Bring them together, and combine with them the hatter, the tanner, the cotton-spinner, the maker of woollen cloth, and the smelter and roller of iron, and each of them becomes a competitor for the purchase of the labour, or the products of the labour, of all the others, and the wages of all rise with the increase of competition. In order that labour may be productive, it must be aided by machinery. The farmer could do little with his hands, but when aided by the plough and the harrow he may raise much wheat and corn. He could carry little on his shoulders, but he may transport much when aided by a horse and wagon, and still more when aided by a locomotive engine or a ship. He could convert little grain into flour when provided only with a pestle and mortar, but he may do much when provided with a mill. His wife could convert little cotton into cloth when provided only with a spinning-wheel and hand-loom, but her labour becomes highly productive when aided by the spinning-jenny and the power-loom. The more her labours and those of her husband are thus aided the larger will be the quantity of grain produced, the more speedily will it be converted into flour, the more readily will it be carried to market, the larger will be the quantity of cloth for which it will exchange, the greater will be the quantity of food and clothing to be divided among the labourers, and the greater will be the facility on the part of the labourer to acquire machinery of his own, and to become his own employer, and thus to increase that diversification in the employment of labour which tends to increase the competition for its purchase. [begin page 59] It will next, we think, be quite clear to the reader that the nearer the grist-mill is to the farm, the less will be the labour required for converting the wheat into flour, the more will be the labour that may be given to the improvement of the farm, and the greater will be the power of the farmer to purchase shoes, hats, coats, ploughs, or harrows, and thus to create a demand for labour. Equally clear will it be that the nearer he can bring the hatter, the shoemaker, and the tailor, the maker of ploughs and harrows, the less will be the loss of labour in exchanging his wheat for their commodities, and the greater will be his power to purchase books and newspapers, to educate his children, and thus to introduce new varieties in the demand for labour; and each such new variety in the demand for that commodity tends to raise the wages of those engaged in all other pursuits. If there be none but farmers, all are seeking employment on a farm. Open a carpenter's or a blacksmith's shop, and the men employed therein will cease to be competitors for farm labour, and wages will tend to rise. Open a mine, or quarry stone and build a mill, and here will be a new competition for labour that will tend to produce

a rise in the wages of all labourers. Build a dozen mills, and men will be required to get out timber and stone, and to make spindles, looms, and steam-engines; and when the mills are completed, the demand for labour will withdraw hundreds of men that would be otherwise competitors for employment in the ploughing of fields, the making of shoes or coats, and hundreds of women that would otherwise be seeking to employ themselves in binding shoes or making shirts. Competition for the purchase of labour grows, therefore, with every increase in the diversification of employment, with constant tendency to increase in the reward of labour. It declines with every diminution in the modes of employing labour, with steady tendency to decline in wages. If the reader will now trace the course of man toward freedom, in the various nations of the world, he will see that his progress has been in the ratio of the growth of towns at which he and his neighbours could exchange the products of their labour, and that it has declined as the near towns have given way to the distant [begin page 60] cities. The people of Attica did not need to go abroad to effect their exchanges, and therefore they became rich and free; whereas the Spartans, who tolerated nothing but agriculture, remained poor and surrounded by hosts of slaves. The towns and cities of Italy gave value to the land by which they were surrounded, and freedom to the people by whom that land was cultivated. So was it in Holland, and in Belgium, and so again in England. In each and all of these land increased in value with every increase in the facility of exchanging its products for clothing and machinery, and with each step in this direction men were enabled more readily to maintain and to increase the power of the land, and to permit larger numbers to obtain increased supplies from the same surfaces. Association thus increased the power of accumulating wealth, and wealth thus diminished in its power over labour, while with augmented numbers the people everywhere found an increase in their power to assert and to defend their rights. Having reflected on the facts presented to him in the pages of history, and having satisfied himself that they are in perfect accordance with the views here presented, the reader will perhaps find himself disposed to admit, the correctness of the following propositions:-I. That the nearer the market the less must be the cost to the farmer for transporting his products to market and for bringing back the manure to maintain and improve his land. That the nearer the market the less must be the loss of labour in going to market, and the greater the quantity that can be given to the improvement of the land. That the more the labour and manure that can be given to land, the larger will be the product and the greater its value. That the larger the quantity of commodities produced the greater will be the demand for labour to be employed in converting them into forms that fit them for consumption, and the larger the quantity to be divided among the labourers. That the greater the competition for the purchase of labour the greater must be the tendency toward the freedom of the labourer. That the freedom of man in thought, speech, action, and trade, tends thus to keep pace with increase in the habit of association among men, and increase in the value of land; -- and

II.

III.

IV.

V.

VI.

VII.

That the interests of the labourer and land-owner are thus in perfect harmony with each other, the one becoming free as the other becomes rich.

Equally correct will be found the following propositions:-I. That the more distant the market the greater must be the cost to the farmer for transporting his products to market, the greater must be the difficulty of obtaining manure, and the more must his land be impoverished. That the more distant the market the greater must be the loss of labour on the road, and the less the quantity that can be given to the improvement of the land. That the less the labour and manure applied to the land the less must be the product, and the less its value. That the longer this process is continued the poorer must become the land, until at length it ceases to have value, and must be abandoned. That the smaller the quantity of commodities produced the less must be the demand for labour to be employed in their conversion, and the less the quantity to be divided among the labourers. That the less the competition for the purchase of labour the less must be the power of the labourer to determine for whom he will work, or what must be his reward, and the greater the tendency toward his becoming enslaved. That the tendency toward slavery tends thus to keep pace with the decline in the habit of association among men, and the loss of value in land; -- and

II.

III.

IV.

V.

VI.

VII.

VIII. That thus the labourer and land-owner suffer together, the one becoming enslaved as the other becomes impoverished. If evidence be desired of the correctness of these propositions, it may found in the history of Egypt, Greece, Rome, Mexico, and of every other country that has declined in wealth and population. [begin page 62]

Chapter VIII.
How Man Passes From Wealth And Freedom Toward Poverty And Slavery.
The views that have thus been presented are entirely in harmony those of the illustrious author of "The Wealth of Nations." "In seeking for employment to a capital," says Dr. Smith, "Manufactures are, upon equal or nearly equal profits, naturally preferred to foreign commerce, for the same reason that agriculture is naturally preferred to manufactures. As the capital of the landlord or farmer is more secure than that of the manufacturer, so the capital of the manufacturer, being at all times more within his view and command, is more secure than that of the foreign merchant. In every period, indeed, of every society, the surplus part both of the rude and manufactured produce, or that for which there is no demand at home, must be sent abroad, in order to be exchanged for something for which there is some demand at home. But whether the capital which carries this surplus produce abroad be a foreign or domestic one, is of little importance." It is thus, in his estimation, of small importance whether the capital engaged in the work of transportation be foreign or domestic -- the operations most essential to the comfort and improvement of man being, first, the production, and next, the conversion of the products of the land, by men occupying towns and cities placed among the producers. The nearer the market the less must be, as he clearly saw, the loss of transportation, and the greater the value of the land. If the number or the capital of those markets were insufficient for the conversion of all the rude produce of the earth, there would then be "considerable advantage" to be derived from the export of the surplus by the aid of foreign capital, thus leaving "the whole stock of the society" to be employed at home "to more useful purpose." These views are certainly widely different from those of modern economists, who see in tables of imports and exports the only criterion of the condition of society. Commerce, by which is meant exchanges with distant people, is regarded as the sole measure of the prosperity of a nation; and yet every man is [begin page 63] rejoiced when the market for his products is brought home to him, and he is thereby enabled to economize transportation and enrich his land by returning to it the elements of which-those products had been composed. "According to the natural course of things," says Dr. Smith, "the greater part of the capital of every growing society is, first, directed to agriculture, afterward to manufactures, and, last of all, to foreign commerce." This, says he, is in accordance with natural laws. As subsistence precedes luxuries, so must the production, of commodities precede their conversion or their exchange. "Necessity imposes," he continues, "that order of things" which "is in every country promoted by the natural inclinations of man. If human institutions had never thwarted those natural inclinations, the towns could nowhere have increased beyond what the improvement and cultivation of the territory in which they were situated could support; till such time, at least, as the whole of that territory was completely cultivated and improved. Upon equal, or nearly equal profits, most men will choose to employ their capitals

rather in the improvement and cultivation of land, than either in manufactures or in foreign trade. The man who employs his capital in land, has it more under his view and command; and his fortune is much less liable to accidents than that of the trader, who is obliged frequently to commit it, not only to the winds and the waves, but to the more uncertain elements of human folly and injustice, by giving great credits, in distant countries, to men with whose character and situation he can seldom be thoroughly acquainted. The capital of the landlord, on the contrary, which is fixed in the improvement of his land, seems to be as well secured as the nature of human affairs can admit of. The beauty of the country, besides the pleasures of a country life, the tranquillity of mind which it promises, and, wherever the injustice of human laws does not disturb it, the independency which it really affords, have charms that, more or less, attract everybody; and as to cultivate the ground was the original destination of man, so, in every stage of his existence, he seems to retain a predilection for this primitive employment. "Without the assistance of some artificers, indeed, the cultivation of land cannot be carried on, but with great inconveniency and continual interruption. Smiths, carpenters, wheelwrights and ploughwrights, masons and bricklayers, tanners, shoemakers, and tailors, are people whose service the farmer has frequent occasion for. Such artificers, too, stand occasionally in need of the assistance of one another; and as their residence is not, like that of the farmer, necessarily tied down to a precise spot, they naturally settle in the neighbourhood of one another, and thus form a small town or village. The butcher, the brewer, and the baker soon join them, together with many other artificers and retailers, necessary or useful for supplying their occasional [begin page 64] wants, and who contribute still further to augment the town. The inhabitants of the town and those of the country are mutually the servants of one another. The town is a continual fair or market, to which the inhabitants of the country resort, in order to exchange their rude for manufactured produce. It is this commerce which supplies the inhabitants of the town, both with the materials of their work and the means of their subsistence. The quantity of the finished work which they sell to the inhabitants of the country, necessarily regulates the quantity of the materials and provisions which they buy. Neither their employment nor subsistence, therefore, can augment, but in proportion to the augmentation of the demand from the country for finished work; and this demand can augment only in proportion to the extension of improvement and cultivation. Had human institutions, therefore, never disturbed the natural course of things, the progressive wealth and increase of the towns would, in every political society, be consequential, and in proportion to the improvement and cultivation of the territory or country." The demand on the artisan "can augment only in proportion to the extension of improvement and cultivation." Nothing can be more true. The interests of the farmer and the mechanic are in perfect harmony with each other. The one needs a market for his products, and the nearer the market the greater must be the produce of his land, because of his increased power to carry back to it the manure. The other needs a market for his labour, and the richer the land around him the greater will be the quantity of products to be offered in exchange for labour, and the greater his freedom to determine for himself for whom he will work and what shall be his wages. The combination of effort between the labourer in the workshop and the labourer on the farm thus gives value to land, and the more rapid the growth of the value of land the greater has everywhere been the tendency to the freedom of man.

These views were opposed to those then universally prevalent. "England's treasure in foreign trade" had become "A fundamental maxim in the political economy, not of England only, but of all other commercial countries. The inland or home trade, the most important of all, the trade in which an equal capital affords the greatest revenue, and creates the greatest employment to the people of the country, was considered as subsidiary only to foreign trade. It neither brought money into the country, it was said, nor carried any out of it. The country, therefore, could never become richer or poorer by means of it, except as far as its prosperity or decay might indirectly influence the state of foreign trade." It was against this error chiefly that Dr. Smith cautioned his [begin page 65] countrymen. He showed that it had led, and was leading, to measures tending to disturb the natural course of things in all the countries connected with England, and to produce among them a necessity, for trade while diminishing the power to maintain trade. "Whatever tends," says he, "to diminish in any country the number of artificers and manufacturers, tends to diminish the home market, the most important of all markets, for the rude produce of the land, and thereby still further to discourage agriculture," and consequently to diminish the power of producing things with which to trade. He nowhere refers to the fact that any system which looks to compelling a nation to export raw produce, tends necessarily to the impoverishment of the land and its owner, and to the diminution, of the freedom of the labourer, and yet that such was the case could scarcely have escaped his observation. The tendency of the then existing English policy was, as he showed, to produce in various countries a necessity for exporting every thing in its rudest form, thus increasing the cost of transportation, while impoverishing the land and exhausting the people. The legislature had been, he said, "prevailed upon" to prevent the establishment of manufactures in the colonies, "sometimes by high duties, and sometimes by absolute prohibitions." In Grenada, while a colony of France, every plantation had its own refinery of sugar, but on its cession to England they were all abandoned, and thus was the number of artisans diminished, to "the discouragement of agriculture." The course of proceeding relative to these colonies is thus described:-"While Great Britain encourages in America the manufacturing of pig and bar iron, by exempting them from duties to which the like commodities are subject when imported from any other country, she imposes an absolute prohibition upon the erection of steel furnaces and slit-mills in any of her American plantations: She will not suffer her colonies to work in those more refined manufactures, even for their own consumption; but insists upon their purchasing of her merchants and manufactures all goods of this kind which they have occasion for. "She prohibits the exportation from one province to another by water, and even the carriage by land upon horseback, or in a cart, of hats, of wools, and woollen goods, of the produce of America; a regulation which effectually prevents the establishment of any manufacture of such commodities for distant sale, and confines the industry of her colonists in this way to such coarse and household manufactures as a private family [begin page 66] commonly makes for its own use, or for that of some of its neighbours in the same province." His views, in regard to such measures, are thus given:--

"To prohibit a great people from making all they can of every part of their own produce, or from employing their stock and industry in a way that they judge most advantageous to themselves, is a manifest violation of the most sacred rights of mankind." Further to carry out this view of compelling the people of the colonies to abstain from manufacturing for themselves, and to carry their products to distant markets, to the exhaustion of the land and to the diminution of the value of labour, bounties were paid on the importation into England of various articles of raw produce, while the export of various raw materials, of artisans, and of machinery, was prohibited. The whole object of the system was, he said, to "raise up colonies of customers, a project," he added, "fit only for a nation of shopkeepers." Indeed, he thought it "unfit even for a nation of shopkeepers," although "extremely fit for a nation whose government was influenced by shopkeepers." He was therefore entirely opposed to all such arrangements as the Methuen treaty, by which, in consideration of obtaining the control of the market of Portugal for the sale of her manufactures, Great Britain agreed to give to the wines of that country great advantage over those of France. Against all the errors of the system, Dr. Smith, however, raised in vain his warning voice. "England's treasure" was, it was thought, to be found "in foreign trade," and every measure adopted by the government had in view the extension of that trade. With each new improvement of machinery there was a new law prohibiting its export. The laws against the export of artisans were enforced, and a further one prohibited the emigration of colliers. The reader will readily see that a law prohibiting the export of cotton or woollen machinery was precisely equivalent to a law to compel all the producers of wool or cotton to seek the distant market of England if they desired to convert their products into cloth. The inventors of machinery, and the artisans who desired to work it, were thus deprived of freedom of action, in order that foreigners might be made the slaves of those who controlled the [begin page 67] spinning-jenny, the loom, and the steam-engine, in whose hands it was desired to centralize the control of the farmers and planters of the world. England was to be made "the workshop of the world," although her people had been warned that the system was not only unnatural, but in the highest degree unjust, and even more impolitic than unjust, because while tending to expel capital and labour from the great and profitable home market, it tended greatly to the "discouragement of agriculture" in the colonies and nations subjected to the system, and to prevent the natural increase of the smaller and less profitable distant market upon which she was becoming more and more dependent. By degrees the tendency of the system became obvious. Bounties on the import of wood, and wool, and flax, and other raw materials, tended to "the discouragement of agriculture" at home, and bounties on the export of manufactures tended to drive into the work of converting, and exchanging the products of other lands the labour and capital that would otherwise have been applied to the work of production at home. The necessary consequence of this was, that the difficulty of obtaining these raw materials, instead of diminishing with the progress of population, tended to increase, and then it was, at the distance of a quarter of a century from the date of the publication of "The Wealth of Nations," that the foundation of the new school was laid by Mr. Malthus, who taught that all the distress existing in the world was the inevitable consequence of a great law of nature, which provided that food should increase only in arithmetical progression, while population might increase in geometrical progression. Next came Mr. Ricardo, who furnished a law of the occupation of the earth, showing, and conclusively, as he supposed, that the work of cultivation was always commenced on the rich soils, yielding a large return to labour, and that as population increased, men were compelled to resort to others, each in succession less fertile than its predecessor

-- the consequence of which was that labour became daily less productive, the power to obtain food diminished, and the power to demand rent increased, the poor becoming daily poorer, weaker, and more enslaved, as the rich became richer and more powerful. Next came the elder Mill, [begin page 68] who showed that, in obedience to the law thus propounded by Mr. Ricardo, the return to capital and labour applied to the work of cultivation must be "continually decreasing," and the annual fund from which sayings are made, continually diminishing. "The difficulty of making savings is thus," he adds, "continually augmented, and at last they must totally cease." He regarded it therefore as certain that "wages would be reduced so low that a portion of the population would regularly die from the consequences of want." In such a state of things, men sell themselves, their wives, or their children, for mere food. We see, thus, that the modern British theory looks directly to the enslavement of man. In this manner, step by step, did the British political economists pass from the school of Adam Smith, in which it was taught that agriculture preceded manufactures and commerce, the latter of which were useful to the extent that they aided the former, -- to that new one in which was, and is, taught, that manufactures and commerce were the great and profitable pursuits of man, and that agriculture, because of the "constantly increasing sterility of the soil," was the least profitable of all. Hence it is that we see England to have been steadily passing on in the same direction, and devoting all her energies to the prevention of the establishment, in any country of the world, of markets in which the raw produce of the land could be exchanged directly with the artisan for the products of his labour. For a time this prospered, but at length the eyes of the world were opened to the fact that they and their land were being impoverished as she was being enriched; and that the effect of the system was that of constituting herself sole buyer of the raw products of their labour and their land, and sole seller of the manufactured commodities to be given in exchange for them, with power to fix the prices of both; and thus that she was really acting in the capacity of mistress of the world, with power to impose taxes at discretion. By degrees, machinery and artisans were smuggled abroad, and new machinery was made, and other nations turned their attention more and more to manufacturing; and now it became necessary to make new exertions for the purpose of securing [begin page 69] to England the monopoly she had so long enjoyed. To enable her to do this we find her at length throwing open her ports for the free admission of corn and numerous other of the raw products of the earth, free from the payment of any duty whatever, and thus offering to the various nations of the world a bounty on the further exhaustion of their land. The adoption of this measure would, it was supposed, induce Prussia, Austria, Russia, and Denmark, and all America, to devote themselves exclusively to the cultivation of the earth, abandoning all attempts at the creation of nearer places of exchange; and thus that all the world outside of England would become producers of raw materials to be carried to that single and distant market, there to be consumed or converted, and the refuse thereof to be deposited on the land of England. That such was the object of this measure was admitted by all. It was announced as a boon to the agriculturists of the world. How far it was calculated to be so, the reader may judge, after satisfying himself of the truth of the following propositions:-I. That if there is to be but one place of exchange or manufacture for the world, all the rest of the people of the world must limit themselves to agriculture. That this necessarily implies the absence of towns, or local places of exchange, and a necessity for resorting to a place of exchange far distant.

II.

III.

That the distance of the place of consumption from the place of production forbids the possibility of returning to the land any of the manure yielded by its products. That this in turn implies the exhaustion of the land and the impoverishment of its owner. That the impoverishment of the land renders necessary a removal to new and more distant lands. That this renders necessary a larger amount of transportation, while the impoverishment of the farmer increases the difficulty of making roads. That the increased distance of the market produces a steadily increased necessity for limiting the work of cultivation to the production of those commodities which can be obtained from [begin page 70] high and dry lands, and that the quantity of products tends therefore to diminish with the increased distance from market.

IV.

V.

VI.

VII.

VIII. That with each step in the progress of exhausting the land, men are compelled to separate more widely from each other, and that there is therefore a steady diminution in the power of association for the making of roads, or the establishment of schools, and that the small towns, or near places of exchange, tend gradually toward depopulation and ruin. IX. That the more men separate from each other the less is the power to procure machinery, and the greater the necessity for cultivating the poorest soils, even though surrounded by lead, iron, and copper ore, coal, lime, and all other of the elements of which machinery is composed. That with the diminished power of association, children grow up uneducated, and men and women become rude and barbarous. That the power to apply labour productively tends steadily to diminish, and that women, in default of other employment, are forced to resort to the field, and to become slaves to their fathers, husbands, and brothers. That the power to accumulate capital tends likewise to diminish -- that land becomes from day to day more consolidated -- and that man sinks gradually into the condition of a slave to the landed or other capitalist.

X.

XI.

XII.

XIII. That with this steady passage of man from the state of a freeman to that of a slave, he has steadily less to sell, and can therefore purchase less; and that thus the only effect of a policy which compels the impoverishment of the land and its owner is to destroy the customer, who, under a different system of policy, might have become a larger purchaser from year to year.

That the object of the present English policy is that of converting all the nations of the world into purely agricultural communities will not be denied; but as it may be doubted if the effects would be such as are here described, it is proposed now to inquire into the movement of some of the non-manufacturing communities of the world, with a view to determine if the facts observed are in correspondence with those that, reasoning a priori, we should be led to expect. Before entering upon this examination, the reader is, however, requested to peruse the following extracts from "Gee on Trade," in which is described the former colonial system, and afterward the extract from a recent despatch of Lord Grey, late Colonial Secretary, with a view to satisfy himself how perfectly identical are the objects now sought to be attained with those desired by the statesmen of the last century, and denounced by Adam Smith. JOSHUA GEE -- 1750. First -- "Manufactures in American colonies should be discouraged, prohibited." "Great Britain with its dependencies is doubtless as well able to subsist within itself as any nation in Europe. We have an enterprising people, fit for all the arts of peace or war. We have provisions in abundance, and those of the best sort, and we are able to raise sufficient for double the number of inhabitants. We have the very best materials for clothing, and want nothing either for use or for luxury, but what we have at home, or might have from our colonies; so that we might make such an intercourse of trade among ourselves, or between us and them, as would maintain a vast navigation. But, we ought always to keep a watchful eye over our colonies, to restrain them from setting up any of the manufactures which are carried on in Great Britain; and any such attempts should be crushed in the beginning, for if they are suffered to grow up to maturity it will be difficult to suppress them." "Our colonies are much in the same state as Ireland was in when they began the woollen manufactory, and as their numbers increase, will fall upon manufactures for clothing themselves, if due care be not taken to find employment for them in raising such productions as may enable them to furnish themselves with all the necessaries from us." "I should, therefore, think it worthy the care of the government to endeavour by all possible means to encourage them in the raising of silk, hemp, flax, iron, (only pig, to be hammered in England,) potash, &c., by giving them competent bounties in the beginning, and sending over skilful and judicious persons, at the public charge, to assist and instruct them in the most proper methods of management, which in my apprehension would lay a foundation for establishing the most profitable trade of any we have. And considering the commanding situation of our colonies along the seacoast, the great convenience of navigable rivers in all of them, the cheapness of land, and the easiness of raising provisions, great numbers of people would transport themselves thither to settle upon such improvements. Now, as people have been filled with fears that the colonies, if encouraged to raise rough materials, would set up for themselves, a little regulation would be necessary; and as they will have the providing rough materials for [begin page 72] themselves, a little regulation would remove all those jealousies out of the way. They have never thrown or wove any silk, as yet, that we have heard of, -- therefore, if a law was made prohibiting the use of any throwing mill, of doubling or throstling silk, with any machine whatever, they would then send it to us raw. And as they will have the providing rough

materials to themselves, so shall we have the manufacturing of them. If encouragement be given for raising hemp, flax, &c., doubtless they will soon begin to manufacture, if not prevented. Therefore, to stop the progress of any such manufacture, it is proposed that no weaver have liberty to set up any looms, without first registering at an office kept for that purpose, and the name and place of abode of any journeyman that shall work for him. But if any particular inhabitant shall be inclined to have any linen or woollen made of their own spinning, they should not be abridged of the same liberty that they now make use of, namely to have a weaver who shall be licensed by the Governor, and have it wrought up for the use of the family, but not to be sold to any person in a private manner, nor exposed to any market or fair, upon pain of forfeiture." "That all slitting mills and engines for drawing wire, or weaving stockings, be put down." " That all negroes shall be prohibited from weaving either linen or woollen, or spinning or combing of wool, or working at any manufacture of iron, further than making it into pig or bar-iron. That they also be prohibited from manufacturing hats, stockings, or leather of any kind. This limitation will not abridge the planters of any liberty they now enjoy--on the contrary, it will then turn their industry to promoting and raising those rough materials." Second -- "The advantages to Great Britain from keeping the colonies dependent on her for their essential supplies." "If we examine into the circumstances of the inhabitants of our plantations, and our own, it will appear that not one-fourth part of their product redounds to their own profit, for out of all that comes here, they only carry back clothing and other accommodations for their families, all of which is of the merchandise and manufacture of this kingdom." "All these advantages we receive by the plantations, besides the mortgages on the planters' estates and the high interest they pay us, which is very considerable, and, therefore, very great care ought to be taken, in regulating all the affairs of the colonists, that the planters are not put under too many difficulties, but encouraged to go on cheerfully." "New England and the northern colonies have not commodities and products enough to send us in return for purchasing their necessary clothing, but are under very great difficulties; and, therefore, any ordinary sort sell with them, -- and when they have grown out of fashion with us, they are new-fashioned enough for them." LORD GREY--1850. "If, as has been alleged by the complainants, and as in some instances would appear to be the case, any of the duties comprised in the tariff have been imposed, not for the purpose of revenue, but with a view of protecting the interest of the Canadian manufacturer, her Majesty's government are clearly of opinion that such a course is injurious alike to the interests of the mother country and to those of the colony. Canada possesses natural advantages for the production of articles which will always exchange in the markets of this country for those manufactured goods of which she stands in need. By such exchange she will obtain these goods much more cheaply than she could manufacture, them for herself, and she will secure an advantageous market for the raw produce which she is best able to raise. On the other hand, by closing her markets against British manufactures, or rendering their introduction more costly, she enhances their price to the consumer, and by the imposition of protective duties, for the purpose of fostering an unnatural trade, she gives a wrong direction to

capital, by withdrawing it from more profitable employment, and causing it to be invested in the manufacture of articles which might be imported at a cost below that of production in the colony, while at the same time she inflicts a blow on her export trade by rendering her markets less eligible to the British customer." "If the merchant finds that by exporting his goods to Canada, they produce him in return a large quantity of corn, and thus yield a greater profit than they would if exported to any other country, he will of course give the preference to Canada. But if by reason of increased import duties, those goods produce a diminished return the result will be either that the Canadian farmer must submit to a proportionate reduction in the price of his produce, or the British manufacturer must resort to another market. It is, therefore, obvious, that it is not less the interest of Canada herself than of Great Britain, that this tariff of import duties should undergo a careful revision." The phraseology of the two is different, but the object is the same -- that of rendering it necessary to send all the raw products of the land to a market far distant, and thus depriving the farmer or planter of the power to return any portion of the loan made to him by the earth, and which she is always willing to renew, on the simple condition that when the borrower has used it, he shall return to the lender the elements of which it had been composed.

