OF THE DUTY OF THE PEOPLE OF THE UNITED STATES.
The slave _must_ apply himself to such labour as his master may see
fit to direct him to perform, and he must give to that master the
produce of his exertions, receiving in return whatever the master may
see fit to give him. He is limited to a single place of exchange.
Precisely similar to this is the system which looks to limiting all
the people of the earth, outside of England, to agriculture as the
sole means of employment; and carried out by smothering in their
infancy the manufactures of other nations, while crushing the older
ones of India by compelling her to receive British manufactures free
of duty, and refusing to permit her to have good machinery, while
taxing her spindles and looms at home, and their products when sent to
Britain. It is one which looks to allowing the nations of the world to
have but one market, in which all are to compete for the sale of their
raw products, and one market, in which all are to compete for the
purchase of manufactured ones; leaving to the few persons who control
that market the power to fix the prices of all they require to buy and
all they desire to sell. Cotton and corn, indigo and wool, sugar and
coffee, are merely the various forms in which labour is sold; and the
cheaper they are sold, the cheaper must be the labour employed in
producing them, the poorer and more enslaved must be the labourer, the
less must be the value of land, the more rapid must be its exhaustion
and abandonment, and the greater must be the tendency toward the
transport of the enslaved labourer to some new field of action, there
to repeat the work of exhaustion and abandonment. Hence it is that we
see the slave trade prevail to so great an extent in all the countries
subject to the British system, except those in which famine and
pestilence are permitted silently to keep down the population to the
level of a constantly diminishing supply of food, as in Portugal,
Turkey, and Jamaica. The system to which the world is indebted for
these results is called "free-trade;" but there can be no freedom of
trade where there is no freedom of man, for the first of all
commodities to be exchanged is labour, and the freedom of man consists
only in the exercise of the right to determine for himself in what
manner his labour shall be employed, and how he will dispose of its
products. If the British system tends toward freedom, proof of the
fact will be found in the free employment of labour where it exists,
and in the exercise by the labourer of a large control over the
application of its produce. Are these things to be found in India?
Certainly not. The labourer there is driven from the loom and forced
to raise sugar or cotton, and his whole control over what is paid by
the consumer for the products of his labour cannot exceed fifteen per
cent. Can they be found in Ireland, in Turkey, or in Portugal?
Certainly not. The labourers of those countries now stand before the
world distinguished for their poverty, and for their inability to
determine for themselves for whom they will labour or what shall be
their reward. Were it otherwise, the "free trade" system would fail to
produce the effect intended. Its object is, and has always been, that
of preventing other communities from mining the coal or smelting the
ore provided for their use by the great Creator of all things, and in
such vast abundance; from making or obtaining machinery to enable them
to avail themselves of the expansive power of steam; from calling to
their aid any of the natural agents required in the various processes
of manufacture; from obtaining knowledge that might lead to
improvement in manufactures of any kind; and, in short, from doing any
thing but raise sugar, coffee, cotton, wool, indigo, silk, and other
raw commodities, to be carried, as does the slave of Virginia or Texas
with the product of his labour, to one great purchaser, who determines
upon their value and upon the value of all the things they are to
receive in exchange for them. It is the most gigantic system of
slavery the world has yet seen, and therefore it is that freedom
gradually disappears from every country over which England is enabled
to obtain control, as witness the countries to which reference has
just been made.
There are, however, as has been shown, several nations of Europe in
which men are daily becoming more free; and the reason for this is to
be found in the fact that they have resisted this oppressive system.
Germany and Russia, Spain, Denmark, Belgium, and other states, have
been determined to protect their farmers in their efforts to bring the
loom and the anvil to their side, and to have towns and other places
of exchange in their neighbourhood, at which they could exchange raw
products for manufactured ones and for manure; and in every one in
which that protection has been efficient, labour and land have become,
and are becoming, more valuable and man more free.
In this country protection has always, to some extent, existed; but at
some times it has been efficient, and at others not; and our tendency
toward freedom or slavery has always been in the direct ratio of its
efficiency or inefficiency. In the period from 1824 to 1833, the
tendency was steadily in the former direction, but it was only in the
latter part of it that it was made really efficient. Then mills and
furnaces increased in number, and there was a steady increase in the
tendency toward the establishment of local places of exchange; and
then it was that Virginia held her convention at which was last
discussed in that State the question of emancipation. In 1833,
however, protection was abandoned, and a tariff was established by
which it was provided that we should, in a few years, have a system of
merely revenue duties; and from that date the abandonment of the older
States proceeded with a rapidity never before known, and with it grew
the domestic slave trade and the pro-slavery feeling. Then it was that
were passed the laws restricting emancipation and prohibiting
education; and then it was that the export of slaves from Virginia and
the Carolinas was so great that the population of those States
remained almost, if not quite stationary, and that the growth of black
population fell from thirty per cent., in the ten previous years, to
twenty-four percent.[203] That large export of slaves resulted in a
reduction of the price of Southern products to a point never before
known; and thus it was that the system called free trade provided
cheap cotton. Slavery grew at the South, and at the North; for with
cheap cotton and cheap food came so great a decline in the demand for
labour, that thousands of men found themselves unable to purchase this
cheap food to a sufficient extent to feed their wives and their
children. A paper by "a farm labourer" thus describes that calamitous
portion of our history, when the rapid approach of the system called
free trade, under the strictly revenue provisions of the Compromise
Tariff, had annihilated competition for the purchase of labour:--
"The years 1839, 1840, and 1841 were striking elucidations of such
cases; when the cry of sober, industrious, orderly men--'Give me
_work_! only give me work; MAKE YOUR OWN TERMS--MYSELF AND FAMILY
HAVE NOTHING TO EAT'--was heard in our land. In those years thousands
of cases of the kind occurred in our populous
districts."--_Pittsburgh Dispatch_.
That such was the fact must be admitted by all who recollect the great
distress that existed in 1841-2. Throughout the whole length and
breadth of the land, there was an universal cry of "Give me work; make
your own terms--myself and family have nothing to eat;" and the
consequence of this approach toward slavery was so great a diminution
in the consumption of food, that the prices at which it was then
exported to foreign countries were lower than they had been for many
years; and thus it was that the farmer paid for the system which had
diminished the freedom of the labourer and the artisan.
It was this state of things that re-established protection for the
American labourer, whether in the field or in the workshop. The tariff
of 1842 was passed, and at once there arose competition for the
purchase of labour. Mills were to be built, and men were needed to
quarry the stone and get out the lumber, and other men were required
to lay the stone and fashion the lumber into floors and roofs, doors
and windows; and the employment thus afforded enabled vast numbers of
men again to occupy houses of their own, and thus was produced a new
demand for masons and carpenters, quarrymen and lumbermen. Furnaces
were built, and mines were opened, and steam-engines were required;
and the men employed at these works were enabled to consume more
largely of food, while ceasing to contend with the agricultural
labourer for employment on the farm. Mills were filled with females,
and the demand for cloths increased, with corresponding diminution in
the competition for employment in the making of shirts and coats.
Wages rose, and they rose in every department of labour; the evidence
of which is to be found in the fact that the consumption of food and
fuel greatly increased, while that of cloth almost doubled, and that
of iron trebled in the short period of five years.
