The difference between these figures is great, but not greater than

that between two systems, the one of which regards the earth as the

great and perpetually improving machine to which the labour of man may

be profitably applied, while the other gives precedence to those very

minute and perpetually deteriorating portions of it which go to the

construction of ships, wagons, and steam-engines. An examination of

these figures will perhaps enable the reader to understand the cause

of the unsteadiness observed wherever the modern system is adopted.

* * * * *

It will be easy now to see why it is that the commercial policy of

England has always been so diametrically opposed to that advocated by

the author of _The Wealth of Nations_. He saw clearly that the man and

the easily transported spindle should go to the food and the cotton,

and that, when once there, 'they were there for ever; whereas the

bulky food and cotton might be transported to the man and the spindle

for a thousand years, and that the necessity for transportation in the

thousand and first would be as great as it had been in the first; and

that the more transportation was needed, the less food and cloth would

fall to the share of both producer and consumer. His countrymen denied

the truth of this, and from that day to the present they have

endeavoured to prevent the other nations of the world from obtaining

machinery of any kind that would enable them to obtain the aid of

those natural agents which they themselves regard as more useful than

the earth itself. "The power of water," says Mr. McCulloch--

"And of wind, which move our machinery, support our ships, and impel

them over the deep--the pressure of the atmosphere, and the

elasticity of steam, which enables us to work the most powerful

engines, are they not the spontaneous gifts of nature? Machinery is

advantageous only because it gives us the means of pressing some of

the powers of nature into our service, and of making them perform the

principal part of what, we must otherwise have wholly performed

ourselves. In navigation is it possible to doubt that the powers of

nature--the buoyancy of the water, the impulse of the wind, and the

polarity of the magnet--contribute fully as much as the labours of

the sailor to waft our ships from one hemisphere to another? In

bleaching and fermentation the whole processes are carried on by

natural agents. And it is to the effects of heat in softening and

melting metals, in preparing our food, and in warming our houses,

that we owe many of our most powerful and convenient instruments, and

that those northern climates have been made to afford a comfortable

habitation."--_Principles_, 165.

This is all most true, but what does it prove in regard to British

policy? Has not its object been that of preventing the people of the

world from availing themselves of the vast deposites, of iron ore and

of fuel throughout the earth, and thus to deprive them of the power to

call to their aid the pressure of the atmosphere and the elasticity of

steam? Has it not looked to depriving them of all power to avail

themselves of the natural agents required in the processes of

bleaching and fermentation, in softening woods, and melting metals,

and was not that the object had in view by a distinguished statesman,

since Chancellor of England, when he said, that "the country could

well afford the losses then resulting from the exportation of

manufactured goods, as its effect would be to smother in the cradle

the manufactures of other nations?" Has not this been the object of

every movement of Great Britain since the days of Adam Smith, and does

not the following diagram represent exactly what would be the state of

affairs if she could carry into full effect her desire to become "the

workshop of the world?"

\British ships/

Producers of raw materials\ / Consumers of cloth and iron

Europe, Asia, Africa > < in Europe, Asia, Africa

America / \ North and South America

/ And rails \

Mr. McCulloch insists that agriculture is less profitable than

manufactures and trade, and his countrymen insist that all the world

outside of England shall be one great farm, leaving to England herself

the use of all the various natural agents required in manufactures and

commerce, that they may remain poor while she becomes rich. There is

in all this a degree of selfishness not to be paralleled, and

particularly when we reflect that it involves a necessity on the part

of all other nations for abstaining from those scientific pursuits

required for the development of the intellect, and which so naturally

accompany the habit of association in towns, for the purpose of

converting the food, the wool, the hides, and the timber of the farmer

into clothing and furniture for his use. It is the policy of

barbarism, and directly opposed to any advance in civilization, as

will be fully seen when we examine into its working in reference to

any particular trade or country.

The annual average production of cotton is probably seventeen hundred

millions of pounds, or less than two pounds per head for the

population of the world; and certainly not one-tenth of what would be

consumed could they find means to pay for it; and not one-tenth of

what would be good for them; and yet it is a drug, selling in India at

two and three cents per pound, and commanding here at this moment,

notwithstanding the abundance of gold, but eight or nine cents, with a

certainty that, should we again be favoured, as we were a few years

since, with a succession of large crops, it will fall to a lower point

than it ever yet has seen: a state of things that could not exist were

the people of the world to consume even one-third as much as would be

good for them. Why do they not? Why is it that India, with her hundred

millions of population, and with her domestic manufacture in a state

of ruin, consumes of British cottons to the extent of only sixteen

cents per head--or little more, probably, than a couple of yards of

cloth? To these questions an answer may perhaps be found upon an

examination of the circumstances which govern the consumption of other

commodities; for we may be quite certain that cotton obeys precisely

the same laws as sugar and coffee, wine and wheat. Such an examination

would result in showing that when a commodity is at once produced at

or near the place of growth in the form fitting it for use, the

consumption is invariably large; and that when it has to go through

many and distant hands before being consumed, it is as invariably

small. The consumption of sugar on a plantation is large; but if it

were needed that before being consumed it should be sent to Holland to

be refined, and then brought back again, we may feel well assured that

there would not be one pound consumed on any given plantation where

now there are twenty, or possibly fifty. The consumption of cotton on

the plantation is very small indeed, because, before being consumed,

'it has to be dragged through long and muddy roads to the landing,

thence carried to New Orleans, thence to Liverpool, and thence to

Manchester, after which the cloth has to be returned, the planter

receiving one bale for every five he sent away, and giving the labour

of cultivating an acre in exchange for fifty, sixty, or eighty pounds

of its product. If, now, the people who raised the cotton were free to

call to their aid the various natural agents of whose service it is

the object of the British system to deprive them, and if, therefore,

the work of converting it into cloth were performed on the ground

where it was raised, or in its neighbourhood, is it not clear that the

consumption would be largely increased? The people who made the cloth

would be the consumers of numerous things raised on the plantation

that are now wasted, while the facility of converting such things into

cloth would be a bounty on raising them; and thus, while five times

the quantity of cotton would be consumed, the real cost--that is, the

labour cost--would be less than it is for the smaller quantity now

used. So, too, in India. It may be regarded as doubtful if the

quantity of cotton to day consumed in that country is one-half what it

was half a century since--and for the reason that the number of people

now interposed between the consumer and the producer is so great. The

consumption of wine in France is enormous, whereas here there is

scarcely any consumed; and yet the apparent excess of price is not so

great as would warrant us in expecting to find so great a difference.

The real cause is not so much to be found in the excess of price,

though that is considerable, as in the mode of payment. A peasant in

France obtains wine in exchange for much that would be wasted but for

the proximity of the wine-vat, and the demand it makes for the labour

of himself and others. He raises milk, eggs, and chickens, and he has

fruit, cabbages, potatoes, or turnips, commodities that from their

bulky or perishable nature cannot be sent to a distance, but can be

exchanged at home. The farmer of Ohio cannot exchange his spare

labour, or that of his horses, for wine, nor can he pay for it in

peaches or strawberries, of which the yield of an acre might produce

him hundreds of dollars--nor in potatoes or turnips, of which he can

obtain hundreds of bushels; but he must pay in wheat, of which an acre

yields him a dozen bushels, one-half of which are eaten up in the

process of exchange between him and the wine-grower. Whenever the

culture of the grape shall come to be established in that State, and

wine shall be made at home, it will be found that the _gallons_

consumed will be almost as numerous as are now the _drops_. Look where

we may, we shall find the same result. Wherever the consumer and the

producer are brought into close connection with each other, the

increase of consumption is wonderful, even where there is no reduction

in the nominal price; and wherever they are separated, the diminution

of consumption is equally wonderful, even where there is a reduction

of the nominal price--and it is so because the facility of exchange

diminishes as the distance increases. A man who has even a single

hour's labour to spare may exchange it with his neighbour for as much

cotton cloth as would make a shirt; but if the labour market is

distant, he may, and will, waste daily as much time as would buy him a

whole piece of cotton cloth, and may have to go shirtless while cotton

is a drug. When the labour market is near, land acquires value and men

become rich and free. When it is distant, land is of little value and

men continue poor and enslaved.

Before proceeding further, it would be well for the reader to look

around his own neighbourhood, and see how many exchanges are even now

made that could not be made by people that were separated even ten or

twenty miles from each other, and how many conveniences and comforts

are enjoyed in exchange for both labour and commodities that would be

wasted but for the existence of direct intercourse between the

parties--and, then to satisfy himself if the same law which may be

deduced from the small facts of a village neighbourhood, will not be

found equally applicable to the great ones of larger communities.

Having reflected upon these things, let him next look at the present

condition of the cotton trade, and remark the fact that scarcely any

of the wool produced is consumed without first travelling thousands of

miles, and passing through almost hundreds of hands. The places of

production are India, Egypt, Brazil, the West Indies, and our Southern

States. In the first, the manufacture is in a state of ruin. In the

second, third, and fourth, it has never been permitted to have an

existence; and in the last it has but recently made an effort to

struggle into life, but from month to month we hear of the stoppage or

destruction of Southern mills, and the day is apparently now not far

distant when we shall have again to say that no portion of the cotton

crop can be consumed in the cotton-growing region until after it shall

have travelled thousands of miles in quest of hands to convert it into

cloth.

