Corn ceasing to go abroad, the manure ceased to be lost to the land on which it had been grown. The demand for human ser vices becoming more regular, capital accumulated rapidly, with corresponding increase of population the growth of the latter half of the century having been four times greater than that of the earlier one. Matter was thus gradually taking upon itself the highest form that of man with constant increase in the power of association, in the development of the various faculties of individual men, and in the rapidity with which consumption followed on production. § 8. When the population of Scotland was less than a million of souls, and when, of course, there existed little power of combination, their situation was such, that not less than "two hundred thousand of her people were begging from door to door." Man was then the slave of nature so deplorable being his condition, that Fletcher of Saltoun could see no remedy but in making him the slave of man—an idea repeated in the present day, in relation to the people of England, by one of the most distinguished British writers.* - Famines were then frequent and severe extending their ravages throughout the country. From 1693 to 1700, emphatically termed the "seven ill years," the distress was so great that extensive parishes were nearly depopulated. Those of 1740 and 1782-83 were particularly severe numerous persons dying of want. Elsewhere, we are told, the farmers were reduced to such extremity, that "they were obliged to bleed their cattle, in order to subsist some time on the blood." Even within the last seventy or eighty years, their situation was such that "nothing but the frugal, penurious manner in which the peasantry then lived, could have enabled them to subsist-paying any rent whatsoever. Their clothing was of the coarsest materials; their furniture and gardening utensils were often made by themselves; their food, always the produce of their farms, was little expensive-consisting chiefly of oatmeal, vegetables, and the produce of the dairy if a little animal food was occasionally added, it was generally the refuse *CARLYLE: Latter-Day Pamphlets. † SINCLAIR: Statistical Account of Scotland, vol. vi. p. 121. of the flock, unfit to be brought to market."* The state of the country was rude beyond conception. The most fertile tracts were waste, or indifferently cultivated. The education, manners, dress, furniture, and tables of the gentry were not so liberal, decent, and sumptuous as those of ordinary farmers are at present. The common people, clothed in the coarsest garb, and starving on the meanest fare, lived in despicable huts with their cattle. † Less than a century since, the slaughter of bullocks for the supply of cities like Glasgow or Edinburgh, was small-the custom of families being to purchase in November what would now be reckoned a small, miserable, half-fed cow, or ox, the salted carcass of which was the only butcher's meat they tasted through the year.‡ With the growth of population and of wealth, cultivation has been extended over the richer soils, with steady increase in the diversification of employments, and in the rapidity with which consumption and production have followed on each other. The effect is seen in the fact, that the product of agricultural labor has increased sixfold, while the population has only doubledgiving an average for each individual at least thrice greater than before had been obtained. § § 9. Society, or commerce, consists in an exchange of services. At times, these services are direct, as when one man carries a load for another. At others, they are indirect being applied to changing wool into cloth, in which latter form the man who needs a coat, purchases the wool and the labor that has been given to effecting its conversion. The power to perform service is a consequence of a consump tion of capital in the form of food. If not applied on the instant that it is produced, it is lost for ever. The less promptly the demand follows the supply, the greater, therefore, must be the waste of power. The more instant the demand, the greater must be the economy of power, and the greater the amount of force. Highest among the tests of civilization must, therefore, be * Rev. Mr. SMITH: quoted by McCULLOCH, Statistics of the British Empire, vol. i. p. 509. + Rev. Dr. PLAYFAIR: quoted in Edinburgh Review, vol. lvi. p. 57. Edinburgh Review, No. cxxvi. p. 173. Ibid. vol. lvi. p. 60. found that continuity in the motion of society which enables all to find demand for their mental and physical powers; and highest among the nations of the world must become that community in which rapid circulation produces this effect. That it may be produced, diversity of employments is the one and indispensable condition. Without that, there can be no regularity of demand-no continuity of motion no economy of human effort no increase of force. Proof of this is supplied in the brief sketch of English history that has above been given-in the movement of Sparta, as compared with that of Athens-in that of France of the Middle Ages, as compared with the Netherlandsand in that of every other country of the world, as it has advanced, or declined, in wealth, strength, and population. Comparing the various nations of the present day with each other, we obtain results precisely similar to those obtained in passing backward through the various stages of English history. In India there is no demand for labor, and her people gladly sell themselves to slavery in the Mauritius. Ireland presents a scene of constant waste of labor-power-its effects exhibiting themselves in the incessant wanderings of her unhappy people in search of harvest wages; in their abandonment of their native land; and in the famines and pestilences of which she is the seat. The state of things in Portugal and Turkey is the same mental and physical power there abounding, for which there is no demand. So is it in Jamaica, Mexico, Brazil, and Buenos Ayres; in all of which we find a state of facts corresponding with that observed in the earlier ages of English history-the laborer being there the mere slave of the man who owns the land, or of him who supplies the food and clothing to those by whom it is tilled.