How, indeed, could it be otherwise than that the reward of labour
should rise? The cotton manufacturer needed labourers, male and
female, and so did his neighbour of the woollens mill; and the
labourers they now employed could buy shoes and hats. The iron-masters
and the coal-miners needed workmen, and the men they employed
needed cotton and woollen cloths; and they could consume more largely
of food. The farmer's markets tended to improve, and he could buy more
largely of hats and shoes, ploughs and harrows, and the hatmakers and
shoemakers, and the makers of ploughs and harrows, needed more hands;
and therefore capital was everywhere looking for labour, where before
labour had been looking for capital. The value of cottons, and
woollens, and iron produced in 1846, as compared with that of 1842,
was greater by a hundred millions of dollars; and all this went to the
payment of labour, for all the profits of the iron-master and of the
cotton and woollen manufacturer went to the building of new mills and
furnaces, or to the enlargement of the old ones. Unhappily, however,
for us, our legislators were smitten with a love of the system called
free trade. They were of opinion that we were, by right, an
agricultural nation, and that so we must continue; and that the true
way to produce competition for the purchase of labour was to resolve
the whole nation into a body of farmers--and the tariff of 1842 was
repealed.
If the reader will now turn to page 107, he will see how large must
have been the domestic slave trade from 1835 to 1840, compared with
that of the period from 1840 to 1845. The effect of this in increasing
the crop and reducing the price of cotton was felt with great severity
in the latter period,[204] and it required time to bring about a
change. We are now moving in the same direction in which we moved from
1835 to 1840. For four years past, we have not only abandoned the
building of mills and furnaces, but have closed hundreds of old ones,
and centralization, therefore, grows from day to day. The farmer of
Ohio can no longer exchange his food directly with the maker of iron.
He must carry it to New York, as must the producer of cotton in
Carolina; who sees the neighbouring factory closed. [205] Local places
of exchange decline, and great cities take their place; and with the
growth of centralization grows the slave trade, North and South.
Palaces rise in New York and Philadelphia, while droves of black
slaves are sent to Texas to raise cotton, and white ones at the North
perish of disease, and sometimes almost of famine. "We could tell,"
says a recent writer in one of the New York journals--
"Of one room, twelve feet by twelve, in which were five resident
families, comprising twenty persons of both sexes and all ages, with
only two beds, without partition or screen, or chair or table, and
all dependent for their miserable support upon the sale of chips,
gleaned from the streets, at four cents a basket--of another, still
smaller and still more destitute, inhabited by a man, a woman, two
little girls, and a boy, who were supported by permitting the room to
be used as a rendezvous by the abandoned women of the street--of
another, an attic room seven feet by five, containing scarcely an
article of furniture but a bed, on which lay a fine-looking man in a
raging fever, without medicine or drink or suitable food, his
toil-worn wife engaged in cleaning dirt from the floor, and his
little child asleep on a bundle of rags in the corner--of another of
the same dimensions, in which we found, seated on low boxes around a
candle placed on a keg, a woman and her oldest daughter, (the latter
a girl of fifteen, and, as we were told, a prostitute,) sewing on
shirts, _for the making of which they were paid four cents apiece,
and even at that price, out of which they had to support two small
children, they could not get a supply of work_--of another of about
the same size occupied by a street rag-picker and his family, the
income of whose industry was eight dollars a month--of another,
scarcely larger, into which we were drawn by the terrific screams of
a drunken man beating his wife, containing no article of furniture
whatever--another warmed only by a tin pail of lighted charcoal
placed in the centre of the room, over which bent a blind man
endeavouring to warm himself; around him three or four men and women
swearing and quarrelling; in one corner on the floor a woman, who had
died the day previous of disease, and in another two or three
children sleeping on a pile of rags; (in regard to this room, we may
say that its occupants were coloured people, and from them but a few
days previous had been taken and adopted by one of our benevolent
citizens a beautiful little white girl, four or five years of age,
whose father was dead and whose mother was at Blackwell's Island;)
another from which not long; since twenty persons, sick with fever
were taken to the hospital, and every individual of them died. But
why extend the catalogue? Or why attempt to convey to the imagination
by words the hideous squalor and the deadly effluvia; the dim,
undrained courts, oozing with pollution; the dark narrow stairways
decayed with age, reeking with filth, and overrun with vermin; the
rotten floors, ceilings begrimed, crumbling, ofttimes too low to
permit you to stand upright, and windows stuffed with rags; or why
try to portray the gaunt shivering forms and wild ghastly faces in
these black and beetling abodes, wherein from cellar to garret
----'All life dies, death lives, and nature breeds
Perverse, all monstrous, all prodigious things,
Abominable, unutterable!'" _N. York Courier and Inquirer_.
Our shops are now everywhere filled with the products of the cheap
labour of England--of the labour of those foreign women who make
shirts at a penny apiece, finding the needles and the thread, and of
those poor girl's who spend a long day at making artificial flowers
for which they receive two pence, and then eke out the earnings of
labour by the wages of prostitution; and our women are everywhere
driven from employment--the further consequences of which may be seen
in the following extract from another journal of the day:--
"A gentleman who had been deputed to inquire into the condition of
this class of operatives, found one of the most expert of them
working from five o'clock in the morning until eleven at night, yet
earning only about three dollars a week. Out of this, she had to pay
a dollar and a half for board, leaving a similar amount for fuel,
clothing, and all other expenses. Her condition, however, as compared
with that of her class generally, was one of opulence. The usual
earnings were but two dollars a week, which, as respectable board,
could be had nowhere for less; than a dollar and a half, _left only
fifty cents for everything else_. The boarding-houses, even at this
price, are of the poorest character, always noisome and unhealthy,
and not unfrequently in vile neighbourhoods. With such positive and
immediate evils to contend with, what wonder that so many needlewomen
take 'the wages of sin?'"
"Among the cases brought to light in New York, was that of an
intelligent and skilful dressmaker, who was found in the garret of a
cheap boarding-house, out of work, and nor are such instances
unfrequent. The small remuneration which these workwomen receive
keeps them living from hand to mouth, so that, in case of sickness,
or scarcity of work, _they are sometimes left literally without a
crust_."--_Philada. Evening-Bulletin_.
If females cannot tend looms, make flowers, or do any other of those
things in which mind takes in a great degree the place of physical
power, they must make shirts at four cents apiece, or resort to
prostitution--or, they may work in the fields; and this is nearly the
latitude of choice allowed to them under the system called free trade.
Every furnace that is closed in Pennsylvania by the operation of this
system, lessens the value of labour in the neighbourhood, and drives
out some portion of the people to endeavour to sell elsewhere their
only commodity, labour. Some seek the cities and some go West to try
their fortunes. So, too, with the closing of woollens mills in New
York, and cotton mills in New England. Every such ease _compels_
people to leave their old homes and try to find new ones--and in this
form the slave trade now exists at the North to a great extent. The
more people thus _driven_ to the cities, the cheaper is labour, and
the more rapid is the growth of drunkenness and crime; and these
effects are clearly visible in the police reports of all our
cities.[206] Centralization, poverty, and crime go always hand in hand
with each other.
The closing of mills and furnaces in Maryland lessens the demand for
labour there, and the smaller that demand the greater _must_ be the
necessity on the part of those who own slaves to sell them to go
South; and here we find the counterpart of the state of things already
described as existing in. New York. The Virginian, limited to negroes
as the only commodity into which he can manufacture his corn and thus
enable it to travel cheaply to market, sends his crop to Richmond, and
the following extract of a letter from that place shows how the system
works:--
"_Richmond, March_ 3, 1853.
"I saw several children sold; the girls brought the highest price.
Girls from 12 to 18 years old brought from $500 to $800.