Chapter IX.
How Slavery Grew, and How it is Now Maintained, in The West Indies.
The system described in the last chapter was fully carried out in the West India colonies. Manufactures were so entirely interdicted from the date of their coming under the crown of Great Britain, that the colonists were not permitted even to refine their own sugar, and still less to convert their cotton into cloth. The necessary consequence was that women and children could have no employment but that of the field. This, of course, tended to sink both mother and child far lower in the scale of civilization than would have been the case had the lighter labour of conversion been associated with the more severe one of production. The next effect was, that as all were bound to remain producers of raw commodities, there could be no markets at hand, and no exchanges could be made except at a distance of thousands of miles. Difficulties, too, arose in regard to the diversification of labour, even in agriculture itself. Indigo was tried, but of the price for which it sold in England so large a portion was absorbed by ship-owners, commission merchants, and the government, that its culture was abandoned. Coffee, was extensively introduced, and as it grows on higher and more salubrious lands its cultivation would have been of great advantage to the community; but here, as in the case of indigo, so small a portion of the price for which it sold was received by the producer that its production was about being abandoned, and was saved only by the government agreeing to reduce its claim to a shilling, or twenty-four cents, a pound. This amounted to about a hundred and eighty dollars per acre, the estimated produce being about 750 pounds of merchantable coffee; 26 and very much of it came out of the producer -- the poor negro. How enormously burdensome such a tax must have been may be judged by the farmers [begin page 75] who feel now so heavily the pressure of the malt duties; and it must always be borne in mind that the West India labourers were aided by the most indifferent machinery of production. By degrees these various taxes rendered necessary the abandonment of all cultivation but that of the sugar-cane, being of all others the most destructive of health, and as the whole population, men, women, and children, were limited to that single pursuit, we shall scarcely err in attributing to this fact the great waste of life recorded in a former chapter. Commerce, too, was interdicted, except with Great Britain and her colonies; and this led to efforts at a smuggling trade with the Spanish possessions on the continent; but 27 this was brought to a close by the watchfulness of the ships of war. Slaves, however, might be imported and exported, and this traffic was carried on a most extensive scale, most of the demand for the Spanish colonies being supplied from the British Islands. In 1775, however, the colonial legislature, desirous to prevent the excessive importation of negroes, imposed a duty of 2 per head, but this was petitioned against by the merchants of England, and the home government directed the discontinuance of the 28 29 tax. At this period the annual export of sugar is stated, to have been 980,346 cwt., the gross sales of which, duty free, averaged 1 14s. 8d. per cwt., making a total of 1,699,421, -- so large a portion of which, however, was absorbed by freight, commissions, insurance, &c., that the net proceeds, of 775 sugar estates are stated to
26 27 28 29

[74/*] [75/*] [75/] [75/]

Dallas's History of the Maroons, vol. i. page c. Macpherson, vol. iii. 394. Ibid. 574. Ibid. vol. iv. 255.

have been only 726,992, or less than 1000 each. If to the 973,000 thus deducted be added the share of the government, (12s. 3d. per cwt.,) and the further charges before the sugar reached the consumer, it will be seen that its grower could not have received more than one-fourth of the price at which it sold. The planter thus appears to have been little more than a superintendent of slaves, who were worked for the benefit of the merchants and the government of Great Britain, by whom was absorbed the lion's share of the produce of their labour. He was placed between the slave, whom he was obliged to support, on the one hand, and the mortgagee, the merchants, and the government, whom he was also obliged to [begin page 76] support, on the other, and he could take for himself only what was left -- and if the crop proved large, and prices fell, he was ruined. The consequences of this are seen in the fact that in twenty years following this period, there were sold for debt no less than 177 estates, while 92 remained unsold in the hands of creditors, and 55 were wholly abandoned. Seeing these things, it will not be difficult to understand the cause of the extraordinary waste of life exhibited in the British Islands. The planter could exist, himself, only by overworking his people; and notwithstanding all his efforts, no less than 324 out of 775 estates changed hands by reason of failure in the short space of twenty years. Whatever might be his disposition to improve the condition of the labourer, to do so was quite impossible while receiving for himself and them so small a portion of the price of his commodity. In the early years of the present century, land had become more valuable. The price of sugar had risen about 80 percent, and the planters were gradually extricating themselves from their difficulties; and a consequence of this was seen in a considerable amelioration of the condition of the slave, who was now much better fed, 30 clothed, and otherwise provided for. Slaves that had been as low as 34, average price, had risen to 50, at which the 250,000 in the island amounted to 12,500,000, and the real and personal property, exclusive of the slaves, was estimated at 31 25,000,000. How great, however, were the difficulties under which the planters still laboured, may be seen from the following extract, which, long as it is, is given because it illustrates so forcibly the destructive effects of the policy that looks to the prevention of that association which results from bringing the loom and the anvil to the side of plough and the harrow. "I have now to enter upon a painful part of my task, a part in which I am under the necessity of stating such circumstances as cannot but reflect disgrace on those who give rise to them, and from which the [begin page 77] weakness, I will not use a harsher term, of the legislature, is but too apparent. These circumstances arise from the various modes of agency, such as that of the attorney of estates, mortgagee in possession, receiver in chancery, &c. The first of these characters requires a definition. By the word attorney, in this sense, is meant agent; and the duties annexed to his office are so similar to those of a steward in England, that were it not for the dissimilarity of executing them, and the dignity attendant upon the former, I should pronounce them one and the same, But as this colonial stewardship is the surest road to imperial fortune, men of property and distinguished situation push eagerly for it. Attorneys are of two sorts; six percent attorneys, and salaried attorneys; the profits of the former arise from commissions of six percent on all the produce of an estate, and various interior resources; the latter are paid a certain stipend by some unincumbered proprietors, who have lately discovered that a steward in Jamaica may be hired like a steward in England, by which several
30 31

[76/*] Dallas's History of the Maroons, vol. i. cvii. [76/] Ibid. cv.

thousand pounds a year are saved, and instead of enriching their agents, are poured into their own coffers. The office of both is to attend to the estates of their employers, and to all their interests in the island, deputed to them that the proprietors themselves may live at home, that is to say, in Europe. "Of all the evils in the island of Jamaica, which call for a remedy, and by means of which the most unjustifiable practices are continued, the first and most crying is that of the business of a certain description of attorneys of orphans, mortgagees in possession, trustees, executors, guardians, and receivers under the court of chancery; and these evils arise in a great measure from the unjust and impolitic law which allows six percent commission on the gross produce of the estates under their charge and direction. The iniquitous practices, screened, if not authorized by that law have long been too glaring to be unnoticed; and attempts have been made to reduce the commission, and to fix it on some more equitable principle; but unfortunately there have always been in the House of Assembly too many of its members interested in benefits resulting from the present law to admit the adoption of the measure. That the interest of attorneys is not always the interest of those whose estates they hold is an undeniable fact, of which I think you will be convinced by the time you arrive at the conclusion of this letter. In many instances, too, this superior collateral interest militates against the happiness and amelioration of the state and condition of the slaves, which is now professed by the colonists to be an object of their most serious attention; and it proves not unfrequently the total ruin of the unfortunate planter, whose involved situation compels him to submit to the condition of consigning his estate to the management of an attorney appointed by his creditor, who is generally his merchant, and who throws the full legal advantages of his debtor's estate into the hands of his own agent in the island, to compensate for the economical bargain he makes for the management of his own concerns; a practice common also to trustees, guardians, &c. The law allowing such enormous commissions for services so inadequate, is also very defective in an important point; for it establishes no data for fixing the charge of this commission, which is never made according to the sales of sugar, for that is not soon, if ever known to the attorney. [begin page 78] Hence, in the different accounts, the charges are estimated on sugar at several prices, from 20s. per cwt. to 45s., and even 50s.; and in the same books of one and the same attorney, these charges are found to differ according to his connection with his employer, generally increasing in proportion to the distress of the property and of the proprietor. To form some notion of the advantages attending these appointments, and of their injurious tendency to involved proprietors, and even to their creditors, let us see what a receiver under the court of chancery can do. In the first place, it has not always been the practice to select him from among the inhabitants in the vicinity of the unfortunate estates, or from among the friends of the proprietor; he is frequently a resident in one of the towns, with perhaps as little knowledge of the management of an estate as is possessed by the sweeper of the chancery office; and indeed it would not be inapplicable to distinguish such receivers by the appellation of chancery-sweepers. These gentlemen seldom if ever see the estates which they are to direct, and have no other directions to give than, in a lumping way, to make as much sugar as possible, and to ship it, most likely to their own correspondents. Whatever the estates clear is so much in their hands, and of course the more money the better for them; money takes root in every soil, and propagates itself a thousand

ways; not a dollar of it therefore finds its way into the chancery chest, for the receiver having given security, the treasure is, by a common fiction in use, held to be fully as safe in his hands. While the different creditors of the estate are fighting the battle of priority, the receiver continues to direct the management of it, to ship the crop, and to take care of the money. At length a prior debt is established, and the creditor having gained the point, remains for a time satisfied; but finding, though his principal accumulates, that he receives nothing, he becomes clamorous for a sale. This may take place in five or six years time, when all pretexts for delay are worn out, and in the mean time the receiver takes care to have money, adequate to the simple sums received, turned over by his consignee or merchant to another hand, his banker's, to be ready to answer bills to be drawn on his own account, for which he must have a premium of from twelve to seventeen and a half percent. The estate at last is advertised for sale by a master in chancery, in consequence of an order from the chancellor. The sale, however, is spun out, a year or two longer, till the creditor or his attorney begins to remonstrate with the master: stipulations for an amicable settlement ensue, that is, for an admission of the receiver's accounts such as they may be, and for time allowed him for payment of the mesne profits or balance in his hands; which agreed to, the sale is positively to take place when the next crop is over. The sale then is actually concluded, the accumulations of these annual funds go unperceived to the further propagation of wealth for the receiver; and the purchaser, who is no other than the prior creditor, is put in possession of an estate in ruin, with a gang of negroes dispirited and miserable, who had been long sensible of their situation, conceiving themselves belonging to nobody, and almost despairing of ever falling into the hands of a kind master, interested in their welfare and happiness. Let us now turn to the attorney of a mortgagee in possession, and see what better he offers. The debt of the involved estate is due to a man of large property, or to [begin page 79] a merchant; if to the former, he has a merchant to whom the consignment is of considerable value. It is immaterial what the debt is, an estate in possession of a mortgagee is generally made to pay full commissions to the attorney employed for it. In justice to all parties the most is to be made of the property, and it is soon found that the negroes upon it are not equal to the returns it is capable of making, consequently hired negroes are added to the plantation-gangs, to plant, weed, and take off the crop; the works are extended, to be adequate to the proposed increase; more stock, more carts are bought, more white people employed. To keep pace with these grand designs, the poor plantation negroes are of course overworked. What is the result? A great deal of sugar and rum is made, to the credit as well as profit of the attorney, and by which the merchant is benefited, as the consignments are augmented; but six percent interest on the principal, six percent on that interest by compound arithmetic become principal, six percent commissions, with the contingent charges for labour, improvements, stores, etc., absorb the whole produce, and the planter daily sinks under an accumulating debt, till he is completely ruined. The greater the distress, the more the attorney fattens; in a war, for instance, a considerable additional benefit occurs; he becomes lumber-merchant, and having the rum of the estate at his command, and perhaps a little sugar, though in the latter article he is usually restricted, as the disposal of it in the island would interfere with the loading of ships and consignments, he purchases wholesale cargoes, and retails them out to the estate at a large profit. Staves bought by the attorney at 18 per thousand, have been known to be sold to the estate for 45 per thousand; and the cart belonging

to the property has carried the rum to pay for them. It is well known that the rum made upon an estate will seldom pay its contingent expenses, and that frequently bills are drawn on Great Britain to the amount of one thousand pounds, and sometimes two thousand pounds, for the excess of the contingencies over and above the amount of the sale of the rum: here the attorney finds another avenue of amassing for himself. Settling the excess from his own means, he appropriates the bills which it enabled him to draw to the purchase of the remainder of a cargo of negroes, after the best have been culled at the rate of from ninety to ninety-five pounds per head: these inferior negroes he disposes of to his dependent overseers, jobbers, doctors, tradesmen, distillers, and book-keepers, at forty or fifty pounds a head profit; nor is it without example, that the very estates on the credit of which some of the bills are drawn, have been supplied with negroes in the same manner, and at the same rate. This manoeuvre indeed is ventured only on estates of minors, whose trustees are merchants in Great Britain, ignorant of such practices; or may be, when they have committed the estates to the attorney, liable to the full advantages to be made of them, to compensate for the moderate allowance they give for the management of their own concerns. An island merchant, or according to the West India appellation, storekeeper, in great business, told a friend of mine, that he had sold a cargo of mules at eighteen pounds per head to an attorney, which were dispersed in separate spells of eight each to several estates, but that at the special instance of the purchaser, he had made out the bills of parcels at thirty pounds per [begin page 80] head. This does not speak much in favour of the virtue of the storekeeper, but it must be observed that he would have lost his customer had he demurred, and would probably have been considered as righteous overmuch. There is a variety of smaller advantages enjoyed by the attorney, such as forming connections with butchers who may purchase the fatted cattle, with jobbers of negroes for the purpose of intermingling negroes at a proportionable profit, fattening horses, and a long et cetera. To the attorney the commanders of the ships in the trade look up with due respect, and as they are proper persons to speak of him to the merchant, their good-will is not neglected. To the involved planter their language often is, 'Sir, I must have your sugars down at the wharf directly;' that is, your sugars are to make the lowest tier, to stand the chance of being washed out should the ship leak or make much water in a bad passage. When they address an attorney, they do not ask for sugars, but his favours, as to quantity and time; and his hogsheads form the upper tier." 32 An examination made about this period proved that these persons, 193 in number, held in charge 606 sugar-works, producing about 80,000 hhds. of sugar, and 36,000 puncheons of rum, which at the selling prices of that day in England yielded about 4,000,000, upon which they were entitled to six percent, or 240,000. We have here a most extensive system of absenteeism, and absentees must be represented by middlemen, having no interest in the slave or in the plantation, except to take from both all that can be taken, giving as little as possible back to either. Why, however, did this absenteeism exist? Why did not the owners of property reside on their estates? Because the policy which looked to limiting the whole population, male and female, old and young, to the culture of sugar, and forbade even that the sugar itself should be refined on the island, effectually prevented the growth of any middle class that should form the population of towns at which the planter might find
32

[80/*] Dallas's History of the Maroons, vol. ii. 358.

society that could induce him to regard the island as his home. Such was not the case in the French Islands, because the French government had not desired to prevent the weaker class of the population from engaging in the work of manufacture, as has been seen in the case of Grenada, in which sugar was refined until the period of its 33 surrender to the British arms. Towns therefore grew up, and men of all descrip[begin page 81] tions came from France to make the islands their home; whereas the English colonists looked only to realizing a fortune and returning home to spend it. All this is fully shown in the following extract, in which is given a comparative view of the British and French Islands immediately before the emancipation act of 1832. "The houses have more of a European air than in our English colonies, and I must notice with praise the existence of four booksellers' shops, as large and well furnished as any second-rate ones in Paris. The sight of books to sell in the West Indies is like water in the desert, for books are not yet included in plantation stores for our islands. The cause is this. The French colonists, whether Creoles or Europeans, consider the West Indies as their country; they cast no wistful looks toward France; they have not even a packet of their own; they marry, educate, and build in and for the West Indies and the West Indies alone. In our colonies it is quite different; except a few regular Creoles to whom gratis rum and gratis coloured mothers for their children have become quite indispensable, every one regards the colony as a temporary lodging-place, where they must sojourn in sugar and molasses till their mortgage's will let them live elsewhere. They call England their home, though many of them have never been there; they talk of writing home and going home, and pique themselves more on knowing the probable result of a contested election in England than on mending their roads, establishing a police, or purifying a prison. The French colonist deliberately expatriates himself; the Englishman never. If our colonies were to throw themselves into the hands of the North Americans, as their enemies say that some of them wish to do, the planters would make their little triennial trips to New York as they now do to London. The consequence of this feeling is that every one, who can do so, maintains some correspondence with England, and when any article is wanted, he sends to England for it. Hence, except in the case of chemical drugs, there is an inconsiderable market for an imported store of miscellaneous goods, much less for an assortment of articles of the same kind. A different feeling in Martinique produces an opposite effect; in that island very little individual correspondence exists with France, and consequently there is that effectual demand for books, wines, jewelry, haberdashery, &c., in the colony itself, which enables labour to be divided almost as far as in the mother country. In St. Pierre there are many shops which contain nothing but bonnets, ribbons, and silks, others nothing but trinkets and toys, others hats only, and so on, and there are rich tradesmen in St. Pierre on this account. Bridge Town would rapidly become a wealthy place, if another system were adopted; for not only would the public convenience be much promoted by a steady, safe, and abundant importation, and separate preservation of each article in common request, but the demand for those articles would be one hundred-fold greater in Bridge Town itself than it now is on the same account in London, Liverpool, or Bristol, when impeded or divided and frittered away by a system of parcel-sending across the Atlantic. [begin page 82] Supply will, under particular circumstances, create demand. If a post were established at Barbadoes, or a steamboat started between the islands, a thousand letters would be written where there are one hundred
33

[80/] See page 14, _ante.

now, and a hundred persons would interchange visits where ten hardly do at present. I want a book and cannot borrow it; I would purchase it instantly from my bookseller in my neighbourhood, but I may not think it worth my while to send for it over the ocean, when, with every risk, I must wait at the least three months for it. The moral consequences of this system are even more to be lamented than the economical, but I will say more about that at 34 some other time." In another part of the same work, the writer says-"Schools for the children of the slaves are the first and chief step toward amelioration of condition and morals in every class of people in the West Indies." Here, however, the same difficulty had existed. For the same reason that no towns could arise there could be no schools, and the planter found himself forced to send his children to England to be educated; the consequence of which was that at his death his property passed into the hands of agents, and his successors having contracted a fondness for European and a dislike for colonial life, remained abroad, leaving their estates to go to ruin, while their people perished under the lash of men who had no other interest than to ship the largest quantity of sugar, molasses, and rum. All this was a natural result of the system that denied to the women and children the privilege of converting cotton into cloth, or of giving themselves to other in-door pursuits. The mechanic was not needed where machinery could not be used, and without him there could grow up neither towns nor schools. The reader will have remarked, in the first extract above given, that the export of rum generally brought the planter in debt, and yet the price paid for it by the consumers appears to have been nearly a million of pounds sterling -- that is, the people of England gave of labour and its products that large sum in exchange for a certain product of the labouring people of Jamaica, not a shilling of which ever reached the planter to be applied to the amelioration of the condition of his estate, or of the people upon it. The crop sold on its arrival at 3s. or 3s. 6d. a gallon, but the consumer paid for it probably 17s., which were thus divided:-- [begin page 83] Government, representing the British people at large Ship-owners, wholesale and retail dealers, &c Land-owner and labourer 11.3 5.9 0.0 17.2

If we look to sugar, we find a result somewhat better, but of similar character. The English consumer gave for it 80s. worth of labour, and those shillings were nearly thus divided:-Government Ship-owner, merchant, mortgagee, &c Land-owner and labourer 27 33 20 80

The reader will now see that Mr. Joshua Gee was not exaggerating when he gave it as one of the recommendations of the colonial system that the colonists left in England 35 three-fourths of all their products, the difference being swallowed up by those who
34 35

[82/*] Coleridge's "Six Months in the West Indies," 131. [83/*] See pages 71-2, _ante.

made or superintended the exchanges. Such was the result desired by those who compelled the planter to depend on a distant market in which to sell all he raised, and to buy all he and his people needed to consume. The more he took out of his land the more he exhausted it and the less he obtained for its products, for large crops made large freights, large charges for storage, and enormous collections by the government, while prices fell because of the size of the crop, and thus was he ruined while all others were being enriched. Under such circumstances he could not purchase machinery for the improvement of his cultivation, and thus was he deprived of the power to render available the services of the people whom he was bound to support. Master of slaves, he was himself a slave to those by whom the labours of himself and his workmen were directed, and it would be unfair to attribute to him the extraordinary waste of life resulting necessarily from the fact that the whole people were limited to the labours of the field. With inexhaustible supplies of timber, the island contained, even in 1850, not a single sawmill, although it afforded an extensive market for lumber from abroad. Yielding in the greatest [begin page 84] abundance the finest fruits, there were yet no town'speople with their little vessels to carry them to the larger markets of this country, and for want of market they rotted under the trees. "The manufacturing resources of this island," says Mr. Bigelow, "are inexhaustible;" and so have they always been, but the people have been deprived of all power to profit by them, and for want of that power there was lost annually a greater amount of labour than would have paid, five times over, for the commodities for which they were compelled to look to the distant market. Of those who did not perish, because of the necessity for an universal dependence on field employments, a large portion of the labour was then, as it now must be, utterly wasted. "For six or eight months of the year, nothing," says Mr. Bigelow, (Notes, p. 54,) "is done on the sugar or coffee plantations." "Agriculture," he continues, "as at present conducted, does not occupy more than half their time." So was it fifty years ago, and it was because of the compulsory waste of labour and consequent small amount of productive power that there existed little opportunity for accumulating capital. Population diminished because there could be no improvement of the condition of the labourer who, while thus limited in the employment of his time, was compelled to support not only himself and his master, but the agent, the commission-merchant, the ship-owner, the mortgagee, the retail trader, and the government, and this under a system that looked to taking every thing from the land and returning nothing to it. Of the amount paid in 1831 by the British people for the products of the 320,000 black labourers of this island, the home government took no less than 3,736,113 10s. 6d., 36 or about eighteen millions of dollars, being almost sixty dollars per head, and this for merely superintending the exchanges. Had no such claim been made on the product of the labour of those poor people, the consumer would have had his sugar cheaper, and this would have made a large consumption, and these eighteen millions would have been divided between the black labourer on the one hand and the white one on the other. It would be quite safe to assert that in that year [begin page 85] each negro, old and young, male and female, contributed five pounds -- $24 -- to the maintenance of the British government, and this was a heavy amount of taxation to be borne by a people limited entirely to agriculture and destitute of the machinery necessary for making even that productive. If now to this heavy burden be added the commissions, freights, insurance, interest, and other charges, it will readily be seen that a system of taxation so grinding could end no otherwise than in ruin; and that such was the tendency of things, was seen in the steady diminution of production. Sugar, hhds.
36

Rum, puncheons.

Coffee, lbs.

[84/*] Martin's West Indies.

