FORM OF SLAVERY UNDER MODERN CIVILIZATION.
Persistence of Chattel-Slavery in Eastern Countries--Assumption
of Form of Wages-Slavery under Modern Civilization--Creation of
Millionaire Capitalists by Present System--Result in Ruin and
Starvation of the Labouring Class--Necessity of Repressive Armies
and Police--Measures necessary to secure Social Reform.
Having seen how human slavery originated in parental despotism--how
it expanded by war, commerce, indebtedness, marriage, _&_c.--how it
continued to be _direct_ or _chattel_ slavery all over the world till
the advent of Christianity--how it, in consequence of the workings
of the Gospel, gradually assumed the form of _wages_-slavery, and
generated modern proletarianism throughout Western Europe and
America--having also seen how the system of chattel-slavery _worked_
in the ancient world and in the slave-states of America, and compared,
or rather contrasted, that system with its more hideous successor,
wages-slavery--let us now inquire what are the forms and conditions of
human slavery as it exists under modern civilization, and by what means
and appliances it may be effectually and for ever banished from the
world.
As already stated, direct or chattel slavery is still the normal
condition of the labouring classes in most Eastern countries, and of
the black population in South America. In Russia and other countries a
species of serfdom, until quite recently, obtained, which partook of
the nature of both chattel and wages slavery, but which was probably,
on the whole, less objectionable than either. The serfs of such
countries correspond with our _villains_ of the Anglo-Saxon and Norman
times, and are clearly a remnant of the old feudal system which grew
up in most parts of Europe upon the dissolution of the Roman empire.
Wherever this serfdom prevails, proletarianism is confined to the
cities and towns, the serfs being, like chattel-slaves, provided for
out of the lands to which they are attached.
In the principal states of Europe and America, in our colonies
generally, and indeed in most modern countries called “civilized,”
wages-slavery is the normal condition of the labouring classes. This
latter kind of slavery is, _cæteris paribus_, more or less intensely
severe according to the degree of perfection to which civilization
is carried. Thus, in our United Kingdom, which is accounted the most
civilized country in the world, wages-slavery is attended with greater
hardships, and subject to more privations and casualties, than anywhere
else. Nowhere else do we find employment so precarious; nowhere else
such multitudes of people overworked at one time and totally destitute
of employment at other times; nowhere else do we see such masses
of the population subsisting upon pittances wholly inadequate to
sustain human beings in health and strength; nowhere else do we find
jails and workhouses so overcrowded; nowhere else do we hear of whole
districts depopulated by famine, nor of upwards of 1,500,000 out of
eight millions of people being cut off by actual starvation and forced
expatriation in the course of twelve months, as has happened in Ireland
in our own times. All this, too, we find to be contemporaneous and in
juxtaposition with granaries, warehouses, and shops teeming with a
superabundance of the choicest produce of all climes--with cries of
over-production and glutted markets ringing in our ears wherever we
pass--and with the most opulent and numerous aristocracy, territorial
and commercial, that was ever known to be congregated in any country
of seven times the extent--to say nothing of a still more numerous
middle-class, in whose ranks may be found some thousands far surpassing
German counts or German princes in command of wealth and luxury.
Hence, no doubt, it was that Sir Robert Peel, not many years since,
accounted in Parliament for our distress by assuring the House that
“the occasional distress and destitution of great numbers of people was
a necessary consequence of our advanced civilization, and was therefore
a thing naturally to be expected in such a country as England.”