"I must say that the slaves did not display as much feeling as I had
expected, as a general thing--but there was _one_ noble
exception--God bless her! and save her, too!! as I hope he will in
some way, for if he does not interpose, there were no men there that
would.
"She was a fine-looking woman about 25 years old, with three
_beautiful_ children. Her children as well as herself were neatly
dressed. She attracted my attention at once on entering the room, and
I took my stand near her to learn her answers to the various
questions put to her by the traders. _One_ of these traders asked her
what was the matter with her eyes? Wiping away the tears, she
replied, 'I s'pose I have been crying.' 'Why do you cry?' 'Because I
have left my man behind, and his master won't let him come along.'
'Oh, if I buy you, I will furnish you with a better husband, or man,
as you call him, than your old one.' 'I don't want any _better_ and
won't have any _other_ as long as he lives.' 'Oh, but you will
though, if I buy you,' '_No, massa, God helping me, I never
will_.'"--_New York Tribune_.
At the North, the poor girl driven out from the cotton or the woollens
mill is forced to make shirts at four cents each, or sell herself to
the horrible slavery of prostitution. At the South, this poor woman,
driven put from Virginia, may perhaps at some time be found making one
of the _dramatis personæ_ in scenes similar to those here described by
Dr. Howe:--
"If Howard or Mrs. Fry ever discovered so ill-administered a den of
thieves as the New Orleans prison, they never described it. In the
negro's apartment I saw much which made me blush that I was a white
man; and which for a moment stirred up an evil spirit in my animal
nature. Entering a large paved court-yard, around which ran galleries
filled with slaves of all ages, sexes, and colours, I heard the snap
of a whip, every stroke of which sounded like the sharp crack of a
pistol. I turned my head, and beheld a sight which absolutely chilled
me to the marrow of my bones, and gave me, for the first time in my
life, the sensation of my hair stiffening at the roots. There lay a
black girl flat upon her face on a board, her two thumbs tied, and
fastened to one end, her feet tied and drawn tightly to the other
end, while a strap passed over the small of her back, and fastened
around the board, compressed her closely to it. Below the strap she
was entirely naked. By her side, and six feet off, stood a huge
negro, with a long whip, which he applied with dreadful power and
wonderful precision. Every stroke brought away a strip of skin, which
clung to the lash, or fell quivering on the pavement, while the blood
followed after it. The poor creature writhed and shrieked, and in a
voice which showed alike her fear of death and her dreadful agony,
screamed to her master who stood at her head, 'Oh, spare my life;
don't cut my soul out!' But still fell the horrid lash; still strip
after strip peeled off from the skin; gash after gash was cut in her
living flesh, until it became a livid and bloody mass of raw and
quivering muscle.
"It was with the greatest difficulty I refrained from springing upon
the torturer, and arresting his lash; but alas, what could I do, but
turn aside to hide my tears for the sufferer, and my blushes for
humanity!
"This was in a public and regularly organized prison; the punishment
was one recognised and authorized by the law. But think you the poor
wretch had committed a heinous offence, and had been convicted
thereof, and sentenced to the lash? Not at all! She was brought by
her master to be whipped by the common executioner, without trial,
judge, or jury, just at his beck or nod, for some real or supposed
offence, or to gratify his own whim or malice. And he may bring her
day after day, without cause assigned, and inflict any number of
lashes he pleases, short of twenty-five, provided only he pays the
fee. Or if he choose, he may have a private whipping-board on his own
premises, and brutalize himself there.
"A shocking part of |his horrid punishment was its publicity, as I
have said; it was in a court-yard, surrounded by galleries, which
were filled with coloured persons of all sexes--runaway slaves
committed for some crime, or slaves up for sale. You would naturally
suppose they crowded forward and gazed horror-stricken at the brutal
spectacle below; but they did not; many of them hardly noticed it,
and many were entirely indifferent to it. They went on in their
childish pursuits, and some were laughing outright in the distant
parts of the galleries;--so low can man created in God's image be
sunk in brutality."
Where, however, lies the fault of all this? Cheap cotton cannot be
supplied to the world unless the domestic slave trade be maintained,
and all the measures of England are directed toward obtaining a cheap
and abundant supply of that commodity, to give employment to that
"cheap and abundant supply of labour" so much desired by the writers
in the very journal that furnished to its readers this letter of Dr.
Howe.[207] To produce this cheap cotton the American labourer must be
expelled from his home in Virginia to the wilds of Arkansas, there to
be placed, perhaps, under the control of a _Simon Legree_.[208] That
he may be expelled, the price of corn must be cheapened in Virginia;
and that it may be cheapened, the cheap labourer of Ireland must be
brought to England there, to compete with the Englishman for the
reduction of labour to such a price as will enable England to "smother
in their infancy" all attempts at manufacturing corn into any thing
but negroes for Arkansas. That done, should the Englishman's "blood
boil" on reading Uncle Tom's Cabin, he is told to recollect that it is
"to his advantage that the slave should be permitted to wear his
chains in peace." And yet this system, which looks everywhere to the
enslavement of man, is dignified by the name of "free trade."
The cheap-labour system of England produces the slave trade of
America, India, and Ireland; and the manner in which it is enabled to
produce that effect, and the extent of its "advantage" to the people
of England itself, is seen in the following extract from a speech
delivered at a public meeting in that country but a few weeks since:--
"The factory-law was so unblushingly violated that the chief
inspector of that part of the factory district, Mr. Leonard Horner,
had found himself necessitated to write to the Home Secretary, to say
that he dared not, and would not send any of his sub-inspectors into
certain districts until he had police protection. * * * And
protection against whom? Against the factory-masters! Against the
richest men in the district, against the most influential men in the
district, against the magistrates of the district, against the men
who hold her Majesty's commission, against the men who sat in the
Petty Sessions as the representatives of royalty. * * * _And did the
masters suffer for their violation of the law?_ In his own district
it was a settled custom of the male, and to a great extent of the
female workers in factories, to be in bed from 9, 10 or 11 o'clock on
Sunday, because they were tired out by the labour of the week. Sunday
was the only day on which they could rest their wearied frames. * *
It would generally be found that, the longer the time of work, the
smaller the wages. * * _He would rather be a slave in South Carolina,
than a factory operative in England."_--_Speech of Rev, Dr. Bramwell,
at Crampton_.
The whole profit, we are told, results from "the last hour," and were
that hour taken from the master, then the people of Virginia might be
enabled to make their own cloth and iron, and labour might there
become so valuable that slaves would cease to be exported to Texas,
and cotton _must_ then rise in price; and in order to prevent the
occurrence of such unhappy events, the great cotton manufacturers set
at defiance the law of the land! The longer the working hours the more
"cheap and abundant" will be the "supply of labour,"--and it is only
by aid of this cheap, or slave, labour that, as we are told, "the
supremacy of England in manufactures can be maintained." The cheaper
the labour, the more rapid must be the growth of individual fortunes,
and the more perfect the consolidation of the land. Extremes thus
always meet. The more splendid the palace of the trader, whether in
cloth, cotton, negroes, or Hindoos, the more squalid will be the
poverty of the labourer, his wife and children,--and the more numerous
the diamonds on the coat of Prince Esterhazy, the more ragged will be
his serfs. The more that local places of exchange are closed, the
greater will be the tendency to the exhaustion and abandonment of the
land, and the more flourishing will be the slave trade, North and
South,--and the greater will be the growth of pro-slavery at the
South, and anti-slavery at the North. The larger the export of negroes
to the South, the greater will be their tendency to run from their
masters to the North, and the greater will be the desire at the North
to shut them out, as is proved by the following law of Illinois, now
but a few weeks old, by which negro slavery is, as is here seen,
re-established in the territory for the government of which was passed
the celebrated ordinance of 1787:--
"_Be it enacted by the People of the State of Illinois, represented
in the General Assembly._
3. If any negro, or mulatto, bond or free, shall come into this
State, and remain ten days, with the evident intention of residing in
the same, every such negro or mulatto shall be deemed guilty of a
high misdemeanour, and for the first offence shall Be fined the sum
of fifty dollars, to be recovered before any justice of the peace, in
the county where said negro or mulatto may be found; said proceeding
shall he in the name of the people Of the State of Illinois, and
shall be tried by a jury of twelve men.
