The Slave Trade, Domestic and Foreign
by Henry Charles Carey · English · Gutenberg #8000 · 1,036,951 chars · public domain (US)
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Title: The Slave Trade, Domestic and Foreign
Author: Henry Charles Carey
Release date: April 1, 2005 [eBook #8000]
Most recently updated: March 22, 2015
Language: English
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Produced by Andrea Ball, Carlo Traverso, Charles Franks
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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.
Sugar, Rum, Coffee,
hhds. puncheons. lbs.
------ ---------- -------
In the three years
ending with 1802,
the average exports
were, of 113,000 44,000 14,000,000
Whereas those of the
three years ending
with 1829 were only 92,000 34,000 17,000,000
The system which looked to depriving the cultivator of the advantage
of a market near at hand, to which he could carry his products, and
from which he could carry home the manure and thus maintain the powers
of his land, was thus producing its natural results. It was causing
the slave to became from day to day more enslaved; and that such was
the case is shown by the excess of deaths over births, as given in a
former chapter. Evidence of exhaustion was seen in every thing
connected with the island. Labour and land were declining in value,
and the security for the payment of the large debt due to mortgagees
in England was becoming less from year to year, as more and more the
people of other countries were being driven to the work of cultivation
because of the impossibility of competing with England in
manufactures. Sugar had declined to little more than a guinea a
hundred-weight, and rum had fallen to little more than two shillings a
gallon;[37] and nearly the whole of this must have been swallowed up
in commissions and interest. Under such circumstances a great waste of
life was inevitable; and therefore it is that we have seen
importations of hundreds of thousands of black men, who have perished,
leaving behind them no trace of their having ever existed. But on whom
must rest the responsibility for a state of things so hideous as that
here exhibited? Not, surely, upon the planter, for he exercised no
volition whatsoever. He was not permitted to employ his surplus power
in refining his own sugar. He could not legally introduce a spindle or
a loom into the island. He could neither mine coal nor smelt iron ore.
He could not in any manner repay his borrowings from the land, and, as
a matter of course, the loans he could obtain diminished in quantity;
and then, small as they were, the chief part of what his commodities
exchanged for was swallowed up by the exchangers and those who
superintend the exchanges, exercising the duties of government. He was
a mere instrument in their hands for the destruction of negro morals,
intellect, and life; and upon them, and not upon him, must rest the
responsibility for the fact that, of all the slaves imported into the
island, not more than two-fifths were represented on the day of
emancipation.
Nevertheless, he it was that was branded as the tyrant and the
destroyer of morals and of life; and public opinion--the public
opinion of the same people who had absorbed so large a portion of the
product of negro labour--drove the government to the measure of
releasing the slave from compulsory service, and appropriating a
certain amount to the payment, first, of the mortgage debts due in
England, and, second, of the owner, who, even if he found his land
delivered to him free of incumbrance, was in most cases left without a
shilling to enable him to carry on the work of his plantation. The
slaves were set free, but there existed no capital to find them
employment, and from the moment of emancipation it became almost
impossible to borrow money on mortgage security. The consequences are
seen in the extensive abandonment of land and the decline of its
value. Any quantity of it may be purchased, prepared for cultivation,
and as fine as any in the island, for five dollars an acre, while
other land, far more productive than any in New England, may be had at
from fifty cents to one dollar. With the decline in the value of land
the labourer tends toward barbarism, and the reason of this may be
found on a perusal of the following paragraph:--
"They have no new manufactories to resort to when they are in want of
work; no unaccustomed departments of mechanical or agricultural
labour are open to receive them, to stimulate their ingenuity and
reward their industry. When they know how to ply the hoe, pick the
coffee-berry, and tend the sugar-mills, they have learned almost all
the industry of the island can teach them. If, in the sixteen years
during which the negroes have enjoyed their freedom, they have made
less progress in civilization than their philanthropic champions have
promised or anticipated, let the want I have suggested receive some
consideration. It may be that even a white peasantry would degenerate
under such influences. Reverse this, and when the negro has cropped
his sugar or his coffee, create a demand for his labour in the mills
and manufactories of which nature has invited the establishment on
this island, and before another sixteen years would elapse the world
would probably have some new facts to assist them in estimating the
natural capabilities of the negro race, of more efficiency in the
hands of the philanthropist than all the appeals which he has ever
been able to address to the hearts or the consciences of men."
_Bigelow's Jamaica_, p. 156.
The artisan has always been the ally of the agriculturist in his
contest with the trader and the government, as is shown in the whole
history of the world. The first desires to tax him by buying cheaply
and selling dearly. The second desires to tax him for permitting him
to make his exchanges, and the more distant the place of exchange, the
greater the power of taxation. The artisan comes near to him, and
enables him to have the raw materials combined on the spot, the
producer of them exchanging directly with the consumer, paying no tax
for the maintenance of ship-owners, commission merchants, or
shopkeepers.
In a piece of cloth, says Adam Smith, weighing eighty pounds, there
are not only more than eighty pounds of wool, but also "several
thousand weight of corn, the maintenance of the working people," and
it is the woo
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