Produced by Andrea Ball, Carlo Traverso, Charles Franks
and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team. This file was produced from images generously made available by the Bibliothèque nationale de France (BnF/Gallica) at http://gallica.bnf.fr.
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.
PREFACE.
The subject discussed in the following pages is one of great importance, and especially so to the people of this country. The views presented for consideration differ widely from those generally entertained, 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. THE WIDE EXTENT OF SLAVERY
CHAPTER II. OF SLAVERY IN THE BRITISH COLONIES
CHAPTER III. OF SLAVERY IN THE UNITED STATES
CHAPTER IV. OF EMANCIPATION IN THE BRITISH COLONIES
CHAPTER V. HOW MAN PASSES FROM POVERTY AND SLAVERY TOWARD WEALTH AND FREEDOM
CHAPTER VI. HOW WEALTH TENDS TO INCREASE
CHAPTER VII. HOW LABOUR ACQUIRES VALUE AND MAN BECOMES FREE
CHAPTER VIII. HOW MAN PASSES FROM WEALTH AND FREEDOM TOWARD POVERTY AND SLAVERY
CHAPTER IX. HOW SLAVERY GREW, AND HOW IT IS NOW MAINTAINED, IN THE WEST INDIES
CHAPTER X. HOW SLAVERY GREW AND IS MAINTAINED IN THE UNITED STATES
CHAPTER XI. HOW SLAVERY GROWS IN PORTUGAL AND TURKEY
CHAPTER XII. HOW SLAVERY GROWS IN INDIA
CHAPTER XIII. HOW SLAVERY GROWS IN IRELAND AND SCOTLAND
CHAPTER XIV. HOW SLAVERY GROWS IN ENGLAND
CHAPTER XV. HOW CAN SLAVERY BE EXTINGUISHED?
CHAPTER XVI. HOW FREEDOM GROWS IN NORTHERN GERMANY
CHAPTER XVII. HOW FREEDOM GROWS IN RUSSIA
CHAPTER XVIII. HOW FREEDOM GROWS IN DENMARK
CHAPTER XIX. HOW FREEDOM GROWS IN SPAIN AND BELGIUM
CHAPTER XX. OF THE DUTY OF THE PEOPLE OF THE UNITED STATES
CHAPTER XXI. OF THE DUTY OF THE PEOPLE OF ENGLAND
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 Send 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. 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 self-complacency, 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 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 fellow-men 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.
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 1400. By 1670 it had reached 8000, and in 1673, 9504.[1] 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 sugar-culture 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…………….. 194,614
And if we now deduct from this the number
in 1702, say…………………………………. 36,000
———-
We obtain, as the increase of 73 years………… 158,614
=======
In that period the importations amounted to……… 497,736
And the exportations to……………………….. 137,114
———-
Leaving, as retained in the island……………. 360,622 [2]
or about two and two-fifths persons for one that then remained alive.
From 1783 to 1787, the number imported was 47,485, and the number exported 14,541;[3] 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 ……….. 70,000
From 1789 to 1791, the excess of import was 32,289,
or 10,763 per annum; and if we take the four years,
1788-1791, at the same rate, we obtain, as the
total number retained in that period…………….. 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, 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 reported 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 they 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 150,000; and yet the number of slaves increased, in that period, from 250,000 to only 323,827—being an annual average increase of about 4500, and exhibiting a loss of fifty per cent.
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 [4] 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 2752.
In 1826, they had declined in numbers to 331,119, to which must be added 1848 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 2000 that had been manumitted, we shall have a loss, in seven years, of 19,275, or more than five per cent. In sixteen years, there had been a diminution of ten per cent., 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:—
Registered:
—————-
1817 to 1820…………. 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 accelerating 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 unfavourable specimen of the system, the movement of population in other colonies will now be given.