4. If said negro or mulatto shall be found guilty, and the fine
assessed be not paid forthwith to the justice of the peace before
whom said proceedings were had, said justice shall forthwith
advertise said negro or mulatto, by posting up notices thereof in at
least three of the most public places in his district; which said
notices shall be posted up for ten days; and on the day, and at the
time and place mentioned in said advertisement, the said justice
shall at PUBLIC AUCTION proceed TO SELL said negro or mulatto to any
person who will pay said fine and costs."
Slavery now travels North, whereas only twenty years ago freedom was
travelling South. That such is the case is the natural consequence of
our submission, even in part, to the system that looks to _compelling_
the export of raw products, the exhaustion of the land, the cheapening
of labour, and the export of the labourer. Wherever it is submitted
to, slavery grows. Wherever it is resisted, slavery dies away, and
freedom grows, as is shown in the following list of--
Countries whose policy looks Countries whose policy looks
to cheapening labour. to raising the value of labour.
---------------------------- -------------------------------
The West Indies, Northern-Germany,
Portugal, Russia,
Turkey, Denmark,
India, Spain,
Ireland, Belgium,
United States under the United States under the
Compromise, and the tariffs of 1828 and 1842.
tariff of 1846.
Population declines in all the foreign countries in the first column,
and it became almost stationary in the Northern Slave States, as it is
now likely again to do, because of the large extent of the domestic
slave trade. Population grows in the foreign countries of the second
column, and it grew rapidly in the Northern Slave States, because of
the limited export of negroes at the periods referred to. The first
column gives the--so-called--free-trade countries, and the other
those which have protected themselves against the system; and yet
slavery grows in all those of the first column, and freedom in all
those of the second. The first column gives us the countries in which
education diminishes and intellect declines, and the period in our own
history in which were passed the laws prohibiting the education of
negroes. The second, those countries in which education advances, with
great increase of intellectual activity; and in our own history it
gives the period at which the Northern Slave States held conventions
having in view the adoption of measures looking to the abolition of
slavery. The first gives those foreign countries in which women and
children must labour in the field or remain unemployed. The second
those in which there is a daily increasing demand for the labour of
women, to be employed in the lighter labour of manufactures. The first
gives those in which civilization advances; and the second those in
which there is a daily increasing tendency toward utter barbarism. We
are now frequently invited to an alliance with Great Britain, and for
what? For maintaining and extending the system whose effects are found
in all the nations enumerated in the first column. For increasing the
supply of cheap cotton, cheap corn, and cheap sugar, all of which
require cheap, or slave, labour, and in return for these things we are
to have cheap cloth, the produce of the cheap, or slave, labour of
England, Scotland, and Ireland.
It is as the advocate of freedom that Britain calls upon us to enter
into more intimate relations with her. Her opponents are, as we are
told, the despots of Europe, the men who are trampling on the rights
of their subjects, and who are jealous of her because her every
movement looks, as we are assured, to the establishment of freedom
throughout the world. Were this so, it might furnish some reason for
forgetting the advice of Washington in regard to "entangling
alliances;" but, before adopting such a course, it would be proper to
have evidence that the policy of Britain, at any time since the days
of Adam Smith, has tended to the enfranchisement of man in any part of
the world, abroad or at home. Of all the despots now complained of,
the King of Naples stands most conspicuous, and it is in relation to
him that a pamphlet has recently been published by the present
Chancellor of the Exchequer, in which are found the following
passages:--
"The general belief is, that the prisoners for political offences in
the kingdom of the Two Sicilies are between fifteen or twenty and
thirty thousand. The government withholds all means of accurate
information, and accordingly there can be no certainty on the point.
I have, however, found that this belief is shared by persons the most
intelligent, considerate, and well informed. It is also, supported by
what is known of the astonishing crowds confined in particular
prisons, and especially by what is accurately known in particular
provincial localities, as to the numbers of individuals missing from
among the community. I have heard these numbers, for example, at
Reggio and at Salerno; and from an effort to estimate them in
reference to population, I do believe that twenty thousand is no
unreasonable estimate. In Naples alone some hundreds are at this
moment under indictment _capitally_; and when I quitted it a trial
was expected to come on immediately, (called that of the fifteenth of
May,) in which the number charged was between four and five hundred;
including (though this is a digression) at least one or more persons
of high station whoso opinions would in this country be considered
more conservative than your own." * * * "In utter defiance of this
law, the government, of which the Prefect of Police is an important
member, through the agents of that department, watches and dogs the
people, pays domiciliary visits, very commonly at night, ransacks
houses, seizing papers and effects, and tearing up floors at pleasure
under pretence of searching for arms, and imprisons men by the score,
by the hundred, by the thousand, without any warrant whatever,
sometimes without even any written authority at all, or any thing
beyond the word of a policeman; constantly without any statement
whatever of the nature of the offence.
"Nor is this last fact wonderful. Men are arrested, not because they
have committed, or are believed to have committed, any offence; but
because they are persons whom it is thought convenient to confine and
to get rid of, and against whom, therefore, some charge must be found
or fabricated."[209]
Why is it that the king is enabled to do these things? Obviously,
because his people are poor and weak. If they were strong, he could
not do them. Men, however, never have anywhere become strong to resist
power, except where the artisan has come to the side of the farmer;
and it is because he has not done so in Naples and Sicily that the
people are so poor, ignorant, and weak as we see them to be. Has
England ever endeavoured to strengthen the Neapolitan people by
teaching them how to combine their efforts for the working of their
rich ores, or for the conversion of their wool into cloth? Assuredly
not. She desires that wool and sulphur, and all other raw materials,
may be cheap, and that iron may be dear; and, that they may be so, she
does all that is in her power to prevent the existence in that country
of any of that diversification of interests that would find employment
for men, women, and children, and would thus give value to labour and
land. That she may do this, she retains Malta and the Ionian Islands,
as convenient places of resort for the great reformer of the age--the
smuggler--whose business it is to see that no effort at manufactures
shall succeed, and to carry into practical effect the decree that all
such attempts must be "smothered in their infancy." If, under these
circumstances, King Ferdinand is enabled to play the tyrant, upon whom
rests the blame? Assuredly, on the people who refuse to permit the
farmers of the Two Sicilies to strengthen themselves by forming that
natural alliance between the loom and the plough to which the people
of England were themselves indebted for their liberties. Were the
towns of that country growing in size, and were the artisan everywhere
taking his place by the side of the farmer, the people would be daily
becoming stronger and more free, whereas they are now becoming weaker
and more enslaved.
So, too, we are told of the tyranny and bad faith prevailing in Spain.