In the three years ending with 1802, the average exports were, of Whereas those of the three years ending with 1829 were only

113,000 92,000

44,000 34,000

14,000,000 17,000,000

The system which looked to depriving the cultivator of the advantage of a market near at hand, to which he could carry his products, and from which he could carry home the manure and thus maintain the powers of his land, was thus producing its natural results. It was causing the slave to became from day to day more enslaved; and that such was the case is shown by the excess of deaths over births, as given in a former chapter. Evidence of exhaustion was seen in every thing connected with the island. Labour and land were declining in value, and the security for the payment of the large debt due to mortgagees in England was becoming less from year to year, as more and more the people of other countries were being driven to the work of cultivation because of the impossibility of competing with England in manufactures. Sugar had declined to little more than a guinea a hundred-weight, and rum had fallen to little more than two shillings a gallon; 37 and nearly the whole of this must have been swallowed up in commissions and interest. Under such circumstances a great waste of life was inevitable; and therefore it is that we have seen importations of hundreds of thousands of black men, who have perished, leaving behind them no [begin page 86] trace of their having ever existed. But on whom must rest the responsibility for a state of things so hideous as that here exhibited? Not, surely, upon the planter, for he exercised no volition whatsoever. He was not permitted to employ his surplus power in refining his own sugar. He could not legally introduce a spindle or a loom into the island. He could neither mine coal nor smelt iron ore. He could not in any manner repay his borrowings from the land, and, as a matter of course, the loans he could obtain diminished in quantity; and then, small as they were, the chief part of what his commodities exchanged for was swallowed up by the exchangers and those who superintend the exchanges, exercising the duties of government. He was a mere instrument in their hands for the destruction of negro morals, intellect, and life; and upon them, and not upon him, must rest the responsibility for the fact that, of all the slaves imported into the island, not more than two-fifths were represented on the day of emancipation. Nevertheless, he it was that was branded as the tyrant and the destroyer of morals and of life; and public opinion -- the public opinion of the same people who had absorbed so large a portion of the product of negro labour -- drove the government to the measure of releasing the slave from compulsory service, and appropriating a certain amount to the payment, first, of the mortgage debts due in England, and, second, of the owner, who, even if he found his land delivered to him free of incumbrance, was in most cases left without a shilling to enable him to carry on the work of his plantation. The slaves were set free, but there existed no capital to find them employment, and from the moment of emancipation it became almost impossible to borrow money on mortgage security. The consequences are seen in the extensive abandonment of land and the decline of its value. Any quantity of it may be purchased, prepared for cultivation, and as fine as any in the island, for five dollars an acre, while other land, far more productive than any in New England, may be had at from fifty cents to one dollar. With the decline in the value of land the labourer tends toward barbarism, and the reason of this may be found on a perusal of the following paragraph:-- [begin page 87] "They have no new manufactories to resort to when they are in want of work; no unaccustomed departments of mechanical or agricultural labour are open to receive them, to stimulate their ingenuity and reward their industry. When they know how to ply the hoe, pick the coffee-berry, and
37

[85/*] Tooke's History of Prices, vol. ii. 412.

tend the sugar-mills, they have learned almost all the industry of the island can teach them. If, in the sixteen years during which the negroes have enjoyed their freedom, they have made less progress in civilization than their philanthropic champions have promised or anticipated, let the want I have suggested receive some consideration. It may be that even a white peasantry would degenerate under such influences. Reverse this, and when the negro has cropped his sugar or his coffee, create a demand for his labour in the mills and manufactories of which nature has invited the establishment on this island, and before another sixteen years would elapse the world would probably have some new facts to assist them in estimating the natural capabilities of the negro race, of more efficiency in the hands of the philanthropist than all the appeals which he has ever been able to address to the hearts or the consciences of men." Bigelow's Jamaica, p. 156. The artisan has always been the ally of the agriculturist in his contest with the trader and the government, as is shown in the whole history of the world. The first desires to tax him by buying cheaply and selling dearly. The second desires to tax him for permitting him to make his exchanges, and the more distant the place of exchange, the greater the power of taxation. The artisan comes near to him, and enables him to have the raw materials combined on the spot, the producer of them exchanging directly with the consumer, paying no tax for the maintenance of ship-owners, commission merchants, or shopkeepers. In a piece of cloth, says Adam Smith, weighing eighty pounds, there are not only more than eighty pounds of wool, but also "several thousand weight of corn, the maintenance of the working people," and it is the wool and the corn that travel cheaply in the form of cloth. What, however, finally becomes of the corn? Although eaten, it is not destroyed. It goes back again on the land, which becomes enriched; and the more that is taken from it; the more there is to be returned, the more it is enriched, the larger are the crops, and the greater is the ability of the farmer to make demands on the artisan. The reward of the latter increases with the growth in the value of the land and with the increase in the wealth of the land-owners by whom he is surrounded; and [begin page 88] thus it is that all grow rich and free together, and that the community acquires from year to year power to resist attempts at taxation beyond that really needed for the maintenance of the rights of person and property. The greater the power to make exchanges at home, the greater will always be found the freedom of man in relation to thought, speech, action, and trade, and the greater the value of land. The object of the policy pursued toward the colonies was directly the reverse of all this, tending to prevent any diversification whatsoever of employments, and thus not only to prevent increase in the value of land, but to diminish its value, because it forbade the return to the earth of any portion of its products. It forbade association, because it limited the whole people to a single pursuit. It forbade the immigration of artisans, the growth of towns, the establishment of schools, and consequently forbade the growth of intellect among the labourers or their owners. It forbade the growth of population, because it drove the women and the children to the culture of sugar among the richest and most unhealthy soils of the islands. It thus impoverished the land and its owners, exterminated the slave, and weakened the community, thus making it a mere instrument in the hands of the people who effected and superintended the exchanges - the merchants and the government -- the class of persons that, in all ages, has thriven at the cost of the cultivator of the earth. By separating the consumer from the producer, they were enabled, as has been shown, to take to themselves three-fourths of the whole sales of the commodities consumed, leaving but one-fourth to be divided between the land and labour that had produced it. They, of course, grew strong, while

the sugar-producing land and labour grew weak, and the weaker they became, the less was the need for regarding the rights of either. In this state of things it was that the landholder was required to accept a fixed sum of money as compensation for relinquishing his claim to demand of the labourer the performance of the work to which he had been accustomed. Unfortunately, however, the system pursued has effectually prevented that improvement of feeling and taste needed to produce in the latter desires [begin page 89] for any thing beyond a sufficiency of food and a shirt. Towns and shops not having grown, he had not been accustomed even to see the commodities that tempted his fellow-labourers in the French Islands. Schools not having existed, even for the whites, he had acquired no desire for books for himself, or for instruction for his children. His wife had acquired no taste for dress, because she had been limited to field labour. Suddenly emancipated from control, they gratified the only desire that had been permitted to grow up in them -- the love of perfect idleness, to be indulged to such extent as was consistent with obtaining the little food and clothing needed for the maintenance of existence. Widely different would have been the state of affairs had they been permitted to make their exchanges at home, giving the cotton and the sugar for the cloth and the iron produced by the labour and from the soil of the island. The producer of the sugar would then have had all the cloth given for it by the consumer, instead of obtaining onefourth of it, and then the land would have increased in value, the planter would have grown rich, and the labourer would have become free, by virtue of a great natural law which provides that the more rapid the augmentation of wealth, the greater must be the demand for labour, the greater must be the quantity of commodities produced by the labourer, the larger must be his proportion of the product, and the greater must be the tendency toward his becoming a free man and himself a capitalist. 38 As a consideration for abstaining from converting their own sugar and cotton into cloth, it had been provided that their products should enjoy certain advantages in the ports of the mother country; and the understanding at the date of emancipation was that the free negro should continue in the enjoyment of the same privileges that had been allowed to the slave and his master. It was soon, however, discovered that the negro, having scarcely any desire beyond the food that could be obtained from a little patch of land, [begin page 90] would not work, and that, consequently, the supply of sugar was reduced, with a large increase of price, and that thus the ship-owner suffered because of diminished freights, the merchant because of reduced consumption, and the government because of reduced revenue. Instead of obtaining, as before, one-fourth of the product, the cultivator had now perhaps one-half, because the taxes did not rise with the rise of price. Nevertheless, the land-owners and labourers of the island were weaker than before, for all power of association had disappeared; and now it was that the trader and the government discovered that if they would continue to draw from the sugar producers of the world their usual supplies of public and private revenue, they must resort again to slave labour, putting the poor free negro of Jamaica, with his exhausted soil, on the same footing with the slave of Brazil and Cuba, on a virgin soil; and this, too, at a moment when the science of Europe had triumphed over the difficulty of making sugar cheaply from the beet-root, and Germany, France, and Belgium were threatening to furnish supplies so abundant as almost to exclude the produce of the cane. They, too, had the sugar-refinery close at hand, whereas the poor free negro was not permitted to refine his product, nor is he so even now, although it is claimed that sugar might still be grown with advantage, were he permitted to exercise even that small amount of control over his labour and its products.

38

[89/*] 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.

What was the character of the machinery with which they were to enter on this competition will be seen by the following extract:-"I could not learn that there were any estates on the island decently stocked with implements of husbandry. Even the modern axe is not in general use; for felling the larger class of trees the negroes commonly use what they call an axe, which is shaped much like a wedge, except that it is a little wider at the edge than at the opposite end, at the very extremity of which a perfectly straight handle is inserted. A more awkward thing for chopping could not be well conceived -- at least, so I thought until I saw the instrument in yet more general use about the houses in the country, for cutting firewood. It was, in shape, size, and appearance, more like the outer half of the blade of a scythe, stuck into a small wooden handle, than any thing else I can compare it to: with this long knife, for it is nothing else, I have seen negroes hacking at branches of palm for several minutes, to accom- [begin page 91] plish what a good wood-chopper, with an American axe, would finish at a single stroke. I am not now speaking of the poorer class of negro proprietors, whose poverty or ignorance might excuse this, but of the 39 proprietors of large estates, which have cost their thousands of pounds." Cuba, too, had its cities and its shops, and these it had because the Spanish government had not desired to compel the people of the island to limit themselves to cultivation alone. Manufactures were small in extent, but they existed; and the power to make exchanges on the spot had tended to prevent the growth of absenteeism. The land-owners were present to look after their estates, and every thing therefore tended toward improvement and civilization, with constantly increasing attraction of both capital and labour. Jamaica, on the contrary, had but a seaport so poor as not to have a single foot of sidewalk paved, and of which three-fourths of the inhabitants were of the black race; and among them all, blacks and whites, there were no mechanics. In the capital of the island, Spanishtown, with a population of 5000, there was not to be found, in 1850, a single shop, nor a respectable hotel, nor even a dray-cart; 40 and in the whole island there was not a stage, nor any other mode of regular conveyance, by 41 land or water, except on the little railroad of fifteen miles from Kingston to the capital. Such was the machinery of production, transportation, and exchange, by aid of which the free people of Jamaica were to maintain "unlimited competition" with Cuba, and its cities, railroads, and virgin soil, and with Europe and its science. What is to be the ultimate result may be inferred from the following comparative view of the first four years of the century, and the last four for which we have returns:-Sugar, hhds 124,000 44,000 Rum, puncheons. 44,000 17,000 Coffee lbs. 14,600,000 6,000,000

1800 to 1803, average export, 1845 to 1848, average export

The consequence of this is seen in the fact that it requires the [begin page 92] wages of two men, for a day, to pay for a pound of butter, and of two women to pay for a pound of ham, while it would need the labour of eighty or a hundred men, for a day, to pay for 42 a barrel of flour. The London Times has recently stated that the free labourer now obtains less food than he did in the days of slavery, and there appears no reason to
39 40 41 42

[81/*] [91/] [91/] [92/*]

Bigelow, Notes, 129. Ibid, 31. Ibid, 69. Bigelow, 125.

doubt the accuracy of its information. This view would, indeed, seem to be fully confirmed by the admission, in the House of Commons, that the cost of sugar "in 43 labour and food" is less now than it was six years since. How indeed can it be otherwise? The object sought for is cheap sugar, and with a view to its attainment the production of sugar is stimulated in every quarter; and we all know that the more that is produced the larger will be the quantity poured into the market of England, and the greater will be the power of the people of that country to dictate the terms upon which they will consent to consume it. Extensive cultivation and good crops produce low prices, high freights, large commissions, and large revenue; and when such crops are made the people of England enjoy "cheap sugar" and are "prosperous," but the slave is rendered thereby more a slave, obtaining less and less food in return for his labour. Nevertheless, it is in that direction that the whole of the present policy of England points. The "prosperity" of her people is to be secured by aid of cheap sugar and high-priced cloth and iron; and the more exclusively the people of India and of Brazil can be forced to devote themselves to the labours of the field, the cheaper will be sugar and the greater will be the tendency of cloth and iron to be dear. What, however, becomes of the poor free negro? The more sugar he sends the more the stocks accumulate, and the lower are the prices, and the smaller is his power to purchase clothing or machinery, as will now be shown. [begin page 93] The London Economist, of November 13, furnishes the following statement of stocks and prices of sugar in the principal markets of Europe:-1849 3,563,000 1850 2,895,000 1851 3,810,000 1852 3,216,000

Stocks ...cwt Prices Duty Free Havana Brown.... Brazil Brown ..

17 to 24s. 16 to 20s.

20 to 27s. 18 to 22s.

16 to 22s. 12 to 17s.

19 to 26s. 16 to 20s.

The stocks of 1849 and 1852 were, as we see, nearly alike, and the prices did not greatly differ. Taking them, therefore, as the standard, we see that a diminution of supply so small as to cause a diminution of stock to the extent of about 400,000 cwts., or only about three percent of the import, added about fifteen percent to the prices of the whole crop in 1850; whereas a similar excess of supply in 1851 caused a reduction of prices almost as great. The actual quantity received in Europe in the first ten months of the last year had been 509,000 cwts. less than in the corresponding months of the previous one. The average monthly receipts are about a million of cwts. per month, and if we take the prices of those two years as a standard, the following will be the result:-1851 1852 12,000,000 cwts. 11,500,000 Gain on short crop Average 16s. 9d.... " " 20s. 3d.... 10,050,000 11,643,750 1,593,750

If now we compare 1850 with 1851, the following is the result:-43

[92/] 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.

1851 1850

As above 11,000,000 cwts

.. " " 21s. 9d....

10,050,000 11,971,250 1,921,250

Now if this reduction of export had been a consequence of increased domestic consumption, we should have to add the value of that million to the product, and this would give

1,187,500 3,108,750

We have here a difference of thirty percent, resulting from a diminution of export to the amount of one-twelfth of the export to Europe, and not more than a twenty-fourth of the whole crop. Admitting the crop to have been 24,000,000 of cwts., and it must [begin page 94] have been more, the total difference produced by this abstraction of four percent from the markets of Europe would be more than six millions of pounds, or thirty millions of dollars. Such being the result of a difference of four percent, if the people of Cuba, Brazil, India, and other countries were to turn some of their labour to the production of cloth, iron, and other commodities for which they are now wholly dependent on Europe, and thus diminish their necessity for export to the further extent of two percent, is it not quite certain that the effect would be almost to double the value of the sugar crop of the world, to the great advantage of the free cultivator of Jamaica, who would realize more for his sugar, while obtaining his cloth and his iron cheaper? If he could do this would he not become a freer man? Is not this, however, directly the reverse of what is sought by those who believe the prosperity of England to be connected with cheap sugar, and who therefore desire that competition for the sale of sugar should be unlimited, while competition, for the sale of cloth is to be limited? "Unlimited competition" looks to competition for the sale of raw produce in the markets of England, and to the destruction of any competition with England for the sale of manufactured goods; and it is under this system that the poor labourer of Jamaica is being destroyed. He is now more a slave than ever, because his labour yields him less of the necessaries and comforts of life than when a master was bound to provide for him. Such is a brief history of West India slavery, from its commencement to the present day, and from it the reader will be enabled to form an estimate of the judgment which dictated immediate and unconditional emancipation, and of the humanity that subsequently dictated unlimited freedom of competition for the sale of sugar. That of those who advocated emancipation vast numbers were actuated by the most praise worthy motives, there can be no doubt; but unenlightened enthusiasm has often before led almost to crime, and it remains to be seen if the impartial historian, will not, at a future day, say that such has been here the case. As regards the course which has been since pursued toward these impoverished, ignorant, and, defenceless people, he will perhaps have less difficulty; and it is possible that in recording it, the motives which led to it, and the results, he may find himself forced to place it among crimes of the deepest dye.

Chapter X.
How Slavery Grew and is Maintained in the United States.
The first attempt at manufacturing any species of cloth in the North American provinces produced a resolution on the part of the House of Commons, [1710,] that "the erecting of manufactories in the colonies had a tendency to lessen their dependence on Great Britain." Soon afterward complaints were made to Parliament that the colonists were establishing manufactories for themselves, and the House of Commons ordered the Board of Trade to report on the subject, which was done at great length. In 1732, the exportation of hats from province to province was prohibited, and the number of apprentices to be taken by hatters was limited. In 1750 the erection of any mill or other engine for splitting or rolling iron was prohibited; but pig iron was allowed to be imported into England duty free, that it might there be manufactured and sent back again. At a later period, Lord Chatham declared that he would not permit the colonists to make even a hobnail for themselves -- and his views were then and subsequently carried into effect by the absolute prohibition in 1765 of the export of artisans, in 1781 of woollen machinery, in 1782 of cotton machinery and artificers in cotton, in 1785 of iron and steel-making machinery and workmen in those departments of trade, and in 1799 by the prohibition of the export of colliers, lest other countries should acquire the art of mining coal. The tendency of the system has thus uniformly been-I. To prevent the application of labour elsewhere than in England to any pursuit but that of agriculture, and thus to deprive the [begin page 96] weaker portion of society -- the women and children -- of any employment but in the field. To compel whole populations to produce the same commodities, and thus to deprive them of the power to make exchanges among themselves. To compel them, therefore, to export to England all their produce in its rudest forms, at great cost of transportation. To deprive them of all power of returning to the land the manure yielded by its products, and thus to compel them to exhaust their land. To deprive them of the power of associating together for the building of towns, the establishment of schools, the making of roads, or the defence of their rights. To compel them, with every step in the process of exhausting the land, to increase their distances from each other and from market. To compel the waste of all labour that could not be employed in the field.

II.

III.

IV.

V.

VI.

VII.

VIII. To compel the waste of all the vast variety of things almost valueless in themselves, but which acquire value as men are enabled to work in 44 combination with each other. [begin page 97] IX. To prevent increase in the value of land and in the demand for the labour of man; and, To prevent advance toward civilization and freedom.

X.

That such were the tendencies of the system was seen by the people of the colonies. "It is well known and understood," said Franklin, in 1771, "that whenever a manufacture is established which employs a number of hands, it raises the value of lands in the neighbouring country all around it, partly by the greater demand near at hand for the produce of the land, and partly from the plenty of money drawn by the manufactures to that part of the country. It seems, therefore," he continued, "the interest of all our farmers and owners of lands, to encourage our young manufactures in preference to foreign ones imported among us from distant countries." Such was the almost universal feeling of the country, and to the restriction on the power to apply labour was due, in a great degree, the Revolution. The power to compel the colonists to make all their exchanges abroad gave to the merchants of England, and to the government, the same power of taxation that we see to have been so freely exercised in regard to sugar. In a paper published in 1750, in the London General Advertiser, it was stated that Virginia then exported 50,000 hhds. of tobacco, producing 550,000, of which the ship-owner, the underwriter, the commission merchant, and the government took 450,000, leaving to be divided between the land-owner and labourer only 100,000, or about eighteen percent, which is less even than the proportion stated by Gee, in his work of that date. Under such circumstances the planter could accumulate little capital to aid him in the improvement of his cultivation.

44

[96/*] The following case illustrates in a very striking manner the value that is given to things that must be wasted among an exclusively agricultural population, -- and it is but one of thousands that might be adduced: WHAT OLD BONES AND BITS OF SKIN MAY BE GOOD FOR. -- How to get a penny-worth of beauty out of old bones and bits of skin, is a problem which the French gelatine makers have solved very prettily. Does the reader remember some gorgeous sheets of colored gelatine in the French department of the Great Exhibition? We owed them to the slaughter-houses of Paris. These establishments are so well organized and conducted, that all the refuse is carefully preserved, to be applied to any purposes for which it may be deemed fitting. Very pure gelatine is made from the waste fragments of skin, bone, tendon, ligature, and gelatinous tissue of the animals slaughtered in the Parisian abbatoirs, and thin sheets of this gelatine are made to receive very rich and beautiful colors. As a gelatinous liquid, when melted, it is used in the dressing of woven stuffs, and in the clarification of wine; and as a solid, it is cut into threads for the ornamental uses of the confectioner, or made into very thin white sheets of papier glace, for copying, drawing, or applied to the making of artificial flowers, or used as a substitute for paper, on which gold printing may be executed. In good sooth, when an ox has given us our beef, and our leather, and our tallow, his career of usefulness is by no means ended; we can get a penny out of him as long as there is a scrap of his substance above ground --Household Words.

The Revolution came, and thenceforward there existed no legal impediments to the establishment of home markets by aid of which the farmer might be enabled to lessen the cost of transporting his produce to market, and his manure from market, thus giving to his land some of those advantages of situation which elsewhere add so largely to its value. The prohibitory laws had, however, had the effect of preventing the gradual growth of the mechanic arts, and Virginia had no towns of any note, while to the same circumstances [begin page 98] was due the fact that England was prepared to put down all attempts at competition with her in the manufacture of cloth, or of iron. The territory of the former embraced forty millions of acres, and her widely scattered population amounted to little more than 600,000. At the North, some descriptions of manufacture had grown slowly up, and the mechanics were much more numerous, and towns had gradually grown to be very small cities; the consequence of which was that the farmer there, backed by the artisan, always his ally, was more able to protect himself against the trader, who represented the foreign manufacturer. Everywhere, however, the growth of manufactures was slow, and everywhere, consequently, the farmer was seen exhausting his land in growing wheat, tobacco, and other commodities, to be sent to distant markets, from which no manure could be returned. With the exhaustion of the land its owners became, of course, impoverished, and there arose a necessity for the removal of the people who cultivated it, to new lands, to be in turn exhausted. In the North, the labourer thus circumstanced, removed himself. In the South, he had to be removed. Sometimes the planter abandoned his land and travelled forth with all his people, but more frequently he found himself compelled to part with some of his slaves to others; and thus has the domestic slave trade grown by aid of the exhaustive process to which the land and its owner have been subjected. The reader may obtain some idea of the extent of the exhaustion that has taken place, by a perusal of the following extracts from an address to the Agricultural Society of Albemarle County, Virginia, by one of the best authorities of the State, the Hon. Andrew Stevenson, late Speaker of the House of Representatives, and Minister to England. Looking to what is the "real situation" of things, the speaker asks-"Is there an intelligent and impartial man who can cast his eyes over the State and not be impressed with the truth, deplorable as it is afflicting, that the produce of most of our lands is not only small in proportion to the extent in cultivation, but that the lands themselves have been gradually sinking and becoming worse, under a most defective and ruinous system of cultivation?" "The truth is," he continues, [begin page 99] "we must all feel and know that the spirit of agricultural improvement has been suffered to languish too long in Virginia, and that it is now reaching a point, in the descending scale, from which, if it is not revived, and that very speedily, our State must continue not only third or fourth in population, as she now is, but consent to take her station among her smaller sisters of the Union." The cause of this unhappy state of things he regards as being to be found in "a disregard of scientific knowledge" and "a deep-rooted attachment to old habits of cultivation," together with the "practice of hard cropping and injudicious rotation of crops, leading them to cultivate more land than they can manure, or than they have means of improving;" and the consequences are found in the fact that in all the country east of the Blue Ridge, the average product of wheat "does not come up to seven bushels to the acre," four of which are required to restore the seed and defray the cost of cultivation, leaving to the land-owner for his own services and those of a hundred acres of land, three hundred bushels, worth, at present prices, probably two hundred and seventy dollars! Even this, however, is not as bad an exhibit as is produced in reference to another populous district of more than a hundred miles in length -- that

between Lynchburg and Richmond -- in which the product is estimated at not exceeding six bushels to the acre! Under such circumstances, we can scarcely be surprised to learn from the speaker that the people of his great State, where meadows abound and marl exists in unlimited quantity, import potatoes from the poor States of the North, and are compelled to be dependent upon them for hay and butter, the importers of which realize fortunes, while the farmers around them are everywhere exhausting their land and obtaining smaller crops in each successive year. Why is this so? Why should Virginia import potatoes and hay, cheese and butter? An acre of potatoes may be made to yield four hundred bushels, and meadows yield hay by tons, and yet her people raise wheat, of which they obtain six or seven bushels to the acre, and corn, of which they obtain fifteen or twenty, and with the produce of these they buy butter and cheese, pork and potatoes, which yield to the producer five dollars where they get one -- and import many of these things too, from States in which manufactur- [begin page 100] ing populations abound, and in which all these commodities should, in the natural course of things, be higher in price than in Virginia, where all, even when employed, are engaged in the cultivation of the soil. The answer to these questions is to be found in the fact that the farmers and planters of the State can make no manure. They raise wheat and corn, which they send elsewhere to be consumed; and the people among whom it is consumed put the refuse on their own lands, and thus are enabled to raise crops that count by tons, which they then exchange with the producers of the wheat produced on land that yields six bushels to the acre. "How many of our people," continues the speaker, "do we see disposing of their lands at ruinous prices, and relinquishing their birthplaces and friends, to settle themselves in the West; and many not so much from choice as from actual inability to support their families and rear and educate their children out of the produce of their exhausted lands -- once fertile, but rendered barren and unproductive by a ruinous system of cultivation. "And how greatly is this distress heightened, in witnessing, as we often do, the successions and reverses of this struggle between going and staying, on the part of many emigrants. And how many are there, who after removing, remain only a few years and then return to seize again upon a portion of their native land, and die where they were born. How strangely does it remind us of the poor shipwrecked mariner, who, touching in the midst of the storm the shore, lays hold of it, but is borne seaward by the receding wave; but struggling back, torn and lacerate, he grasps again the rock, with bleeding hands, and still clings to it, as a last and forlorn hope. Nor is this to be wondered at. Perhaps it was the home of his childhood -the habitation of his fathers for past generations -- the soil upon which had been expended the savings and nourishment, the energies and virtues of a long life--'the sweat of the living, and the ashes of the dead.' "Oh! how hard to break such ties as these. "This is no gloomy picture of the imagination; but a faithful representation of what most of us know and feel to be true. Who is it that has not had some acquaintance or neighbour -- some friend, perhaps some relative, forced into this current of emigration, and obliged from necessity, in the evening, probably, of a long life, to abandon his State and friends, and the home of his fathers and childhood, to seek a precarious subsistence in the supposed El Dorados of the West?"