Why is this? Why is it that the light and easily transported spindle

and loom are not placed in and about the cotton fields? The planters

have labour, _that is now wasted_, that would be abundant for the

conversion of half their crops, if they could but bring the machinery

to the land, instead of taking the produce of the land to the

machinery. Once brought there, it would be there for ever; whereas,

let them carry the cotton to the spindle as long as they may, the work

must still be repeated. Again, why is it that the people of India, to

whom the world was so long indebted for all its cotton goods, have not

only ceased to supply distant countries, but have actually ceased to

spin yarn or make cloth for themselves? Why should they carry raw

cotton on the backs of bullocks for hundreds of miles, and then send

it by sea for thousands of miles, paying freights, commissions, and

charges of all kinds to an amount so greatly exceeding the original

price, to part with sixty millions of pounds of raw material, to

receive in exchange eight or ten millions of pounds of cloth and yarn?

Is it not clear that the labour of converting the cotton into yarn is

not one-quarter as great as was the labour of raising, the cotton

itself? Nevertheless, we here see them giving six or eight pounds of

cotton for probably a single one of yarn, while labour unemployed

abounds throughout India. Further, Brazil raises cotton, and she has

spare labour, and yet she sends her cotton to look for the spindle,

instead of bringing the spindle to look for the cotton, as she might

so readily do. Why does she so? The answer to these questions is to be

found in British legislation, founded on the idea that the mode of

securing to the people of England the highest prosperity is to deprive

all mankind, outside of her own limits, of the power to mine coal,

make iron, construct machinery, or use steam, in aid of their efforts

to obtain food, clothing, or any other of the necessaries of life.

This system is directly opposed to that advocated by Adam Smith. Not

only, said he, is it injurious to other nations, but it must be

injurious to yourselves, for it will diminish the productiveness of

both labour and capital, and will, at the same time, render you daily

more and more dependent upon the operations of other countries, when

you should be becoming more independent of them. His warnings were

then, as they are now, unheeded; and from his day to the present,

England has been engaged in an incessant effort utterly to destroy the

manufactures of India, and to _crush every attempt elsewhere to

establish any competition with her for the purchase of cotton_. The

reader will determine for himself if this is not a true picture of the

operations of the last seventy years. If it is, let him next determine

if the tendency of the system is not that of enslaving the producers

of cotton, white, brown, and black, and compelling them to carry all

their wool to a single market, in which one set of masters dictates

the price at which they _must_ sell the raw material and _must_ buy

the manufactured one. Could there be a greater tyranny than this?

To fully understand the working of the system in diminishing the power

to consume, let us apply elsewhere the same principle, placing in

Rochester, on the Falls of the Genesee, a set of corn-millers who had

contrived so effectually to crush all attempts to establish mills in

other parts of the Middle States, that no man could eat bread that had

not travelled up to that place in its most bulky form, coming back in

its most compact one, leaving at the mill all the refuse that might

have been applied to the fattening of hogs and cattle--and let us

suppose that the diagram on the following page represented the corn

trade of that portion of the Union.

\ Wagons and /

Producers of food \ / Consumers of food

in those states > < in those states

/ \

/Rochester mills\

Now, suppose all the grain of half a dozen States had to make its way

through such a narrow passage as is above indicated, is it not clear

that the owners of roads, wagons, and mills would be masters of the

owners of land? Is it not clear that the larger the crops the higher

would be freights, and the larger the charge for the use of mills, the

smaller would be the price of a bushel of wheat as compared with that

of a bag of meal? Would not the farmers find themselves to be mere

slaves to the owners of a small quantity of mill machinery? That such

would be the case, no one can even for a moment doubt--nor is it at

all susceptible of doubt that the establishment of such a system would

diminish by one-half the consumption of food, throughout those States,

and also the power to produce it, for all the refuse would be fed at

and near Rochester, and the manure yielded by it would be totally lost

to the farmer who raised the food. The value of both labour and land

would thus be greatly diminished. Admitting, for a moment, that such a

system existed, what would be the remedy? Would it not be found in an

effort to break down the monopoly, and thus to establish among the

people the power to trade among themselves without paying, toll to the

millers of Rochester? Assuredly it would; and to that end they would

be seen uniting among themselves to induce millers to come and settle

among them, precisely as we see men every where uniting to bring

schools and colleges to their neighbourhood, well assured that a small

present outlay is soon made up, even in a pecuniary point of view, in

being enabled to keep their children at home while being educated,

instead of sending them abroad, there to be boarded and lodged, while

food is wasted at home that they might eat, and chambers are empty

that they might occupy. Education thus obtained costs a parent almost

literally nothing, while that for which a child must go to a distance

is so costly that few can obtain it. Precisely so is it with food and

with cloth. The mere labour of converting grain into flour is as

nothing when compared with that required for its transportation

hundreds of miles; and the mere labour required for the conversion of

cotton into cloth is as nothing compared with the charges attendant

upon its transportation from the plantation to Manchester and back

again. Commercial centralization looks, however, to compelling the

planter to pay treble the cost of conversion, in the wages and profits

of the people employed in transporting and exchanging the cotton.

Admitting that the grain and flour trade were thus centralized, what

would be the effect of a succession of large crops, or even of a

single one? Would not the roads be covered with wagons whenever they

were passable, and even at times when, they were almost impassable?

Would not every one be anxious to anticipate the apprehended fall of

prices by being early in the market? Would not freights be high? Would

not the farmer, on his arrival in Rochester, find that every

store-house was filled to overflowing? Would not storage be high?

Would he not approach the miller, cap in hand, and would not the

latter receive him with his hat on his head? Assuredly such would be

the case, and he would hear everywhere of the astonishing extent of

"the surplus"--of how rapidly production was exceeding consumption--of

the length of time his grain must remain on hand before it could be

ground--of the low price of flour, &c. &c.;--and the result would be

that the more grain carried to market the less would be carried back,

and _the less he would be able to consume_; and at last he would

arrive at the conclusion that the only effect of large crops granted

him by the bounty of Heaven was that of enriching the miller at his

expense, by compelling him to allow more toll for the privilege of

creeping through the hole provided for him by the miller. He would

pray for droughts and freshets--for storms and frosts--as the only

means of escape from ruin.

The reader may determine for himself if this is not a fair picture of

the cotton trade? Do the planters profit by good crops? Assuredly not.

The more they send to market the less they receive for it. Do they

profit by improvements in the transportation of their commodity?

Certainly not. With the growth of railroads, cotton has fallen in

price, and will not this day command on the plantation near as much,

per pound, as it did before the railroad was invented. In India, the

cost of transportation from the place of production to England has

fallen in the last forty years sevenpence,[142] and yet the grower of

cotton obtains for it one-third less than he did before--receiving now

little more than two cents, when before he had from three to four. Who

profits by the reduction of cost of transportation and conversion?

_The man who keeps the toll-gate through which it passes to the

world_, and who opens it only gradually, so as to permit the increased

quantity to pass through slowly, paying largely for the privilege.

That all this is perfectly in accordance with the facts of the ease

must be obvious to every reader. The planter becomes rich when crops

are short, but then the mill-owner makes but little profit. He is

almost ruined when crops are large, but then it is that the mill-owner

is enriched--and thus it is that the system produces universal

discord, whereas under a natural system there would be as perfect

harmony of national, as there is of individual interests.

We may now inquire how this would affect the farmers around Rochester.

The consumption of the Middle States would be largely diminished

because of the heavy expense of transporting the wheat to mill and the

flour back again, and this would cause a great increase of the surplus

for which a market must be elsewhere found. This, of course, would

reduce prices, and prevent increase, if it did not produce large

diminution in the value of land. The millers would become

_millionaires_--great men among their poorer neighbours--and they

would purchase large farms to be managed by great farmers, and fine

houses surrounded by large pleasure-grounds. Land would become

everywhere more and more consolidated, because people who could do so

would fly from a country in which such a tyranny existed. The demand

for labour would diminish as the smaller properties became absorbed.

Rochester itself would grow, because it would be filled with cheap

labour from the country, seeking employment, and because there would

be great numbers of wagoners and their horses to be cared for, while

porters innumerable would be engaged in carrying wheat in one

direction and flour in another. Hotels would grow large, thieves and

prostitutes would abound, and morals would decline. From year to year

the millers would become greater men, and the farmers and labourers

smaller men, and step by step all would find themselves becoming

slaves to the caprices of the owners of a little machinery, the whole

cost of which would scarcely exceed _the daily loss_ resulting from

the existence of the system. By degrees, the vices of the slave would

become more and more apparent. Intemperance would grow, and education

would diminish, as the people of the surrounding country became more

dependent on the millers for food and clothing in exchange for cheap

grain and cheaper labour. The smaller towns would everywhere decline,

and from day to day the millers would find it more easy so to direct

the affairs of the community as to secure a continuance of their

monopoly. Local newspapers would pass away, and in their stead the

people throughout the country would be supplied with the Rochester

_Times_, which would assure the farmers that cheap food tended to

produce cheaper labour, and the land-owners that if they did not

obtain high rents it was their own fault, the defect being in their

own bad cultivation--and the more rapid the augmentation of the

millers' fortunes, and of the extent of their pleasure-grounds, the

greater, they would be assured, must be the prosperity of the whole

people; even although the same paper might find itself obliged to

inform its readers that the overgrown capital presented it as

"A strange result of the terrible statistics of society, that there

was upon an average one person out of twenty of the inhabitants of

the luxurious metropolis every day destitute of food and employment,

and every night without a place for shelter or repose?"--London

_Times_.