In 1764, the slave population of ST. VINCENT'S was 7414. In 1787, twenty-three years after, it was 11,853, having increased 4439; whereas, in four only of those years, 1784-87, the net import of negroes had been no less than 6100.[5] In 1805, the number was 16,500, the increase having been 4647; whereas the net import in three only, out of eighteen years, had been 1937. 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……………….. 4205 deaths, 2656 births. " 1825……………….. 2106 " 1852 " " 1828……………….. 2020 " 1829 " " 1831……………….. 2266 " 1781 "
The births, it will be observed, steadily diminished in number.
At the peace of 1763, DOMINICA contained 6000 slaves. The net amount of importation, in four years, 1784 to 1787, was 23,221;[6] 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 we might almost feel ourselves called upon to allow five imported for every one 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 death and the gains by births, for a part of the period preceding emancipation, are thus given:—
1817 to 1820…………….. 1748 deaths, 1433 births. 1820 to 1823…………….. 1527 " 1491 " 1823 to 1826…………….. 1493 " 1309 "
If we look to BRITISH GUIANA, we find the same results.[7]
In 1820, Demerara and Essequebo 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:—
1817 to 1820…………….. 7140 deaths, 4868 births. 1820 to 1823…………….. 7188 " 4512 " 1823 to 1826…………….. 7634 " 4494 " 1826 to 1829…………….. 5731 " 4684 " 1829 to 1832…………….. 7016 " 4086 "
We have here a decrease, in fifteen years, of fifteen per cent., 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.
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, in the later years, the births to have exceeded the deaths—the former having been, from 1826 to 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 8774, while the births were only 6001.
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 the island amounted to no less than 16,228;[8] 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:—
1817…………………….. 451 births, 902 deaths. 1818…………………….. 657 " 1070 "
The total births from 1817 to 1831, were 10,144 in number, while the deaths were 12,764—showing a loss of about ten per cent.
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 per cent. 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 in 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 colonies, 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.
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 1482. From 1783 to 1787, the number exported from all 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 entrepôt of the trade,[10] and thence they were supplied to the other islands 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 per cent.
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……………………….. 136,358
whereas, in 1800, it had risen to……………… 205,555
———-
Increase………. 69,197
=======
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 per cent. for the
natural increase by births. Admitting, now, that for
every family of five free persons there came one
slave, this, would account for………………….. 9,000
And if we take the natural increase of the slave
population at only twenty-five per cent., we have
further………………………………………. 34,000
———
Making a total from domestic sources of………… 43,000
And leaving, for the import from abroad………… 26,197
Deducting these from the total number added, we obtain, for the natural increase, about 29-1/2 per cent.
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 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 per cent. 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 per cent., 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 per cent. 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 per cent. In 1810, the number had been 1,379,800.
In 1820 it was 1,779,885; increase 30 per cent. " 1830 " 2,328,642; " 30.8 " " " 1840 " 2,873,703; " 24 " " " 1850 " 3,591,000; " 25 " " [11]
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. One-half of them may have been imported. Starting from this point, and taking the natural increase of each decennial period at 25 per cent., 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 Natural Actual Years Number. Increase. Increase. Importation. ——- ———- ————- ————- —————— 1760….. 310,000….. 77,500….. 152,000….. 74,500 1770….. 462,000….. 115,500….. 120,000….. } 1780….. 582,000….. 140,500….. 170,000….. } 34,000 1790….. 752,000, 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………………………………. 30,000
1715 to 1750……………………………….. 90,000
1751 to 1760……………………………….. 35,000
1761 to 1770……………………………….. 74,500
1771 to 1790……………………………….. 34,000
And if we now estimate the import
subsequent to 1790 at even…………………… 70,000
———-
We obtain as the total number………………. 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, 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……………. £100,000,000
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 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 had 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 means 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 civilization 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, 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 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 determine for whom they would work and what should be their wages—or were, in other words, declared to be free.
CHAPTER IV.
OF EMANCIPATION IN THE BRITISH COLONIES.