This is a terrible picture, and yet it is but the index to one still worse that must follow in its train. Well does the hon. speaker say that -"There is another evil attending this continual drain of our population to the West, next in importance to the actual loss of the population [begin page 101] itself, and that is, its tendency to continue and enlarge our wretched system of cultivation. "The moment some persons feel assured that for present gain they can exhaust the fertility of their lands in the old States, and then abandon them for those in the West, which, being rich, require neither the aid of science nor art, the natural tendency is at once to give over all efforts at improvement themselves, and kill their land as quickly as possible -- then sell it for what it will bring or abandon it as a waste. And such will be found to be the case with too many of the emigrants from the lowlands of Virginia." Another distinguished Virginian, Mr. Ruffin, in urging an effort to restore the lands that have been exhausted, and to bring into activity the rich ones that have never been drained, estimates the advantages to be derived by Lower Virginia alone at $500,000,000. "The strength, physical, intellectual, and moral, as well as the revenue of the commonwealth, will," he says, "Soon derive new and great increase from the growing improvements of that one and the smallest of the great divisions of her territory, which was the poorest by natural constitution -- still more, the poorest by long exhausting tillage--its best population gone or going away, and the remaining portion sinking into apathy and degradation, and having no hope left except that which was almost universally entertained of fleeing from the ruined country and renewing the like work of destruction on the fertile lands of the far West." If we look farther South, we find the same state of affairs. North Carolina abounds in rich lands, undrained and uncultivated, and coal and iron ore abound. Her area is greater than that of Ireland, and yet her population is but 868,000; and it has increased only 130,000 in twenty years, and, from 1830 to 1840; the increase was only 16,000. In South Carolina, men have been everywhere doing precisely what has been described in reference to Virginia; and yet the State has, says Governor Seabrook, in his address to the State Agricultural Society, "millions of uncleared acres of unsurpassed fertility, which seem to solicit a trial of their powers from the people of the plantation States." * * " In her borders," he continues, "there is scarcely a vegetable product essential to the human race that cannot be furnished." Marl and lime abound, millions of acres of rich meadow-land remain in a state of nature, and "the seashore parishes," he adds, "possess unfailing supplies of salt mud, salt grass, and shell-lime." [begin page 102] So great, nevertheless, was the tendency to the abandonment of the land, that in the ten years from 1830 to 1840 the white population increased but 1000 and the black but 12,000, whereas the natural increase would have given 150,000! Allowing Virginia, at the close of the Revolution, 600,000 people, she should now have, at the usual rate of increase, and excluding all allowance for immigration, 4,000,000, or one to every ten acres; and no one at all familiar with the vast advantages of the state 45 can doubt her capability of supporting more than thrice that number. Nevertheless,
45

[102/*] The superficial area of the State is 64,000 square miles, being greater than that of England, and double that of Ireland.

the total number in 1850 was but 1,424,000, and the increase in twenty years had been but 200,000, when it should have been 1,200,000. If the reader desire to know what has become of all these people, he may find most of them among the millions now inhabiting Alabama and Mississippi, Louisiana, Texas, and Arkansas; and if he would know why they are now there to be found, the answer to the question may be given in the words -- "They borrowed from the earth, and they did not repay, and therefore she expelled them." It has been said, and truly said, that "the nation which commences by exporting food will end by exporting men." When men come together and combine their efforts, they are enabled to bring into activity all the vast and various powers of the earth; and the more they come together, the greater is the value of land, the greater the demand, for labour, the higher its price, and the greater the freedom of man. When, on the contrary, they separate from each other, the greater is the tendency to a decline in the value of land, the less is the value of labour, and the less the freedom of man. Such being the case, if we desire to ascertain the ultimate cause of the existence of the domestic slave trade, it would seem to be necessary only to ascertain the cause of the exhaustion of the land. The reason usually assigned for this will be found in the following passage, extracted from one of the English journals of the day;-- [begin page 103] "The mode of agriculture usually coincident with the employment of slave labour is essentially exhaustive, and adapted therefore only to the virginrichness of a newly-colonized soil. The slave can plant, and dig, and hoe: he works rudely and lazily with rude tools: and his unwilling feet tread the same path of enforced labour day after day. But slave labour is not adapted to the operations of scientific agriculture, which restores its richness to a wornout soil; and it is found to be a fact that the planters of the Northern slave States, as, e.g., Virginia, gradually desert the old seats of civilization, and advance further and further into the yet untilled country. Tobacco was the great staple of Virginian produce for many years after that beautiful province was colonized by Englishmen. It has exhausted the soil; grain crops have succeeded, and been found hardly less exhaustive; and emigration of both white and coloured population to the West and South has taken place to a very large extent. The result may be told in the words of an American witness:-- 'That part of Virginia which lies upon tide waters presents an aspect of universal decay. Its population diminishes, and it sinks day by day into a lower depth of exhaustion and poverty. The country between tide waters and the Blue Ridge is fast passing into the same condition. Mount Vernon is a desert waste; Monticello is little better, and the same circumstances which have desolated the lands of Washington and Jefferson have impoverished every planter in the State. Hardly any have escaped, save the owners of the rich bottom lands along James River, the fertility of which it seems difficult utterly to destroy.' 46 Now a Virginia planter stands in much the same relation to his plantation as an absentee Irish landlord to his estate; the care of the land is in each case handed over to a middleman, who is anxious to screw out of it as large a return of produce or rent as possible; and pecuniary embarrassment is in both cases the result. But as long as every pound of cotton grown on the Mississippi and the Red River finds eager customers in Liverpool, the price of slaves in those districts cannot fail to keep up. In many cases the planter of the Northern slave States emigrates to a region where he can employ his capital of thews and sinews more profitably than at home. In many others, he turns his plantation into an establishment for slave breeding, and sells
46

[103/*] Despotism in America, 127.

his rising stock for labour in the cottonfield." -- Prospective Review Nov. 1852. Unhappily, however, for this reasoning precisely the same exhaustion is visible in the Northern States, as the reader may see by a perusal of the statements on this subject given by Professor Johnson, in his "Notes on North America," of which the following is a specimen:-"Exhaustion has diminished the produce of the land, formerly the great staple of the country. When the wheat fell off, barley, which at first yielded fifty or sixty bushels, was raised year after year, till the land fell away from this, and became full of weeds." -- Vol. i. 259. [begin page 104] Rotation of crops cannot take place at a distance from market. character of the system is well shown in the following extract:-The exhaustive

"In the State of New York there are some twelve million acres of improved land, which includes all meadows and enclosed pastures. This area employs about five hundred thousand labourers, being an average of twenty-four acres to the hand. At this ratio, the number of acres of improved land in the United States is one hundred, and twenty millions. But New York is an old and more densely populated State than an average in the Union; and probably twenty-five acres per head is a juster estimate for the whole country. At this rate, the aggregate is one hundred and twentyfive millions. Of these improved lands, it is confidently believed that at least four-fifths are now suffering deterioration in a greater or less degree. "The fertility of some, particularly in the planting States, is passing rapidly away; in others, the progress of exhaustion is so slow as hardly to be observed by the cultivators themselves. To keep within the truth, the annual income from the soil may be said to be diminished ten cents an acre on one hundred million acres, or four-fifths of the whole. "This loss of income is ten millions of dollars, and equal to sinking a capital of one hundred and sixty-six million six hundred and sixty-six thousand dollars a year, paying six percent annual interest. That improved farming lands may justly be regarded as capital, and a fair investment when paying six percent interest, and perfectly safe, no one will deny. This deterioration is not unavoidable, for thousands of skilful farmers have taken fields, poor in point of natural productiveness, and, instead of diminishing their fertility, have added ten cents an acre to their annual income, over and above all expenses. If this wise and improving system of rotation tillage and husbandry were universally adopted, or applied to the one hundred million acres now being exhausted, it would be equivalent to creating each year an additional capital of one hundred and sixty-six millions six hundred and sixty-six thousand dollars, and placing it in permanent real estate, where it would pay six percent annual interest. For all practical purposes, the difference between the two systems is three hundred, and thirty-three millions three hundred and thirty-three thousand dollars a year to the country. "Eight million acres [in the State of New York] are in the hands of three hundred thousand persons, who still adhere to the colonial practice of extracting from the virgin soil all it will yield, so long as it will pay expenses to crop it, and then leave it in a thin, poor pasture for a term of years.

Some of these impoverished farms, which seventy-five years ago produced from twenty to thirty bushels of wheat, on an average, per acre, now yield only from five to eight bushels. In an exceedingly interesting work entitled 'American Husbandry,' published in London in 1775, and written by an American, the following remarks may be found on page 98, vol. i.:-- 'Wheat, in many parts of the province, (New York,) yields a larger produce than is common in Eng- [begin page 105] land. Upon good lands about Albany, where the climate is the coldest in the country, they sow two bushels and better upon an acre, and reap from twenty to forty; the latter quantity, however, is not often had, but from twenty to thirty are common; and with such bad husbandry as would not yield the like in England, and much less in Scotland. This is owing to the richness and freshness of the land.' "According to the State census of 1845, Albany county now produces only seven and a half bushels of wheat per acre, although its farmers are on tide water and near the capital of the State, with a good home market, and possess every facility for procuring the most valuable fertilizers. Dutchess county, also on the Hudson River, produces an average of only five bushels per acre; Columbia, six bushels; Rensselaer, eight; Westchester, seven; which is higher than the average of soils that once gave a return larger than the wheat lands of England even with 'bad husbandry.' "Fully to renovate the eight million acres of partially exhausted lands in the State of New York, will cost at least an average of twelve dollars and a half per acre, or an aggregate of one hundred millions of dollars. It is not an easy task to replace all the bone-earth, potash, sulphur, magnesia, and organized nitrogen in mould consumed in a field which has been unwisely cultivated fifty or seventy-five years. Phosphorus is not an abundant mineral anywhere, and his sub-soil is about the only resource of the husbandman after his surface-soil has lost most of its phosphates. The three hundred thousand persons that cultivate these eight million acres of impoverished soils annually produce less by twenty-five dollars each than they would if the land had not been injured. "The aggregate of this loss to the State and the world is seven million five hundred thousand dollars per annum, or more than seven percent interest on what it would cost to renovate the deteriorated soils. There is no possible escape from this oppressive tax on labour of seven million five hundred thousand dollars, but to improve the land, or run off and leave it." Patent Office Report, 1849 It is not slavery that produces exhaustion of the soil, but exhaustion of the soil that causes slavery to continue. The people of England rose from slavery to freedom as the land was improved and rendered productive, and as larger numbers of men were enabled to obtain subsistence from the same surface; and it was precisely as the land thus acquired value that they became free. Such, too, has been the case with every people that has been enabled to return to the land the manure yielded by its products, because of their having a market at home. On the contrary, there is no country in the world, in which men have been deprived, of the power to improve their land, in which slavery has not been maintained, to be aggravated in intensity as the land became more and [begin page 106] more exhausted, as we see to have been the case in the West Indies. It is to this perpetual separation from each other that is due the poverty and weakness of the South. At the close of the Revolution, the now slave States contained probably 1,600,000 people, and those States contained about 120,000,000 of acres, giving an average of about eighty acres to each. In 1850, the population had

grown to 8,500,000, scattered over more than 300,000,000 of acres, giving about forty acres to each. The consequence of this dispersion is that the productive power is very small, as is here seen in an estimate for 1850, taken from a Southern journal of high 47 reputation:-Cotton............................. 105,600,000 Tobacco............................. 15,000,000 Rice................................ 3,000,000 Naval stores....................... 2,000,000 Sugar.............................. 12,396,150 Hemp.............................. 695,840 If we now add for food an equal amount, and this is certainly much in excess of the truth...... And for all other products..................... We obtain..................................

138,691,990 138,691,990 22,616,020 $300,000,000

as the total production of eight millions and a half of people, or about $35 per head. The total production of the Union in 1850 cannot have been short of 2500 millions; and if we deduct from that sum the above quantity, we shall have remaining 2150 millions as the product of fourteen millions and a half of Northern people, or more than four times as much per head. The difference is caused by the fact that at the North artisans have placed themselves near to the farmer, and towns and cities have grown up, and exchanges are made more readily, and the farmer is not to the same extent obliged to exhaust his land, and dispersion therefore goes on more slowly; and there is, in many of the States, an extensive demand for those commodities of which the earth yields largely, such as potatoes, cabbages, turnips, &c. &c. With each [begin page 107] step in the process of coming together at the North, men tend to become more free; whereas the dispersion of the South produces everywhere the trade in slaves of which the world complains, and which would soon cease to exist if the artisan could be brought to take his place by the side of the producer of food and cotton. Why he cannot do so may he found in the words of a recent speech of Mr. Cardwell, member of Parliament from Liverpool, congratulating the people of England on the fact that free trade had so greatly damaged the cotton manufacture of this country, that the domestic consumption was declining from year to year. In this is to be found the secret of the domestic slave trade of the South, and its weakness, now so manifest. The artisan has been everywhere the ally of the farmer, and the South has been unable to form that alliance, the consequences of which are seen in the fact that it is always exporting men and raw materials, and exhausting its soil and itself: and the greater the tendency to exhaustion, the greater is the pro-slavery feeling. That such should be the case is most natural. The man who exhausts his land attaches to it but little value, and he abandons it, but he attaches much value to the slave whom he can carry away with him. The proslavery feeling made its appearance first in the period between 1830 and 1840. Up to 1832, there had existed a great tendency in Maryland, Virginia, and Kentucky toward freedom, but that disappeared; and the reason why it did so may be seen in the greatly increased tendency to the abandonment of the older tobacco and cotton growing States, as here shown:-Total Population: Virginia........ South Carolina... Ratio of increase: Virginia..................
47

1820. 1,065,379 502,741

1830. 1,211,405 581,185

1840. 1,239,797 594,398

1850. 1,424,863 668,247

13.6

2.3

15.2

[106/*] De Bow's Commercial Review, new series, vol. ii. 137.

South Carolina.......

15.6

2.3

12.4

With the increase in the export of slaves to the South, the negro population declined in its ratio of increase, whereas it has grown with the growth of the power of the slave to remain at home, as is here shown:-1820. 1,779,885 30 1830. 2,328,642 30.8 1840. 2,873,703 24 1850. 3,591,000 25

Total black population: Ratio of increase........

We see thus that the more the black population can remain at home, the more rapidly they increase; and the reason why such is the case is, that at home they are among their own people, by whom they have been known from infancy, and are of course better fed and clothed, more tenderly treated, and more lightly worked, with far greater tendency toward freedom. It would thence appear that if we desire to bring about the freedom of the negro, we must endeavour to arrest the domestic slave trade, and enable the slave and his master to remain at home; and to do this we must look to the causes of the difference in the extent of the trade in the periods above referred to. Doing this, we shall find that from 1820 to 1830 there was a decided tendency toward bringing the artisan to the side of the ploughman; whereas from 1833 to 1840 the tendency was very strong in the opposite direction, and so continued until 1842, at which time a change took place, and continued until near the close of the decennial period, when our present revenue system came fully into operation. The artisan has now ceased to come to the side of the planter. Throughout the country cotton and woollen mills and furnaces and foundries have been closed, and women and children who were engaged in performing the lighter labour of converting cotton into cloth are now being sold for the heavier labour of the cotton-field, as is shown by the following advertisement, now but a few weeks old:-SALE OF NEGROES. -- The negroes belonging to the Saluda Manufacturing Company were sold yesterday for one-fourth cash, the balance in one and two years, with interest, and averaged $599. Boys from 16 to 25 brought $900 to $1000. -- Columbia, (S.C.) Banner, Dec. 31, 1852. As a necessary consequence of this, the domestic slave trade is now largely increasing, as is shown by the following extract from a recent journal:-[begin page 109] "The emigration to the southern portion of Arkansas, Louisiana, and Texas, during the past fall, has been unusually large, and the tide which flows daily through our streets indicates that the volume abates but little, if any. On the opposite bank of the river are encamped nearly fifty wagons, with probably not less than two hundred and fifty souls. Each night, for a fortnight, there have been, on an average, not less than twenty-five wagons encamped there; and notwithstanding two hand ferry-boats have been constantly plying between the shores, the hourly accession to the number makes the diminution scarcely perceptible." -- Little Rock. (Ark.) Gazette, Dec. 3, 1852. Had the member for Liverpool been aware that a decline in the tendency toward bringing the cotton-mill to the cotton-field was accompanied by increased exhaustion of the land, increased impoverishment, and increased inability to bring into action the rich soils of the older States, and that with each such step there arose an increased necessity for the expulsion of the people of those States, accompanied by an increased sacrifice of life resulting from the domestic slave trade, he would certainly have

hesitated before congratulating Parliament on an occurrence so hostile to the progress of freedom. That the export of negroes, with its accompanying violation of the rights of parents and children, and with its natural tendency toward a total forgetfulness of the sanctity of the marriage tie, has its origin in the exhaustion of the land, there can be no doubt -- and that that, in its turn, has its origin in the necessity for a dependence on distant markets, is quite as free from doubt. The man who must go to a distance with his products cannot raise potatoes, turnips, or hay. He must raise the less bulky articles, wheat or cotton and he must take from his land all the elements of which wheat or cotton is composed, and then abandon it. In addition to this, he must stake all his chances of success in his year's cultivation on a single crop; and what are the effects of this is seen in the following paragraph in relation to the wheat cultivation of Virginia in the last season:-"Never did I know in this State such a destruction of the wheat crop; I have just returned from Albemarle, one of the best counties. The joint-worm, a new enemy of three year's known existence there, has injured every crop, and destroyed many in that and other counties both sides and along the Blue Ridge. I saw many fields that would not yield more than seed, and not a few from which not one [begin page 110] peck per acre could be calculated upon. I saw more than one field without a head. The most fortunate calculate upon a half crop only. Corn is backward on the lower James River, embracing my own farm. I have heard today from my manager that the caterpillar has made its appearance, and must in the late wheat do serious damage." That State is not permitted to do any thing but grow wheat and tobacco, both of which she must export, and the larger the export the smaller are the returns, under the system of "unlimited competition" for the sale of raw products, and limited competition for the purchase of manufactured ones, which it is the object of British policy to establish. Not only is Virginia limited in the application of her labour, but she is also greatly limited in the extent of her market, because of the unequal distribution of the proceeds of the sales of her products. The pound of tobacco for which the consumer pays 6s. ($1.44,) yields him less than six cents, the whole difference being absorbed by the people who stand between him and the consumer, and who contribute nothing toward the production of his commodity. 48 Now, it is quite clear that if the consumer and he stood face to face with each other, he would receive all that was paid, and that while the one bought at lower prices, the other would sell at higher ones, and both would grow rich. The difficulty with him is that not only is his land exhausted, but he receives but a very small portion of the price paid for its products, and thus is he, like the labourer of Jamaica, exhausted by reason of the heavy taxation to which he is subjected for the support of foreign merchants and foreign governments. As a consequence of all this his land has little value, and he
48

[110/*] 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.

finds himself becoming poorer from year to year, and each year he has to sell a negro for the payment of the tax on his tobacco and [begin page 111] his wheat to which he is thus subjected, until he has at length to go himself. If the reader desire to study the working of this system of taxation, he cannot do better than read the first chapter of "Uncle Tom's Cabin," containing the negotiation between Haley and Mr. Shelby for the transfer of Uncle Tom, resulting in the loss of his life in the wilds of Arkansas. The more the necessity for exhausting land and for selling negroes, the cheaper, however, will be wheat and cotton. Uncle Tom might have remained at home had the powers of the land been maintained and had Virginia been enabled to avail herself of her vast resources in coal, iron ore, water-power, &c.; but as she could not do this, he had to go to Arkansas to raise cotton: and the larger the domestic slave trade, the greater must be the decline in the price of that great staple of the South. At no period was that trade so large as in that from 1830 to 1840, and the effects are seen in the following comparative prices of cotton:-Crops, 1831 and 1832, average 10-1/2. 1841 and 1842, average 7. The export of negroes declined between 1842 and 1850, and the consequence is that cotton has since maintained its price. With the closing of Southern mills the slave trade, is now again growing rapidly, and the consequences will be seen in a large decline in the price of that important product of Southern labour and land. The reader will now observe that it was in the period from 1830 to 1840 that the tendency to emancipation disappeared -- that it was in that period were passed various laws adverse to the education of negroes -- that it was in that period there was the greatest enlargement of the domestic slave trade -- and the greatest decline in the price of cotton. Having remarked these things, and having satisfied himself that they, each and all, have their origin in the fact that the planter is compelled to depend on foreign markets and therefore to exhaust his land, he will be enabled to judge of the accuracy of the view contained in the following sentence:-"The price of a negro on Red River varies with the price of cotton in Liverpool, and whatever tends to lower the value of the staple here, not only confers an inestimable advantage on our own manufacturing population, but renders slave labour less profitable, and therefore less permanent in Alabama." -- Prospective Review, No. xxxii. 512. [begin page 112] It would be fortunate if philanthropy and pecuniary profit could thus be made to work together, but such unhappily is not the case. When men are enabled to come nearer to each other and combine their efforts, and towns arise, land acquires great value and gradually becomes divided, and with each step in this direction the negro loses his importance in the eye of his owner. When, however, men are forced to abandon the land they have exhausted, it becomes consolidated, and the moveable chattel acquires importance in the eyes of his emigrant owner. At death, the land cannot, under these circumstances, be divided, and therefore the negroes must; and hence it is that such advertisements as the following are a necessary consequence of the system that looks to cheap wheat, cheap sugar, and cheap cotton. HIGH PRICE OF NEGROES. -- We extract the following from the Lancaster (S.C.) Ledger of the 5th January last:--

We attended the sale of negroes belonging to the estate of the late S. Beekman, on the 22d of last month, and were somewhat astonished at the high price paid for negroes. Negro men brought from $800 to $1000, the greater number at or near the latter price. One (a blacksmith) brought $1425. We learn from the Winsboro Register, that on Monday, the 3d inst., a large sale of negroes was made by the Commissioner in Equity for Fairfield district, principally the property of James Gibson, deceased. The negroes were only tolerably likely, and averaged about $620 each. The sales were made on a credit of twelve months. -- Charleston (S. C.) Courier. The more the planter is forced to depend upon tobacco the lower will be its price abroad, and the more he must exhaust his land. The more rapid the exhaustion the more must be the tendency to emigrate. The more the necessity for depending exclusively on wheat, the greater the necessity for making a market for it by raising slaves for sale: and in several of the older Southern States the planter now makes nothing but what results from the increase of "stock." Of all the exporters of food England is the largest, said a distinguished English merchant, in a speech delivered some years since. In some parts of that country it is manufactured into iron, and in others into cloth, in order that it may travel cheaply, and this is quite in accordance with the advice of Adam Smith. With [begin page 113] a view, however, to prevent other nations from following in the course so strongly urged upon them by that great man, labour has been cheapened, and men and women, boys and girls, have been accustomed to work together in the same mine, and often in a state of entire nudity; while other, women and children have been compelled to work for fourteen or sixteen hours a day for six days in the week, and for small wages, in the mill or workshop -- and this has been done in accordance with the advice of Mr. Huskisson, who, from his place in Parliament, told his countrymen that in order "to give capital a fair remuneration, labour must be kept down" -- that is, the labourer must be deprived of the power to determine for himself for whom he would work, or what should be his reward. It was needed, as was then declared by another of the most eminent statesmen of Britain, "that the manufactures of all other nations should be strangled in their infancy," and such has from that day to the present been the object of British policy. Hence it is that England is now so great an exporter of food manufactured into cloth and iron. The people of Massachusetts manufacture their grain into fish, cloth, and various other commodities, with a view to enable it cheaply to travel to market. Those of Illinois, unable to convert their corn into coal or iron, find themselves obliged to manufacture it into pork. The Virginian would manufacture his corn and his wheat into cloth, or into coal and iron, if he could; but this he cannot do, although close to the producer of cotton, and occupying a land abounding in all the raw materials of which machinery is composed; and having, too, abundant labour power that runs to waste. Why he cannot do it is that England follows the advice of Mr. Huskisson, and cheapens labour with a view to prevent other nations from following the advice of Adam Smith. The whole energies of the State are therefore given to the raising of tobacco and corn, both of which must go abroad, and as the latter cannot travel profitably in its rude state, it requires to be manufactured, and the only branch of manufacture permitted to the Virginian is that of negroes, and hence it is that their export is so large, and that cotton is so cheap. Widely different would be the course of things could he be per [begin page 114] mitted to employ a reasonable portion of his people in the development of the vast resources of the State -- opening mines, erecting furnaces, smelting iron, making machinery, and

building mills. Fewer persons would then raise corn and more would be employed in consuming it, and the price at home would then rise to a level with that in the distant market, and thus would the land acquire value, while the cost of raising negroes would be increased. Towns would then grow up, and exchanges would be made on the spot, and thus would the planter be enabled to manure his land. Labour would become more productive, and there would be more commodities to be given in exchange for labour; and the more rapid the increase in the amount of production the greater would be the tendency toward enabling the labourer to determine for whom he would work and what should be his reward. Population would then rapidly increase, and land would become divided, and the little black cultivator of cabbages and potatoes would be seen taking the place of the poor white owner of large bodies of exhausted land, and thus would the negro tend toward freedom as his master became enriched. Nothing of this kind is, however, likely to take place so long as the Virginian shall continue of the opinion that the way to wealth lies in the direction of taking every thing from the land and returning nothing to it -- nor, perhaps, so long as the people of England shall continue in the determination that there shall be but one workshop in the world, and carry that determination into effect by "keeping labour down," in accordance with the advice of Mr. Huskisson. The tendency to the abandonment of the older States is now probably greater than it has ever been, because their people have ceased to build mills or furnaces, and every thing looks to a yet more perfect exhaustion of the soil. The more they abandon the land the greater is the anxiety to make loans in England for the purpose of building roads; and the more numerous the loans the more rapid is the flight, and the greater the number of negroes brought to market. A North Carolina paper informs its readers that-"The trading spirit is fully up. A few days since Mr. D. W. Bullock sold to Messrs. Wm. Norfleet, Robert Norfleet, and John S. Dancy, [begin page 115] plantation and 18 negroes for $30,000. Mr. R.R. Bridges to Wm. F. Dancy, 6 acres near town for $600. At a sale in Wilson, we also understand, negro men with no extra qualifications sold as high as $1225." -- Tarborough Southerner. A South Carolina editor informs his readers that "At public auction on Thursday, Thomas Ryan & Son sold fifteen likely negroes for $10,365, or an average of $691. Three boys, aged about seventeen, brought the following sums, viz. $1065, $1035, $1010, and two at $1000 -- making an average of $1022. Capers Heyward sold a gang of 109 negroes in families. Two or three families averaged from $1000 to $1100 for each individual; and the entire sale averaged $550. C.G. Whitney sold two likely female house servants -- one at $1000, the other at $1190." - Charleston Courier. Limited, as the people of the old States are more and more becoming, to the raising of "stock" as the sole source of profit, need we be surprised to see the pro-slavery feeling gaining ground from day to day, as is here shown to be the case? REMOVAL OF FREE PERSONS OF COLOUR FROM VIRGINIA. -- A bill has been reported in the Virginia House of Delegates which provides for the appointment of overseers, who are to be required to hire out, at public auction, all free persons of colour, to the highest bidder, and to pay into the State Treasury the sums accruing from such hire. The sums are to be

devoted in future to sending free persons of colour beyond the limits of the State. At the expiration of five years, all free persons of colour remaining in the State are to be sold into slavery to the highest bidder, at public auction, the proceeds of such sales to be paid into the public treasury, provided that said free persons of colour shall be allowed the privilege of becoming the slaves of any free white person whom they may select, on the payment by such person of a fair price. Twenty years since, Virginia was preparing for the emancipation of the slave. Now, she is preparing for the enslavement of the free. If the reader would know the cause of this great change, he may find it in the fact that man has everywhere become less free as land has become less valuable. Upon whom, now, must rest the responsibility for such a state of things as is here exhibited? Upon the planter? He exercises no volition. He is surrounded by coal and iron ore, but the attempt to convert them into iron has almost invariably been followed by ruin. He has vast powers of nature ready to obey his will, yet dare he not purchase a spindle or a loom to enable him to [begin page 116] bring into use his now waste labour power, for such attempts at bringing the consumer to the side of the producer have almost invariably ended in the impoverishment of the projector, and the sale and dispersion of his labourers. He is compelled to conform his operations to the policy which looks to having but one workshop for the world; and instead of civilizing his negroes by bringing them to work in combination, he must barbarize them by dispersion. A creature of necessity, he cannot be held responsible; but the responsibility must, and will, rest on those who produce that necessity. The less the power of association in the Northern slave States, the more rapid must be the growth of the domestic slave trade, the greater must be the decline in the price of wheat, cotton, and sugar, the greater must be the tendency to the passage of men like Uncle Tom, and of women and children too, from the light labour of the North to the severe labour of the South and South-west -- but, the greater, as we are told, must be the prosperity of the people of England. It is unfortunate for the world that a country exercising so much influence should have adopted a policy so adverse to the civilization and the freedom not only of the negro race, but of mankind at large. There seems, however, little probability of a change. Seeking to make of herself a great workshop, she necessarily desires that all the rest of the world should be one great farm, to be cultivated by men, women, and children, denied all other means of employment. This, of course, forbids association, which diminishes as land becomes exhausted. The absence of association forbids the existence of schools or workshops, books or instruction, and men become barbarized, when, under a different system, they might and would become civilized. The tendency to freedom passes away, as we see to have been the case in the last twenty years -- but in place of freedom, and as a compensation for the horrors of Jamaica and of the domestic slave trade, the great workshop of the world is supplied with cheap grain, cheap tobacco, cheap sugar, and cheap cotton. Were Adam Smith alive, he might, and probably would, take some trouble to inform his countrymen that a system which looked [begin page 117] to the exhaustion of the land of other countries, and the enslavement of their population, was "a manifest violation of the most sacred rights of mankind;" but since his day the doctrines of the "Wealth of Nations" have been discarded, and its author would find himself now addressing hearers more unwilling than were even the men for whom he wrote eighty years since. At that time the imaginary discovery had not been made that men always commenced on the rich soils, and passed, as population and wealth increased, to poorer ones; and the Malthusian law of population was yet unthought of. Now, however, whatever tends

to limit the growth of population is, we are told, to be regarded as a great good; and as the domestic slave trade accomplishes that object at the same time that it furnishes cheap cotton, it can scarcely be expected that there will be any change; and yet, unless a change be somewhere made, abroad or at home, we must perforce submit to the continuance of the existing system, which precludes education, almost eschews matrimony, separates husbands and wives, parents and children, and sends the women to the labours of the field.