We remember, some years ago, when an address was presented to this
same Sir Robert Peel by some 6,000 or 7,000 of the merchants,
bankers, shipowners, &c., of the City of London, to console him for
his temporary expulsion from office by the Whigs,--we remember how
the _Times_ (which was then _ratting_ from the Whigs) boasted, by
way of demonstrating the respectability of the addressers, that the
list contained the names of 1,500 citizens whose aggregate wealth
would suffice to redeem the National Debt, and still leave enough to
support the owners in opulence. We remember having seen it stated,
about the same period, in a City article of the said _Times_, that so
prosperous was trade that ironmasters in Staffordshire and Wales were
known to have realised £200,000 in one year. We remember hearing, on
the best authority, of the house of Baring & Co. clearing £650,000 by
the speculations of a single year. We know a banker died, a few years
since, in Liverpool whose estate was computed at from £5,000,000 to
£7,000,000. Peel’s father is said to have died worth £3,000,000; and
old Arkwright worth twice that much. Soames, the late shipowner, was
worth several millions. Rentals varying from £20,000 to upwards of
£200,000 a year are numerous in England. The Duke of Westminster’s
property will, it is said, be now worth half-a-million per annum of
income. London, Liverpool, Manchester, Leeds, and other towns abound
in millionaires worth from a _plum_ to twenty, thirty, and even fifty
_plums_. A year’s rental of some of our dukes would pay the wages of
some 20,000 Irish labourers for a whole twelvemonth, at sixpence per
day each, which is more than thousands of them can earn by a hard
day’s work. A single bargain on the Stock Exchange will realise, for
a Rothschild, a Baring, a Gurney, or a Goldsmid, more than 30,000
needlewomen in London could possibly earn in two years at present
wages. Were a few of our great landowners and millionaire capitalists
so inclined, they might, by clubbing together, keep an army of 100,000
fighting men about them, whose maintenance, at their present wages,
would actually not be missed out of their enormous revenues. At £15 per
man, the annual cost would be only a million and a half, which, divided
amongst Sir Robert Peel’s 1,500 city addressers, would weigh less
heavily upon them than a penny a week subscription upon a poor Chartist
weaver.
And while this monstrous hell-begotten opulence stares us in the face
wherever we go, what find we to be the condition of the men to whom we
owe the very bread we eat, and without whom England would be a howling
wilderness, namely, the agricultural labourers? We find them, in order
to escape death from starvation, driven to the very brink of rebellion,
as may be collected from paragraphs like the following, which may be
seen in almost every agricultural journal we may chance to take up. We
quote from a Wiltshire paper:--
“RIOTS IN THE AGRICULTURAL DISTRICTS.--The farm-labourers of the
district round West Lavington, Devizes, have been resisting an attempt
to reduce wages from seven to six shillings a week, by forcibly
stopping farm operations. The men having got a hint of the contemplated
reduction, a number of them waited upon the steward of Lord Churchill,
the owner of the principal farms, with a view of inducing him to
intercede in their behalf. This led to no beneficial results; and the
men finding that their masters were determined on reduction, about a
hundred and fifty of them assembled in front of the house of a Mr.
Spencer, and stopped men, horses, and agricultural implements that
were proceeding to work by that road. Having persuaded other labourers
to join them, they went round to all the farms and completely stopped
all operations. They took horses from ploughs, opened sheep-pens, and
prevented all labour being proceeded with. On the following day some of
them returned to work; but warrants being issued for the ringleaders,
more than a hundred men formed themselves into a band and paraded the
streets, armed with staves. The assistance of the constabulary was then
obtained, and something like order restored. The next day a man named
Kite was taken before the magistrates and committed to prison. He had
not been long in custody before a large body of his fellow-labourers,
armed with sticks, came into the town for the purpose of rescuing him,
but were deterred by the presence of a strong military detachment.”