We have here slavery at home as a consequence of the determination, to

subject to slavery people abroad. With each step in the growth of the

millers' fortunes, and of the splendour of their residences, land

would have become consolidated and production would have diminished,

and the whole population would have tended more and more to become a

mass of mere traders, producing nothing themselves, but buying cheaply

and selling dearly, and thus deriving their support from the exercise

of the power to tax the unfortunate people forced to trade with them;

a state of things in the highest degree adverse to moral,

intellectual, or political improvement.

The reader may now turn to the extracts from Mr. McCulloch's works

already given, (page 240 _ante_,) and compare with them this view of

the effects of supposed commercial centralization on this side of the

Atlantic. Doing so, he will find it there stated that it is to the

consolidation of the land, and to the luxury of the style of living of

the great landlords, surrounded, as they, "in most cases" are, by

"poor and needy dependants," whose necessities finally compel them to

seek in large cities a market for their own labour, and that of their

wives and children, that we are to look for an augmentation of "the

mass of wealth and the scale of enjoyment!" Modern British political

economy holds no single idea that is in harmony with the real

doctrines of Adam Smith, and yet it claims him as its head!

* * * * *

The reader is requested now to remark--

I. That the system of commercial centralization sought to be

established by Great Britain is precisely similar to the one here

ascribed to the millers of Rochester, with the difference only, that

it has for its object to compel all descriptions of raw produce to

pass through England on its way from the consumer and the producer,

even when the latter are near neighbours to each other, and England

distant many thousand of miles from both.

II. That to carry out that system it was required that all other

nations should be prevented from obtaining either the knowledge or the

machinery required for enabling them cheaply to mine coal, smelt iron

ore, or manufacture machines by aid of which they could command the

services of the great natural agents whose value to man is so well

described by Mr. McCulloch. (See page 249 _ante_.)

III. That this was at first accomplished by means of prohibitions, and

that it is now maintained by the most strenuous efforts for cheapening

labour, and thus depriving the labourer at home of the power to

determine for whom he will work or what shall be his wages.

IV. That the more perfectly this system can be carried out, the more

entirely must all other nations limit themselves, men, women and

children, to the labour of the field, and the lower must be the

standard of intellect.

V. That while the number of agriculturists in other countries must

thus be increased, the power to consume their own products must be

diminished, because of the great increase of the charges between the

producer and the consumer.

VI. That this, in turn, must be attended with an increase in the

quantity of food and other raw materials thrown on the market of

Britain, with great increase in the competition between the foreign

and domestic producers for the possession of that market, and great

diminution of prices.

VII. That this tends necessarily to "discourage agriculture" in

Britain, and to prevent the application of labour to the improvement

of the land.

VIII. That it likewise tends to the deterioration of the condition of

the foreign agriculturist, who is thus deprived of the power to

improve his land, or to increase the quantity of his products.

IX. That the smaller the quantity of commodities produced, the less

must be the power to pay for labour, and the less the competition for

the purchase of the labourer's services.

X. That with the decline in the demand for labour, the less must be

the power of consumption on the part of the labourer, the greater must

be the tendency to a glut of foreign and domestic produce, in the

general market of the world, and the greater the tendency to a further

diminution of the labourer's reward.

XI. That, the greater the quantity of raw produce seeking to pass

through the market of England, the greater must be the tendency to a

decline in the value of English land, and the larger the charges of

the owners of the mills, ships, and shops, through which the produce

must pass, and the greater their power of accumulation, at the cost of

both labour and land.

XII. That the less the labour applied to the improvement of the soil,

the more must the population of the country be driven from off the

land, the greater must be the tendency of the latter toward

consolidation, and the greater the tendency toward absenteeism and the

substitution of great farmers and day-labourers for small proprietors,

with further decline in production and in the demand for labour.

XIII. That with the reduction of the country population, local places

of exchange must pass away; and that labour and land must decline in

power as ships, mills, and their owners become more united and more

powerful.

XIV. That the tendency of the whole system is, therefore, toward

diminishing the value and the power of land, and toward rendering the

labourer a mere slave to the trading community, which obtains from day

to day more and more the power to impose taxes at its pleasure, and to

centralize in its own hands the direction of the affairs of the

nation; to the destruction of local self-government, and to the

deterioration of the physical, moral, intellectual, and political

condition of the people.

In accordance with these views, an examination of the productive power

of the United Kingdom should result in showing that production has not

kept pace with population; and that such had been the ease we should

be disposed to infer from the increasing demand for cheap labour, and

from the decline that has unquestionably taken place in the control of

the labourer over his own operations. That the facts are in accordance

with this inference the reader may perhaps be disposed to admit after

having examined carefully the following figures.

In 1815, now thirty-eight years since, the declared value of the

exports of the United Kingdom, of British produce and manufacture, was

as follows:--

Of woollen manufactures............... £9,381,426

" cotton " ............... 20,620,000

" silk " ............... 622,118

" linen " ............... 1,777,563

And of other commodities.............. 19,231,684

----------

Total................................. 51,632,791

In the same year there were imported of

Wool.................................. 13,634,000 lbs.

Cotton................................ 99,306,000 "

Silk.................................. 1,807,000 "

Flax.................................. 41,000,000 "

Grain................................. 267,000 qrs.

Flour................................. 202,000 cwts.

Butter................................ 125,000 "

Cheese................................ 106,000 "

If to the raw cotton, wool, silk, and flax that were re-exported in a

manufactured state, and to the dyeing materials and other articles

required for their manufacture, we now add the whole foreign food, as

above shown, we can scarcely make, of foreign commodities re-exported,

an amount exceeding twelve, or at most thirteen millions, leaving

thirty-eight millions as the value of the British produce exported in

that year; and this divided among the people of the United Kingdom

would give nearly £2 per head.

In 1851 the exports, were as follows:--

Manufactures of wool.................... £10,314,000

" cotton.................. 30,078,000

" silk.................... 1,329,000

" flax.................... 5,048,000

All other commodities................... 21,723,569

-----------

Total................................... £68,492,569

We see thus that nearly the whole increase that had taken place in the

long period of thirty-six years was to be found in four branches of

manufacture, the materials of which were wholly drawn from abroad, as

is shown in the following statement of imports for that year:--

Wool.................................... 83,000,000 lbs.

Cotton.................................. 700,000,000 "

Silk.................................... 5,020,000 "

Flax.................................... 135,000,000 "

Eggs.................................... 115,000,000 "

Oxen, cows, calves, sheep, hogs, &c..... 300,000 "

Corn.................................... 8,147,675 qrs.

Flour................................... 5,384,552 cwts.

Potatoes................................ 635,000 "

Provisions.............................. 450,000 "

Butter.................................. 354,000 "

Cheese.................................. 338,000 "

Hams and lard........................... 130,000 "

The wool imported was more than was required to produce the cloth

exported, and from this it follows that the whole export represented

foreign wool. The cotton, silk, flax, dyeing-materials, &c. exported

were all foreign, and the food imported was adequate, or nearly so, to

feed the people who produced the goods exported. Such being the case,

it would follow that the total exports of British and Irish produce

could scarcely have amounted to even £15,000,000, and it certainly

could not have exceeded that sum--and that would give about 10s. per

head, or one-fourth as much as in 1815.

The difference between the two periods is precisely the same as that

between the farmer and the shoemaker. The man who, by the labour of

himself and sons, is enabled to send to market the equivalent of a

thousand bushels of wheat, has first _fed himself and them_, and

therefore he has _the whole proceeds_ of his sales to apply to the

purchase of clothing, furniture, or books, or to add to his capital.

His neighbour buys food and leather, and sells shoes. He _has been

fed_, and the first appropriation to be made of the proceeds of his

sales is to buy more food and leather; and all he has to apply to

other purposes is _the difference_ between the price at which he buys

and that at which he sells. Admitting that difference to be one-sixth,

it would follow that his sales must be six times as large to enable

him to have the same value to be applied to the purchase of other

commodities than food, or to the increase of his capital. Another

neighbour buys and sells wheat, or shoes, at a commission of five per

cent., out of which he has _to be fed_. To enable him to have an

amount of gross commissions equal to the farmer's sales, he must do

twenty times as much business; and if, we allow one-half of it for the

purchase of food, he must do forty times as much to enable him to have

the same amount with which to purchase other commodities, or to

increase his capital. Precisely so is it with a nation. When it sells

its own food and leather, _it has fed itself_, and may dispose as it

will of the whole amount of sales. When it buys food and leather, and

sells shoes, _it has been fed_, and must first pay the producers of

those commodities; and all that it can appropriate to the purchase of

clothing or furniture, or to the increase, of its capital, is the

_difference_; and, to enable it to have the same amount to be so

applied, it must sell six times as much in value. When it acts as a

mere buyer and seller of sugar, cotton, cloth, or shoes, it has _to be

fed_ out of the differences, and then it may require forty times the

amount of sales to yield the same result.

These things being understood, we may now compare the two

years above referred to. In the first, 1815, the sales of

domestic produce amounted to.................... £38,600,000

And if to this we add the difference on

£13,000,000..................................... 2,166,667

-----------

We obtain the amount, applicable to the purchase

of other commodities than food................. £40,766,667

In the second, 1851, the sales of domestic produce

were ........................................... £15,000,000

To which add differences on £53,492,000, say.... 9,000,000

----------

We have, as applicable to other purposes than the

purchase of food............................... £24,000,000

Divided among the population, of those years, it gives £2 per head in

the first, and 16s. in the other; but even this, great as it is, does

not represent in its full extent the decline that has taken place. The

smaller the change of form made in the commodity imported before

exporting it, the more nearly does the business resemble that of the

mere trader, and the larger must be the quantity of merchandise

passing, to leave behind the same result. In 1815, the export of yarn

of any kind was trivial, because other countries were then unprovided

with looms. In 1851 the export of mere yarn, upon which the

expenditure of British labour had been only that of twisting it, was

as follows:--

Cotton.................................. 144,000,000 lbs.