Chapter Xi.
How Slavery Grows In Portugal and Turkey.
In point of natural advantages, PORTUGAL is equal with any country in Western Europe. Her soil is capable of yielding largely of every description of grain, and her climate enables her to cultivate the vine and the olive. Mineral riches abound, and her rivers give to a large portion, of the country every facility for cheap intercourse; and yet her people are among the most enslaved, while her government is the weakest and most contemptible of Europe. It is now a century and a half since England granted her what were deemed highly important advantages in regard to wine, [begin page 118] on condition that she should discard the artisans who had been brought to the side of her farmers, and permit the people of England to supply her people with certain descriptions of manufactures. What were the duties then agreed on are not given in any of the books now at hand, but by the provisions of a treaty made in 1810, cloths of all descriptions were to be admitted at a merely revenue duty, varying from ten to fifteen percent. A natural consequence of this system has been that the manufactures which up to the date of the Methuen treaty had risen in that country, perished under foreign competition, and the people found themselves by degrees limited exclusively to agricultural employments. Mechanics found there no place for the exercise of their talents, towns could not grow, schools could not arise, and the result is seen in the following paragraph:-"It is surprising how ignorant, or at least superficially acquainted, the Portuguese are with every kind of handicraft; a carpenter is awkward and clumsy, spoiling every work he attempts, and the way in which the doors and woodwork even of good houses are finished would have suited the rudest ages. Their carriages of all kinds, from the fidalgo's family coach to the peasant's market cart, their agricultural implements, locks and keys, &c. are ludicrously bad. They seem to disdain improvement, and are so infinitely below par, so strikingly inferior to the rest of Europe, as to form a sort of disgraceful wonder in the middle of the nineteenth century." -- Baillie. The population, which, half a century since was 3,683,000, is now reduced to little more than 3,000,000; and we need no better evidence of the enslaving and exhausting tendency of a policy that limits a whole people, men, women, and children, to the labours of the field. At the close almost of a century and a half of this system, the following is given in a work of high reputation, as a correct picture of the state of the country and the strength of the government:-"The finances of Portugal are in the most deplorable condition, the treasury is dry, and all branches of the public service suffer. A carelessness and a mutual apathy reign not only throughout the government, but also throughout the nation. While improvement is sought everywhere else throughout Europe, Portugal remains stationary. The postal service of the country offers a curious example of this, nineteen to twenty-one days being still required for a letter to go and come between Lisbon and Braganza, a distance of 423 kilometres, [begin page 119] (or little over 300 miles.) All the resources of the state are exhausted, and it is probable that the receipts will not give one-third of the amount for which they figure in the budget." -Annuaire de l'Economie Politique, 1849, 322.

Some years since an effort was made to bring the artisan to the side of the farmer and vine-grower, but a century and a half of exclusive devotion to agriculture had placed the people so far in the rear of those of other nations, that the attempt was hopeless, the country having long since become a mere colony of Great Britain. If we turn to Madeira, we find there further evidence of the exhausting consequences of the separation of the farmer and the artisan. From 1886 to 1842, the only period for which returns are before me, there was a steady decline in the amount of agricultural production, until the diminution had reached about thirty per cent., as follows:-Wine. 27,270 pipes 16,131 " Wheat. 8472 qrs. 6863 " Barley. 3510 2777

1836............. 1842.............

At this moment the public papers furnish an "Appeal to America," commencing as follows:-"A calamity has fallen on Madeira unparalleled in its history. The vintage, the revenue of which furnished the chief means for providing subsistence for its inhabitants, has been a total failure, and the potato crop, formerly another important article of their food, is still extensively diseased. All classes, therefore, are suffering, and as there are few sources in the island to which they can look for food, clothing, and other necessaries of life, their distress must increase during the winter, and the future is contemplated with painful anxiety and apprehension. Under such appalling prospects, the zealous and excellent civil Governor, Snr. Jos Silvestre Ribeiro, addressed a circular letter to the merchants of Madeira on the 24th of August last, for the purpose of bringing the unfortunate and critical position of the population under his government to the notice of the benevolent and charitable classes in foreign countries, and in the hope of exciting their sympathy with, and assistance to, so many of their fellow creatures threatened with famine." Such are the necessary consequences of a system which looks to compelling the whole population of a country to employ themselves in a single pursuit -- all cultivating the land and all producing the same commodity; and which thus effectually prevents the growth of that natural association so much admired by Adam [begin page 120] Smith. It is one that can end only in the exhaustion of the land and its owner. When population increases and men come together, even the poor land is made rich, and thus it is, says M. de Jonnes, that "the powers of manure causes the poor lands of the 49 department of the Seine to yield thrice as much as those of the Loire." When population diminishes, and men are thus forced to live at greater distances from each other, even the rich lands become impoverished; and of this no better evidence need be sought than that furnished by Portugal. In the one case, each day brings men nearer to perfect freedom of thought, speech, action, and trade. In the other they become from day to day more barbarized and enslaved, and the women are more and more driven to the field, there to become the slaves of fathers, husbands, brothers, and even of sons. Of all the countries of Europe there is none possessed of natural advantages to enable it to compare with those constituting the TURKISH EMPIRE in Europe and Asia. Wool and silk, corn, oil, and tobacco, might, with proper cultivation, be produced in almost
49

[120/*] Statistique de l'Agriculture de la France, 129.

unlimited quantity, while Thessaly and Macedonia, long celebrated for the production of cotton, abound in lands uncultivated, from which it might be obtained in sufficient extent to clothe a large portion of Europe. Iron ore abounds, and in quality equal to any in the world, while in another part of the empire "the hills seem a mass of carbonate of 50 copper." Nature has done every thing for the people of that country, and yet of all those of Europe, the Turkish rayah approaches in condition nearest to a slave; and of all the governments of Europe, that of Portugal even not excepted, that of Turkey is the most a slave to the dictation, not only of nations, but even of bankers and traders. Why it is so, we may now inquire. By the terms of the treaty with England in 1675, the Turkish government bound itself to 51 charge no more than three percent duty on imports, and as this could contribute little to the revenue, [begin page 121] that required to be sought elsewhere. A poll-tax, house-tax, land-tax, and many other direct taxes, furnished a part of it, and the balance was obtained by an indirect tax in the form of export duties; and as the corn, tobacco, and cotton of its people were obliged to compete in the general markets of the world with the produce of other lands, it is clear that these duties constituted a further contribution from the cultivators of the empire in aid of the various direct taxes that have been mentioned. So far as foreigners were interested, the system was one of perfect free trade and direct taxation. For many years, Turkey manufactured much of her cotton, and she exported cottonyarn. Such was the case so recently as 1798, as will be seen by the following very interesting account of one of the seats of the manufacture:-"'Ambelakia, by its activity, appears rather a borough of Holland than a village of Turkey. This village spreads, by its industry, movement, and life, over the surrounding country, and gives birth to an immense commerce which unites Germany to Greece by a thousand threads. Its population has trebled in fifteen years, and amounts at present (1798) to four thousand, who live in their manufactories like swarms of bees in their hives. In this village are unknown both the vices and cares engendered by idleness; the hearts of the Ambelakiots are pure and their faces serene; the slavery which blasts the plains watered by the Peneus, and stretching at their feet, has never ascended the sides of Pelion (Ossa;) and they govern themselves, like their ancestors, by their protoyeros, (primates, elders,) and their own magistrates. Twice the Mussulmen of Larissa attempted to scale their rocks, and twice were they repulsed by hands which dropped the shuttle to seize the musket. "'Every arm, even those of the children, is employed in the factories; while the men dye the cotton, the women prepare and spin it. There are twentyfour factories, in which yearly two thousand five hundred bales of cotton yarn, of one hundred cotton okes each, were dyed (6138 cwts.) This yarn found its way into Germany, and was disposed of at Buda, Vienna, Leipsic, Dresden, Anspach, and Bareuth. The Ambelakiot merchants had houses of their own in all these places. These houses belonged to distinct associations at Ambelakia. The competition thus established reduced very considerably the common profits; they proposed therefore to unite themselves under one central commercial administration. Twenty years ago this plan was suggested, and in a year afterward it was carried into
50 51

[120/] Urquhart's Resources of Turkey, 179. [120/] Equivalent to light port-charges, the anchorage being only sixteen cents per ship.

execution. The lowest shares in this joint-stock company were five thousand piastres, (between 600 and 700,) and the highest were restricted to twenty thousand, that the capitalists might not swallow up all the profits. [begin page 122] The workmen subscribed their little profits, and uniting in societies, purchased single shares; and besides their capital, their labour was reckoned in the general amount; they received their share of the profits accordingly, and abundance was soon spread through the whole community. The dividends were at first restricted to ten percent, and the surplus profit was applied to the augmenting of the capital; which in two years was raised from 600,000 to 1,000,000 piastres, (120,000.)' "It supplied industrious Germany, not by the perfection of its jennies, but by the industry of its spindle and distaff. It taught Montpellier the art of dyeing, not from experimental chairs, but because dyeing was with it a domestic and culinary operation, subject to daily observation in every kitchen; and by the simplicity and honesty, not the science of its system, it reads a lesson to commercial associations, and holds up an example unparalleled in the commercial history of Europe, of a joint-stock and labour company; ably and economically and successfully administered, in which the interests of industry and capital were, long equally represented. Yet the system of administration with which all this is connected, is common to the thousand hamlets of Thessaly that have not emerged from their insignificance; but Ambelakia for twenty years was left alone." 52 At that time, however, England had invented new machinery for spinning cotton, and, by prohibiting its export, had provided that all the cotton of the world should be brought to Manchester before it could be cheaply converted into cloth. The cotton manufacturers at Ambelakia had their difficulties to encounter, but all those might have been overcome had they not, says Mr. Urquhart, "been outstripped by Manchester." They were outstripped, and twenty years afterward, not only had that place been deserted, but others in its neighbourhood were reduced to complete desolation. Native manufactories for the production of cotton goods had, indeed, almost ceased to work. Of 600 looms at Sentari in 1812, but 40 remained in 1821; and of the 2000 weaving establishments at Tournovo in 1812, but 200 remained in 1830. 53 For a time, cotton went abroad to be returned in the form of twist, thus making a voyage of thousands of miles in search of a spindle; but even this trade has in a great degree passed away. As a consequence of these things there had been a ruinous fall of wages, affecting all classes of labourers. "The profits," says Mr. Urquhart-[begin page 123] "Have been reduced to one-half, and sometimes to one-third, by the introduction of English cottons, which, though they have reduced the home price, and arrested the export of cotton-yarn from Turkey, have not yet supplanted the home manufacture in any visible degree; for, until tranquillity has allowed agriculture to revive, the people must go on working merely for bread, and reducing their price, in a struggle of hopeless competition. The industry, however, of the women and children is most remarkable; in every interval of labour, tending the cattle, carrying water, the spindle and distaff, as in the days of Xerxes, is never out of their hands. The children are as assiduously at work, from the moment their little fingers, can turn the spindle. About Ambelakia, the former focus of the cotton-yarn trade, the
52 53

[122/*] Beaujour's Tableau du Commerce de la Greece, quoted by Urquhart, 47. [122/] Urquhart, 150.

peasantry has suffered dreadfully from this, though formerly the women could earn as much in-doors, as their husbands in the field; at present, their daily profit (1881) does not exceed twenty paras, if realized, for often they cannot dispose of the yarn when spun. Piastres. 2 0 0 5 0 Prs. 9 Paras. 5 35 10 30 20 00

Five okes of uncleaned cotton, at seventeen paras.............. Labour of a woman for two days, (seven farthings per day)... Carding, by vibrations of a cat-gut............ Spinning, a woman's unremitting labour for a week.............. Loss of cotton, exceeding an oke of uncleaned cotton.......... Value of one oke of uncleaned cotton...

"Here a woman's labour makes but 2d. per day, while field-labour, according to the season of the year, ranges from 4d. to 6d. and at this rate, the pound of coarse cotton-yarn cost in spinning 5d."-- P. 147. The labour of a woman is estimated at less than four cents per day, and "the unremitting labour of a week" will command but twenty-five cents. The wages of men employed in gathering leaves and attending silkworms are stated at one piastre (five cents) per day. At Salonica, the shipping port of Thessaly, they were ten cents. (Urquhart, 268.) As a necessary consequence of this, population diminishes, and everywhere are seen the ruins of once prosperous villages. Agriculture declines from day to day. The once productive cotton-fields of Thessaly lie untilled, and even around Constantinople itself-"There are no cultivated lands to speak of within twenty miles, in some directions within fifty miles. The commonest necessaries of life come from distant parts: the corn for daily bread from Odessa; the cattle and sheep from beyond Adrianople, or from Asia Minor; the rice, of which such a vast consumption is made, from the neighbourhood of Phillippopolis; the poultry chiefly from Bulgaria; the fruit [begin page 124] and vegetables from Nicomedia and Mondania. Thus a constant drain of money is occasioned, without any visible return except to the treasury or from the property of the Ulema." -- Slade's Travels in Turkey, vol. ii. 143. The silk that is made is badly prepared, because the distance of the artisan prevents the poor people from obtaining good machinery; and as a consequence of this, the former direct trade with Persia has been superseded by an indirect one through England, to which the raw silk has now to be sent. In every department of industry we see the same result. Birmingham has superseded Damascus, whose blades are now no longer made. Not only is the foreigner free to introduce his wares, but he may, on payment of a trifling duty of two percent, carry them throughout the empire until finally disposed of. He travels by caravans, and is lodged without expense. He brings his goods to be exchanged for money, or what else he needs, and the exchange effected, he disappears as suddenly as he came. "It is impossible," says Mr. Urquhart, "to witness the arrival of the manytongued caravan at its resting-place for the night, and see, unladen and piled up together, the bales from such distant places -- to glance over their very wrappers, and the strange marks and characters which they bear -without being amazed at so eloquent a contradiction of our preconceived

notions of indiscriminate despotism and universal insecurity of the East. But while we observe the avidity with which our goods are sought, the preference now transferred from Indian to Birmingham muslins, from Golconda to Glasgow chintzes, from Damascus to Sheffield steel, from Cashmere shawls to English broadcloth; and while, at the same time, the energies of their commercial spirit are brought thus substantially before us; it is indeed impossible not to regret that a gulf of separation should have so long divided the East and the West, and equally impossible not to indulge in the hope and anticipation of a vastly extended traffic with the East, and of all the blessings which follow fast and welling in the wake of commerce."--P. 133. Among the "blessings" of the system is the fact that local places of exchange no longer exist. The storekeeper who pays rent and taxes has found himself unable to compete with the peddler who pays neither; and the consequence is that the poor cultivator finds it impossible to exchange his products, small as they are, for the commodities he needs, except, on the occasional arrival of a caravan, and that has generally proved far more likely to ab- [begin page 125] sorb the little money in circulation, than any of the more bulky and less valuable products of the earth. As usual in purely agricultural countries, the whole body of cultivators is hopelessly in debt, and the money-lender fleeces all. If he aids the peasant before harvest, he must have an enormous interest, and be paid in produce at a large discount from the market price; The village communities are almost universally in debt, but to them, as the security is good, the banker charges only twenty percent per annum. Turkey is the very paradise of middlemen -- a consequence of the absence of any mode of employment except in cultivation or in trade; and the moral effect of this may be seen in the following passage:-"If you see," says Urquhart, "a Turk meditating in a corner, it is on some speculation -- the purchase of a revenue farm, or the propriety of a loan at sixty percent; if you see pen or paper in his hand, it is making or checking an account; if there is a disturbance in the street, it is a disputed barter; whether in the streets or in-doors, whether in a coffeehouse, a serai, or a bazaar, whatever the rank, nation, language of the persons around you, traffic, barter, gain are the prevailing impulses; grusch, para, florin, lira, asper, amid the Babel of tongues, are the universally intelligible sounds." -P. 138. We have thus a whole people divided into two classes -- the plunderers and the plundered; and the cause of this may be found in the fact that the owners and occupants of land have never been permitted to strengthen themselves by the formation of that natural alliance between the plough and the loom, the hammer and the harrow, so much admired by Adam Smith. The government is as weak as the people, for it is so entirely dependent on the bankers, that they may be regarded as the real owners of the land and the people, taxing them at discretion; and to them certainly enure all the profits of cultivation. As a consequence of this, the land is almost valueless. A recent traveller states that good land maybe purchased in the immediate vicinity of Smyrna at six cents an acre, and at a little distance vast quantities may be had for nothing. Throughout the world, the freedom of man has grown in the ratio of the increase in the value of land, and that has always grown in the ratio of the tendency to have the artisan take his place by the side of the cultivator of the earth. Whatever [begin page 126] tends to prevent this natural association tends, therefore, to the debasement and enslavement of man.

The weakness of Turkey, as regards foreign nations, is great, and it increases every 54 day. Not only ambassadors, but consuls, beard it in its own cities; and it is now even denied that she has any right to adopt a system of trade different from that under which she has become thus weakened. Perfect freedom of commerce is declared to be "one of those immunities which we can resign on no account or pretext whatever; it is a 55 golden privilege, which we can never abandon." Internal trade scarcely exists; and, as a natural consequence, the foreign one is insignificant, the whole value of the exports being but about thirty-three millions of dollars, or less than two dollars per head. The total exports from Great Britain in the last year amounted to but 2,221,000, ($11,500,000,) much of which was simply en route for Persia; and this constitutes the great trade that has been built up at so much cost to the people of Turkey, and that is to be maintained as "a golden privilege" not to be abandoned! Not discouraged by the result of past efforts, the same author looks forward anxiously for the time when there shall be in Turkey no employment in manufactures of any kind, and when the people shall be exclusively employed in agriculture; and that time cannot, he thinks, be far distant, as "a few pence more or less in the price of a commodity will make the difference of purchasing or manufacturing at home." 56 Throughout his book he shows that the rudeness of the machinery of cultivation is in the direct ratio of the distance of the cultivator from market; and yet he would desire that all the produce of the country should go to a distant market to be exchanged, although the whole import of iron at the present moment for the supply of a population of almost twenty millions of people, possess- [begin page 127] ing iron ore, fuel, and unemployed labour in unlimited quantity, is but 2500 per annum, or about a penny's worth for every thirty persons! Need we wonder at the character of the machinery, the poverty and slavery of the people, the trivial amount of commerce, or at the weakness of a government whose whole system looks to the exhaustion of the land, and to the exclusion of that great middle class of working-men, to whom the agriculturist has everywhere been indebted for his freedom? The facts thus far given have been taken, as the reader will have observed, from Mr. Urquhart's work; and as that gentleman is a warm admirer of the system denounced by Adam Smith, he cannot be suspected of any exaggeration when presenting any of its unfavourable results. Later travellers exhibit the nation as passing steadily onward toward ruin, and the people toward a state of slavery the most, complete -- the necessary consequence of a policy that excludes the mechanic and prevents the formation of a town population. Among the latest of those travellers is Mr. Mac Farlane, 57 at the date of whose visit the silk manufacture had entirely disappeared, and even the filatures for preparing the raw silk were closed, weavers having become ploughmen, and women and children having been totally deprived of employment. The cultivators of silk had become entirely dependent on foreign markets in which there existed no demand for the products of their land and labour. England was then passing through one of her periodical crises, and it had been deemed necessary to put down the prices of all agricultural products, with a view to stop importation. On one occasion, during Mr. Mac Farlane's travels, there came a report that silk had risen in England,
54

55 56 57

[126/*] 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. [126/] Urquhart, 257. [126/] Ibid. 202. [127/*] Turkey, and its Destiny, by C. Mac Farlane, Esq., 1850.

and it produced a momentary stir and animation, that, as he says, "flattered his national vanity to think that an electric touch parting from London, the mighty heart of commerce, should thus be felt in a few days at a place like Biljek." Such is commercial centralization! It renders the agriculturists of the world mere slaves, dependent for food and clothing upon the will of a few people, proprietors of a small amount of [begin page 128] machinery, at "the mighty heart of commerce." At one moment speculation is rife, and silk goes up in price, and then every effort is made to induce large shipments of the raw produce of the world. At the next, money is said to be scarce, and the shippers are ruined, as was, to so great an extent, experienced by those who exported corn from this country in 1847. At the date of the traveller's first visit to Broussa, the villages were numerous, and the silk manufacture was prosperous. At the second, the silk works were stopped and their owners bankrupt, the villages were gradually disappearing, and in the town itself scarcely a chimney was left, while the country around presented to view nothing but poverty and wretchedness. Everywhere, throughout the empire, the roads are bad, and becoming worse, and the condition of the cultivator deteriorates; for if he has a surplus to sell, most of its value at market is absorbed by the cost of transportation, and if his crop is short, prices rise so high that he cannot purchase. Famines are therefore frequent, and child-murder prevails throughout all classes of society. Population therefore diminishes, and the best lands are abandoned, "nine-tenths" of them remaining untilled; 58 the natural consequence of which is, that malaria prevails in many of those parts of the country that once were most productive, and pestilence comes in aid of famine for the extermination of this unfortunate people. Native mechanics are nowhere to be found, there being no demand for them, and the plough, the wine-press, and the oil-mill are equally rude and barbarous. The product of labour is, consequently, most diminutive, and its wages twopence a day, with a little food. The interest of money varies from 25 to 50 percent per annum, and this rate is frequently paid for the loan of bad seed that yields but little to either land or labour. With the decline of population and the disappearance of all the local places of exchange, the pressure of the conscription becomes from year to year more severe, and droves of men may be seen "chained like wild beasts -- free Osmanlees driven along the road [begin page 129] like slaves to a market" -- free men, separated from wives and children, who are left to perish of starvation amid the richest lands, that remain untilled because of the separation of the artisan from the producer of food, silk, and cotton. Internal commerce is trifling in amount, and the power to pay for foreign merchandise has almost passed away. Land is nearly valueless; and in this we find the most convincing proof of the daily increasing tendency toward slavery, man having always become enslaved as land has lost its value. In the great valley of Buyuk-der, once known as the fair land, a property of twenty miles in circumference had shortly before his visit been purchased for less than 1000, or $4800. 59 In another part of the country, one of twelve miles in circumference had been purchased for a considerably 60 61 The slave trade, black and white, had never been more active; and smaller sum. this was a necessary consequence of the decline in the value of labour and land. In this country, negro men are well fed, clothed, and lodged, and are gradually advancing toward freedom. Population therefore increases, although more slowly than would be the case were they enabled more to combine their efforts for the improvement of their condition. In the West Indies, Portugal, and Turkey, being neither well fed,
58 59 60 61

[128/*] [129/*] [129/] [129/]

Mac Farlane, vol. i, 46. Mac Farlane, vol. ii, 242. Ibid. 296. Ibid. vol. i. 37.

clothed, nor lodged, their condition declines; and as they can neither be bought nor sold, they are allowed to die off, and population diminishes as the tendency toward the subjugation of the labourer becomes more and more complete. Which of these conditions tends most to favour advance in civilization the reader may decide. [begin page 130]

Chapter XII.
How Slavery Grows In India.
In no part of the world has there existed the same tendency to voluntary association, the distinguishing mark of freedom, as in India. In none have the smaller communities been to the same extent permitted the exercise of self-government. Each Hindoo village had its distinct organization, and under its simple and "almost patriarchal 62 arrangements," says Mr. Greig, -"The natives of Hindoostan seem to have lived from the earliest, down, comparatively speaking, to late times -- if not free from the troubles and annoyances to which men in all conditions of society are more or less subject, still in the full enjoyment, each individual, of his property, and of a very considerable share of personal liberty. * * * Leave him in possession of the farm which his forefathers owned, and preserve entire the institutions to which he had from infancy been accustomed, and the simple Hindoo would give himself no concern whatever as to the intrigues and cabals which took place at the capital. Dynasties might displace one another; revolutions might recur; and the persons of his sovereigns might change every day; but so long as his own little society remained undisturbed, all other contingencies were to him subjects scarcely of speculation. To this, indeed, more than to any other cause, is to be ascribed the facility with which one conqueror after another has overrun different parts of India; which submitted, not so much because its inhabitants were wanting in courage, as because to the great majority among them it signified nothing by whom the reins of the supreme government were held. A third consequence of the village system has been one which men will naturally regard as advantageous or the reverse, according to the opinions which they hold, touching certain abstract points into which it is not necessary to enter here. Perhaps there are not to be found on the face of the earth, a race of human beings whose attachment to their native place will bear a comparison with that of the Hindoos. There are no privations which the Hindoo will hesitate to bear, rather than voluntarily abandon the spot where he was born; and if continued oppression drive him forth, he will return to it again after long years of exile with fresh fondness." The Mohammedan conquest left these simple and beautiful in- [begin page 131] stitutions untouched. "Each Hindoo village," says Col. Briggs, in his work on the land tax -"Had its distinct municipality, and over a certain number of villages, or district, was an hereditary chief and accountant, both possessing great local influence and authority, and certain territorial domains or estates. The Mohammedans early saw the policy of not disturbing an institution so complete, and they availed themselves of the local influence of these officers to reconcile their subjects to their rule. * * * From the existence of these local Hindoo chiefs at the end of six centuries in all countries conquered by the Mohammedans, it is fair to conclude that they were cherished and maintained with great attention as the key-stone of their civil government. While the administration of the police, and the collection of the
62

[13/0*] History of British India, vol. i. 46.

revenues, were left in the hands of these local chiefs, every part of the new territory was retained under military occupation by an officer of rank; and a considerable body of Mohammedan soldiers.* * * In examining the details of Mohammedan history, which has been minute in recording the rise and progress of all these kingdoms, we nowhere discover any attempt to alter the system originally adopted. The ministers, the nobles, and the military chiefs, all bear Mohammedan names and titles, but no account is given of the Hindoo institutions, being subverted, or Mohammedan officers, being employed in the minor, details, of the civil administration. "It would appear from this that the Moslems, so far from imposing their own laws upon their subjects, treated the customs of the latter with the utmost respect; and that they did so because experience taught them that their own interests were advanced by a line of policy so prudent." Local action and local combination are everywhere conspicuous in the history of this country. With numerous rulers, some of whom to a greater or less extent acknowledged the superiority of the Sovereign of Delhi, the taxes required for their support were heavy, but they were locally expended, and if the cultivator contributed too large a portion of his grain, it was at least consumed in a neighbouring market, and nothing went from off the land. Manufactures, too, were widely spread, and thus was made a demand for the labour not required in agriculture. "On the coast of Coromandel," says Orme, 63 "and in the province of Bengal, when at some distance from a high road or principal town, it is difficult to find a village in which every man, woman, and child is not employed in making a piece of cloth. At present," he continues, "much the greatest part of whole provinces are employed [begin page 132] in this single manufacture." Its progress, as he says, "includes no less than a description of the lives of half the inhabitants of Indostan." While employment was thus locally subdivided, tending to enable neighbour to exchange with neighbour, the exchanges between the producers of food, or of salt, in one part of the country and the producers of cotton and manufacturers of cloth in another, tended to the production of commerce with more distant men, and this tendency was much increased by the subdivision of the cotton manufacture itself. Bengal was celebrated for the finest muslins, the consumption of which at Delhi, and in Northern India generally, was large, while the Coromandel coast was equally celebrated for the best chintzes and calicoes, leaving to Western India the manufacture of strong and inferior goods of every kind. Under these circumstances it is no matter of surprise that the country was rich, and that its people, although often overtaxed, and sometimes plundered by invading armies, were prosperous in a high degree. Nearly a century has now elapsed since, by the battle of Plassey, British power was established in India, and from that day local action has tended to disappear, and centralization to take its place. From its date to the close of the century there was a rapidly increasing tendency toward having all the affairs of the princes and the people settled by the representatives of the Company established in Calcutta, and as usual in such cases, the country was filled with adventurers, very many of whom were wholly without principle, men whose sole object was that of the accumulation of fortune by any means, however foul, as is well known by all who are familiar with the indignant denunciations of Burke. 64
63 64