If, however, the people of that country are poor and weak, and
compelled to submit to measures that are tyrannical and injurious, may
it not be traced to the fact that the mechanic has never been
permitted to place himself among them? And may not the cause of this
be found in the fact that Portugal and Gibraltar have for a century
past been the seats of a vast contraband trade, having for _its
express object_ to deprive the Spanish people of all power to do any
thing but cultivate the soil? Who, then, are responsible for the
subjection of the Spanish people? Those, assuredly, whose policy looks
to depriving the women and children of Spain of all employment except
in the field, in order that wool may be cheap and that cloth may be
dear.
Turkey is poor and weak, and we hear much of the designs of Russia, to
be counteracted by England; but does England desire that Turkey shall
grow strong and her people become free? Does she desire that
manufactures shall rise, that towns shall grow, and that the land
shall acquire value? Assuredly not. The right to inundate that country
with merchandise is "a golden privilege" never to be abandoned,
because it would raise the price of silk and lower the price of silk
goods.
The people of Austria and Hungary are weak, but has England ever tried
to render them strong to obtain their freedom? Would she not now
oppose any measures calculated to enable the Hungarians to obtain the
means of converting their food and their wool into cloth--to obtain
mechanics and machinery, by aid of which towns could grow, and their
occupants become strong and free? To render any aid of that kind would
be in opposition to the doctrine of cheap food and cheap labour.
Northern Germany is becoming strong and united, and the day is now at
hand when all Germany will have the same system under which the North
has so much improved; but these things are done in opposition to
England, who disapproves of them because they tend to raise the price
of the raw products of the earth and lower that of manufactured ones,
and to enable the agricultural population to grow rich and strong; and
the more exclusively she depends on trade, the greater is her
indisposition to permit the adoption of any measures tending to limit
her power over the people of the world.
The people of China are weak, but does the consumption of opium to the
extent of forty millions of dollars a year tend to strengthen them?
The government, too, is weak, and therefore is Hong Kong kept for the
purpose of enabling "the great reformer" to evade the laws against the
importation of a commodity that yields the East India Company a profit
of sixteen millions of dollars a year, and the consumption of which is
so rapidly increasing.
Burmah, too, is weak, and therefore is her territory to be used for
the purpose of extending the trade in opium throughout the interior
provinces of China. Will this tend to strengthen, or to free, the
Chinese people?
Can the people of this country become parties to a system like
this--one that looks to cheapening labour every where? Can they be
parties to any system that can be maintained only on the condition of
"an abundant and cheap supply of labour?" Or, can they be parties to
an alliance that, wherever it is found, so far cheapens man as to
render him a profitable article for the export trade?
Who, then, are our natural allies? Russia, Prussia, and Denmark are
despotisms, we are told. They are so; but yet so beautiful and so
perfect is the harmony of interests under a natural system, that that
which despots do in their own defence strengthens the people, and
carries them on toward freedom. Denmark is a despotism, and yet her
people are the freeest and most happy of any in Europe. It is time
that we emancipated ourselves from "the tyranny of words"[210] under
which we live, and looked to things. England has what is called a free
government, and yet Ireland, the West Indies, and India have been
prostrated under the despotism of the spindle and loom, while despotic
Denmark protects her people against that tyranny, and thus enables her
women and her children to find other employments than those of the
field. The King of Prussia desires to strengthen himself against
France, Austria, and Russia; and, to do this, he strengthens his
people by enabling them to find employment for all their time, to find
manure for their farms, and to find employment for their minds; and he
strengthens Germany by the formation of a great Union, that gives to
thirty millions of people the same advantage of freedom of internal
trade that subsists among ourselves. The Emperor of Russia desires to
strengthen himself, and he, in like manner, adopts measures leading to
the building of towns, the diversification of labour, and the habit of
association among men; and thus does he give value to land and labour.
He is a despot, it is true, but he is doing what is required to give
freedom to sixty millions of people; while all the measures of England
in India tend to the enslavement of a hundred millions. We are told of
his designs upon Turkey--but what have the _people_ of that country to
lose by incorporation within the Russian Empire? Now, they are poor
and enslaved, but were they once Russian the spindle would be brought
to the wool, towns would cease to decline, labour and land would
acquire value, and the people would begin to become free. It may be
doubted if any thing would so much tend to advance the cause of
freedom in Europe as the absorption of Turkey by Russia, for it would
probably be followed by the adoption of measures that would secure
perfect freedom of trade throughout all Middle and Eastern Europe,
with large increase in the value of man. The real despotism is that
which looks to cheapening labour, and the real road to freedom is that
which looks toward raising the value of labour and land.
The natural allies of this country are the agricultural nations of the
world, for their interests and ours look in the same direction, while
those of England look in one directly opposite. They and we need that
the prices of all agricultural products should be high, and those of
manufactured articles low, while England desires that the latter may
be high and the former low. That they and we may be gratified, it is
required that machinery shall take its place by the food and the wool;
that towns shall arise, and that man shall everywhere become strong
and free. That she may be gratified, it is required that the food and
the wool shall go to the spindle and the loom; that men, women, and
children shall be confined to the labours of the field, and that men
shall remain poor, ignorant, and enslaved. The more Russia makes a
market for her wheat, the higher will be its price, to the great
advantage of the farmers of the world; and the more cotton and sugar
she will require, and the higher will be their prices, to the great
advantage of the planters of the world. The more Germany makes a
market for her wool, the higher will be its price, and the cheaper
will be cloth, and the more cotton and sugar she will need. The more
we make a market for cotton, the better will it be for the people of
India; and the more we consume our own grain, the better will it be
for the farmers of Germany. Our interests and theirs are one and the
same; but it is to the interest of the British manufacturer to have
all the world competing with each other to sell in his one limited
market, and the more competition he can create, the cheaper will be
products of the plough, and the larger will be the profits of the
loom. He wishes to buy cheaply the things we have to sell, and to sell
dearly those we have to buy. We wish to sell dearly and buy cheaply,
and as our objects are directly the reverse of his, it would be as
imprudent for us to be advised by him, as it would be for the farmer
to enter into a combination with the railroad for the purpose of
keeping up the price of transportation.
Russia and Germany, Denmark, Spain, and Belgium are engaged in
resisting a great system of taxation, and they grow rich and strong,
and therefore their people become from year to year more free.
Portugal and India, Turkey and Ireland yield to the system, and they
become from year to year poorer and weaker, and their people more
enslaved. It is on the part of the former a war for peace, and
fortunately it is a war that involves no expense for fleets and
armies, and one under which both wealth and population grow with great
rapidity--and one, therefore, in which we may, and must, unite, if we
desire to see the termination of the slave trade at home or abroad.
Russia and Germany, Denmark, Spain, and Belgium are engaged in an
effort to raise the value of man _at home_, wherever that home may be,
and thus to stop the forced export of men, whether black, brown, or
white: England is engaged in an effort to destroy everywhere the value
of man _at home_, and therefore it is that the slave trade flourishes
in the countries that submit to her system. We desire to increase the
value of man in Virginia, and thus to terminate the domestic slave
trade. We desire that corn and cotton, rice, sugar, and tobacco may be
high, and cloth and iron low; that labour may be largely paid, and
that man may become free; and the less our dependence on the market of
England, the sooner will our desires be gratified.