Linen................................... 19,000,000 "

Silk.................................... 390,000 "

Woollen................................. 14,800,000 "

The reader will readily perceive that in all these cases the foreign

raw material bears a much larger proportion to the value than would

have been the case had the exports taken place in the form of cloth.

An examination of these facts can scarcely fail to satisfy him how

deceptive are any calculations based upon statements of the amount of

exports and imports; and yet it is to them we are always referred for

evidence of the growing prosperity of England. With every year there

must be an increasing tendency in the same direction, as the

manufacturers of India are more and more compelled to depend on

England for yarn, and as the nations of Europe become more and more

enabled to shut out cloth and limit their imports to yarn. From

producer, England has become, or is rapidly becoming, a mere trader,

and trade has not grown to such an extent as was required to make

amends for the change. She is therefore in the position of the man who

has substituted _a trade_ of a thousand dollars a year for _a

production_ of five hundred. In 1815, the people of the United Kingdom

had to divide among themselves, then twenty millions in number, almost

forty millions, the value of their surplus products exported to all

parts of the earth. In 1851, being nearly thirty millions in number,

they had to divide only fifteen millions, whereas had production been

maintained, it should have reached sixty millions, or almost the total

amount of exports. In place of this vast amount of _products_ for

sale, they had only the _differences_ upon an excess trade of

£40,000,000, and this can scarcely be estimated at more than eight or

ten, toward making up a deficit of forty-five millions. Such being the

facts, it will not now be difficult for the reader to understand why

it is that there is a decline in the material and moral condition of

the people.

How this state of things has been brought about is shown by the steady

diminution in the proportion of the population engaged in the work of

production. Adam Smith cautioned his countrymen that "if the whole

surplus produce of America in grain of all sorts, salt provisions, and

fish," were "forced into the market of Great Britain," it would

"interfere too much with the prosperity of our own people." He thought

it would be a "great discouragement to agriculture." And yet, from

that hour to the present, no effort has been spared to increase in all

the nations of the world the surplus of raw produce, to be poured into

the British market, and thus to produce competition between the

producers abroad and the producers at home, to the manifest injury of

both. The more the linen manufacture, or those of wool, hemp, or iron,

could be discouraged abroad, the greater was the quantity of raw

products to be sent to London and Liverpool, and the less the

inducement for applying labour to the improvement of English land. For

a time, this operation, so far as regarded food, was restrained by the

corn-laws; but now the whole system is precisely that which was

reprobated by the most profound political economist that Britain has

ever produced. Its consequences are seen in the following figures:--In

1811, the proportion of the population of England engaged in

agriculture was 35 per cent. In 1841 it had fallen to 25 per cent.,

and now it can scarcely exceed 22 per cent., and even in 1841 the

actual number was less than it had been thirty years before.[143]

Thus driven out from the land, Englishmen had to seek other

employment, while the same system was annually driving to England tens

of thousands of the poor people of Scotland and Ireland; and thus

forced competition for the sale in England of the raw products of the

earth produced competition there for the sale of labour; the result of

which is seen in the fact that agricultural wages have been from 6s.

to 9s. a week, and the labourer has become from year to year more a

slave to the caprices of his employer, whether the great farmer or the

wealthy owner of mills or furnaces. The total population of the

_United Kingdom_ dependent upon agriculture cannot be taken at more

than ten millions; and as agricultural wages cannot be estimated at a

higher average than 5s. per week, there cannot be, including the

earnings of women, more than 6s. per family; and if that be divided

among four, it gives 1s. 6d. per head, or £3 18s. per annum, and a

total amount, to be divided among ten millions of people, of 40

millions of pounds, or 192 millions of dollars. In reflecting upon

this, the reader is requested to bear in mind that it provides wages

for every week in the year, whereas throughout a considerable portion

of the United Kingdom very much of the time is unoccupied.

Cheap labour has, in every country, gone hand in hand with cheap land.

Such having been the case, it may not now be difficult to account for

the small value of land when compared with the vast advantages it

possesses in being everywhere close to a market in which to exchange

its raw products for manufactured ones, and also for manure. The

reader has seen the estimate of _M. Thunen_, one of the best

agriculturists of Germany, of the vast difference in the value of land

in Mecklenburgh close to market, as compared with that distant from

it; but he can everywhere see for himself that that which is close to

a city will command thrice as much rent as that distant twenty miles,

and ten times as much as that which is five hundred miles distant.

Now, almost the whole land of the United Kingdom is in the condition

of the best of that here described. The distances are everywhere

small, and the roads are, or ought to be, good; and yet the total

rental of land, mines, and minerals, is but £55,000,000, and this for

an area of 70 millions of acres, giving an average of only about $3.60

per acre, or $9--less than £2,--per head of the population. This is

very small indeed, and it tends to show to how great an extent the

system must have discouraged agriculture. In 1815, with a population

of only twenty millions, the rental amounted, exclusive of houses,

mines, minerals, fisheries, &c., to fifty-two and a half millions,

and the exports of the produce of British and Irish land were then

almost three times as great as they are now, with a population almost

one-half greater than it was then.

The very small value of the land of the United Kingdom, when compared

with its advantages, can be properly appreciated by the reader only

after an examination of the course of things elsewhere. The price of

food raised in this country is dependent, almost entirely, on what can

be obtained for the very small quantity sent to England. "Mark Lane,"

as it is said, "governs the world's prices." It does govern them in

New York and Philadelphia, where prices must be as much below those of

London or Liverpool as the cost of transportation, insurance, and

commissions, or there could be no export. Their prices, in turn,

govern those of Ohio and Pennsylvania, Indiana and Illinois, which

must always be as much below those of New York as the cost of getting

the produce there. If, now, we examine into the mere cost of

transporting the average produce of an acre of land from the farm to

the market of England, we shall find that it would be far more than

the average rental of English land; and yet that rental includes coal,

copper, iron, and tin mines that supply a large portion of the world.

Under such circumstances, land in this country should be of very small

value, if even of any; and yet the following facts tend to show that

the people of Massachusetts, with a population of only 994,000,

scattered over a surface of five millions of acres, with a soil so

poor that but 2,133,000 are improved, and possessed of no mines of

coal, iron, tin, lead, or copper, have, in the short period they have

occupied it, acquired rights in land equal, per acre, to those

acquired by the people of England in their fertile soils, with their

rich mines, in two thousand years. The cash value of the farms of that

State in 1850 was $109,000,000, which, _divided over the whole

surface_, would give $22 per acre, and this, at six per cent., would

yield $1.32. Add to this the difference between wages of four, six,

and eight shillings per week in the United Kingdom, and twenty or

twenty-five dollars per month in Massachusetts, and it will be found

that the return in the latter is quite equal to that in the former;

and yet the price of agricultural produce generally, is as much below

that of England as the cost of freight and commission, which alone are

greater than the whole rent of English land.

New York has thirty millions of acres, of which only twelve millions

have been in any manner improved; and those she has been steadily

exhausting, because of the absence of a market on or near the land,

such as is possessed by England. She has neither coal nor other mines

of any importance, and her factories are few in number; and yet the

cash value of farms, as returned by the Marshal, was 554 millions of

dollars, and that was certainly less than the real value. If we take

the latter at 620 millions, it will gives $50 per acre for the

improved land, or an average of $20 for all. Taking the rent at six

per cent. on $50, we obtain $3 per acre, or nearly the average of the

United Kingdom; and it would be quite reasonable to make the mines and

minerals of the latter a set-off against the land that is unimproved.

If the reader desire to understand the cause of the small value, of

English land when compared with its vast advantages, he may find it in

the following passage:--

"Land-owners possess extensive territories which owe little or

nothing to the hand of the improver; where undeveloped sources of

production lie wasting and useless in the midst of the most certain

and tempting markets of the vast consuming population of this

country."--_Economist_, London.

Unfortunately, however, those markets are small, while the tendency

of the whole British system is toward converting the entire earth

into one vast farm for their supply, and thus preventing the

application of labour to the improvement of land at home. The

tendency of prices, whether of land, labour, or their products, is

toward a level, and whatever tends to lessen the price of any of

those commodities in Ireland, India, Virginia, or Carolina, tends to

produce the same effect in England; and we have seen that such is the

direct tendency of English policy with regard to the land of all

those countries. With decline in value, there must ever be a tendency

to consolidation, and thus the policy advocated by the _Economist_

produces the evil of which it so much and so frequently complains.