* The black population of Jamaica is nominally free, but that there can be no real freedom without that commerce which results from diversity of employment, is shown by the following account of the present condition of the island: "A recent petition to the British Secretary of State invites his attention to the widespread and annually increasing distress which overshadows the entire population, and has sunk a large portion of the inhabitants into actual destitution.' The gentlemen whose names are attached thereto are― Mr. Chitty, one of the late chairmen of Quarter Sessions, who has retired on a pension; Mr. Pinnock, a Kingston merchant; Mr. Phineas Abraham, the senior partner in the firm of P. Abraham & Co., of Falmouth; Mr. Hodgson, the chaplain of the General Penitentiary; and Mr. Valpy, a solicitor, and nephew of our late Chief Justice, Sir Joshua Rowe. They state that the condition of the colony is at the lowest possible point, short of universal Turning now to France, and Northern Europe generally, we find a state of things that is widely different-the circulation there becoming daily more continuous- the demand for human effort following more rapidly on the power to labor being producedphysical and mental faculty becoming more and more developed as it is more and more economized and force increasing from day to day. To what cause may these differences be ascribed ? The answer to this question is found in the fact, that the first named of these countries follow in the lead of England, adopting for their guides those economists who hold that the return to agricultural labor tends to diminish that agriculture is, therefore, the least profitable of human pursuits — that the proportion of the land-owner tends naturally to increase, and that of the laborer to diminish the tendency towards a state of slavery increasing as matter tends more and more to take upon itself the highest form of which it is capable that of man. The others follow in the lead of France - adopting the policy of Colbert, which looks to placing agriculture at the head of all pursuits -seeking the attainment of that object by means of measures tending to raise the price of land and labor, while reducing that of the commodities required for the consumption of the landowner and the laborer. The first place trade at the head of the pursuits of man, while the latter seek the extension of commerce. Coming now to England herself, we find ourselves in the home of the philosophers to whom the world is indebted for the theory of over-population-invented, as it was, for the purpose of accounting for the enormous waste of power resulting from want of continuity in the demand for it. At one time, the mill-owner closes his doors, with a view to reduce the price of labor and its ruder products; while, at another, long-continued strikes carry ruin to the homes of both the workman and his employer. Trad bankruptcy and ruin; that real estate has no market value; that dwellinghouses are gradually decaying, and money can with difficulty be raised, even in return for personal property; that most of the necessary articles for consumption are imported from the United States, while the natural products are neglected; and that the money-capital of the country is drained, in the absence of any exchange of trade. They add, that the industrial condition of the inhabitants is at the lowest ebb, and that their moral and social condition is not a whit more elevated."- Falmouth Post. ing centralization is there almost perfect; and centralization and stability are totally inconsistent with each other.* Turning now to the United States, we find a waste of laborpower not exceeded in any civilized country of the world—the amount employed not being even a third of the capability of effort that is produced. Consumption following slowly after production, the markets of the world are always flooded with flour, cotton, rice, and tobacco; and hence it is, that the power of those commodities to command gold, silver, lead, iron, copper, tin, or any other of the metallic products of the earth, steadily diminishes when, in the natural order of things, it should as steadily increase. When, however, we seek to find the waste of power most complete, we must turn to the closing years of the free-trade period that followed the termination of the great European war-workshops having then been everywhere closed, while wives and children perished for want of food; to the free-trade period of 1842, when the demand for labor had almost wholly ceased; to the years 1850-51, prior to the large import of Californian gold; or, lastly, to the present moment, when the circulation is gradually and steadily declining-when the production of food and clothing is diminishing in its ratio to the population-and when pauperism grows with a growth such as has never before been known. Looking to Spain, So is it, and so must it be, everywhere. we find, as we change our place, the same differences that in the United States attend upon change of time. Throughout the Basque provinces, there are nearly two hundred iron-works in operation; while other departments of manufacture make large "Between our Black West Indies and our White Ireland, between these two extremes of lazy refusal to work, and of famishing inability to find any work, what a world have we made of it, with our fierce Mammon-worships, and our benevolent philanderings, and idle, godless nonsenses of one kind and another! Supply-and-demand, Leave-it-alone, Voluntary principle, Time will mend it: till British industrial existence seems fast becoming one huge poison-swamp of reeking pestilence, physical and moral; a hideous living Golgotha of souls and bodies buried alive; such a Curtius' gulf, communicating with the Nether Deeps, as the Sun never saw till now. * Thirty thousand outcast Needlewomen working themselves swiftly to death; three million Paupers rotting in forced idleness, helping said Needlewomen to die: these are but items in the sad ledger of despair. - Thirty thousand wretched women, sunk in that putrifying well of abominations; they have oozed in upon London, from the universal Stygian quagmire of British industrial life; are accumulated in the well of the concern to that extent."-CARLYLE: Latter-Day Pamphlets. * |