* * * * *
Are we then to adopt a system of measures tending to the injury of the
people of England? By no means. Her _real_ interests and ours are the
same, and by protecting ourselves against her system, we are
benefiting her. The harmony of interests is so perfect, that nations
_cannot_ be benefited by measures tending to the injury of other
nations; and when they allow themselves to be led away by the belief
that they can be so, they are always themselves the heaviest
sufferers. The sooner that all the agricultural communities of the
earth shall come to an understanding, that it is to their interest to
withdraw from the present insane contest for the privilege of
supplying a single and limited market, and determine to create markets
for themselves, the sooner will the English labourer, land-owner, and
capitalist find themselves restored to freedom. That the reader may
understand this, we must look once more to Ireland. The closing of the
demand for labour in that country drove the poor people to England in
search of employment. "For half a century back"--that is, since the
Union--"the western shores of our island," says a British journalist--
"Especially Lancashire and Glasgow have been flooded with crowds of
half clad, half fed, half civilized Celts, many thousands of whom
have settled permanently in our manufacturing towns, reducing wages
by their competition, and what is worse, reducing the standard of
living and comfort among our people by their example--spreading
squalor and disease by their filthy habits--inciting to turbulence
and discontent by their incorrigible hostility to law, incalculably
increasing the burden of our poor rates--and swelling the registry of
crime, both in police courts and assizes; to the great damage of the
national character and reputation. The abundant supply of cheap
labour which they furnished had no doubt the effect of enabling our
manufacturing industry to increase at a rate and, to a height which,
without them, would have been unattainable; and so far they have been
of service."--_North British Review_, No. 35.
The essential error of this passage is found in the supposition that
any set of people or any species of industry, is to profit by the
cheapening of labour and the enslavement of man. Nothing of this kind
can take place. The true interests of all men are promoted by the
elevation, and they all suffer by whatever tends to the depression, of
their fellow-men. The master of slaves, whether wearing a crown or
carrying a whip, is himself a slave; and that such is the case with
nations as well as individuals, the reader may perhaps be satisfied if
he will follow out the working of the British system as here described
by the reviewer. For half a century Irish labour has been, as we are
here told, poured into England, producing a glut in the market, and
lowering not only the wages, but also the standard of comfort among
English labourers. This is quite true; but why did these men come?
Because labour was cheaper in Ireland than in England. Why was it so?
Because, just half a century since, it was provided by the Act of
Union that the women and children of Ireland should either remain idle
or work in the field. Prior to the centralization by that act of all
power in the British Parliament, the people of that country had been
vigorously engaged in the effort to produce competition for the
purchase of labour _at home_; and had they been permitted to continue
on in that direction, it would have risen to a level with English
labour, and then it could not have been profitably exported. This,
however, they were not permitted to do. Their furnaces and factories
were closed, and the people who worked in them were driven to England
to seek their bread, and wages fell, because the price of all
commodities, labour included, tends to a level, and whatever reduces
them anywhere tends to reduce them everywhere. The price of English
labour fell because the Act of Union had diminished the value of that
of Ireland.
If we desire to know to what extent it had this effect, we must look
to the consequences of an over-supply of _perishable_ articles. Of all
commodities, labour is _the most perishable_, because it must be sold
on the instant or it is wasted, and if wasted, the man who has it to
sell may perish himself. Now we know that an over-supply of even iron,
equal to ten per cent., will reduce prices thirty, forty, or fifty per
cent., and that an excess of a single hundred thousand bales in the
crop of cotton makes a difference of ten per cent. upon three millions
of bales, whereas a diminution to the same extent will make a
difference of ten per cent. in the opposite direction. Still more is
this the case with oranges and peaches, which must be sold at once or
wasted. With an excess in the supply of either, they are often
abandoned as not worth the cost of gathering and carrying to market. A
small excess in the supply of men, women, and children so far reduces
their value in the eyes of the purchaser of labour, that he finds
himself, as now in England, induced to regard it as a mercy of Heaven
when famine, pestilence, and emigration clear them out of his way; and
he is then disposed to think that the process "cannot be carried too
far nor continued too long."
Irish labour, having been cheapened by the provisions of the Act of
Union, was carried to the market of England for sale, and thus was
produced _a glut of the most perishable of all commodities_; and the
effect of that glut must have been a diminution in the general price
of labour in England that far more than compensated for the increased
number of labourers. Admitting, however, that the diminution was no
more than would be so compensated, it would follow, of course, that
the quantity of wages paid after a year's immigration was the same
that it had previously been. That it was not, and could not have been
so great, is quite certain; but it is not needed to claim more than
that there was no increase. It follows, necessarily, that while the
quantity of wages to be expended in England against food and clothing
remained the same, the number of persons among whom it was to be
divided had increased, and each had less to expend. This of course
diminished the power to purchase food, and to a much greater degree
diminished the demand for clothing, for the claims of the stomach are,
of all others, the most imperious. The reader will now see that the
chief effect thus produced by cheap labour is a reduction in the
domestic demand for manufactured goods. As yet, however, we are only
at the commencement of the operation. The men who had been driven from
Ireland by the closing of Irish factories, had been consumers of
food,[211] but as they could no longer consume at home, it became now
necessary that that food should follow them to England, and the
necessity for this transportation tended largely to diminish the
prices of all food in Ireland, and of course the value of labour and
land. Each new depression in the price of labour tended to swell the
export of men, and the larger that export the greater became, of
course, the necessity for seeking abroad a market for food. Irish food
came to swell the supply, but the English market for it did not grow,
because the greater the glut of men, the smaller became the sum of
wages to be laid out against food; and thus Irish and English food
were now contending against each other, to the injury, of English and
Irish labour and land. The lower the price of food in England, the
less was the inducement to improve the land, and the less the demand
for labour the less the power to buy even food, while the power to pay
for clothing diminished with tenfold rapidity. With each step in this
direction the labourer lost more and more the control over his own
actions, and became more and more enslaved. The decline in the home
demand for manufactures then produced a necessity for seeking new
markets, for underworking the Hindoo, and for further cheapening
labour; and the more labour was cheapened the less became the demand
for, and the return to capital. Land, labour, and capital thus
suffered alike from the adoption of a policy having for its object to
prevent the people of Ireland from mining coal, making iron, or
availing themselves of the gratuitous services of those powerful
agents so abundantly provided by nature for their use.
The reader may, perhaps, appreciate more fully the evil effects of
this course upon an examination of the reverse side of the picture.
Let us suppose that the Irishman could at once be raised from being
the slave of the landholder to becoming a freeman, exercising control
over the application of his labour, and freely discussing with his
employer what should be his reward,--and see what would be the effect.
It would at once establish counter-attraction, and instead of a
constant influx of people _from_ Ireland into England, there would be
a constant afflux _to_ that country, and in a little time the whole
mass of Irish labour that now weighs on the English market would be
withdrawn, and wages would rise rapidly. At the cost of the
landholder, it will be said. On the contrary, to his profit. The
Irishman at home, fully employed, would consume thrice the food he can
now obtain, and Irish food would at once cease to press on the English
market, and the price of English food would rise. This, of course,
would offer new inducements to improve the land, and, this would make
a demand for labour and capital, the price of both of which would
rise. These things, however, it will be said, would be done at the
cost of the manufacturer. On the contrary, to his advantage Ireland
now consumes but little of English manufactures. "No one," says the
Quarterly Review, "ever saw an English scarecrow with such rags" as
are worn by hundreds of thousands of the people of Ireland. Raise the
value of Irishmen at home, make them free, and the Irish market will
soon require more manufactured goods than now go to all India. Raise
the value of man in Great Britain, and the domestic market will absorb
an amount of commodities that would now be deemed perfectly
incredible.