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 disturbance 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 following extracts from the work of a recent traveller and settler in that colony:—[13]
"The chain was broken, and the people of England hurraed 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 palatable dishes he had been permitted to cook for himself in the Boer's or 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 of 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 the wretched earnings of our mechanics, we are disgusted at the idea of 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 demand of 3s. a day has been acceded to, and 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 the 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—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 lately, one of the most prosperous of the colonies. That island embraces about four millions of acres of land, "of which," says Mr. 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 have ever been reclaimed, or even appropriated."[14]
"It is traversed by over two hundred streams, forty of which are from twenty-five to one hundred feet in breadth; and, it deserves to be mentioned, furnish water-power sufficient to manufacture every thing 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 by which it is ever visited."[15]
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 a proper application of capital and skill, its inhabitants are miserably poor, and daily sinking deeper and deeper into the utter helplessness of abject want.
"'Magnas inter opes inops.'
"Shipping has deserted her ports; her magnificent plantations of sugar and coffee are running to weeds; her private dwellings are falling to 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."
The cause of all this, say the planters, is that wages are too high 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 all 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-pens, (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, 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 ruin."[16] "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.'
"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, and others, after having been sold at six, eight, or ten per cent. 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 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 of 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 cut off, save 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 total 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 per cent. 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 Demerara 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 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 Essequebo!"
"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,[17] 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 roads 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 number of villagers in this deserted region must be upward of 2500, and as the country abounds with fish and 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 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,[18] 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 [19] that in 1829, gave employment to 3635 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 2000 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,[20] 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 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, 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 re-enacted in the Slave States of America, if slavery were summarily abolished by act of Congress to-morrow. 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 there are now found ten persons for every one 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." "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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 be 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 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 where stone was more readily obtained than earth."[23] Caesar found the Gauls occupying the high lands surrounding the Alps, while the rich Venetia remained a marsh. The occupation of the Campagna 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 Meroë, 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 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 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.
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 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 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, 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 the town would be worth five dollars to the farmer, would be worth nothing at a distance of 4-3/4 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.
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 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 throughout all declining states.[25]
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 diminishes, 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 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 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 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 increased 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 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.
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 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.
II. 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.
III. That the more the labour and manure that can be given to land, the larger will be the product and the greater its value.
IV. 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.
V. That the greater the competition for the purchase of labour the greater must be the tendency toward the freedom of the labourer.
VI. 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
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.
II. 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.
III. That the less the labour and manure applied to the land the less must be the product, and the less its value.
IV. 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.
V. 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.
VI. 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.
VII. 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
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.
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 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 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 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 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 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, 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 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.
II. 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.
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.
IV. That this in turn implies the exhaustion of the land and the impoverishment of its owner.
V. That the impoverishment of the land renders necessary a removal to new and more distant lands.
VI. That this renders necessary a larger amount of transportation, while the impoverishment of the farmer increases the difficulty of making roads.
VII. 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 high and dry lands, and that the quantity of products tends therefore to diminish with the increased distance from market.
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.
X. That with the diminished power of association, children grow up uneducated, and men and women become rude and barbarous.
XI. 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.
XII. 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.
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 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 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 this was brought to a close by the watchfulness of the ships of war.[27] 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 tax.[28] At this period the annual export of sugar is stated,[29] 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, &e., that the net proceeds, of 775 sugar estates are stated to 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 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 per cent., 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, clothed, and otherwise provided for.[30] 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 £25,000,000.[31] 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 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 per cent. attorneys, and salaried attorneys; the profits of the former arise from commissions of six per cent. 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 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 per cent. 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. 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 per cent. 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 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 per cent. interest on the principal, six per cent. on that interest by compound arithmetic become principal, six per cent. 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 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 per cent., 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 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 surrender to the British arms.[33] Towns therefore grew up, and men of all descriptions 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. 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 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 some other time."[34]
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:—
Government, representing the British people at large… 11.3
Ship-owners, wholesale and retail dealers, &c………. 5.9
Land-owner and labourer………………………….. 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……………………………………… 27
Ship-owner, merchant, mortgagee, &c……………….. 33
Land-owner and labourer………………………….. 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 three-fourths of all their products,[35] the difference being swallowed up by those who 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 abundance the finest fruits, there were yet no town's-people 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 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.