Here we find soldiers and policemen (whose keep costs for each man
more than double the labourer’s pay) employed to force Englishmen
to choose between starvation and toiling all the week round for six
shillings. Supposing these unfortunate labourers to work every day in
the year (Sundays excepted), their wages, at six shillings a week,
would be just £15 12s. for the whole year! Here is a sum wherewith to
keep a wife and, mayhap, five or six young children! Mr. Edward Smith
has told us how common it is to see nigger-slaves in America making
and spending from 50 to 150 dollars per annum by the labour of their
leisure hours--that is to say, exclusive of the maintenance provided
for them by their masters in exchange for their regular work. Take the
mean--100 dollars. This, at 4s. 2d. per dollar, is just £20 16s. 8d. If
he saves or spends 150 dollars, it is upwards of £30. Here, then, we
find a nigger-bondsman so far superior in condition to the free-born
Englishman, that he can actually afford to throw away upon luxuries (by
the earnings of his leisure hours) one-third more than, or even double,
the entire sum that a Wiltshire labourer is paid for the whole of his
time, though he drudge all the year round, and is never sick a single
day. If facts like these do not make the blood of Englishmen rush to
their cheeks, and the very cravenest of them take the field for their
social rights, they are past redemption.
Sir Robert Peel calls all this “civilization;” and the House of Commons
cried, “Hear, hear,” and cheered and supported him, when he declared
that the remedy for such a state of things lay not within the compass
of legislation; that Parliament depended, itself, upon the people,
and not the people on Parliament; and that the only and proper remedy
for the distressed classes was for them “to take their affairs into
their own hands”! Well, in the foregoing paragraph from the Devizes
newspaper, we see them essay to take their affairs into their own
hands; and we see also, that no sooner do they attempt to do so--no
sooner do they proceed to act upon Sir Robert’s advice--than soldiers
and police are brought down upon them, and warrants issued for their
apprehension. If this be not the perfection of human slavery, as well
as the perfection of inhumanity and injustice, we really know not what
is.
But is it true that no Parliamentary cure is findable for the
disease?--that the evil is one beyond the reach of legislative
control?--that, after all, the boasted “omnipotence of Parliament”
(which, Blackstone tells us, can do anything and everything not
naturally impossible)--is it true that this boasted omnipotence cannot
secure for an Englishman the food he has raised, the bread he has
earned--nay, doubly, trebly, quintuply, decuply earned? Is this true?
No, no; a thousand times no! What Parliament has done, it can undo;
what Parliament ought to do, and can do, it ought to be made to do, or
else to abdicate. There is not a member in either House of Parliament
that does not know, as well as we know, that our _land_ and _money_
laws are at the bottom of all the distress in the country, and that
the repeal of bad laws, and the enactment of good ones, are all that
is wanted to make England a paradise. There is not a member in either
House that does not know that all the slavery in the world, or that
has ever been in the world, is, or has been, the work of landlords
and money-lords; and that, consequently, the only true and proper way
to put an end to slavery is to make laws to deprive landlords and
money-lords of the power to enslave and rob their fellow-creatures.
If it be said, this cannot be done without interfering with the
rights of private property, we answer emphatically that it is laws
against robbery, and not against property, that are wanted. We assert
emphatically (because we know we can prove satisfactorily) that the
repeal of unjust laws, and the enactment of a few just and salutary
ones, upon Land, Credit, and Equitable Exchange (the latter including
Currency), is all that is needed to terminate poverty and slavery
for ever; and that it is perfectly within the compass of Parliament
to enact such laws without violating the rights of private property,
or confiscating to the value of one shilling of any man’s estate, or
otherwise dealing with it than in the legitimate way of taxation and
commutation, which the laws of all countries recognise and practise,
and none more than our own.
