services of the politician, the soldier, the owner of slaves, and the trader — of that class which lives by virtue of the simple act of appropriation. Every movement, however, in that direction, looking necessarily to a diminution in the power of the latter, they are all soldier, trader, and politician-found, uniformly, banded together for the subjection of the people; as was seen in Athens and in Rome, and as may now be seen in all the countries of Europe and America. The history of the world is but a record of the efforts of the few to tax the many, and of those of the many to escape taxation; and the tendency of society to assume a natural and stable form is in the precise ratio of the success of this latter class—a success, however, slowly and tediously accomplished, because of the power of those who live by appropriation to come together in towns and cities, while they who contribute to their revenues are scattered throughout the country.

§ 2. The close connection between war and trade is seen in every page of history. The Ishmaelites, whose hand was against every man, while every man's hand was against them, were extensive dealers in slaves and other merchandise. The Phoenicians, Carians, and Sidonians-being freebooters at one time, or traders at another, as might best suit their purposes-were always ready for any measures tending to increase their monopoly at home by adding to the number of their slaves; or their monopolies abroad by preventing others from interfering in the trade which they, themselves, carried on between distant men. The pages of Homer exhibit to us Menelaus boasting of his piracies, and of the plunder he had acquired; and the sage Ulysses as feeling his honor untouched by the inquiry, as to whether he came in the character of trader, or of pirate. Turning next to a somewhat corresponding period in the history of modern Europe, we find the Norwegian sea-kings and their subjects alternately engaged in "gathering property," as robbery by sea and land was naively termed; or in carrying the produce of one kingdom to another-both pursuits being held in equally high esteem. Later, the same connection becomes obvious in the histories of Hawkins, Drake, and Cavendish; in that of the slave-trade, from its commencement to its close ;* in that

"There is no nation in Europe which has plunged so deeply into this guilt as Britain. We stopped the natural progress of civilization in Africa.

of the Buccaneers and the West India colonies; in the French and English wars on this continent in the West Indies - and in India; in the closing of the Scheldt; in the wars of Spain and England; in the paper blockades of the wars of the French Revolution; in the occupation of Gibraltar as a smuggling depot ;* in the late wars of India, and more particularly in the last with Burmah, commenced on account of a trader's claim of a few hundred pounds;† in the opium war of China; in the manner in which Indian wars are gotten up in this country; in our own recent war

We kept her down in

We cut her off from the opportunity of improvement. a state of darkness, bondage, ignorance, and bloodshed. We have there subverted the whole order of nature; we have aggravated every natural barbarity, and furnished to every man motives for committing, under the name of trade, acts of perpetual hostility and perfidy against his neighbor. Thus had the perversion of British commerce carried misery instead of happiness to one whole quarter of the globe. False to the very principles of trade, unmindful of our duty, what almost irreparable mischief had we done to that continent! We had obtained as yet only so much knowledge of its productions as to show that there was a capacity for trade which we checked." -W. Pitt.

"Gibraltar was all that England did get out of that war, and as this robbery went a great way to ensure her discomfiture, and to establish Philip the Fifth upon the throne, we may consider Gibraltar as the cause of the first of those ruinous wars which, made without due authority, and carried on by anticipations of revenue, have introduced among us those social diseases which have counterbalanced and perverted the mechanical advancement of modern times.-Gibraltar was confirmed to us at the treaty of Utrecht, but without any jurisdiction attached to it, and upon the condition that no smuggling should be carried on thence into Spain. These conditions we daily violate. We exercise jurisdiction by cannon-shot in the Spanish waters, (for the bay is all Spanish.) Under our batteries, the smuggler runs for protection; he ships his bales at our quays; he is either the agent of our merchants, or is insured by them; and the flag-post at the top of the rock is used to signal to him the movements of the Spanish cruisers."-UrquHART: Pillars of Hercules, vol. i. p. 43.

+ Two British subjects belonging to the barque Monarch had a dispute at Rangoon, which resulted in the captain of the ship being mulcted in the sum of £101. Two others, likewise British subjects, belonging to the ship Champion, had also a dispute at the same place, which resulted in one of them being required to pay £70; and out of these transactions grew, in a few weeks, the Burmese war, in which many thousands of lives were sacrificed, while towns and cities were plundered; and which, itself, resulted in the annexation to the British Empire of a territory larger than England. Those who desire to understand how war and trade feed each other, can obtain the desired information by reading Mr. Cobden's pamphlet, entitled "How Wars are got up in India:" London, 1853. It will there be seen that, as elsewhere in the East, the fable of the wolf and the lamb was fully acted out; war having been forced on the Burmese, who evinced throughout the strongest desire to do entire justice. The crime, however, brings with it its punishment, Burmah being a heavy charge on the Indian treasury, as are "Scinde, Sattarah, and the Punjaub, annexed," says Mr. Cobden, "at the cost of so many crimes."

like demonstration against Japan, with a view to compel that country to accept of the blessings that were to follow in the wake of trade; in the proceedings of France at the Sandwich Islands, and among those of the Marquesas group; and last, though not least, in the maintenance of war against private property on the ocean, as exhibited in the recent capture, in the Baltic and Black seas, of so many defenceless ships, owned by men who had no concern in the war, except that which arose out of the fact that they had found themselves compelled to pay taxes for its maintenance.