How can this be done for Ireland? By the same process under which the
man of Germany, Russia, Denmark, and Spain is now passing gradually
toward freedom. By providing that she shall be _protected_ in her
efforts to bring the consumer to the side of the producer, and thus be
enabled to provide at home demand for all her labour and all her food,
and for all the capital now deemed surplus that weighs on the market
of England. It will, however, be said that this would deprive the
English manufacturer of the market he now has in that country. It
would not. He would sell more in value, although it would certainly be
less in bulk. If Ireland spun her own yarn and made her own coarse
cloths, she would need to buy fine ones. If she made her woollen cloth
she could afford to buy silks. If she made her own pig-iron she would
have occasion to purchase steam-engines. If she mined her own coal she
would require books; and the more her own labourer was elevated in the
scale of material comfort, and moral and intellectual improvement, the
larger would be her demands on her neighbours for those commodities
requiring for their production the exercise of mind, to their
advantage as well as her own.
The error in the whole British system is, that it looks to preventing
everywhere local association and local commerce; and this it does
because it seeks to locate in England the workshop of the world. The
natural effect of this is a desire to compel all nations to transport
their products to market in their rudest form, at greatest cost to
themselves, and greatest exhaustion of their land; and the poorer they
become, the greater are her efforts at competing with them in the
rudest manufactures, to the great injury of her own people. The man
who is constantly competing with men below himself, will be sure
eventually to fall to their level; whereas, he who looks upward and
determines upon competition with those who are above him, will be very
likely to rise to their level. If all the world were engaged in
perfecting their products, the standard of man would be everywhere
rising, and the power to purchase would grow everywhere, with rapid
increase in the amount of both internal and external commerce, but the
commodities, exchanged would be of a higher character--such as would
require for their preparation a higher degree of intellect. At
present, all the nations outside of England are to be stimulated to
the adoption of a system that affords to their men, women, and
children no employment but that of the rude operations of the field,
while those in England are to be kept at work mining coal, making pig
metal; and converting cotton into yarn; and thus the tendency of the
system is toward driving the whole people of the world into pursuits
requiring little more than mere brute labour, and the lowest grade of
intellect, to the destruction of commerce, both internal and external.
The more this is carried into effect the more must the people of
England and the world become brutalized and enslaved, and the greater
must be the spread of intemperance and immorality. To this, Ireland,
India, and all other countries that find themselves forced to press
their products on the English market, are largely contributing, and
the only people that are doing any thing for its correction are those
who are labouring to make a market at home for their products, and
thus diminish the competition for their sale in the English market.
Were Germany and Russia now to abolish protection, the direct effect
would be to throw upon England an immense amount of food they now
consume at home, and thus diminish the price to such an extent as to
render it impracticable to apply labour to the improvement of English
land. This would of course diminish the wages of English labour, and
diminish the power of the labourers to purchase manufactured goods,
and the diminution thus produced in the domestic demand would be twice
as great as the increase obtained abroad. It is time that the people
of England should learn that the laws which govern the community of
nations are precisely the same as those which govern communities of
individuals, and that neither nations nor individuals can benefit
permanently by any measures tending to the injury of their neighbours.
The case of Ireland is one of oppression more grievous than is to be
found elsewhere in the records of history; and oppression has brought
its punishment in the enslavement of the English labourer, land-owner,
and capitalist. The first has small wages, the second small rents, and
the third small profits, while the intermediate people, bankers,
lawyers, and agents, grow rich. The remedy for much of this would be
found in the adoption of measures that would raise the value of
labour, capital, and land, in Ireland, and thus permit the two former
to remain at home, to give value to the last.
The evil under which the people of England labour is that they are
borne down under the weight of raw produce forced into their market,
and the competition for its sale. This, in turn, reacts upon the
world--as prices in that market fix the prices of all other markets.
What is now needed is to raise _there_ the price of labour and its
products, as would at once be done were it possible for all the
agricultural nations to become so much masters of their own actions as
to be able to say that from this time forward they would have such a
demand at home as would free them from the slavery incident to a
_necessity_ for going to that market. Could that now be said, the
instant effect would be so to raise the price of food as to make a
demand for labour and capital in England that would double the price
of both, as will be seen on an examination of the following facts. The
United Kingdom contains seventy millions of acres, and an average
expenditure of only three days labour per acre, at 12s. per week,
would amount to twenty-one millions of pounds, or half as much as the
whole capital engaged in the cotton trade. No one who studies the
reports on the agriculture of the British islands can doubt that even
a larger quantity might annually, and most profitably, be employed on
the land; and when we reflect that this would be repeated year after
year, it will be seen how large a market would thus be made for both
labour and capital. The rise of wages would put an end to the export
of men from either England or Ireland, and the increase in the home
demand for manufactures would be great.
It may be said that the rise in the price of food would give large
rents, without improvement in the land, and that the profit of this
change would go to the land-owner. In all other trades, however, high
wages _compel_ improvements of machinery, and it is only when they are
low that men can profitably work old machines. Were the wages of
England this day doubled, it would be found that they would eat up the
whole proceeds of all badly farmed land, leaving no rent, and then the
owners of such land would find themselves as much obliged to improve
their machinery of production as are the mill-owners of Manchester. If
they could not improve the whole, they would find themselves compelled
to sell a part; and thus dear labour would produce division of the
land and emancipation of the labourer, as cheap labour has produced
the consolidation of the one and the slavery of the other.
To enable Russia and Germany to refrain from pressing their products
on the market that now regulates and depresses prices, it would be
required that they should have great numbers of mills and furnaces, at
which their now surplus food could be consumed, and their effect would
be to create among them a new demand for labour with rise of wages, a
better market for food to the benefit of the farmer, a better market
for capital, and a greatly increased power to improve the land and to
make roads and build schools. This would, of course, make demand for
cotton, to the benefit of the cotton-grower, while improved prices for
food would benefit the farmer everywhere. Maryland, Virginia, and the
Carolinas, too, would then have their factories, at which food and
cotton would be converted into cloth, and the value of man in those
States would rise to a level with that of Mississippi and Alabama--and
our domestic slave trade would be brought to an end by precisely the
same measures that would relieve England, Ireland, and Scotland from
any _necessity_ for exporting men to distant regions of the earth.
Nothing of this kind could at once be done; but Russia, Germany, and
other countries of Europe are now, under protection, doing much toward
it; and it is in the power of the people of this country to contribute
largely toward bringing about such a state of things. Much was being
done under the tariff of 1842, but it is being undone under the act of
1846. The former tended to _raise_ the value of man at home, and hence
it was that under it the domestic slave trade so much diminished. The
latter tends to _diminish_ the value of man at home, and hence it is
that under it that trade so rapidly increases. The former tended to
diminish the quantity of food to be forced on the market of England,
to the deterioration of the value of English labour and land. The
latter tends to increase the quantity for which a market must be
sought abroad; and whatever tends to force food into that country
tends to lessen the value of its people, and to produce their _forced
export_ to other countries. As yet, however, we have arrived only at
the commencement of the working of the "free trade" system. We are now
where we were in 1836, when the making of railroads by aid of large
purchases, _on credit_, of cloth and iron, stimulated the consumption
of food and diminished the labour applied to its production. After the
next revulsion, now perhaps not far distant, the supply of food will
be large, and then it will be that the low prices of 1841-2, for both
food and labour, will be repeated.
In considering what is the duty of this country, every man should
reflect that whatever tends to increase the quantity of raw produce
forced on the market of England, tends to the cheapening of labour and
land everywhere, to the perpetuation of slavery, and to the extension
of its domain--and that whatever tends to the withdrawal of such
produce from that market tends to raising the value of land and labour
everywhere, to the extinction of slavery, and to the elevation of man.