But, before going a step further in this inquiry, we beg to submit
here the following resolutions which were proposed to a crowded public
meeting by the author of this work, and carried by acclamation without
a single dissentient, although the meeting was composed of reformers
and philanthropists of all shades and sects:--
“This meeting is of opinion that in addition to a full, fair, and free
representation of the whole people in the Commons House of Parliament,
upon principles the same, or similar to those laid down in the People’s
Charter, the following measures, some of a provisional, the others
of a permanent nature, are necessary to ensure real political and
social justice to the oppressed and suffering population of the United
Kingdom, and to protect society from violent revolutionary changes:--
“1. A repeal of our present wasteful and degrading system of poor-laws,
and a substitution of a just and efficient poor-law (based upon the
original Act of Elizabeth), which would centralise the rates, and
dispense them equitably and economically for the beneficial employment
and relief of the destitute poor; the rates to be levied only upon the
owners of every description of realized property; the employment to be
of a healthy, useful, and reproductive kind, so as to render the poor
self-sustaining and self-respecting. Till such employment be procured
the relief of the poor to be, in all cases, promptly and liberally
administered as a right, and not grudgingly doled out as a boon; the
relief not to be accompanied with obduracy, insult, imprisonment in the
workhouses, separation of married couples, the breaking up of families,
or any such other harsh and degrading conditions as, under the present
system, convert relief into punishment, and treat the unhappy applicant
rather as a convicted criminal than as (what he really is) the victim
of an unjust and vitiated state of society.
“2. In order to lighten the pressure of rates, and at the same time
gradually to diminish, and finally to absorb, the growing mass of
pauperism and surplus population, it is the duty of the Government to
appropriate its present surplus revenue, and the proceeds of national
or public property, to the purchasing of lands, and the location
thereon of the unemployed poor. The rents accruing from these lands to
be applied to further purchases of land, till all who desired to occupy
land, either as individual holders or industrial communities, might be
enabled to do so. A general law, empowering parishes to raise loans
upon the security of their rates, would greatly facilitate and expedite
the operation of Government towards this desirable end.
“3. Pending the operations of these measures, it is desirable to
mitigate the burdens of taxation and of public and private indebtedness
upon all classes who suffer thereby,--the more especially as these
burdens have been vastly aggravated by the recent monetary and free
trade measures of Sir Robert Peel. To this end, the Public Debt and
all private indebtedness affected by the fall of prices should be
equitably adjusted in favour of the debtor and productive classes, and
the charges of Government should be reduced upon a scale corresponding
with the general fall of prices and of wages. And, as what is
improperly called the National Debt has been admitted, in both Houses
of Parliament, to be in the nature of a _bona fide_ mortgage upon
the realised property of the country, it is but strict justice that
the owners of this property, and they only, should be henceforward
held responsible for both capital and interest. At all events, the
industrious classes should not be held answerable for it, seeing
that the debt was not borrowed by them, nor for them, nor with their
consent, and that even had it been so, they have had no assets left
them for the payment of it. Moreover, the realised property of this
country, being estimated at eight times the amount of the debt, the
owners or mortgagers have no valid excuse or plea to offer on the score
of inability, for refusing to meet the claims of their mortgagees.
“4. The gradual resumption by the State (on the acknowledged principles
of equitable compensation to existing holders or their heirs) of its
ancient, undoubted, inalienable dominion and sole proprietorship over
all lands, mines, turbaries, fisheries, &c., of the United Kingdom
and our Colonies; the same to be held by the State, as trustees in
perpetuity for the entire people, and rented out to them in such
quantities and on such terms as the law and local circumstances shall
determine;--because the land, being the gift of the Creator to ALL,
can never become the exclusive property of individuals; because the
monopoly of the land in private hands is a palpable invasion of the
rights of the excluded parties, rendering them more or less the slaves
of landlords and capitalists, and tending to circumscribe or annul
their other rights and liberties; because a monopoly of the earth by a
portion of mankind is no more justifiable than would be the monopoly
of air, light, heat, or water; and because the rental of land (which
justly belongs to the whole people) would form a national fund adequate
to defray all charges of the public service, execute all needful public
works, and educate the population, without the necessity for any
taxation.