The profits of farmers are generally estimated at half the rental,

which would give for a total of rents and profits about 85 millions;

and if to this be added the wages of agricultural labour, we obtain

but about 125 millions, of which less than one-third goes to the

labourer.[144]

We have here the necessary result of consolidation of land--itself

the result of an attempt to compel the whole people of the world to

compete with each other in a single and limited market for the sale of

raw produce. With every increase of this competition, the small

proprietor has found himself less and less able to pay the taxes to

which he was subjected, and has finally been obliged to pass into the

condition of a day-labourer, to compete with the almost starving

Irishman, or the poor native of Scotland, driven into England in

search of employment; and hence have resulted the extraordinary facts

that in many parts of that country, enjoying, as it does, every

advantage except a sound system of trade, men gladly labour for six

shillings ($1.44) a week; that women labour in the fields; and that

thousands of the latter, destitute of a change of under-clothing, are

compelled to go to bed while their chemises are being washed.[145]

Driven from the land by the cheap food and cheap labour of Ireland,

the English labourer has to seek the town, and there he finds himself

at the mercy of the great manufacturer; and thus, between the

tenant-farmer on the one hand, and the large capitalist on the other,

he is ground as between the upper and the nether millstone. The result

is seen in the facts heretofore given. He loses gradually all

self-respect, and he, his wife, and his children become vagrants, and

fall on the public for support. Of the wandering life of great numbers

of these poor people some idea may be formed from the following

statement of Mr. Mayhew[146] :--

"I happened to be in the country a little time back, and it

astonished me to find, in a town with a population of 20,800, that no

less than 11,000 vagabonds passed through the town in thirteen weeks.

We have large classes known in the metropolis as the people of the

streets."

It will, however, be said that if cheap corn tend to drive him from

employment, he has a compensation in cheaper sugar, cotton, coffee,

rum, and other foreign commodities--and such is undoubtedly the case;

but he enjoys these things at the cost of his fellow labourers, black,

white, and brown, in this country, the West Indies, India, and

elsewhere. The destruction of manufactures in this country in 1815 and

1816 drove the whole population to the raising of food, tobacco, and

cotton; and a similar operation in India drove the people of that

country to the raising of rice, indigo, sugar, and cotton, that _must_

go to the market of England, because of the diminution in the domestic

markets for labour or its products. The diminished domestic

consumption of India forces her cotton into the one great market,

there to compete with that of other countries, and to reduce their

prices. It forces the Hindoo to the Mauritius, to aid in destroying

the poor negroes of Jamaica, Cuba, and Brazil; but the more the sugar

and cotton that _must_ go to the distant market, the higher will be

the freights, the lower will be the prices, the larger will be the

British revenue, the greater will be the consumption, and the greater

will be the "prosperity" of England, but the more enslaved will be the

producers of those commodities. Competition for their sale tends to

produce low prices, and the more the people of the world, men, women,

and children, can be limited to agriculture, the greater must be the

necessity for dependence on England for cloth and iron, the higher

will be their prices, and the more wretched will be the poor labourer

everywhere.

The reader may perhaps understand the working of the system after an

examination of the following comparative prices of commodities:--

1815. 1852.

----- -----

England sells--

Bar iron, per ton.... £13 5s. 0d. ..... £9 0s. 0d.

Tin, per cwt......... 7 0 0 ..... 5 2 0

Copper " ......... 6 5 0 ..... 5 10 0

Lead " ......... 1 6 6 ..... 1 4 0

England buys--

Cotton, per lb....... 0 1 6 ..... 0 0 6

Sugar, per cwt....... 3 0 0 ..... 1 0 0

While these principal articles of raw produce have fallen to

one-third of the prices of 1815, iron, copper, tin, and lead, the

commodities that she supplies to the world, have not fallen more than

twenty-five per cent. It is more difficult to exhibit the changes of

woven goods, but that the planters are constantly giving more cotton

for less cloth will be seen on an examination of the following facts

in relation to a recent large-crop year, as compared with the course

of things but a dozen years before. From 1830 to 1835, the price of

cotton here was about eleven cents, which we may suppose to be about

what it would yield in England, free of freight and charges. In those

years our average export was about 320,000,000, yielding about

$35,000,000, and the average price of cotton cloth, per piece of 24

yards, weighing 5 lbs. 12 oz., was 7s. 10d., ($1.88,) and that of iron

£6 10s. ($31.20.) Our exports would therefore have produced, delivered

in Liverpool, 18,500,000 pieces of cloth, or about 1,100,000 tons of

iron. In 1845 and 1846, the _home consumption_ of cotton by the people

of England was almost the same quantity, say 311,000,000 pounds, and

the average price here was 6-1/2 cents, making the product

$20,000,000. The price of cloth then was 6s. 6-3/4 d., ($1.57 1/2,)

and that of iron about £10, ($48;) and the result was, that the

planters could have, for nearly the same quantity of cotton, about

12,500,000 pieces of cloth, or about 420,000 tons of iron, also

delivered in Liverpool. Dividing the return between the two

commodities, it stands thus:--

Average from: 1830 to 1835. 1845-6. Loss.

------------- ------------- ------- -----

Cloth, pieces.... 9,250,000 ... 6,250,000 ... 3,000,000

And iron, tons... 550,000 ... 210,000 ... 340,000

The labour required for converting cotton into cloth had been greatly

diminished, and yet the proportion, retained by the manufacturers had

greatly increased, as will now be shown:--

Weight of Cotton Retained

Weight of given to the by the

Cotton used. planters. manufacturers.

------------ ---------------- --------------

1830 to 1835... 320,000,000... 110,000,000... 210,000,000

1845 and 1846.. 311,000,000... 74,000,000.... 237,000,000

In the first period, the planter would have had 34 per cent. of his

cotton returned to him in the form of cloth, but in the second only 24

per cent. The grist miller gives the farmer from year to year a larger

proportion of the product of his grain, and thus the latter has all

the profit of every improvement. The cotton miller gives the planter

from year to year a smaller proportion of the cloth produced. The one

miller comes daily nearer to the producer. The other goes daily

farther from him, for with the increased product the surface over

which it is raised is increased.

How this operates on a large scale will now be seen on an examination

of the following facts:--

The declared or actual _value_ of exports

of British produce in manufactures in 1815 was.. £51,632,971

And the _quantity_ of foreign merchandise

retained for consumption in that year was....... £17,238,841 [147]

This shows, of course, that the prices of the raw products of the

earth were then high by comparison with those of the articles that

Great Britain had to sell.

In 1849, the _value_ of British exports was..... £63,596,025

And the _quantity_ of foreign merchandise

retained for consumption was no less than....... £80,312,717

We see thus that while the value of exports had increased only

_one-fourth_, the produce received in exchange was _almost five times

greater_; and here it is that we find the effect of that _unlimited_

competition for the sale in England of the raw products of the world,

and _limited_ competition for the purchase of the manufactured ones,

which it is the object of the system to establish. The nation is

rapidly passing from the strong and independent position of one that

produces commodities for sale, into the weak and dependent one of the

mere trader who depends for his living upon the differences between

the prices at which he sells and those at which he buys--that is, upon

his power to tax the producers and consumers of the earth. It is the

most extraordinary and most universal system of taxation ever devised,

and it is carried out at the cost of weakening and enfeebling the

people of all the purely agricultural countries. The more completely

all the world, outside of England, can be rendered one great farm, in

which men, women, and children, the strong and the weak, the young and

the aged, can be reduced to field labour as the only means of support,

the larger will be the sum of those _differences_ upon which the

English people are now to so great an extent maintained, but the more

rapid will be the tendency everywhere toward barbarism and slavery.

The more, on the other hand, that the artisan can be brought to the

side of the farmer, the smaller must be the sum of these

_differences_, or taxes, and the greater will everywhere be the

tendency toward civilization and freedom; but the greater will be that

English distress which is seen always to exist when the producers of

the world obtain much cloth and iron in exchange for their sugar and

their cotton. The English system is therefore a war for the

perpetuation and extension of slavery.

On a recent occasion the Chancellor of the Exchequer congratulated the

House of Commons on the flourishing state of the revenue,

notwithstanding, that, they had

"In ten years repealed or reduced the duties on coffee, timber,

currants, wool, sugar, molasses, cotton wool, butter, cheese, silk

manufactures, tallow, spirits, copper ore, oil and sperm, and an

amazing number of other articles, which produced a small amount of

revenue, with respect to which it is not material, and would be

almost preposterous, that I should trouble the House in detail. It is

sufficient for me to observe this remarkable fact, that the reduction

of your customs duties from 1842 has been systematically continuous;

that in 1842 you struck off nearly £1,500,000 of revenue calculated

from the customs duties; that in 1843 you struck off £126,000; in

1844, £279,000; in 1845, upwards of £3,500,000; in 1846, upwards of

£1,150,000; in 1847, upwards of £343,000; in 1848, upwards of

£578,000; in 1849, upwards of £384,000; in 1850, upwards of £331,000;

and in 1851, upwards of £801,000--making an aggregate, in those ten

years, of nearly £9,000,000 sterling."

The reason of all this is, that the cultivator abroad is steadily

giving more raw produce for less cloth and iron. The more exclusively

the people of India can be forced to devote themselves to the raising

of cotton and sugar, the cheaper they will be, and the larger will be

the British revenue. The more the price of corn can be diminished, the

greater will be the flight to Texas, and the cheaper will be cotton,

but the larger will be the slave trade of America, India, and Ireland;

and thus it is that the prosperity of the owners of mills and furnaces

in England is always greatest when the people of the world are

becoming most enslaved.

It may be asked, however, if this diminution of the prices of foreign

produce is not beneficial to the people of England. It is not, because

it tends to reduce the general price of labour, the commodity they

have to sell. Cheap Irish labour greatly diminishes the value of that

of England, and cheap Irish grain greatly diminishes the demand for

labour in England, while increasing the supply by forcing the Irish

people to cross the Channel. The land and labour of the world have one

common interest, and that is to give as little as possible to those

who perform the exchanges, and to those who superintend them--the

traders and the government. The latter have everywhere one common

interest, and that is to take as much as possible from the producers

and give as little as possible to the consumers, buying cheaply and

selling dearly. Like fire and water, they are excellent servants, but

very bad masters. The nearer the artisan comes to the producer of the

food and the wool, the less is the power of the middleman to impose

taxes, and the greater the power of the farmer to protect himself. The

tendency of the British system, wherever found, is to impoverish the

land-owner and the labourer, and to render both from year to year more

tributary to the owners of an amount of machinery so small that its

whole value would be paid by the weekly--if not even by the

daily--loss inflicted upon the working population of the world by the

system.[148] The more the owners of that machinery become enriched,

the more must the labourer everywhere become enslaved.