The system commonly called free trade tends to produce the former
results; and where man is enslaved there can be no real freedom of
trade. That one which looks to protection against this extraordinary
system of taxation, tends to enable men to determine for themselves
whether they will make their exchanges abroad or at home; and it is in
this power of choice that consists the freedom of trade and of man. By
adopting the "free trade," or British, system we place ourselves side
by side with the men who have ruined Ireland and India, and are now
poisoning and enslaving the Chinese people. By adopting the other, we
place ourselves by the side of those whose measures tend not only to
the improvement of their own subjects, but to the emancipation of the
slave everywhere, whether in the British Islands, India, Italy, or
America.
It will be said, however, that protection tends to destroy commerce,
the civilizer of mankind. Directly the reverse, however, is the fact.
It is the system now called free trade that tends to the destruction
of commerce, as is shown wherever it obtains. Protection looks only to
resisting a great scheme of foreign taxation that everywhere limits
the power of man to combine his efforts with those of his neighbour
man for the increase of his production, the improvement of his mind,
and the enlargement of his desires for, and his power to procure, the
commodities produced among the different nations of the world. The
commerce of India does not grow, nor does that of Portugal, or of
Turkey; but that of the protected, countries does increase, as has
been shown in the case of Spain, and can now be shown in that of
Germany. In 1834, before the formation of the _Zoll-Verein_, Germany
took from Great Britain,
of her own produce and manufactures, only........ £4,429,727
Whereas in 1852 she took......................... £7,694,059
And as regards this country, in which protection has always to some
extent existed, it is the best customer that England ever had, and our
demands upon her grow most steadily and regularly under protection,
because the greater our power to make coarse goods, the greater are
those desires which lead to the purchase of fine ones, and the greater
our ability to gratify them.
Whatever tends to increase the power of man to associate with his
neighbour man, tends to promote the growth of commerce, and to produce
that material, moral, and intellectual improvement which leads to
freedom. To enable men to exercise that power is the object of
protection. The men of this country, therefore, who desire that all
men, black, white, and brown, shall at the earliest period enjoy
perfect freedom of thought, speech, action, and trade, will find, on
full consideration, that duty to themselves and to their fellow-men
requires that they should advocate efficient protection, as the true
and only mode of abolishing the domestic trade in slaves, whether
black or white.
* * * * *
It will, perhaps, be said that even although the slave trade were
abolished, slavery would still continue to exist, and that the great
object of the anti-slavery movement would remain unaccomplished. One
step, at all events, and a great one, would have been made. To render
men _adscripti glebæ_, thus attaching them to the soil, has been in
many countries, as has so recently been the case in Russia, one of the
movements toward emancipation; and if this could be here effected by
simple force of attraction, and without the aid of law, it would be
profitable to all, both masters and slaves; because whatever tends to
attract population tends inevitably to increase the value of land, and
thus to enrich its owner. There, however, it could not stop, as the
reader will readily see. Cheap food enables the farmer of Virginia to
raise cheap labour for the slave market. Raise the price of food, and
the profit of that species of manufacture would diminish. Raise it
still higher, and the profit would disappear; and then would the
master of slaves find it necessary to devolve upon the parent the
making of the _sacrifice_ required for the raising of children, and
thus to enable him to bring into activity all the best feelings of the
heart.
Cheap food and slavery go together; and if we desire to free ourselves
from the last, we must commence by ridding ourselves of the first.
Food is cheap in Virginia, because the market for it is distant, and
most of its value there is swallowed up in the cost of transportation.
Bring the consumer close to the door of the farmer, and it will be
worth as much there as it now commands in the distant market. Make a
demand everywhere around him for all the food that is raised, and its
value will everywhere rise, for then we shall cease to press upon the
limited market of England, which fixes the price of our crop, and is
now borne down by the surplus products of Germany and Russia, Canada
and ourselves; and the price will then be higher in the remote parts
of Virginia than can now be obtained for it in the distant market of
England. It will then become quite impossible for the farmer
profitably to feed his corn to slaves.
With the rise in the price of food the land would quadruple in value,
and that value would continue to increase as the artisan more and more
took his place by the side of the producer of food and wool, and as
towns increased in number and in size; and with each step in this
direction the master would attach less importance to the ownership of
slaves; while the slave would attach more importance to freedom. With
both, the state of feeling would, improve; and the more the negro was
improved the more his master would be disposed to think of slavery, as
was thought of old by Jefferson and Madison, that it was an evil that
required to be abated; and the more rapid the growth of wealth, the
greater the improvement in the value of land, the more rapid would be
the approach of freedom to all, the master and the slave.
It will be said, however, that if food should so much increase in
value as to render it desirable for Virginia to retain the whole
growth of her population, black and white, the necessary effect would,
be a great rise in the price of cotton, and a great increase in the
wealth of the planters further South, who would be desirous to have
negroes, even at greatly increased prices. That the price of cotton
would rise is quite certain. Nothing keeps it down but the low price
of food, which forces out the negroes of the Northern States, and
thus, maintains the domestic slave trade; and there is no reason to
doubt that not only would there be a large increase in its price, but
that the power to pay for it would increase with equal rapidity. More
negro labour would then certainly be needed, and then would exist
precisely the state of things that leads inevitably to freedom. When
two masters seek one labourer, the latter becomes free; but when two
labourers seek one master, the former become enslaved. The increased
value of negro labour would render it necessary for the owners of
negroes to endeavour to stimulate the labourer to exertion, and this
could be done only by the payment of wages for over-work, as is even
now done to a great extent. At present, the labour of the slave is in
a high degree unproductive, as will be seen by the following passage
from a letter to the New York _Daily Times_, giving the result of
information derived from a gentleman of Petersburgh, Virginia, said to
be "remarkable for accuracy and preciseness of his information:"--
"He tells me," says the writer, "he once very carefully observed how
mush labour was expended in securing a crop of very thin wheat, and
found that it took four negroes one day to cradle, rake, and bind one
acre. (That is, this was the rate at which the field was harvested.)
In the wheat-growing districts of Western New York, four men would be
expected to do five acres of a similar crop.
"Mr. Griscom further states, as his opinion, that four negroes do
not, in the ordinary agricultural operations of this State,
accomplish as much as one labourer in New Jersey. Upon my expressing
my astonishment, he repeated it as his deliberately formed opinion.
"I have since again called on Mr. Griscom, and obtained permission to
give his name with the above statement. He also wishes me to add,
that the ordinary waste in harvesting, by the carelessness of the
negroes, above that which occurs in the hands of Northern labourers,
is large enough to equal what a Northern farmer would consider a
satisfactory profit on the crop."
To bring into activity all this vast amount of labour now wasted, it
is needed to raise the _cost of man_, by raising the price of food;
and that is to be done by bringing the farmer's market to his door,
and thus giving value to labour and land. Let the people of Maryland
and Virginia, Carolina, Kentucky, and Tennessee be enabled to bring
into activity their vast treasures of coal and iron ore, and to render
useful their immense water-powers--free the masters from their present
dependence on distant markets, in which they _must_ sell all they
produce, and _must_ buy all they consume--and the negro slave becomes
free, by virtue of the same great law that in past times has freed the
serf of England, and is now freeing the serf of Russia. In all
countries of the world man has become free as land has acquired value,
and as its owners have been enriched; and in all man has become
enslaved as land has lost its value, and its owners have been
impoverished.[212]