[131/*] Historical Fragments, 402. [132/*] "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

England was thus enriched as India was impoverished, and as centralization was more and more established. [begin page 133] Step by step the power of the Company was extended, and everywhere was adopted the Hindoo principle that the sovereign was proprietor of the soil, and sole landlord, and as such the government claimed to be entitled to one-half of the gross produce of the land. "Wherever," says Mr. Rickards, long an eminent servant of the Company, "The British power supplanted that of the Mohammedans in Bengal, we did not, it is true, adopt the sanguinary part of their creed; but from the impure fountain of their financial system, did we, to our shame, claim the inheritance to a right to seize upon half the gross produce of the land as a tax; and wherever our arms have triumphed, we have invariably proclaimed this savage right: coupling it at the same time with the senseless doctrine of the proprietary right to these lands being also vested in the sovereign, in virtue of the right of conquest." -- Rickards's India, vol. i, 275. Under the earlier Mohammedan sovereigns, this land-tax, now designated as rent, had been limited to a thirteenth, and from that to a sixth of the produce of the land; but in the reign of Akber (16th century) it was fixed at one-third, numerous other taxes being at the same time abolished. With the decline and gradual dissolution of the empire, the local sovereigns not only increased it, but revived the taxes that had been discontinued, and instituted others of a most oppressive kind; all of which were continued by the Company, while the land-tax was maintained at its largest amount. While thus imposing taxes at discretion, the Company had also a monopoly of trade, and it could dictate the prices of all it had to sell, as well as of all that it needed to buy; and here was a further and most oppressive tax, all of which was for the benefit of absentee landlords. With the further extension of power, the demands on the Company's treasury increased without an increase of the power to meet them; for exhaustion is a natural consequence of absenteeism, or centralization, as has so well been proved in Ireland. The people became less able to pay the taxes, and as the government could not be carried on without revenue, a permanent settlement was made by Lord Cornwallis, by means of which all the rights of village proprietors, over a large portion of Bengal, were sacrificed in favour of the Zemindars, who were thus at once constituted great landed [begin page 134] proprietors and absolute masters of a host of poor tenants, with power to punish at discretion those who were so unfortunate as not to be able to pay a rent the amount of which had no limit but that of the power to extort it. It was the middleman system of Ireland transplanted to India; but the results were at first unfavourable to the Zemindars, as the rents, for which they themselves were responsible to the government, were so enormous that all the rack-renting and all the flogging inflicted upon the poor cultivators could not enable them to pay; and but few years elapsed before the Zemindars themselves were sold out to make way for another set as keen and as hard-hearted as themselves. That system having failed to answer the purpose, it was next determined to arrest the extension of the permanent settlement, and to settle with each little ryot, or cultivator, to the entire exclusion of the

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.

village authorities, by whom, under the native governments, the taxes had uniformly been so equitably and satisfactorily distributed. The Ryotwar system was thus established, and how it has operated may be judged from the following sketch, presented by Mr. Fullerton, a member of the Council at Madras:-"Imagine the revenue leviable through the agency of one hundred thousand revenue officers, collected or remitted at their discretion, according to the occupant's means of paying, whether from the produce of his land or his separate property; and in order to encourage every man to act as a spy on his neighbour, and report his means of paying, that he may eventually save himself from extra demand, imagine all the cultivators of a village liable at all times to a separate demand in order to make up for the failure of one or more individuals of the parish. Imagine collectors to every county, acting under the orders of a board, on the avowed principle of destroying all competition for labour by a general equalization of assessment, seizing and sending back runaways to each other. And, lastly, imagine the collector the sole magistrate or justice of the peace of the county, through the medium and instrumentality of whom alone any criminal complaint of personal grievance suffered by the subject can reach the superior courts. Imagine, at the same time, every subordinate officer employed in the collection of the land revenue to be a police officer, vested with the power to fine, confine, put in the stocks, and flog any inhabitant within his range, on any charge, without oath of the accuser, or sworn recorded evidence of the case." 65 [begin page 135] Any improvement in cultivation produced an immediate increase of taxation, so that any exertion on the part of the cultivator would benefit the Company, and not himself. 66 One-half of the gross produce may be assumed to have been the average annual rent, although, in many cases it greatly exceeded that proportion. The Madras Revenue Board, May 17th, 1817, stated that the "conversion of the government share of the produce (of lands) is in some districts, as high as 60 or 70 percent of the 67 whole." It might be supposed that, having taken so large a share of the gross produce, the cultivator would be permitted to exist on the remainder, but such is not the case. Mr. 68 Rickards gives a list of sixty other taxes, invented by the sovereigns, or their agents, many of which he states to exist at the present day. Those who have any other mode of employing either capital or labour, in addition to the cultivation of their patches of land, as is very frequently the case, are subject to the following taxes, the principle of which is described as excellent by one of the collectors, December 1st, 1812:-"The Veesabuddy, or tax on merchants, traders, and shopkeepers; Mohturfa, or tax on weavers, cotton cleaners, shepherds, goldsmiths, braziers, ironsmiths, carpenters, stone-cutters, &c.; and Bazeebab, consisting of smaller taxes annually rented out to the highest-bidder. The renter was thus constituted a petty chieftain, with power to exact fees at marriages, religious ceremonies; to inquire into and fine the misconduct of females in families, and other misdemeanours; and in the exercise of their
65 66 67 68

[134/*] Quoted in Thompson's Lectures on India, 61. [135/*] Colonel Sykes states the proportion collected in the Deccan as much less than is above given [135/] Rickards, vol. i. 288. [135/] Vol. ii. 218.

privileges would often urge the plea of engagements to the Cirkar (government) to justify extortion. The details of these taxes are too long to be given in this place. The reader, however, may judge of the operation and character of all by the following selection of one, as described in the collector's report:-- 'The mode of settling the Mohturfa on looms hitherto has been very minute; every circumstance of the weaver's family is considered, the number of days which he devotes to his loom, the number of his children, the assistance which he receives from them, and the number and quality of the pieces which he can turn out in a month or year; so that, let him exert himself as he will, his industry will always be taxed to the highest degree.' This mode always leads to such details that the government servants cannot enter into it, and the assessment of the tax is, in [begin page 136] consequence, left a great deal too much to the Curnums of the villages. No weaver can possibly know what he is to pay to the Cirkar, till the demand come to be made for his having exerted himself through the year; and having turned out one or two pieces of cloth more than he did the year before, though his family and looms have been the same, is made the ground for his being charged a higher Mohturfa, and at 69 last, instead of a professional, it becomes a real income tax." The following will show that no mode of employing capital is allowed to escape the notice of the tax-gatherer:-"The reader will, perhaps, better judge of the inquisitorial nature of one of these surveys, or pymashees, as they are termed in Malabar, by knowing that upward of seventy different kinds of buildings -- the houses, shops, or warehouses of different castes and professions -- were ordered to be entered in the survey accounts; besides the following 'implements of professions' which were usually assessed to the public revenue, viz.: "Oil-mills, iron manufactory, toddy-drawer's stills, potter's kiln, washerman's stone, goldsmith's tools, sawyer's saw, toddy-drawer's knives, fishing-nets, barber's hones, blacksmith's anvils, pack bullocks, cocoa-nut safe, small fishing-boats, cotton-beater's bow, carpenter's tools, large fishing-boats, 70 looms, salt storehouse." "If the landlord objected to the assessment on trees as old and past bearing, they were, one and all, ordered to be cut down, nothing being allowed to stand that did not pay revenue to the state. To judge of this order, it should be mentioned that the trees are valuable, and commonly used for building, in Malabar. To fell all the timber on a man's estate when no demand existed for it in the market, and merely because its stream of revenue had been drained, is an odd way of conferring benefits and protecting property." 71 "Having myself," says Mr. Rickards, "been principal collector of Malabar, and made, during my residence in the province, minute inquiries into the produce and assessments of lands, I was enabled to ascertain beyond all doubt, and to satisfy the revenue board at Madras, that in the former survey of the province, which led to the rebellion, lands and produce were inserted

69 70 71

[136/*] Rickards, vol i. 500. [136/] Ibid. 559. [136/] Ibid. 558.

in the pretended survey account which absolutely did not exist, while other 72 lands were assessed to the revenue at more than their actual produce." "Fifty percent on the assessment is allowed," says Mr. Campbell, "as a reward to any informer of concealed cultivation, &c.; and it is stated that there are, 'in almost every village, dismissed accountants desirous of being re-employed, and unemployed servants who wish to bring themselves to notice,' whose services as informers can be relied on." A system like this, involving the most prying supervision of the affairs of each individual, and in which, in settling the tax [begin page 137] to be paid, "the collector takes into 74 consideration the number of children to be supported, makes the poor ryot a mere slave to the collector, and with the disadvantage that the latter has no pecuniary interest in the preservation of his life, whereas the death of a slave, who constitutes a part of the capital of his owner, is a severe loss." The tendency thus far has been, as we see, to sweep away the rights not only of kings and princes, but of all the native authorities, and to centralize in the hands of foreigners in Calcutta the power to determine for the cultivator, the artisan, or the labourer, what work he should do, and how much of its products he might retain, thus placing the latter in precisely the position of a mere slave to people who could feel no interest in him but simply as a tax-payer, and, who were represented by strangers in the country, whose authority was everywhere used by the native officers in their employ, to enable them to accumulate fortunes for themselves. The poor manufacturer, as heavily taxed as the cultivator of the earth, found himself compelled to obtain advances from his employers, who, in their turn, claimed, as interest, a large proportion of the little profit that was made. The Company's agents, like the native merchants, advanced the funds necessary to produce the goods required for Europe, and the poor workmen are described as having been "in a state of dependence almost amounting to servitude, enabling the resident to obtain his labour at his own price." 75 In addition to the taxes already described, a further one was collected at local customhouses, on all exchanges between the several parts of the country; and to these were again added others imposed by means of monopolies of tobacco and opium, and of salt, one of the most important necessaries of life. The manufacture of coarse salt from 76 the earth was strictly prohibited. The salt lakes of the upper country furnish a supply 77 so great that it is of little value on the spot; but these lakes being even yet in the possession of native princes, the monopoly could then, and can now, be maintained only by aid of strong bands of revenue officers, whose presence renders that [begin page 138] which is almost worthless on one side of an imaginary line so valuable on the other side of it that it requires the produce of the sixth part of the labour of the year to enable the poor Hindoo to purchase salt for his family. Along the seashore salt is abundantly furnished by nature, the solar heat causing a constant deposition of it; but the mere fact of collecting it was constituted an offence punishable by fine and imprisonment, and the quantity collected by the Company's officers was limited to that
72 73 74 75 76 77 73

[136/] [136/] [137/*] [137/] [137/] [137/]

Ibid. 558. Campbell's Modern India, London, 1852, 356. Campbell's Modern India, 357. Baines's History of the Cotton Manufacture. Campbell's Modern India, 332. Ibid. 381.

required for meeting the demand at a monopoly price, all the remainder being regularly destroyed, lest the poor ryot should succeed in obtaining for himself, at cost, such a supply as was needed to render palatable the rice which constituted almost his only food. The system has since been rendered less oppressive, but even now the duty is 78 ten times greater than it was under enlightened Mohammedan sovereigns. Such being the mode of collecting the revenue, we may now look to its distribution. Under the native princes it was, to a great extent, locally-expended, whereas, under the new system, all the collections by government or by individuals tended to Calcutta, to be there disposed of. Thence no inconsiderable portion of it passed to England, and thus was established a perpetual drain that certainly could not be estimated at less than four millions of pounds sterling per annum, and cannot be placed, in the last century, at less than four hundred millions of pounds, or two thousand millions of dollars. The difference between an absentee landlord expending at a distance all his rents, and a resident one distributing it again among his tenants in exchange for services, and the difference in the value of the products of the land resulting from proximity to market, are so well exhibited in the following passage from a recent work on India, that the reader cannot fail to profit by its perusal:-"The great part of the wheat, grain, and other exportable land produce which the people consume, as far as we have yet come, is drawn from our Nerbudda districts, and those of Malwa which border upon them; and par consequent, the price has been rapidly increasing as we recede from them in our advance northward. Were the soil of those [begin page 139] Nerbudda districts, situated as they are at such a distance from any great market for their agricultural products, as bad as it is in the parts of Bundelcund that I came over, no net surplus revenue could possibly be drawn from them in the present state of arts and industry. The high prices paid here for land produce, arising from the necessity of drawing a great part of what is consumed from such distant lands, enables the Rajahs of these Bundelcund states to draw the large revenue they do. These chiefs expend the whole of their revenue in the maintenance of public establishments of one kind or other; and as the essential articles of subsistence, wheat and grain, &c., which are produced in their own districts, or those immediately around them, are not sufficient for the supply of these establishments, they must draw them from distant territories. All this produce is brought on the backs of bullocks, because there is no road from the districts whence they obtain it, over which a wheeled carriage can be drawn with safety; and as this mode of transit is very expensive, the price of the produce, when it reaches the capitals, around which these local establishments are concentrated, becomes very high. They must pay a price equal to the collective cost of purchasing and bringing this substance from the most distant districts, to which they are at any time obliged to have recourse for a supply, or they will not be supplied; and as there cannot be two prices for the same thing in the same market, the wheat and grain produced in the neighbourhood of one of these Bundelcund capitals, fetch as high a price there as that brought from the most remote districts on the banks of the Nerbudda river; while it costs comparatively nothing to bring it from the former lands to the markets. Such lands, in consequence, yield a rate of rent much greater compared with their natural powers of fertility than those of the remotest districts whence produce is drawn for these markets
78

[138/*] Campbell's Modern India, 105.

or capitals; and as all the lands are the property of the Rajahs, they draw all these rents as revenue. "Were we to take this revenue, which the Rajahs now enjoy, in tribute for the maintenance of public establishments concentrated at distant seats, all these local establishments would of course be at once disbanded; and all the effectual demand which they afford for the raw agricultural produce of distant districts would cease. The price of the produce would diminish in proportion; and with it the value of the lands of the districts around such capitals. Hence the folly of conquerors and paramount powers, from the days of the Greeks and Romans down to those of Lord Hastings and Sir John Malcolm, who were all bad political economists, supposing that conquered and ceded territories could always be made to yield to a foreign state the same amount of gross revenue they had paid to their domestic government, whatever their situation with reference to the markets for their produce -- whatever the state of their arts and their industry -- and whatever the character and extent of the local establishments maintained out of it. The settlements of the land revenue in all the territories acquired in central India during the Mahratta war, which ended, in 1817, were made upon the supposition, that the lands would continue to pay the same rate of rent under the new, as they had paid under the old government, uninfluenced by the diminution of all local establish- [begin page 140] ments, civil and military, to one-tenth of what they had been; that, under the new order of things, all the waste lands must be brought into tillage; and be able to pay as high a rate of rent as before tillage; and, consequently, that the aggregate available net revenue must greatly and rapidly increase! Those who had the making of the settlements, and the governing of these new territories, did not consider that the diminution of every establishment was the removal of a market -- of an effectual demand for land produce; and that when all the waste lands should be brought into tillage, the whole would deteriorate in fertility, from the want of fallows, under the prevailing system of agriculture, which afforded the lands no other means of renovation from over cropping. The settlements of the land revenue which were made throughout our new acquisitions upon these fallacious assumptions, of course failed. During a series of quinquennial settlements, the assessment has been everywhere gradually reduced to about twothirds of what it was when our rule began; and to less than one-half of what Sir John Malcolm, and all the other local authorities, and even the worthy Marquis of Hastings himself, under the influence of their opinions, expected it would be. The land revenues of the native princes of central India, who reduced their public establishments, which the new order of things seemed to render useless, and thereby diminished their only markets for the raw produce of their lands, have been everywhere falling off in the same proportion; and scarcely one of them now draws two-thirds of the income he drew from the same lands in 1817. "There are in the valley of the Nerbudda, districts that yield a great deal more produce every year than either Orcha, Jansee, or Duteea; and yet, from the want of the same domestic markets, they do not yield one-fourth of the amount of land revenue. The lands are, however, rated equally high to the assessment, in proportion to their value to the farmers and cultivators. To enable them to yield a larger revenue to government, they require to have larger establishments as markets for land produce. These establishments may be either public, and paid by government, or they may be private, as manufactories, by which the land produce of these districts

would be consumed by people employed in investing the value of their labour in commodities suited to the demand of distant markets, and more valuable than land produce in proportion to their weight and bulk. These are the establishments which government should exert itself to introduce and foster, since the valley of the Nerbudda, in addition to a soil exceedingly fertile, has in its whole line, from its source to its embouchure, rich beds of coal reposing for the use of future generations, under the sandstone of the Sathpore and Vindhya ranges; and beds no less rich of very fine iron. These advantages have not yet been justly appreciated; but they will be so by and by." 79 From the concluding lines of this extract the reader will see that India is abundantly supplied with fuel and iron ore, and that if she has not good machinery, the deficiency is not chargeable to nature. At the close of the last century cotton abounded, and to so [begin page 141] great an extent was the labour of men, women, and children applied to its conversion into cloth, that, even with their imperfect machinery, they not only supplied the home demand for the beautiful tissues of Dacca and the coarse products of Western India, but they exported to other parts of the world no less than 200,000,000 80 of pieces per annum. Exchanges with every part of the world were so greatly in their favour that a rupee which would now sell for but 1s. 10d. or 44 cents, was then worth 2s. 8d. or 64 cents. The Company had a monopoly of collecting taxes in India, but in return it preserved to the people the control of their domestic market, by aid of which they were enabled to convert their rice, their salt, and their cotton, into cloth that could be cheaply carried to the most remote parts of the world. Such protection was needed, because while England prohibited the export of even a single collier who might instruct the people of India in the mode of mining coal -- of a steam engine to pump water or raise coal, or a mechanic who could make one -- of a worker in iron who might smelt the ore -- of a spinning-jenny or power-loom, or of an artisan who could give instruction in the use of such machines -- and thus systematically prevented them from keeping pace with improvement in the rest of the world, -- she at the same time imposed very heavy duties on the produce of Indian looms received in England. The day was at hand, however, when that protection was to disappear. The Company did not, it was said, export sufficiently largely of the produce of British industry, and in 1813 the trade to India was thrown open -- but the restriction on the export of machinery and artisans was maintained in full force; and thus were the poor and ignorant people of that country exposed to "unlimited competition," with a people possessed of machinery ten times more effective than their own, while not only by law deprived of the power to purchase machinery, but also of the power of competing in the British market with the produce of British looms. Further than this, every loom in India, and every machine calculated to aid the labourer, was subject to a tax that increased with every increase in the industry of [begin page 142] its owner, and in many cases absorbed the whole profit derived from 81 its use. Such were the circumstances under which the poor Hindoo was called upon to encounter, unprotected, the "unlimited competition" of foreigners in his own market. It was freedom of trade all on one side. Four years after, the export of cottons from 82 Bengal still amounted to 1,659,994, but ten years later it had declined to 285,121; and at the end of twenty years we find a whole year pass by without the export of a single piece of cotton cloth from Calcutta, the whole of the immense trade that existed but half a century since having disappeared. What were the measures used for the accomplishment of the work of destroying a manufacture that gave employment and food to so many millions of the poor people of the country, will be seen on a perusal of
79 80 81 82

[140/*] [141/*] [142/*] [142/]

Rambles in India, by Col. Sleeman, vol. i. p. 296. Speech of Mr. G. Thompson in the House of Commons. See page 133 ante. Chapman's Commerce and Cotton of India, 74.

the following memorial, which shows that while India was denied machinery, and also denied access to the British market, she was forced to receive British cottons free of all duty:-"Petition of Natives of Bengal, relative to Duties on Cotton and Silk. "Calcutta, 1st Sept. 1831. "To the Right Honourable the Lords of His Majesty's Privy Council for Trade, &c. "The humble Petition of the undersigned Manufacturers and Dealers in Cotton and Silk Piece Goods, the fabrics of Bengal; "SHOWETH -- That of late years your Petitioners have found their business nearly superseded by the introduction of the fabrics of Great Britain into Bengal, the importation of which augments every year, to the great prejudice of the native manufacturers. "That the fabrics of Great Britain are consumed in Bengal, without any duties being levied thereon to protect the native fabrics. "That the fabrics of Bengal are charged with the following duties when they are used in Great Britain -"On manufactured cottons, 10 per cent. "On manufactured silks, 24 per cent. "Your Petitioners most humbly implore your Lordships' consideration of these circumstances, and they feel confident that no disposition exists in England to shut the door against the industry of any part of the inhabitants of this great empire. "They therefore pray to be admitted to the privilege of British subjects, and humbly entreat your Lordships to allow the cotton and silk fabrics of Bengal to be used in Great Britain 'free of duty,' or at the [begin page 143] same rate which may be charged on British fabrics consumed in Bengal. "Your Lordships must be aware of the immense advantages the British manufacturers derive from their skill in constructing and using machinery, which enables them to undersell the unscientific manufacturers of Bengal in their own country: and, although your Petitioners are not sanguine in expecting to derive any great advantage from having their prayer granted, their minds would feel gratified by such a manifestation of your Lordships' good-will toward them; and such an instance of justice to the natives of India would not fail to endear the British government to them. "They therefore confidently trust that your Lordships' righteous consideration will be extended to them as British subjects, without exception of sect, country, or colour. "And your Petitioners, as in duty bound, will ever pray." [Signed by 117 natives of high respectability.]

The object sought to be accomplished would not have, however, been attained by granting the prayer of this most reasonable and humble petition. When the export of cotton, woollen, and steam machinery was prohibited, it was done with a view of compelling all the wool of the world to come to England to be spun and woven, thence to be returned to be worn by those who raised it -- thus depriving the people of the world of all power to apply their labour otherwise than in taking from the earth cotton, sugar, indigo, and other commodities for the supply of the great "workshop of the world." How effectually that object has been accomplished in India, will be seen from the following facts. From the date of the opening of the trade in 1813, the domestic manufacture and the export of cloth have gradually declined until the latter has finally ceased, and the export of raw cotton to England has gradually risen until it has attained a height of about sixty millions of pounds, 83 while the import of twist from England has risen to twenty-five millions of pounds, and of cloth, to two hundred and sixty millions of yards; weighing probably fifty millions of pounds, which, added to the twist, make seventy-five millions, requiring for their production somewhat more than eighty millions of raw cotton. We see thus that every pound of the raw material sent to England is returned. The cultivator receives for it one penny, and when [begin page 144] it returns to him in the form of cloth, he pays for it from one to two shillings, the whole difference being absorbed in the payment of the numerous brokers, transporters, manufacturers, and operatives, men, women, and children, that have thus been interposed between the producer and the consumer. The necessary consequence of this has been that everywhere manufactures have disappeared. Dacca, one of the principal seats of the cotton manufacture, contained 90,000 houses, but its trade had already greatly fallen off even at the date of the memorial above given, and its splendid buildings, factories, and churches are now a mass of ruins and overgrown with jungle. The cotton of the district found itself compelled to go to England that it might there be twisted and sent back again, thus performing a voyage of 20,000 miles in search of the little spindle, because it was a part of the British policy not to permit the spindle anywhere to take its place by the side of the cultivator of cotton. The change thus effected has been stated in a recent official report to have been attended with ruin and distress, to which "no parallel can be found in the annals of commerce." What were the means by which it was effected is shown in the fact that at this period Sir Robert Peel stated that in Lancashire, children were employed fifteen and seventeen hours per day during the week, and on Sunday morning, from six until twelve, cleaning the machinery. In Coventry, ninety-six hours in the week was the time usually required; and of those employed, many obtained but 2s. 9d.-- 66 cents -- for a week's wages. The object to be accomplished was that of underworking the poor Hindoo, and driving him from the market of the world, after which he was to be driven from his own. The mode of accomplishment was that of cheapening labour and enslaving the labourer at home and abroad. With the decline of manufactures there has ceased to be a demand for the services of women or children in the work of conversion, and they are forced either to remain idle, or to seek employment in the field; and here we have one of the distinguishing marks of a state of slavery. The men, too, who were accustomed to fill up the intervals of other employments in pursuits connected with the [begin page 145] cotton manufacture, were also driven to the field -- and all demand for labour, physical or intellectual, was at an end, except so far as was needed for raising rice, indigo, sugar, or cotton. The rice itself they were not permitted to clean, being debarred therefrom by a duty double that which was paid on paddy, or rough rice, on its import into England. The poor grower of

83

[143/*] Chapman, Cotton and Commerce of India, 28.

cotton, after paying to the government seventy-eight percent of the product of his labour, found himself deprived of the power to trade directly with the man of the loom, and forced into "unlimited competition" with the better machinery and almost untaxed labour of our Southern States; and thereby subjected to "the mysterious variations of foreign markets" in which the fever of speculation was followed by the chill of revulsion with a rapidity and frequency that set at naught all calculation. If our crops were small, his English customers would take his cotton; but when he sent over more next year, there had, perhaps, been a good season here, and the Indian article became an absolute drug in the market. It was stated some time since, in the House of Commons, that one gentleman, Mr. Turner, had thrown 7,000 worth of Indian cotton upon a dunghill, because he could find no market for it. It will now readily be seen that the direct effect of thus compelling the export of cotton from India was to increase the quantity pressing on the market of England, and thus to lower the price of all the cotton of the world, including that required for domestic consumption. The price of the whole Indian crop being thus rendered dependent on that which could be realized for a small surplus that would have no existence but for the fact that the domestic manufacture had been destroyed, it will readily be seen how enormous has been the extent of injury inflicted upon the poor cultivator by the forcible separation of the plough and the loom, and the destruction of the power of association. Again, while the price [begin page 146] of cotton is fixed in England, there, too, is fixed the price of cloth, and such is the case with the sugar and the indigo to the production of which these poor people are forced to devote themselves; and thus are they rendered the mere slaves of distant men, who determine what they shall receive for all they have to sell, and what they shall pay for all they require to purchase. Centralization and slavery go thus always hand in hand with each other. The ryots are, as we see, obliged to pay sixteen or eighteen pence for the pound of cotton that has yielded them but one penny; and all this difference is paid for the labour of other people while idle themselves. "A great part of the time of the labouring population in India is," says Mr. 85 Chapman, "spent in idleness. I don't say this to blame them in the smallest degree. Without the means of exporting heavy and crude surplus agricultural produce, and with scanty means, whether of capital, science, or manual skill, for elaborating on the spot articles fitted to induce a higher state of enjoyment and of industry in the mass of the people, they have really no inducement to exertion beyond that which is necessary to gratify their present and very limited wishes; those wishes are unnaturally low, inasmuch as they do not afford the needful stimulus to the exercise requisite to intellectual and moral improvement; and it is obvious that there is no remedy for this but extended intercourse. Meanwhile, probably the half of the human time and energy of India runs to mere waste. Surely we need not wonder at the poverty of the country."