That such must necessarily be the case will be obvious to any reader

who will reflect how adverse is the system to the development of

intellect. Where all are farmers, there can be little association for

the purpose of maintaining schools, or for the exchange of ideas of

any kind. Employment being limited to the labours of the field, the

women cannot attend to the care of their children, who grow up,

necessarily, rude and barbarous; and such we see now to be the case in

the West Indies, whence schools are rapidly disappearing. In Portugal

and Turkey there is scarcely any provision for instruction, and in

India there has been a decline in that respect, the extent of which is

almost exactly measured by the age of the foreign occupation.[149] In

the Punjab, the country last acquired, men read and write, but in

Bengal and Madras they are entirely uneducated. Ireland had, seventy

years since, a public press of great efficiency, but it has almost

entirely disappeared, as has the demand for books, which before the

Union was so great as to warrant the republication of a large portion

of those that appeared in England. Scotland, too, seventy years since,

gave to the Empire many of its best writers, but she, like Ireland,

has greatly declined. How bad is the provision for education

throughout England, and how low is the standard of intellect among a

large portion of her manufacturing population, the reader has seen,

and he can estimate for himself how much there can be of the reading

of books, or newspapers among an agricultural population hired _by the

day_ at the rate of six, eight, or even nine shillings a week--and it

will, therefore not surprise him to learn that there is no daily

newspaper published out of London. It _is_, however, somewhat

extraordinary that in that city, there should be, as has recently been

stated, but a single one that is not "published at a loss." That one

circulates 40,000 copies, or more than twice the number of all the

other daily papers united. This is a most unfavourable sign, for

centralization and progress have never gone hand in hand with each

other.

The system, too, is repulsive in its character. It tends to the

production of discord among individuals and nations, and hence it is

that we see the numerous strikes and combinations of workmen,

elsewhere so little known. Abroad it is productive of war, as is now

seen in India, and as was so recently the case in China. In Ireland it

is expelling the whole population, and in Scotland it has depopulated

provinces. The vast emigration now going on, and which has reached the

enormous extent of 360,000 in a single year, bears testimony to the

fact that the repulsive power has entirely overcome the attractive

one, and that the love of home, kindred, and friends is rapidly

diminishing. How, indeed, could it be otherwise, in a country in which

labour has been so far cheapened that the leading journal assures its

readers that during a whole generation "man has been a drug, and

population a nuisance?"

The fact that such a declaration should be made, and that that and

other influential journals should rejoice in the expulsion of a whole

nation, is evidence how far an unsound system can go toward steeling

the heart against the miseries of our fellow-creatures. These poor

people do not emigrate voluntarily. They are forced to leave their

homes, precisely as is the case with the negro slave of Virginia; but

they have not, as has the slave, any certainty of being fed and

clothed at the end of the journey. Nevertheless, throughout England

there is an almost universal expression of satisfaction at the idea

that the land is being rid of what is held to be its superabundant

population; and one highly respectable journal,[150] after showing

that at the same rate Ireland would be entirely emptied in twenty-four

years, actually assures its readers that it views the process "without

either alarm or regret," and that it has no fear of the process being

"carried too far or continued too long."

We see thus, on one hand, the people of England engaged in _shutting_

in the poor people of Africa, lest they should be forced to Cuba; and,

on the other, rejoicing at evictions, as the best means of _driving

out_ the poor people of Ireland. In all this there is a total absence

of consistency; but so far as the Irish people are concerned, it is

but a natural consequence of that "unsound social philosophy," based

upon the Ricardo-Malthusian doctrine, which after having annihilated

the small land-owner and the small trader, denies that the Creator

meant that every man should find a place at his table, and sees no

more reason why a poor labourer should have any more right to be fed,

if willing to work, than the Manchester cotton-spinner should have to

find a purchaser for his cloth. "Labour," we are told, is "a

commodity," and if men _will_ marry and bring up children "to an

overstocked and expiring trade," it is for them to take the

consequences--and "_if we stand between the error and its

consequences, we stand between the evil and its cure_--if we intercept

the penalty (where it does not amount to positive death) we perpetuate

the sin."[151]

Such being the state of opinion in regard to the claims of labour, we

need scarcely be surprised to find a similar state of things in regard

to the rights of property. The act of emancipation was a great

interference with those rights. However proper it might have been

deemed to free the negroes, it was not right to cause the heaviest

portion of the loss to be borne by the few and weak planters. If

justice required the act, all should have borne their equal share of

the burden. So again in regard to Ireland, where special laws have

been passed to enable the mortgagees to sell a large portion of the

land, rendered valueless by a system that had for long years prevented

the Irishman from employing himself except in the work of cultivation.

India appears likely now to come in for its share of similar

legislation. Centralization has not there, we are told, been carried

far enough. Private rights in land, trivial even as they now are,[152]

must be annihilated. None, we are told, can be permitted "to stand

between the cultivator and the government," even if the collection of

the taxes "should render necessary so large an army of _employé_ as to

threaten the absorption of the lion's share" of them.[153] In regard

to the rights to land in England itself, one of her most distinguished

writers says that

"When the 'sacredness of property' is talked of, it should always be

remembered that this sacredness does not belong in the same degree to

landed property. No man made the land. * * * The claim of the

land-owners to the land is altogether subordinate to the general

policy of the state. * * * Subject to this proviso (that of

compensation) the state is at liberty to deal with landed property as

the general interests of the community may require, even to the

extent, if it so happen, of doing with the whole what is done with a

part whenever a bill is passed for a railroad or a street."--_J. S.

Mill, Principles_, book ii. chap. ii.

In regard to the disposal of property at the death of its owner, the

same author is of opinion that "a certain moderate provision, such as

is admitted to be reasonable in the case of illegitimate children, and

of younger children" is all "that parents owe to their children, and

all, therefore, which the state owes to the children of those who die

intestate." The surplus, if any, he holds "it may rightfully

appropriate to the general purposes of the community."--_Ibid_.

Extremes generally meet. From the days of Adam Smith to the present

time the policy of England has looked in the direction that led

necessarily to the impoverishment of the small land-owner, and to

the consolidation of land, and during the whole of that period we

have been told of the superior advantages of large farms and great

tenant-farmers; but now, when the injurious effects of the system

are becoming from day to day more obvious, the question of the

existence of _any right_ to land is being discussed, and we are told

that "public reasons" existed "for its being appropriated," and if

those reasons have "lost their force, the thing would be unjust."

From this to confiscation the step would not be a very great one. No

such idea certainly could exist in the mind of so enlightened a man

as Mr. Mill, who insists upon compensation; but when a whole people,

among whom the productive power is steadily diminishing as

individual fortunes become more and more colossal, are told that the

proprietors of land, great and small, receive compensation for its

use, for no other reason than that they have been enabled to possess

themselves of a monopoly of its powers, and that rent is to be

regarded as "the recompense of no sacrifice whatever," but as being

"received by those who neither labour nor put by, but merely hold

out their hands to receive the offerings of the rest of the

community,"[154] can we doubt that the day is approaching when the

right to property in land will be tested in England, as it has

elsewhere been? Assuredly not. Ricardo-Malthusianism tends directly

to what is commonly called Communism, and at that point will England

arrive, under the system which looks to the consolidation of the

land, the aggrandizement of the few, and the destruction of the

physical, moral, intellectual, and political powers of the whole

body of labourers, abroad and at home,

Where population and wealth increase together, there is always found a

growing respect for the rights of persons and property. Where they

decline, that respect diminishes; and the tendency of the whole

British politico-economical system being toward the destruction of

population and wealth at home and abroad, it tends necessarily toward

agrarianism in its worst form. That such is the tendency of things in

England we have the assurance of the London _Times_, by which, it has

recently been shown, says Mr. Kay,

"That during the last half century, every thing has been done to

deprive the peasant of any interest in the preservation of public

order; of any wish to maintain the existing constitution of society;

of all hope of raising himself in the world, or of improving his

condition in life; of all attachment to his country; of all feelings

of there really existing any community of interest between himself

and the higher ranks of society; and of all consciousness that he has

any thing to lose by political changes; and that every thing has been

done to render him dissatisfied with his condition, envious of the

richer classes, and discontented with the existing order of things.

"The labourer," he continues "has no longer any connection with the

land which he cultivates; he has no stake in the country; he has

nothing to lose, nothing to defend, and nothing to hope for. The word

"cottage" has ceased to mean what it once meant--a small house

surrounded by its little plot of land, which the inmate might

cultivate as he pleased, for the support and gratification of his

family and himself. The small freeholds have long since been bought

up and merged in the great estates. Copyholds have become almost

extinct, or have been purchased by the great land-owners. The

commons, upon which the villagers once had the right of pasturing

cattle for their own use, and on which, too, the games and pastimes

of the villages were held, have followed the same course: they are

enclosed, and now form part of the possessions of the great

landowners. Small holdings of every kind have, in like manner, almost

entirely disappeared. Farms have gradually become larger and larger,

and are now, in most parts of the country, far out of the peasant's

reach, on account of their size, and of the amount of capital

requisite to cultivate them. The gulf between the peasant and the

next step in the social scale--the farmer--is widening and increasing

day by day. The labourer is thus left without any chance of improving

his condition. His position is one of hopeless and irremediable

dependence. The workhouse stands near him, pointing out his dismal

fate if he falls one step lower, and, like a grim scarecrow, warning

him to betake himself to some more hospitable region, where he will

find no middle-age institutions opposing his industrious

efforts."--Vol. i. 361.