“5. That, as it is the recognised duty of the State to support all
those of its subjects who from incapacity or misfortune are unable to
procure their own subsistence, and as the nationalization of landed
property would open up new sources of occupation for the now surplus
industry of the people (a surplus which is daily augmented by the
accumulation of machinery in the hands of the capitalists), the same
principle which now sanctions a public provision for the destitute poor
should be extended to the providing a sound system of National Credit,
through which any man might (under certain conditions) procure an
advance from the national funds arising out of the proceeds of public
property, and thereby be enabled to rent and cultivate land on his
own account, instead of being subjected, as now, to the injustice and
tyranny of wages-slavery (through which capitalists and profitmongers
are enabled to defraud him of his fair recompense), or being induced
to become a hired slaughterer of his fellow-creatures at the bidding
of godless diplomatists, enabling them to foment and prosecute
international wars, and trample on popular rights, for the exclusive
advantage of aristocratic and ‘vested interests.’ The same privilege
of obtaining a share of the national credit to be applicable to the
requirements of individuals, companies, and communities in all other
branches of useful industry, as well as in agriculture.
“6. That the National Currency should be based on real, consumable
wealth, or on the _bona fide_ credit of the State, and not upon the
variable and uncertain amount of scarce metals; because a currency
depending on such a basis, however suitable in past times, or as a
measure of value in present international commerce, has now become, by
the increase of population and wealth, wholly inadequate to perform
the functions of equitably representing and distributing that wealth;
thereby rendering all commodities liable to perpetual fluctuation
in price, as those metals happen to be more or less plentiful in
any country; increasing to an enormous extent the evils inherent in
usury and in the banking and funding systems (in support of which
a legitimate function of the law--the PROTECTION of property--is
distorted into an instrument for the CREATION of property to a large
amount for the benefit of a small portion of society belonging to what
are called vested interests); because, from its liability to become
locally or nationally scarce or in excess, that equilibrium which
should be maintained between the production and consumption of wealth
is destroyed; because, being of intrinsic value itself, it fosters a
vicious trade in money and a ruinous practice of commercial gambling
and speculation; and, finally, because, under the present system of
society, it has become confessedly the ‘root of all evil,’ and the
main support of that unholy worship of Mammon which now so extensively
prevails, to the supplanting of all true religion, natural and revealed.
“7. That in order to facilitate the transfer of property or service,
and the mutual interchange of wealth among the people, to equalize
the demand and supply of commodities, to encourage consumption as
well as production, and to render it as easy to sell as to buy, it is
an important duty of the State to institute, in every town and city,
public marts or stores for the reception of all kinds of exchangeable
goods, to be valued by disinterested officers appointed for the
purpose, either upon a corn or a labour standard; the depositors to
receive symbolic notes representing the value of their deposits, such
notes to be made legal currency throughout the country, enabling their
owners to draw from the public stores to an equivalent amount, thereby
gradually displacing the present reckless system of competitive trading
and shopkeeping--a system which, however necessary or unavoidable in
the past, now produces a monstrous amount of evil, by maintaining a
large class living on the profits made by the mere sale of goods, on
the demoralizing principle of buying cheap and selling dear, totally
regardless of the ulterior effects of that policy upon society at large
and the true interests of humanity.
“It is not assumed that the foregoing propositions comprise all the
reforms needed in society. Doubtless there are many other reforms
required besides those alluded to; doubtless we want a sound system
of national education for youth, made compulsory upon all parents
and guardians; doubtless we require a far less expensive system of
military and naval defence than now obtains; doubtless we require
the expropriation of railways, canals, bridges, docks, gas-works,
water-works, &c.; and doubtless we require a juster and more humane
code of civil and penal law than we now possess. But these and all
other needful reforms will be easy of accomplishment when those
comprised in the foregoing propositions shall have been effected.
Without these, indeed, justice cannot be done to humanity; society
cannot be placed in the true path of improvement, never again to
be turned aside or thrown back; nor can those natural checks and
counter-checks be instituted without which the conflicting passions and
propensities of man fail to produce a harmonious whole, but with which,
as in the material world, all things are made to work together for
good, reconciling man to his position in the universe, and exalting his
hopes of future destiny.”
We shall treat the subject of these propositions in the following
chapters; and meanwhile the reader will please observe that similar
resolutions have also received the sanction of numerous meetings, large
and small, throughout the country.
[Illustration: Decoration]