84

84

85

[145/*] 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 percent 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 percent on the gross produce of the land. -- Speech of Mr. Bright in the House of Commons. [146/*] Chapman's Commerce and Cotton of India, 110.

Assuredly we need not. They are idle perforce. With indifferent means of communication, their cotton and their food could readily travel in the form of cloth, and they could consume liberally of food and clothing; but they find themselves now forced to export every thing in its rudest form, and this they are to do in a country that is almost without roads. The manner in which these raw products now travel may be seen on a perusal of the following passage from the London Economist:-"The cotton is brought on oxen, carrying 160 pounds each, at the extreme rate, in fair weather, of seven miles a day for a continuance, and at a price of about 5s. for each hundred miles. If we take the average distance to Mirzapore at 500 miles, each pound of cotton costs in transit alone above 2-1/2 d. It has thence to be borne by water-carriage [begin page 147] nearly 800 miles farther on to Calcutta. * * * The great cotton-growing districts are in the northern portion of the Peninsula, embracing Guzerat, and a vast tract called the Deccan, lying between the Satpoora range of hills and the course of the Kishna River. General Briggs says -- 'The cotton from the interior of the country to the coast at Bombay occupies a continuous journey of from one to two months, according to the season of the year; while in the rains the route is wholly impassable, and the traffic of the country is at a stand.' "In the absence of a defined road, even the carriers, with their pack-cattle, are compelled to travel by daylight, to prevent the loss of their bullocks in the jungles they have to pass through, and this under a burning sun of from 100 to 140 degrees Fahrenheit. The droves of oxen are never so few as one hundred, and sometimes exceed a thousand. Every morning after daylight each animal has to be saddled, and the load lifted on him by two men, one on each side; and before they are all ready to move the sun has attained a height which renders the heat to an European oppressive. The whole now proceeds at the rate of about two miles an hour, and seldom performs a journey of more than eight miles; but, as the horde rests every fourth day, the average distance is but six miles a day. If the horde is overtaken by rain, the cotton, saturated by moisture, becomes heavy, and the black clayey soil, through which the whole line of road lies, sinks under the feet of a man above the ankle, and under that of a laden ox to the knees. "In this predicament the cargo of cotton lies sometimes for weeks on the ground, and the merchant is ruined." "So miserably bad," says another writer, "are the existing means of communication with the interior, that many of the most valuable articles of produce are, for want of carriage and a market, often allowed to perish on the farm, while the cost of that which found its way to the port was enormously enhanced; but the quantity did not amount to above 20 percent of the whole of the produce, the remainder of the articles always being greatly deteriorated." It will scarcely be difficult now to understand why it is that cotton yields the cultivator but a penny per pound. Neither will it be difficult, seeing that the local manufacturers have every where been ruined, to understand why the producer of the more bulky food is in a condition that is even worse, now that the consumer has disappeared from his side. If the crop is large, grain is a drug for which scarcely any price can be obtained; 86
86

[147/*] Chapman, 167.

and if it is small, the people perish, by thousands and ten of thousands, of famine, because, in the existing state of the roads, there can be little or no exchange of raw products. In the first case the cultivator is [begin page 148] ruined, because it requires almost the whole crop to pay the taxes. In the other he is starved; and all this is a necessary consequence of a system that excludes the great middle class of mechanics and other working-men, and resolves a great nation into a mass of wretched cultivators, slaves to a few grasping money lenders. Under such circumstances, the 87 accumulation of any thing like capital is impossible. "None," says Colonel Sleeman, "have stock equal to half their rent." They are dependent everywhere, on the produce of the year, and however small may be its amount, the taxes must be paid, and of all 88 that thus goes abroad nothing is returned. The soil gets nothing. It is not manured, nor can it be under a system of absenteeism like this, and its fertility everywhere declines, as is shown by the following extracts:-"Formerly, the governments kept no faith with their land-holders and cultivators, exacting ten rupees where they had bargained for five, whenever they found the crops good; but, in spite of all this zolm, (oppression,) there was then more burkut (blessings from above) than now. The lands yielded more returns to the cultivator, and he could maintain his 89 little family better upon five acres than he can now upon ten. "The land requires rest from labour, as well as men and bullocks; and if you go on sowing wheat and other exhausting crops, it will go on yielding less 90 and less returns, and at last will not be worth the tilling." "There has been a manifest falling off in the returns."
91

The soil is being exhausted, and every thing necessarily goes backward. Trees are cut down, but none are planted; and the former sites of vast groves are becoming arid wastes, a consequence of which is, that droughts become from year to year more frequent. "The clouds," says Colonel Sleeman, "brought up from the southern ocean by the south-east trade-wind are attracted, as they pass over the island, by the forests in the interior, and made to drop their stores in daily refreshing showers. In many other parts of the world, governments have now become aware of this mysterious provision of nature, and have adopted measures to take advantage of it for the benefit of the people; and the dreadful sufferings to which the people of those of our districts, which have been the most denuded of their trees, have been of late years exposed from the want of rain in due season, may, perhaps, induce our Indian government, to turn its thoughts to the subject." [begin page 149] In former times extensive works were constructed for irrigating the land, but they are everywhere going to ruin -- thus proving that agriculture cannot flourish in the absence of the mechanic arts:
92

87 88 89 90 91 92

[148/*] [148/] [148/] [148/] [148/] [148/]

Rambles, vol. i. 205. Ibid. 268. Ibid. vol. ii. 147. Ibid. 153. Ibid. 185. Ibid. 199.

"In Candeish, very many bunds [river-banks formed for purposes of irrigation] which were kept in repair under former governments, have, under ours, fallen to decay; nevertheless, not only has the population increased considerably under our rule, but in 1846 or 1847, the collector was obliged to grant remission of land tax, 'because the abundance of former years lay stagnating in the province, and the low prices of grain from that cause 93 prevented the ryots from being able to pay their fixed land assessment.'" We have here land abandoned and the cultivator ruined for want of a market for food, and wages falling for want of a market for labour; and yet these poor people are paying for English food and English labour employed in converting into cloth the cotton produced alongside of the food -- and they are ruined because they have so many middlemen to pay that the producer of cotton can obtain little food, and the producer of food can scarcely pay his taxes, and has nothing to give for cloth. Every thing tends, therefore, toward barbarism, and, as in the olden time of England and of Europe generally, famines become steadily more numerous and more severe, as is here shown:-"Some of the finest tracts of land have been forsaken, and given up to the untamed beasts of the jungle. The motives to industry have been destroyed. The soil seems to lie under a curse. Instead of yielding abundance for the wants of its own population, and the inhabitants of other regions, it does not keep in existence its own children. It becomes the burying-place of millions, who die upon its bosom crying for bread. In proof of this, turn your eyes backward upon the scenes of the past year. Go with me into the north-western provinces of the Bengal presidency, and I will show you the bleaching skeletons of five hundred thousand human beings, who perished of hunger in the space of a few short months. Yes, died of hunger in what has been justly called the granary of the world. Bear with me, if I speak of the scenes which were exhibited during the prevalence of this famine. The air for miles was poisoned by the effluvia emitted from the putrefying bodies of the dead. The rivers were choked with the corpses thrown into their channels. Mothers cast their little ones beneath the rolling waves, because they would not see them draw their last gasp and feel them stiffen in their arms. The English in the city were prevented from taking their customary evening drives. Jackalls and vul- [begin page 150] tures approached, and fastened upon the bodies of men, women, and children, before life was extinct. Madness, disease, despair stalked abroad, and no human power present to arrest their progress. It was the carnival of death! And this occurred in British India -- in the reign of Victoria the First! Nor was the event extraordinary and unforeseen. Far from it: 1835-36 witnessed a famine in the northern provinces: 1833 beheld one to the eastward: 1822-23 saw one in the Deccan. They have continued to increase in frequency and extent under our sway for more than half a century." 94 The famine of 1838 is thus described by Mr. George Thompson, late M.P., on the testimony of a gentleman of high respectability: "The poorer houses were entirely unroofed, the thatches having been given to feed the cattle, which had nevertheless died; so that cattle had disappeared altogether from the land. He says that a few attenuated
93 94

[149/*] Chapman, 97. [150/*] Thompson's Lectures on India, 57.

beings, more like skeletons than human creatures, were seen hovering about among the graves of those who had been snatched away by the famine; that desertion was everywhere visible, and that the silence of death reigned. In one of the villages, he says, an old man from whom they had bought a goat during their former visit, in 1833, was the only survivor of the whole community except his brother's son, whom he was cherishing and endeavouring to keep alive, and these two had subsisted altogether upon the eleemosynary bounty of travellers. The courier of Lord Auckland had informed this gentleman that when the governor-general passed through that part of the country the roads were lined on either side with heaps of dead bodies, and that they had not unfrequently to remove those masses of unburied human beings, ere the governor-general could proceed onward with his suite; and that every day from 2000 to 3000 famishing wretches surrounded and followed the carriages, to whom he dealt out a scanty meal; and on one occasion the horse of the courier took fright, and on the cause being ascertained -- what was it? It was found to be the lifeless body of a man who had died with his hand in his mouth, from which he had already devoured the fingers." 95 The more severe the pressure on the poor ryot, the greater is the power of the few who are always ready to profit by the losses of their neighbours. These poor people are obliged to borrow money on their growing crops, the prices of which are regulated by the will of the lender rather than by the standard of the market, and the rate of interest which the cultivators pay for these loans is often not less than 40 or 50 percent. A recent traveller says of the unfortunate cultivator-"Always oppressed, ever in poverty, the ryot is compelled to seek the aid of the mahajun, or native money-lender. This will frequently [begin page 151] be the talukdhar, or sub-renter, who exacts from the needy borrower whatever interest he thinks the unfortunate may he able to pay him, often at the rate of one percent per week. The accounts of these loans are kept by the mahajuns, who, aware of the deep ignorance of their clients, falsify their books, without fear of detection. In this way, no matter how favourable the season, how large the crop, the grasping mahajun is sure to make it appear that the whole is due to him; for he takes it at his own value. So far from Mr. Burke having overstated the case of the oppression of the ryots, on the trial of Warren Hastings, when he said that the tax-gatherer took from them eighteen shillings in every pound, he was really within the mark. At the conclusion of each crop-time, the grower of rice or cotton is made to appear a debtor to his superior, who thereupon provided the ryot appears able to toil on for another season -- advances more seed for sowing, and a little more rice to keep the labourer and his family from absolute starvation. But should there be any doubt as to the health and strength of the tenantlabourer, he is mercilessly turned from his land and his mud hut, and left to die on the highway." This is slavery, and under such a system how could the wretched people be other than slaves? The men have no market for their labour, and the women and children must remain idle or work in the field, as did, and do, the women of Jamaica; and all because they are compelled everywhere to exhaust the soil in raising crops to be sent to a distance to be consumed, and finally to abandon the land, even where they do not perish of famine. Mr. Chapman informs us that -95

[150/] Ibid. 185.

"Even in the valley of the Ganges, where the population is in some districts from 600 to 800 to the square mile, one-third of the cultivable lands are not cultivated; and in the Deecan, from which we must chiefly look for increased supplies of cotton, the population, amounting to about 100 to the square mile, is maintained by light crops, grown on little more than half the 96 cultivable land." Elsewhere he tells us that of the cultivable surface of all India one-half is waste. Bishop Heber informs us of the "impenetrable jungle" that now surrounds the once great manufacturing city of Dacca; and the Bombay Times reminds its English readers of the hundreds of thousands of acres of rich land that are lying waste, and that might be made to produce cotton. When population and wealth diminish it is always the rich soils that are first abandoned, as is shown in the Campagna of Rome, [begin page 152] in the valley of Mexico, and in the deltas of the Ganges and the Nile. Without association they could never have been brought into cultivation, and with the disappearance of the power to associate they are of necessity allowed to relapse into their original condition. Driven back to the poor soils and forced to send abroad the product, their wretched cultivator becomes poorer from day to day, and the less he obtains the more he becomes a slave to the caprices of his landlord, and the more is he thrown upon the mercy of the money-lender, who lends on good security at three percent per month, but from him must have fifty or a hundred percent for a loan until harvest. That under such circumstances the wages of labour should be very low, even where the wretched people are employed, must be a matter of course. In some places the labourer has two and in others three rupees, or less than a dollar and a half, per month. The officers employed on the great zemindary estates have from three to four rupees, and that this is a high salary, is proved by the fact that the police receive but 48 rupees ($23) per annum, out of which they feed and clothe themselves! Such are the rewards of labour in a country possessing every conceivable means of amassing wealth, and they become less from year to year. "It could not be too universally known," said Mr. Bright in the House of Commons, two years since, "That the cultivators of the soil were in a very unsatisfactory condition; that they were, in truth, in a condition of extreme and almost universal poverty. All testimony concurred upon that point. He would call the attention of the house to the statement of a celebrated native of India, the Rajah Rammohun Roy, who about twenty years ago published a pamphlet in London, in which he pointed out the ruinous effects of the zemindary system, and the oppression experienced by the ryots in the presidencies both of Bombay and Madras. After describing the state of matters generally, he added, 'Such was the melancholy condition of the agricultural labourers, that it always gave him the greatest pain to allude to it.' Three years afterward, Mr. Shore, who was a judge in India, published a work which was considered as a standard work till now, and he stated that 'the British Government was not regarded in a favourable light by the native population of India,' -- that a system of taxation and extortion was carried on 'unparalleled in the annals of any country. Then they had the authority of an American planter, Mr. Finnie, who was in India in 1840, and who spoke of the deplorable condition of the cultivators of the soil, and stated that if the Americans were similarly treated, they would become [begin page
96 97 97

[151/*] Chapman, 22. [151/] Ibid, 25.

153] as little progressive as the native Indians. He might next quote the accounts given by Mr. Marriott in 1838, a gentleman who was for thirty years engaged in the collection of the revenue in India, and who stated that 'the condition of the cultivators was greatly depressed, and that he believed it was still declining.' There was the evidence of a native of India to which he might refer on this subject. It was that of a gentleman, a native of Delhi, who was in England in the year 1849, and he could appeal to the right hon. baronet the member for Tamworth in favour of the credibility of that gentleman. He never met with a man of a more dignified character, or one apparently of greater intelligence, and there were few who spoke the English language with greater purity and perfection. That gentleman had written a pamphlet, in which he stated that throughout his whole line of march from Bombay he found the Nizam's territories better cultivated, and the ryots in a better state of circumstances, than were the Company's territories, of the people residing within them, who were plunged in a state of the greatest poverty; and he concluded his short, but comparatively full, notice of the present deplorable state of India, by observing that he feared this was but the prelude of many more such descriptions of the different portions of the Company's dominions which would be put forth before the subject would attract the notice of those whose duty it was to remove the evils that existed." We have here confirmation of the correctness of the views of Colonel Sleeman, that the condition of the people under the local governments is better than under the great central government. Heavily as they are taxed, a small part only of the proceeds of taxes goes, in these cases, to Calcutta on its way to England, whereas, of the enormous salaries paid to English governors and judges, nearly the whole must go abroad, as no one consents to serve for a few years in India, except on such terms as will enable him to accumulate a fortune and return home to spend it. In further confirmation of this we have the facts so fully given in Mr. Campbell's recent work, (Modern India, chap, xi.,) and proving that security of person and property increases as we pass from the old possessions of the Company, and toward the newly acquired ones. Crime of every kind, gang robbery, perjury, and forgery, abound in Bengal and Madras, and the poverty of the cultivator is so great that the revenue is there the least, and is collected with the greatest difficulty -- and there, too, it is that the power of association has been most effectually destroyed. Passing thence to the Northwestern provinces more recently acquired, person and property become more secure and the revenue increases; but when we reach [begin page 154] the Punjab, which until now has been subject to the rule of Runjeet Singh and his successors, we find that, tyrants as he and they have been represented, the people have there been left in the exercise of self-government. The village communities and the beautiful system of association, destroyed in Bengal, there remain untouched. Officers of all kinds are there more responsible for the performance of their duties than are their fellows in the older provinces, and property and person are more secure than elsewhere in India. Gang robbery is rare, perjury is unfrequent, and Mr. Campbell informs us that a solemn oath is "astonishingly binding." "The longer we possess a province," he continues, "the more common and general does perjury become;" and we need no better evidence than is thus furnished of the slavish tendency of the system. The hill tribes, on the contrary, are remarkable for their "strict veracity," and Colonel Sleeman expresses the belief that "there is as little falsehood spoken in the village communities," as in any part of the world with an equal area and population. 98 In the new provinces the people read and write with facility, and they are men of physical and moral energy, good cultivators, and understand well both their rights and their duties; whereas from the older ones
98

[154/*] Rambles in India, vol. ii. 109.

education has disappeared, and with it all power to associate together for any good purpose. In the new provinces, commerce is large, as is shown by the following facts representing the population and post-office revenue of Bengal, the N.W. Provinces, and the Punjab, placed in the order of their acquisition by the Company:-Population. 41,000,000 24,000,000 8,000,000 Post-office Revenue. 480,500 rupees. 978,000 " 178,000 "

Bengal................ N.W. Provinces.... Punjab................

We have here exhibited the remarkable fact that in the country of the Sikhs, so long represented as a scene of grasping tyranny, eight millions of people pay as much postage as is paid by fifteen millions in Bengal, although in the latter is Calcutta, the seat of all the operations of a great centralized government. That such [begin page 155] should be the case is not extraordinary, for the power advantageously to employ labour diminishes with the approach to the centre of British power, and increases as we recede from it. Idleness and drunkenness go hand in hand with each other, and therefore it is that Mr. Campbell finds himself obliged to state that "intemperance 99 increases where our rule and system have been long established." We see thus that the observations of both Mr. Campbell and Colonel Sleeman, authors of the most recent works on India, confirm to the letter the earlier statements of Captain Westmacott, an extract from which is here given:-"It is greatly to be deplored, that in places the longest under our rule, there is the largest amount of depravity and crime. My travels in India have fallen little short of 8000 miles, and extended to nearly all the cities of importance in Northern, Western, and Central India. I have no hesitation in affirming, that in the Hindoo and Mussulman cities, removed from European intercourse, there is much less depravity than either in Calcutta, Madras, or Bombay, where Europeans chiefly congregate." Calcutta grows, the city of palaces, but poverty and wretchedness grow as the people of India find themselves more and more compelled to resort to that city to make their exchanges. Under the native rule, the people of each little district could exchange with each other food for cotton or cotton cloth, paying nobody for the privilege. Now, every man must send his cotton to Calcutta, thence to go to England with the rice and the indigo of his neighbours, before he and they can exchange food for cloth or cotton -and the larger the quantity they send the greater is the tendency to decline in price. With every extension of the system there is increasing inability to pay the taxes, and increasing necessity for seeking new markets in which to sell cloth and collect what are called rents -- and the more wide the extension of the system the greater is the difficulty of collecting revenue sufficient for keeping the machine of government in motion. This difficulty it was that drove the representatives of British power and civilization into becoming traders in that pernicious drug, opium. "The very best parts of India," as we are told, were selected for the [begin page 156] cultivation of the poppy. The people were told that they must either cultivate this plant, make opium, or give up their land. If they refused, they were peremptorily told they must yield or quit. The same Company that forced them to grow opium said, You must sell the opium to us; and to them it was sold, and they gave the price they pleased to put upon the opium thus manufactured; and they then sold it to trading speculators at
99 100 100

[155/*] Modern India, 394. [155/] Thompson, Lectures on India, 25.

Calcutta, who caused it to be smuggled up the Canton River to an island called Lintin, and tea was received in exchange. At last, however, the emperor of China, after repeated threats, proceeded to execute summary justice; he seized every particle of opium; put under bond every European engaged in the merchandise of it; and the papers of today (1839) inform us that he has cut off the China trade, "root and branch." Unhappily, however, the British nation deemed it expedient to make war upon the poor Chinese, and compel them to pay for the opium that had been destroyed; and now the profits of the Indian government from poisoning a whole people have risen from 1,500,000, at the date of the above extract, to the enormous sum of 3,500,000, or 101 $16,800,000, and the market is, as we are informed, still extending itself.

101

[156/*] The destruction of life in China from this extension of the market for the produce of India is stated at no less than 400,000 per annum. How this trade is regarded in India itself, by Christian men, may be seen from the following extract from a review, recently published in the Bombay Telegraph, of papers in regard to it published in Hunt's Merchants' Magazine, in which the review is now republished:-"That a professedly Christian government should, by its sole authority and on its sole responsibility, produce a drug which is not only contraband, but essentially detrimental to the best interests of humanity; that it should annually receive into its treasury crores of rupees, which, if they cannot, save by a too licentious figure, be termed 'the price of blood,' yet are demonstrably the price of the physical waste, the social wretchedness, and moral destruction of the Chinese; and yet that no sustained remonstrances from the press, secular or spiritual, nor from society, should issue forth against the unrighteous system, is surely an astonishing fact in the history of our Christian ethics. "An American, accustomed to receive from us impassioned arguments against his own nation on account of slavery, might well be pardoned were he to say to us, with somewhat of intemperate feeling, 'Physician, heal thyself,' and to expose with bitterness the awful inconsistency of Britain's vehement denunciation of American slavery, while, by most deadly measures, furthering Chinese demoralization." The review, in referring to the waste of human life, closes as follows:"What unparalleled destruction! The immolations of an Indian Juggernauth dwindle into insignificance before it! We again repeat, nothing but slavery is worthy to be compared for its horrors with this monstrous system of iniquity. As we write, we are amazed at the enormity of its unprincipledness, and the large extent of its destructiveness. Its very enormity seems in some measure to protect it. Were it a minor evil, it seems as though one might grapple with it. As it is, it is beyond the compass of our grasp. No words are adequate to expose its evil, no fires of indignant feeling are fierce enough to blast it. "The enormous wealth it brings into our coffers is its only justification, the cheers of vice-enslaved wretches its only welcome; the curses of all that is moral and virtuous in an empire of three hundred and sixty millions attend its introduction; the prayers of enlightened Christians deprecate its course; the indignation of all righteous minds is its only 'God-speed.' "It takes with it fire and sword, slaughter and death; it leaves behind it bankrupt fortunes, idiotized minds, broken hearts, and ruined souls. Foe to all the interests of humanity, hostile to the scanty virtues of earth; and warring against the

That the reader may see, and understand how [begin page 157] directly the government is concerned in this effort at demoralizing and enslaving the Chinese, the following extract is given:-"For the supply and manufacture of government opium there is a separate establishment. There are two great opium agencies at Ghazeepore and Patna, for the Benares and Bahar provinces. Each opium agent has several deputies in different districts, and a native establishment. They enter into contracts with the cultivators for the supply of opium at a rate fixed to meet the market. The land revenue authorities do not interfere, except to prevent cultivation without permission. Government merely bargains with the cultivators as cultivators, in the same way as a private merchant would, and makes advances to them for the cultivation. The only difficulty found is to prevent, their cultivating too much, as the rates are favourable, government a sure purchaser, and the cultivation liked. The land cultivated is measured, and precaution is taken that the produce is all sold to government. The raw opium thus received is sent to the head agency, where it is manufactured, packed in chests, and sealed with the Company's seal." 102 It would seem to the author of this paragraph almost a matter of rejoicing that the Chinese are bound to continue large consumers of the drug. "The failure of one attempt to exclude it has shown," as he thinks-"That they are not likely to effect that object; and if we do not supply them, some one else will; but the worst of it is, according to some people, that if the Chinese only legalized the cultivation in their own country, they could produce it much cheaper, and our market would be ruined. Both for their sakes and ours we must hope that it is not so, or that they will not find it 103 out." Need we wonder, when gentlemen find pleasure in the idea of an increasing revenue from forcing this trade in despite of all the efforts of the more civilized Chinese government, that "intemperance increases" where the British "rule and system has been long estab- [begin page 158] lished?" Assuredly not. Poor governments are, as we everywhere see, driven to encourage gambling, drunkenness, and other immoralities, as a means of extracting revenue from their unfortunate taxpayers; and the greater the revenue thus obtained, the poorer become the people and the weaker the government. Need we be surprised that that of India should be reduced to become manufacturer and smuggler of opium, when the people are forced to exhaust the land by sending away its raw products, and when the restraints upon the mere collection of domestic salt are so great that English salt now finds a market in India? The following passage on this subject is worthy of the perusal of those who desire fully to understand how it is that the people of that country are restrained in the application of their labour, and why it is that labour is so badly paid:-"But those who cry out in England against the monopoly, and their unjust exclusion from the salt trade, are egregiously mistaken. As concerns them there is positively no monopoly, but the most absolute free trade. And,

102 103

overflowing benevolence of heaven, may we soon have to rejoice over its abolition!" [157/*] Campbell, 390. [157/] Ibid. 393.

more than this, the only effect of the present mode of manufacture in Bengal is to give them a market which they would never otherwise have. A government manufacture of salt is doubtless more expensive than a private manufacture; but the result of this, and of the equality of duty on bad and good salt, is, that fine English salt now more or less finds a market in India; whereas, were the salt duty and all government interference discontinued tomorrow, the cheap Bengal salt would be sold at such a rate that not a pound of English or any other foreign salt could be brought into the market." 104 Nevertheless, the system is regarded as one of perfect free trade! Notwithstanding all these efforts at maintaining the revenue, the debt has increased the last twelve years no less than 15,000,000, or seventy-two millions of dollars; and yet the government is absolute proprietor of all the land of India, and enjoys so large a portion of the beneficial interest in it, that private property therein is reduced to a sum absolutely insignificant, as will now be shown. The gross land revenue obtained from a country with an area of 491,448 square miles, or above three hundred millions of acres, is 151,786,743 rupees, equal to fifteen 105 millions of pounds sterling, or seventy-two millions of dollars. What is the value of private [begin page 159] rights of property, subject to the payment of this tax, or rent, may be judged from the following facts:-- In 1848-9 there were sold for taxes, in that portion of the country subject to the permanent settlement, 1169 estates, at something less than four years' purchase of the tax. Further south, in the Madras government, where the ryotwar settlement is in full operation, the land "would be sold" for balances of rent, but "generally it is not," as we are told, "and for a very good reason, viz. that nobody will buy it." Private rights in land being there of no value whatsoever, "the collector of Salem," as Mr. Campbell informs us-"Navely mentions 'various unauthorized modes of stimulating the tardy,' rarely resorted to by heads of villages; such as 'placing him in the sun, obliging him to stand on one leg, or to sit with his head confined between 106 his knees.'" In the north-west provinces, "the settlement," as our author states, "has certainly been successful in giving a good market value to landed property;" that is, it sells at about 107 "four years' purchase on the revenue." Still further north, in the newly acquired provinces, we find great industry, "every thing turned to account," the assessment, to which the Company succeeded on the deposition of the successors of Runjeet Singh, 108 more easy, and land more valuable. The value of land, like that of labour, therefore increases as we pass from the old to the new settlements, being precisely the reverse of what would be the case if the system tended to the enfranchisement and elevation of the people, and precisely what should be looked for in a country whose inhabitants were passing from freedom toward slavery. With the data thus obtained we may now ascertain, with perhaps some approach to accuracy, the value of all the private rights in the land of India. In no case does that
104 105 106 107 108