This is slavery, and it is an indication of poverty, and yet we hear

much of the wealth of England. Where, however, is it? The whole rental

of the land, houses, mills, furnaces, and mines of the United Kingdom

but little exceeds one hundred millions of pounds sterling, of which

about one-half is derived from buildings--and if we take the whole,

perishable and imperishable, at twenty years' purchase, it is but

two-thousand millions.[155] If next we add for machinery of all kinds,

ships, farming stock and implements, 600 millions,[156] we obtain a

total of only 2600 millions, or 12,500 millions of dollars, as the

whole accumulation of more than two thousand years' given to the

improvement of the land, the building of houses, towns, and

cities--and this gives but little over 400 dollars per head. Sixty

years since, New York had a population of only 340,000, and it was a

poor State, and to this hour it has no mines of any importance that

are worked. Throughout the whole period, her people have been

exhausting her soil, and the product of wheat, on lands that formerly

gave twenty-five and thirty bushels to the acre, has fallen to six or

eight,[157] and yet her houses and lands are valued at almost twelve

hundred millions of dollars, and the total value of the real and

personal estate is not less than fifteen hundred millions, or about

$500 per head--and these are the accumulations almost of the present

century.

The _apparent_ wealth of England is, however, great, and it is so for

the same reason that Rome appeared so rich in the days of Crassus and

Lucullus, surrounded by people owning nothing, when compared with the

days when Cincinnatus was surrounded by a vast body of small

proprietors. Consolidation of the land and enormous manufacturing

establishments have almost annihilated the power profitably to use

small capitals, and the consequence is that their owners are forced to

place them in saving funds, life-insurance companies, and in banks at

small interest, and by all of these they are lent out to the large

holders of land and large operators in mills, furnaces, railroads, &c.

As the land has become consolidated, it has been covered with

mortgages, and the effect of this is to double the apparent quantity

of property. While the small proprietors held it, it was assessed to

the revenue as land only. Now, it is assessed, first, as land, upon

which its owner pays a tax, and next as mortgage, upon which the

mortgagee pays the income-tax. The land-owner is thus holding his

property with other people's means, and the extent to which this is

the case throughout England is wonderfully great. Banks trade little

on their own capital, but almost entirely on that of others.[158] The

capital of the Bank of England haying been expended by the government,

it has always traded exclusively on its deposites and circulation. The

East India Company has no capital, but a very large debt, and nothing

to represent it; and the example of these great institutions is copied

by the smaller ones. Life-insurance companies abound, and the capitals

are said to be large, but "nine-tenths" of them are declared to be "in

a state of ruinous insolvency;"[159] and it is now discovered the true

mode of conducting that business is to have no capital whatsoever. The

trade of England is to a great extent based on the property of

foreigners, in the form of wool, silk, cotton, tobacco, sugar, and

other commodities, sent there for sale, and these furnish much of the

capital of her merchants. While holding this vast amount of foreign

capital, they supply iron and cloth, for which they take the bonds of

the people of other nations; and whenever the amount of these bonds

becomes too large, there comes a pressure in the money market, and the

prices of all foreign commodities are forced down, to the ruin of

their distant owners. To the absence of real capital [160] it is due

that revulsions are so frequent, and so destructive to all countries

intimately connected with her; and it is a necessary consequence of

the vast extent of trading on borrowed capital that the losses by

bankruptcy are so astonishingly great. From 1839 to 1843, a period of

profound peace, eighty-two private bankers became bankrupt; of whom

forty-six paid _no dividends_, twelve paid under twenty-five per

cent., twelve under fifty per cent., three under seventy-five per

cent., and two under one hundred per cent.; leaving seven

unascertained at the date of the report from which this statement is

derived. The last revulsion brought to light the fact that many of the

oldest and most respectable houses in London had been for years

trading entirely on credit, and without even a shilling of capital;

and in Liverpool the destruction was so universal that it was

difficult to discover more than half a dozen houses to whom a cargo

could be confided. Revulsions are a necessary consequence of such a

state of things, and at each and every one of them the small

manufacturer and the small trader or land-owner are more and more

swept away, while centralization steadily increases--and

centralization is adverse to the growth of wealth and civilization.

The whole fabric tends steadily more and more to take the form of an

inverted pyramid, that may be thus represented:--

Ships and mills,

L a n d,

Labour.

In confirmation of this view we have the following facts given in a

speech of Mr. George Wilson, at a _réunion_ in Manchester, a few weeks

since:--

"In the five counties of Buckingham, Dorset, Wilts, Northampton, and

Salop, 63 members were returned by 52,921 voters, while only the same

number were returned by Lancashire and Yorkshire, with 89,669 county

and 84,612 borough voters, making a total of 174,281. So that, if they

returned members in proportion to voters alone, those five counties

could only claim 19; while, if Lancashire took their proportion, it

would be entitled to 207. There were twelve large cities or boroughs

(taking London as a double borough) returning 24 members, with 192,000

voters, and a population of 3,268,218, and 388,000 inhabited houses.

On the other side, 24 members were returned by Andover, Buckingham,

Chippenham, Cockermouth, Totnes, Harwich, Bedford, Lymington,

Marlborough, Great Marlborough, and Richmond; but they had only 3,569

voters, 67,434 inhabitants, and 1,373 inhabited houses. * * The most

timid reformer and most moderate man would hardly object to the

disfranchisement of those boroughs which had a population less than

5000, and to handing over the 20 members to those large

constituencies."

As the people of Ireland are driven from the land to London,

Liverpool, or America, the claims of that country to representation

necessarily diminish; and so with Scotland, as the Highlands and the

Isles undergo the process of wholesale clearance. The same system that

depopulates them tends to depopulate the agricultural counties of

England, and to drive their people to seek employment in the great

cities and manufacturing towns; and this, according to Mr.

McCullogh,[161] is one of the principal advantages resulting from

absenteeism. The wealthy few congregate in London, and the vast mass

of poor labourers in the lanes and alleys, the streets and the

cellars, of London and Liverpool, Birmingham and Sheffield, Manchester

and Leeds; and thus is there a daily increasing tendency toward having

the whole power over England and the world placed in the hands of the

owners of a small quantity of machinery--the same men that but a few

years since were described by Sir Robert Peel as compelling children

to work sixteen hours a day during the week, and to appropriate a part

of Sunday to cleaning the machinery--and the same that recently

resisted every attempt at regulating the hours of labour, on the

ground that all the profit resulted from the power to require "the

last hour." Many of these gentlemen are liberal, and are actuated by

the best intentions; but they have allowed themselves to be led away

by a false and pernicious theory that looks directly to the

enslavement of the human race, and are thus blinded to the

consequences of the system they advocate; but even were they right, it

could not but be dangerous to centralize nearly the whole legislative

power in a small portion of the United Kingdom, occupied by people

whose existence is almost entirely dependent on the question whether

cotton is cheap or dear, and who are liable to be thrown so entirely

under the control of their employers.

With each step in this direction, consolidation of the land tends to

increase, and there is increased necessity for "cheap labour." "The

whole question" of England's manufacturing superiority, we are told,

"has become one of a cheap and abundant supply of labour."[162] That

is, if labour can be kept down, and the labourer can be prevented from

having a choice of employers, then the system may be maintained, but

not otherwise. Where, however, the labourer has not the power of

determining for whom he will work, he is a slave; and to that

condition it is that the system tends to reduce the English people, as

it has already done with the once free men of India. Alarmed at the

idea that the present flight from England may tend to give the

labourer power to select his employer, and to have some control over

the amount of his reward, the London _Times_ suggests the expediency

of importing cheap labourers from Germany and other parts of the

continent, to aid in underworking their fellow-labourers in America

and in India.

It has been well said that, according to some political economists,

"man was made for the land, and not the land for man." In England, it

would almost seem as if he had been made for cotton mills. Such would

appear now to be the views of the _Times_, as, a quarter of a century

since, they certainly were of Mr. Huskisson. The object of all sound

political economy is that of raising the labourer, and increasing the

dignity of labour. That of the English system is to "keep labour

down," and to degrade the labourer to the condition of a mere slave;

and such is its effect everywhere--and nowhere is its tendency in that

direction more obvious than in England itself.[163]

Consolidation of land on one side and a determination to underwork the

world on the other, are producing a rapid deterioration of material

and moral condition, and, as a natural consequence, there is a steady

diminution in the power of local self-government. The diminution of

the agricultural population and the centralization of exchanges have

been attended by decay of the agricultural towns, and their remaining

people become less and less capable of performing for themselves those

duties to which their predecessors were accustomed--and hence it is

that political centralization grows so rapidly. Scarcely a session of

Parliament now passes without witnessing the creation of a new

commission for the management of the poor, the drainage of towns, the

regulation of lodging-houses, or other matters that could be better

attended to by the local authorities, were it not that the population,

is being so rapidly divided into two classes widely remote from each

other--the poor labourer and the rich absentee landlord or other

capitalist.