War and trade, seeking always a monopoly of power, and requiring fleets and armies, tend invariably towards centralization. The support of soldiers and sailors, generals and admirals, produces a necessity for taxation, the proceeds of which must seek a central point before they can be again distributed and the distribution brings together, necessarily, hosts of men waiters on Providence anxious to secure their share; as is seen to have been the case in Athens and in Rome; and as is now so obvious in Paris and London, New York and Washington. The city, growing, becomes, from year to year, more and more a place in which trade in merchandise, or trade in principles, may advantageously be carried on; and the larger the city, the more rapidly increasing is the tendency towards augmented centralization — every increase of taxation tending to diminish the power of healthful association throughout the tax-paying districts, and to increase the unhealthy movement in the tax-receiving capital.

With every such increase of central attraction, society tends to take upon itself a form directly the reverse of the natural one assuming more and more that of an inverted pyramid; and hence it is that in every community which has depended upon its powers. of appropriation, in place of those of production-in every one that has diminished the rapidity of motion among its own people, while engaged in the effort to diminish that existing among those of its neighbors-there has been seen to arrive a period of splendor and apparent strength, but real weakness, followed by decline, even when not by death. While enriching the few, centralization impoverishes the many; and while enabling the former to build palaces and temples-to open parks, maintain armies, and almost to re-create cities-it drives the latter to seek refuge in the meanest

hovels, and thus creates a population always ready to sell their services to the highest bidder, at any sacrifice of conscience. With every step in this direction, the societary machine becomes less stable and secure-and with each it tends more and more to topple over, until at length it falls, burying in its ruins those who had hoped most to profit by the state of things they had labored to produce. So has it been, even in our own day, in the cases of Napoleon and Louis Philippe; who were, however, but types of their class that class which profits by the exercise of power over their fellow-men, and seeks distinction in the characters of warriors, politicians, or traders.

The more perfect the power of association—the higher the organization of society, and the more complete the development of individuality among its members the more do all such men tend to occupy their natural place, that of instruments to be used by society; and the more does society itself tend to take its natural form, with hourly increase in the power of resistance to any invasion of its rights, and in the capacity for durability. Whatever tends to diminish the power of association, and to prevent the development of individuality, produces the reverse effect of making society the instruments of these men-centralization, slavery, and death travelling always hand in hand together, whether in the moral or material world.*

* The entire identity of the views of the trader and the slave-owner is exhibited in the following passages from recent journals:

“An inexhaustible supply of cheap labor has so long been a condition of our social system, whether in town or country, whether for work or for pleasure, that it remains to be seen whether a great enhancement of labor would not disturb our industrial, and even our political, arrangements to a serious extent. Two men have been after one master so long, that we are not prepared for the day when two masters will be after one man; for it is not certain either that the masters can carry on their business, or that the men will comport themselves properly under the new regime. Commercial enterprise and social development require an actually increasing population, and also that the increase shall be in the most serviceable—that is, the laborious- part of the population, for otherwise it will not be sufficiently at the command of capital and skill."-London Times.

Cheapness of labor is essential to the material progress of every people. But this can only obtain with the abundance of supply. Now, slave laboris, and ought to be, the cheapest kind of labor. It will only become otherwise when foreign and hostile influences are made to bear against it. The abolition of the slave-trade, by cutting off the supply, tends to this result. Slaves were never before so high in the South. * Slavery is, and so long as the South preserves her existence must continue to be, the basis of all property values in the South. Increase the supply

*

*

*

*

*

of labor, and thus cheapen the cost of slaves, and the South will escape im

To the fact that the policy of Athens, of Rome, and of other communities of ancient and modern times, tended directly to the production of this latter state of things, it is due that there has been, in many of them, seen to arise a state of things giving colour to the idea that societies, like trees and men, have their various stages of growth and of decline - ending, naturally and necessarily, in death. How far this is so, the reader will perhaps be prepared to decide after a brief examination of the course of action pursued by some of the leading communities of the world.

§ 3. In the early period of Grecian history, we find the people of Attica divided into several small and independent communities -but becoming at length united under Theseus; when ATHENS became the capital of the kingdom. The communities of Boeotia in like manner associated themselves with Thebes; and the several little states of Phocis united in following their example. The tendency to combination thus exhibited in the various states was early shown in relation to the affairs of Greece at large — in the

minent peril. The number of slave-owners would multiply, the direct interest in its preservation would be more universally diffused, and that great necessity of the South union in defence of slavery — more readily accomplished. If it were possible, every man in her limits should be a slave-owner."-Charleston Mercury.

*

"The great works of this country depend upon cheap labor."-Lon. Times. "Slavery is the corner-stone of our institutions."-McDuffie.

*

"The whole question has become one of a cheap and abundant supply of labor. * The operation of the repeal of the corn laws was, first, to equalize, or approximate, the wages here and on the continent; and, secondly, not, indeed, to lower them here at once, but to make it possible to lower them, if at any future time the relation between demand and supply in the labormarket should render such reduction just and necessary. *

*

For half a century back, the western shores of our island have been flooded with crowds of half-clad, half-fed, half-civilized Celts, reducing the standard of living and comfort among our people by their example, swelling the registers of crimes, to the great damage of the national character and reputation;" but, as the writer continues, "the abundant supply of cheap labor which they furnished had no doubt the effect of enabling our manufacturing industry to increase at a rate, and to reach a height, which, without them, would have been unattainable; and so far they have been of service."-North British Review, Nov. 1852.

"As long as the larger proportion of women are incompetent or unwilling to earn anything except by plain sewing, it is as idle to abuse the order of Davises for the misery of his operatives, as it would be to abuse Providence for bringing them into the world with appetites. It would be better for all of them, in the long run, to reduce wages to the famine point, so as to force all who had sufficient strength into other employments. This at least would diminish competition, and give the remaining ones a better chance."-New York Evening Post.