[158/*] [158/] [159/*] [159/] [159/]

Campbell, 384. Ibid. 377. Campbell, 359. Ibid. 332. Ibid. 345

subject to tax appear to be worth more than four years' purchase, while in a very large portion of the country it would seem to be worth absolutely nothing. There are, however, some tax-free lands that may he set off against those held under the ryotwar settlement; and it is therefore pos- [begin page 160] sible that the whole are worth four years' purchase, which would give 288 millions of dollars, or 60 millions of pounds sterling, as the value of all the rights in land acquired by the people of India by all the labour of their predecessors and themselves in the many thousands of years it has been cultivated. The few people that have occupied the little and sandy State of New Jersey, with its area of 6900 square miles, have acquired rights in and on the land that are valued, subject to the claims of government, at 150 millions of dollars; and the few that have occupied the little island on which stands the city of New York have acquired rights that would sell in the market for at least one-half more than could be obtained for all the proprietary rights to land in India, with 300 millions of acres and 96 millions of inhabitants! "Under the native princes," says Mr. Campbell, "India was a paying country." Under British rule, it has ceased to be so, because under that rule all power of combined action has been annihilated, or is in train to be, and will be so, by aid of the system that looks to compelling the whole people, men, women, and children, to work in the field, producing commodities to be exported in their raw state. Every act of association is an act of trade, and whatever tends to destroy association must destroy trade. The internal commerce of India declines steadily, and the external amounts to but about half a dollar per head, and no effort can make it grow to any extent. The returns of last year, of English trade, show a diminution as compared with those of the previous one, whereas with almost all other countries there is a large increase. Cuba exports to the large amount of twenty-five dollars per head, or almost fifty times as much as India; and she takes of cotton goods from England four times as much per head; and this she does because it is a part of the policy of Spain to bring about combination of action, and to enable the planter and the artisan to work together, whereas the policy of England is to destroy everywhere the power of association, and thus to destroy the domestic trade, upon which the foreign one must be built. Centralization is adverse to trade, and to the freedom of man. Spain does not seek to establish centralization. Provided she receives a given amount of [begin page 161] revenue, she is content to permit her subjects to employ themselves at raising sugar or making cloth, as they please, and thus to advance in civilization; and by this very course it is that she is enabled to obtain revenue. How centralization operates on the people and the revenue, and how far it tends to promote the civilization or the freedom of man, may be seen, on a perusal of the following extract from a recent speech of Mr. Anstey, in the British House of Commons:-"Such was the financial condition of India, which the right honourable gentleman believed to be so excellent. The intelligent natives of India, however, who visited this country, were not of that opinion. They told us that the complaints sent from India to this country were disregarded here, and that they always would be disregarded as long as inquiry into them was imperial, not local. They stated that their condition was one of hopeless misery, and that it had been so ever since they came under our rule. The result was, that cholera had become the normal order of things in that country, and in India it never died out. It appeared from the reports of medical officers in the army that it did not attack the rich and well-fed so frequently as it attacked the poor, and that among them it had made the most fearful ravages. The first authentic account they had of the appearance of the cholera in India was coincident with the imposition of the salt monopoly by Warren Hastings; and by a just retribution it had visited their own shores, showing them with what a scourge they had so long

afflicted the natives of India. It might be said of the other taxes that, in one form or another, they affected every branch of industry and every necessary of life. They affected even the tools of trade, and were sometimes equal in amount to the sum for which the tool itself could be purchased in the market. "When on a former occasion he had mentioned those facts before a member of the court of directors, he was told that if he had seen the papers in the archives, he would perceive that an alteration had taken place; but he found, on an inspection of the papers, that the result to the purchaser of salt is almost equal to what it had been. It was a well known fact that the natives dare not complain. When they asked for protection from the laws, they were treated as Juttee Persaud had been treated last year -- cases were fabricated against them, and they were prosecuted for their lives. With the examples before them of Nuncomar and Juttee Persaud, it was not surprising that the natives were so backward in bringing to justice the persons whose oppressions had been so great." It was in the face of facts like those here presented, and other similar ones presented to us in the history of Jamaica, that in a recent despatch Lord Palmerston thus instructed his minister at Madrid:-- [begin page 162] "I have to instruct your lordship to observe to M. de Miraflores that the slaves of Cuba form a large portion, and by no means an unimportant one, of the population of Cuba; and that any steps taken to provide for their emancipation would, therefore, as far as the black population is concerned, be quite in unison with the recommendation made by her Majesty's government, that measures should be adopted for contenting the people of Cuba, with a view to secure the connection between that island and the Spanish crown; and it must be evident that if the negro population of Cuba were rendered free, that fact would create a most powerful element of resistance to any scheme for annexing Cuba to the United States, where slavery still exists. "With regard to the bearing which negro emancipation would have on the interests of the white proprietors, it may safely be affirmed that free labour costs less than slave labour, and it is indisputable that a free and contented peasantry are safer neighbours for the wealthy classes above them than illtreated and resentful slaves; and that slaves must, from the nature of things, be more or less ill-treated, is a truth which belongs to the inherent principles of human nature, and is quite as inevitable as the resentment, however suppressed it may be, which is the consequence of ill-treatment." The negroes of Jamaica have never been permitted to apply their spare labour even to the refining of their own sugar, nor are they so at this day. They must export it raw, and the more they send the lower is the price and the larger the proportion taken by the government -- but the poor negro is ruined. Spain, on the contrary, permits the Cubans to engage in any pursuits they may deem most likely to afford them a return to labour and capital; and, as a necessary consequence of this, towns and cities grow up, capital is attracted to the land, which becomes from day to day more valuable, labour is in demand, and there is a gradual, though slow, improvement of condition. The power to resort to other modes of employment diminishes the necessity for exporting sugar, and when exported to Spain, the producer is enabled to take for himself nearly the whole price paid by the consumer, the government claiming only a duty of fifteen percent.

The Hindoo, like the negro, is shut out from the workshop. If he attempts to convert his cotton into yarn, his spindle is taxed in nearly all of the profit it can yield him. If he attempts to make cloth, his loom is subjected to a heavy tax, from which that of his wealthy English competitor is exempt. His iron ore and his coal must remain in the ground, and if he dares to apply [begin page 163] his labour even to the collection of the salt which crystallizes before his door, he is punished by fine and imprisonment. He must raise sugar to be transported to England, there to be exchanged, perhaps, for English salt. For the sugar, arrived in that country, the workman pays at the rate perhaps of forty shillings a hundred, of which the government claims one-third, the ship owner, the merchant, and others, another third, and the remaining third is to be fought for by the agents of the Company, anxious for revenue, and the poor ryot, anxious to obtain a little salt to eat with his rice, and as much of his neighbour's cotton, in the form of English cloth, as will suffice to cover his loins. Under the Spanish system capital increases, and labour is so valuable that slaves still continue to be imported. Under the English one, labour is valueless, and men sell themselves for long years of slavery at the sugar culture in the Mauritius, in Jamaica, and in Guiana. In all countries to which men are attracted, civilization tends upward; but in all those from which men fly, it tends downward. At the moment this despatch was being written by Lord Palmerston, Mr. Campbell was writing his book, in which it is everywhere shown that the tendency of India toward centralization and absenteeism, and therefore toward exhaustion and slavery, is rapidly on the increase. "The communication with India," as he says-"Is every day so much increased and facilitated that we become more and more entirely free from native influence, and the disposition to Hindooize, which at first certainly showed itself, has altogether disappeared. The English in India have now become as English as in England. "While this state of things has great advantages, it has also some disadvantage in the want of local knowledge, and of permanency in the tenure of appointments which results. As there has been a constant succession of total strangers in every appointment, it follows that the government must be entirely carried on upon general principles, with little aid from local knowledge and experience." -- P. 202. The tendency toward the transfer of English capital to India, as he informs us, retrogrades instead of advancing, and this is precisely what we might expect to find to be the case. Capital never seeks a country from which men are flying as they now fly from [begin page 164] India. The English houses bring none, but being in general mere speculators, they borrow largely and enter into large operations, and when the bubble bursts, the poor Hindoo suffers in the prostration of trade and decline in the prices of cotton and sugar. "The consequence is," as Mr. Campbell says-"That European speculation has retrograded. Far up the country, where the agents of the old houses were formerly numerous and well supplied with money, the planters are now few and needy, and generally earn but a precarious subsistence as in fact the servants of native capitalists."--P. 204. Iron, by aid of which the people might improve their processes of cultivation and manufacture, has little tendency toward India. The average export of it to that country in 1845 and '46 was but 13,000 tons, value 160,000, or about two-pence worth for every five of the population. Efforts are now being made for the construction of railroads, but their object is that of carrying out the system of centralization, and thus

still further destroying the power of association, because they look to the annihilation of what still remains of domestic manufacture, and thus cheapening cotton. With all the improvements in the transportation of that commodity, its poor cultivator obtains less for it than he did thirty years since, and the effect of further improvement can be none other than that of producing a still further reduction, and still further deterioration of the condition of the men who raise food and cotton. As yet the power of association continues in the Punjab, but it is proposed now to hold there great fairs for the sale of English manufactures, and the day cannot be far distant when the condition of the people of the new provinces will be similar to that of those of the old ones, as no effort will be spared to carry out the system which looks to driving the whole people to agriculture, and thus compelling them to exhaust their land. It is needed, says Mr. Chapman, the great advocate of railways in India, that the connection between "the Indian grower and English spinner" become more intimate, and "the more the English is made to outweigh the native home demand, the more strongly will the native agriculturist feel that his personal success depends on securing and improving his 109 [begin page 165] British connection" -- that is, the more the natives can be prevented from combining, their labours, the greater, as Mr. Chapman thinks, will be the prosperity of India. Centralization has impoverished, and to a considerable extent depopulated, that country, but its work is not yet done. It remains yet to reduce the people of the Punjab, of Affghanistan and Burmah, to the condition of the Bengalese. The Burmese war is, as we are informed, "connected with at least certain hopes of 110 getting across to China through the Burmese territories," and, of course of extending the trade in opium throughout the whole of interior China; and the revenue from that source will pay the cost of annexation. It is by aid of this powerful narcotic, probably, that "civilization" is about, as we are told, to "plant her standard on the ruins of 111 kingdoms which for thousands of years have been smouldering into dust." We are often told of "the dim moral perceptions" of the people of India, and as many of those who will read this volume may be disposed to think that the cause of poverty lies in some deficiencies in the character of the Hindoo, it may not be improper, with a view to the correction of that opinion, to offer a few passages from the very interesting work of Colonel Sleeman, who furnishes more information on that head than any other recent traveller or resident; and his remarks are the more valuable because of being the fruit of many years of observation:-"Sir Thomas Munro has justly observed, 'I do not exactly know what is meant by civilizing the people of India. In the theory and practice of good government they may be deficient; but if a good system of agriculture -- if unrivalled manufactures -- if a capacity to produce what convenience or luxury demands -- if the establishment of schools for reading and writing -if the general practice of kindness and hospitality -- and above all, if a scrupulous respect and delicacy toward the female sex are amongst the points that denote a civilized people; then the Hindoos are not inferior in civilization to the people of Europe.-- Rambles, vol. i. 4. "Our tents were pitched upon a green sward on one bank of a small stream running into the Nerbudda close by, while the multitude occ- [begin page 166] upied the other bank. At night all the tents and booths are illuminated, and the scene is hardly less animating by night than by day; but what strikes an European most is the entire absence of all tumult and disorder at
109 110 111

[165/*] Chapman on the Commerce of India, 88. [165/] Lawson's Merchants' Magazine, January, 1853, 58. [165/] Ibid. 51.

such places. He not only sees no disturbance, but feels assured that there will be none; and leaves his wife and children in the midst of a crowd of a hundred thousand persons all strangers to them, and all speaking a language and following a religion different from theirs, while he goes off the whole day, hunting and shooting in the distant jungles, without the slightest feeling of apprehension for their safety or comfort." -- Ibid. 2. "I am much attached to the agricultural classes of India generally, and I have found among them some of the best men I have ever known. The peasantry in India have generally very good manners, and are exceedingly intelligent, from having so much more leisure, and unreserved and easy intercourse with those above them." -- Ibid. 76. "I must say, that I have never either seen or read of a nobler spirit than seems to animate all classes of these communities in India on such distressing occasions." -- Ibid. 197. "There is no part of the world, I believe, where parents are so much reverenced by their sons as they are in India in all classes of society." -Ibid. 330. "An instance of deliberate fraud or falsehood among native merchants of respectable stations in society, is extremely rare. Among the many hundreds of bills I have had to take from them for private remittances, I have never had one dishonoured, or the payment upon one delayed beyond the day specified; nor do I recollect ever hearing of one who had. They are so careful not to speculate beyond their means, that an instance of failure is extremely rare among them. No one ever in India hears of families reduced to ruin or distress by the failure of merchants and bankers; though here, as in all other countries advanced in the arts, a vast number of families subsist upon the interest of money employed by them. "There is no class of men more interested in the stability of our rule in India than this of the respectable merchants; nor is there any upon whom the welfare of our government, and that of the people, more depend. Frugal, first, upon principle, that they may not in their expenditure encroach upon their capitals, they become so by habit; and when they advance in life they lay out their accumulated wealth in the formation of those works which shall secure for them, from generation to generation, the blessings of the people of the towns in which they have resided, and those of the country around. It would not be too much to say, that one-half the great works which embellish and enrich the face of India, in tanks, groves, wells, temples, &c., have been formed by this class of the people solely with the view of securing the blessings of mankind by contributing to their happiness in solid and permanent works." -- Ibid. vol. ii. 142. "In the year 1829, while I held the civil charge of the district of Jubbulpore, in this valley of the Nerbudda, I caused an estimate to be made of the public works of ornament and utility it contained. The [begin page 167] population of the district at that time amounted to five hundred thousand souls, distributed among four thousand and fifty-three occupied towns, villages, and hamlets. There were one thousand villages more which had formerly been occupied, but were then deserted. There were two thousand two hundred and eighty-eight tanks, two hundred and nine bowlies, or large wells, with flights of steps extending from the top down to the water when in

its lowest stage; fifteen hundred and sixty wells lined with brick and stone, cemented with lime, but without stairs; three hundred and sixty Hindoo temples, and twenty-two Mohammedan mosques. The estimated cost of these works in grain at the present price, that is the quantity that would have been consumed, had the labour been paid in kind at the present ordinary rate, was eighty-six lacks, sixty-six thousand and forty-three rupees (86,66,043,) 866,604 sterling. "The labourer was estimated to be paid at the rate of about two-thirds the quantity of corn he would get in England if paid in kind, and corn sells here at about one-third the price it fetches in average seasons in England. In Europe, therefore, these works, supposing the labour equally efficient, would have cost at least four times the sum here estimated; and such works formed by private individuals for the public good, without any view whatever to return in profits, indicates a very high degree of public spirit. "The whole annual rent of the lands of this district amounts to about six hundred and fifty thousand rupees a year, (65,000 sterling,) that is, five hundred thousand demandable by the government, and one hundred and fifty thousand by those who hold the lands at lease immediately under government, over and above what may be considered as the profits of their stock as farmers. These works must, therefore, have cost about thirteen times the amount of the annual rent of the whole of the lands of the districts -- or the whole annual rent for above thirteen years!" -- Ibid, vol. ii. 194. We have here private rights in land amounting to 150,000 rupees, in a country 112 abounding in coal and iron ore, and with a population of half a million of people. Estimating the private interest at ten years' purchase, it is exactly three years' purchase of the land-tax; and it follows of course, that the government takes every year onefourth of the whole value of the property, -- at which rate the little State of New Jersey, with its half-million of inhabitants, would pay annually above thirty millions of dollars for the support of those who were charged with the administration of its affairs! Need we wonder at the poverty of India when thus taxed, while deprived of all power even to manure its land? "Three-fourths of the recruits for our Bengal native infantry are [begin page 168] drawn from the Rajpoot peasantry of the kingdom of Oude, on the left bank of the Ganges, where their affections have been linked to the soil for a long series of generations. The good feelings of the families from which they are drawn, continue, through the whole period of their service, to exercise a salutary influence over their conduct as men and as soldiers. Though they never take their families with them, they visit them on furlough every two or three years, and always return to them when the surgeon considers a change of air necessary to their recovery from sickness. Their family circles are always present to their imaginations; and the recollections of their last visit, the hopes of the next, and the assurance that their conduct as men and as soldiers in the interval will be reported to those circles by their many comrades, who are annually returning on furlough to the same parts of the country, tend to produce a general and uniform propriety of conduct, that is hardly to be found among the soldiers of any other army in the world, and which seems incomprehensible to those who are unacquainted with its source, -- veneration for parents cherished

112

[167/*] See page 140, ante.

through life and a never impaired love of home, and of all the dear objects by which it is constituted." -- Ibid. vol. ii. 415. Such are the people that we see now forced to abandon a land of which not more than half the cultivable part is in cultivation -- a land that abounds in every description of mineral wealth -- and to sell themselves for long years of service, apart from wives, children, and friends, to be employed in the most unhealthful of all pursuits, the cultivation of sugar in the Mauritius, and the Sandwich Islands, and among the swamps of British Guiana, and Jamaica, and for a reward of four or five rupees ($2 to $2.50) per month. What was their condition in the Mauritius is thus shown by an intelligent and honest visitor of the island in 1838:-"After the passage of the act abolishing slavery, an arrangement was sanctioned by the Colonial Government, for the introduction of a great number of Indian labourers into the colony. They were engaged at five rupees, equal to ten shillings, a month, for five years, with also one pound of rice, a quarter of a pound of dhall, or grain, a kind of pulse, and one ounce of butter, of ghee, daily. But for every day they were absent from their work they were to return two days to their masters, who retained one rupee per month, to pay an advance made of six months' wages, and to defray the expense of their passage. If these men came into Port Louis to complain of their masters, they were lodged in the Bagne prison, till their masters were summoned. The masters had a great advantage before the magistrates over their servants: the latter being foreigners, but few of them could speak French, and they had no one to assist them in pleading their cause. They universally represented themselves as having been deceived with respect to the kind of labour to be exacted from them. But perhaps [begin page 169] the greatest evil attendant on their introduction into the Mauritius was the small proportion of females imported with them, only about two hundred being brought with upward of ten thousand men. It was evident that unless the system of employing them were closely watched, there was a danger that it might ultimately grow into another species of 113 slavery." We see thus that while the females of India are deprived of all power to employ themselves in the lighter labour of manufacture, the men are forced to emigrate, leaving behind their wives and daughters, to support themselves as best they may. The same author furnishes an account of the Indian convicts that had been transported to the island, as follows:-"Among the Indian convicts working on the road, we noticed one wearing chains; several had a slight single ring round the ankle. They are lodged in huts with flat roofs, or in other inferior dwellings, near the road. There are about seven hundred of them in the island. What renders them peculiarly objects of sympathy is, that they were sent here for life, and no hope of any remission of sentence is held out to them for good conduct. Their's is a hopeless bondage; and though it is said by some that they are not hard worked, yet they are generally, perhaps constantly, breaking stones and mending the road, and in a tropical sun. There are among them persons who were so young when transported that, in their offences, they could only

113

[169/*] Backhouse's Visit to the Mauritius, 35.

be looked on as the dupes of those that were older; and many of them bear 114 good characters." At the date to which these passages refer there was a dreadful famine in India; but, "during the prevalence of this famine," as we are told,-"Rice was going every hour out of the country. 230,371 bags of 164 pounds each -- making 37,780,844 lbs. -- were exported from Calcutta. Where? To the Mauritius, to feed the kidnapped Coolies. [begin page 170] Yes: to feed the men who had been stolen from the banks of the Ganges and the hills adjacent, and dragged from their native shore, under pretence of going to one of the Company's villages, to grow in the island of Mauritius what they might have grown in abundance upon their own fertile, but overtaxed land. The total amount of rice exported from Calcutta, during the famine in 1838, was 151,923,696 lbs., besides 13,722,408 lbs. of other edible grains, which would have fed and kept alive all those who perished that year. Wives might have been saved to their husbands, babes to their mothers, friends to their friends; villages might still have been peopled; a sterile land might have been restored to verdure. Freshness and joy and the voices of gladness, might have been there. Now, all is stillness, and desolation, and death. Yet we are told we have nothing to do with India." 115 The nation that exports raw produce must exhaust its land, and then it must export its men, who fly from famine, leaving the women and children to perish behind them. By aid of continued Coolie immigration the export of sugar from the Mauritius has been doubled in the last sixteen years, having risen from 70 to 140 millions of pounds. Sugar is therefore very cheap, and the foreign competition is thereby driven from the British market. "Such conquests," however, says, very truly, the London Spectator -"Don't always bring profit to the conqueror; nor does production itself prove prosperity. Competition for the possession of a field may be carried so far as to reduce prices below prime cost; and it is clear from the notorious facts of the West Indies -- from the change of property, from the total unproductiveness of much property still -- that the West India production of sugar has been carried on, not only without replacing capital, but with a constant sinking of capital." The "free" Coolie and the "free negro" of Jamaica, have been urged to competition for the sale of sugar, and they seem likely to perish together; but compensation for this is found in the fact that-114

115

[169/] 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. [170/*] Thompson's Lectures on British India, 187.

"Free-trade has, in reducing the prices of commodities for home consumption, enabled the labourer to devote a greater share of his income toward purchasing clothing and luxuries, and has increased the home trade 116 to an enormous extent." What effect this reduction of "the prices of commodities for [begin page 171] home consumption" has had upon the poor Coolie, may be judged from the following passage:-"I here beheld, for the first time, a class of beings of whom we have heard much, and for whom I have felt considerable interest. I refer to the Coolies imported by the British government to take the place of the faineant negroes, when the apprenticeship system was abolished. Those that I saw were wandering about the streets, dressed rather tastefully, but always meanly, and usually carrying over their shoulder a sort of chiffonier's sack, in which they threw whatever refuse stuff they found in the streets or received as charity. Their figures are generally superb; and their Eastern costume, to which they adhere as far as their poverty will permit of any clothing, sets off their lithe and graceful forms to great advantage. Their faces are almost uniformly of the finest classic mould, and illuminated by pairs of those dark swimming and propitiatory eyes, which exhaust the language of tenderness and passion at a glance. "But they are the most inveterate mendicants on the island. It is said that those brought from the interior of India are faithful and efficient workmen, while those from Calcutta and its vicinity are good for nothing. Those that were prowling about the streets of Spanish-town and Kingston, I presume, were of the latter class, for there is not a planter on the island, it is said, from whom it would be more difficult to get any work than from one of these. They subsist by begging altogether: they are not vicious, nor intemperate, nor troublesome particularly, except as beggars. In that calling they have a pertinacity before which a Northern mendicant would grow pale. They will not be denied. They will stand perfectly still and look through a window from the street for a quarter of an hour, if not driven away, with their imploring eyes fixed upon you, like a stricken deer, without saying a word or moving a muscle. They act as if it were no disgrace for them to beg, as if the least indemnification which they are entitled to expect, for the outrage perpetrated upon them in bringing them from their distant homes to this strange island, is a daily supply of their few and cheap necessities, as they call for them. "I confess that their begging did not leave upon my mind the impression produced by ordinary mendicancy. They do not look as if they ought to work. I never saw one smile, and though they showed no positive suffering, I never saw one look happy. Each face seemed to be constantly telling the unhappy story of their woes, and like fragments of a broken mirror, each reflecting in all its hateful proportions the national outrage of which they are the victims." 117 The slave trade has taken a new form, the mild and gentle Hindoo having taken the place of the barbarous and fierce African; and this trade is likely to continue so long as
116 117

[170/] Lawson's Merchants' Magazine, January, 1853, 14. [171/*] Bigelow's "Jamaica in 1850," 17.

it shall be held to be the chief object of the government of a Christian people to [begin page 172] secure to its people cheap cotton and sugar, without regard to the destruction of life of which that cheapness is the cause. The people of England send to India missionary priests and bishops, but they obtain few converts; nor can it ever be otherwise under a system which tends to destroy the power of association, and thus prevents that diversification of employments that is indispensable to the improvement of physical, moral, intellectual, or political condition. May we not hope that at no very distant day they will arrive at the conclusion that such association is as necessary to the Hindoo as they know it to be to themselves, and that if they desire success in their attempts to bring the followers of Mohammed, or of Brahma, to an appreciation of the doctrines of Christ, they must show that their practice and their teachings are in some degree in harmony with each other? When that day shall come they will be seen endeavouring to remedy the evil they have caused, and permitting the poor Hindoo to obtain establishments in which labour may be combined for the production of iron and of machinery, by aid of which the native cotton may be twisted in the neighbourhood in which it is produced, thus enabling the now unhappy cultivator to exchange directly with his food-producing neighbour, relieved from the necessity for sending his products to a distance, to be brought back again in the form of yarn or cloth, at fifteen or twenty times the price at which he sold it in the form of cotton. That time arrived, they will appreciate the sound good sense contained in the following remarks of Colonel Sleeman:-"If we had any great establishment of this sort in which Christians could find employment, and the means of religious and secular instruction, thousands of converts would soon flock to them; and they would become vast sources of future improvement in industry, social comfort, municipal institutions, and religion. What chiefly prevents the spread of Christianity in India is the dread of exclusion from caste and all its privileges; and the utter hopelessness of their ever finding any respectable circle of society of the adopted religion, which converts, or would be converts to Christianity, now everywhere feel. Form such circles for them -- make the members of these circles happy in the exertion of honest and independent industry -- let those who rise to eminence in them feel that they are considered as respectable and as important in the social system as the servants of government, and converts will flock around you from all parts, and from all classes of the Hindoo community. * * * I am persuaded that a dozen such establishments as that of Mr. Thomas Ashton, of Hyde, as described by a physician of Manchester, and noticed in Mr. Baines's admirable work on the Cotton Manufactures of Great Britain, (page 447,) would do more in the way of conversion among the people of India than has ever ye