With the decay of the power of the people over their own actions, the

nation is gradually losing its independent position among the nations

of the earth. It is seen that the whole "prosperity" of the country

depends on the power to purchase cheap cotton, cheap sugar, and other

cheap products of the soil, and it is feared that something may

interfere to prevent the continuance of the system which maintains the

domestic slave trade of this country. We are, therefore, told by all

the English journals, that "England is far too dependent on America

for her supply of cotton. There is," says the _Daily News_, "too much

risk in relying on any one country, if we consider the climate and

seasons alone; but the risk is seriously aggravated when the country

is not our own, but is inhabited by a nation which, however friendly

on the whole, and however closely allied with us by blood and

language, has been at war with us more than once, and might possibly

some day be so again."

From month to month, and from year to year, we have the same note,

always deepening in its intensity,--and yet the dependence increases

instead of diminishing. On one day, the great prosperity of the

country is proved by the publication of a long list of new cotton

mills, and, on the next, we are told of--

"The frightful predicament of multitudes of people whom a natural

disaster [a short crop of cotton] denies leave to toil--who must

work or starve, but who cannot work because the prime material of

their work is not to be obtained in the world."--_Lawson's Merchants'

Magazine_, Dec. 1852.

What worse slavery can we have than this? It is feared that this

country will not continue to supply cheap cotton, and it is known that

India cannot enlarge its export, and, therefore, the whole mind of

England is on the stretch to discover some new source from which it

may be derived, that may tend to increase the competition for its

sale, and reduce it lower than it even now is. At one time, it is

hoped that it may be grown in Australia--but cheap labour cannot

there be had. At another, it is recommended as expedient to encourage

its culture in Natal, (South Africa,) as there it can be grown, as we

are assured, by aid of cheap--or slave--labour, from India.[164]

It is to this feeling of growing dependence, and growing weakness,

that must be attributed the publication of passages like the

following, from the London _Times_:--

"It used to be said that if Athens, and Lacedæmon could but make up

their minds to be good friends and make a common cause, they would be

masters of the world. The wealth, the science, the maritime

enterprise, and daring ambition of the one, assisted by the

population, the territory, the warlike spirit, and stern institutions

of the other, could not fail to carry the whole world before them.

That was a project hostile to the peace and prosperity of mankind,

and ministering only to national vanity. A far grander object, of

more easy and more honourable acquisition, lies before England and

the United States, and all other countries owning our origin and

speaking our language. Let them agree not in an alliance offensive

and defensive, but simply to never go to war with one another. Let

them permit one another to develop as Providence seems to suggest,

and the British race will gradually and quietly attain to a

pre-eminence beyond the reach of mere policy and arms. The vast and

ever-increasing interchange of commodities between the several

members of this great family, the almost daily communications now

opened across, not one, but several oceans, the perpetual discovery

of new means of locomotion, in which steam itself now bids fair to be

supplanted by an equally powerful but cheaper and more convenient

agency--all promise to unite the whole British race throughout the

world in one social and commercial unity, more mutually beneficial

than any contrivance of politics. Already, what does Austria gain

from Hungary, France from Algiers, Russia from Siberia, or any

absolute monarchy from its abject population, or what town from its

rural suburbs, that England does not derive in a much greater degree

from the United States, and the United States from England? What

commercial partnership, what industrious household exhibits so direct

an exchange of services? All that is wanted is that we should

recognise this fact, and give it all the assistance in our power. We

cannot be independent of one another. The attempt is more than

unsocial; it is suicidal. Could either dispense with the labour of

the other, it would immediately lose the reward of its own industry.

Whether national jealousy, or the thirst for warlike enterprise, or

the grosser appetite of commercial monopoly, attempt the separation,

the result and the crime are the same. We are made helps meet for one

another. Heaven has joined all who speak the British language, and

what Heaven has joined let no man think to put asunder."

The allies of England have been Portugal and Ireland, India and the

West Indies, and what is their condition has been shown. With Turkey

she has had a most intimate connection, and that great empire is now

prostrate. What inducement can she, then, offer in consideration of an

alliance with her? The more intimate our connection, the smaller must

be the domestic market for food and cotton, the lower must be their

prices, and the larger must be the domestic slave trade, now so

rapidly increasing. Her system tends toward the enslavement of the

labourer throughout the earth, and toward the destruction everywhere

of the value of the land; and therefore it is that she needs allies.

Therefore; it is that the _Times_, a journal that but ten years since

could find no term of vituperation sufficiently strong to be applied

to the people of this country, now tells its readers that--

"It is the prospect of these expanding and strengthening affinities

that imparts so much interest to the mutual hospitalities shown by

British and American citizens to the diplomatic representatives of

the sister States."

"To give capital a fair remuneration," it was needed that "_the price

of English labour should be kept down_;" and it has been kept down to

so low a point as to have enabled the cotton mills of Manchester to

supersede the poor Hindoo in his own market, and to drive him to the

raising of cheap sugar to supply the cheap labour of England--and to

supersede the manufacturers of this country, and drive our countrymen

to the raising of cheap corn to feed the cheap labour of England,

driven out of Ireland. Cheap food next forces the exportation of

negroes from Maryland and Virginia to Alabama and Mississippi, there

to raise cheap cotton to supersede the wretched cultivator of India;

and thus, in succession, each and every part of the agricultural world

is forced into competition with every other part, and the labourers of

the world become from day to day more enslaved; and all because the

people of England are determined that the whole earth shall become one

great farm, with but a single workshop, in which shall be fixed the

prices of all its occupants have to sell or need to buy. For the first

time in the history of the world, there exists a nation whose whole

system of policy is found in the shopkeeper's maxim, Buy cheap and

sell dear; and the results are seen in the fact that that nation is

becoming from day to day less powerful and less capable of the

exercise of self-government among the community of nations. From day

to day England is more and more seen to be losing the independent

position of the farmer who sells the produce of his own labour, and

occupying more and more that of the shopkeeper, anxious to conciliate

the favour of those who have goods to sell or goods to buy; and with

each day there is increased anxiety lest there should be a change in

the feelings of the customers who bring cotton and take in exchange

cloth and iron. The records of history might be searched in vain for a

case like hers--for a nation voluntarily subjecting itself to a

process of the most exhaustive kind. They present no previous case of

a great community, abounding in men of high intelligence, rejoicing in

the diminution of the proportion of its people _capable of feeding

themselves and others_, and in the increasing proportion _requiring to

be fed_. England now exports in a year nearly 400,000 men and women

that have been raised at enormous cost,[165] and she rejoices at

receiving in exchange 300,000 infants yet to be raised. She exports

the young, and retains the aged. She sends abroad the sound, and keeps

at home the unsound. She expels the industrious, and retains the idle.

She parts with the small capitalist, but she keeps the pauper. She

sends men from her own land, and with them the commodities they must

consume while preparing for cultivation distant lands;--and all these

things are regarded as evidences of growing wealth and power. She

sends men from where they could make twelve or twenty exchanges in a

year to a distance from, which they can make but one; and this is

taken as evidence of the growth of commerce. She sends her people from

the land to become trampers in her roads, or to seek refuge in filthy

lanes and cellars; and this is hailed as tending to promote the

freedom of man. In all this, however, she is but realizing the

prophecies of Adam Smith, in relation to the determination of his

countrymen to see in foreign trade alone "England's treasure."

In all nations, ancient and modern, freedom has come with the growth

of association, and every act of association is an act of commerce.

Commerce, and freedom grow, therefore, together, and whatever tends to

lessen the one must tend equally to lessen the other. The object of

the whole British system is to destroy the power of association, for

it seeks to prevent everywhere the growth of the mechanic arts, and

without them there can be no local places of exchange, and none of

that combination so needful to material, moral, intellectual, and

political improvement. That such has been its effect in Portugal and

Turkey, the West Indies, and India, and in our Southern States, we

know--and in all of these freedom declines as the power of association

diminishes. That such has been its effect in Ireland and Scotland, the

reader has seen. In England we may see everywhere the same tendency to

prevent the existence of association, or of freedom of trade. Land,

the great instrument of production, is becoming from day to day more

consolidated. Capital, the next great instrument, is subjected to the

control of the Bank of England--an institution that has probably

caused more ruin than any other that has ever existed.[166]

Associations for banking or manufacturing purposes are restrained by a

system of responsibility that tends to prevent prudent men from taking

part in their formation. The whole tendency of the system is to fetter

and restrain the productive power; and hence it is that it has proved

necessary to establish the fact that the great Creator had made a

serious mistake in the laws regulating the increase of food and of

men, and that the _cheapened_ labourer was bound to correct the error

by repressing that natural desire for association which leads to an

increase of population. The consequences of all this are seen in the

fact that there is in that country no real freedom of commerce. There

is no competition for the purchase of labour, and the labourer is

therefore a slave to the capitalist. There is no competition for the

use of capital, and its owner is a slave to his banker, who requires

him to content himself with the smallest profits. There is scarcely

any power to sell land, for it is everywhere hedged round with

entails, jointures, and marriage settlements, that fetter and enslave

its owner. There is no competition for obtaining "maidens in

marriage," for the _Chronicle_ assures us that marriage now rarely

takes place until the cradle has become as necessary as the ring;[167]

and when that is the case, the man will always be found a tyrant and

the woman a slave. In the effort to destroy the power of association,

and the freedom of trade and of man abroad, England has in a great

degree annihilated freedom at home; and all this she has done because,

from the day of the publication of _The Wealth of Nations_, her every

movement has looked to the perpetuation of the system denounced by its

author as a "manifest violation of the most sacred rights of mankind."