Зображення сторінки
PDF
ePub

succumb to the assaults of trade, the result is seen in the fact, that the people of those States, and the hundred millions of India, have, during the whole of this period, been engaged in competition for the sale of their products-a course of proceeding leading, inevitably, to exaggeration of the evils of slavery where it already exists, and to its production where, as yet, it is not found. Exporting always the rude produce of the soil, the same effects are seen in both — exhaustion of the land, with growing tendency towards commercial and moral death, and political dissolution. In the one, the government is dependent upon monopolies of salt and opium for its support; while, in the other, we witness a frantic determination, at any hazard, to extend throughout the continent a system that, seventy years since, was regarded, by the most eminent men of the Southern States, as a blight and a curse, requiring to be removed.

Half a century since, there yet existed competition for the purchase of Irish labor. Political centralization had long existed; but it remained for that of the trader to annihilate all competition for the purchase of human energies at home, and to terminate all Irish competition for the purchase of those abroad. The consequences are seen in the fact, that the 8,000,000 of Irish people do not make a market for the chief product of India and Carolina, to so great an extent as is now made by a single million in Massachusetts.

Half a century since, Mexico suffered under the oppression of political centralization, yet she still was prosperous. Since then. - having become politically independent - she has fallen under the trader's power. The consequences are, that, producing little, she has little to sell; and her markets are, to the rest of the world, almost wholly worthless. So is it with Turkey, Portugal, Jamaica, and every other free-trade country- their power of production being so very small, that they scarcely appear in the world as competitors for the purchase of the labor of other nations.

How stationary, even where not declining, is the condition of the people of all those countries, and how useless they are to the rest of the world, is shown in the fact, that, of the addition made to the supply of cotton, in the last twenty years, nearly the whole is consumed in those countries which seek to produce competition

for the purchase of labor at home, as preparatory for increase of competition for its purchase abroad.*

Competition, by A, for the purchase of the labor of B, tends to the production of competition by B for that of C, and, through him, to the end of the alphabet; or it does not. If it does, then are all those communities whose policy tends in that direction, moving towards freedom for themselves and the world; while those whose tendencies are opposite, must be moving towards the establishment of slavery, both at home and abroad. Such is the fact; and yet, strangely enough, while the first embrace many of the despotisms of Europe, the last are found in the two especial traders of the world, Great Britain and the United Statesself-styled friends of freedom, and patrons of the revolutionists of the world.†

=

The average product of cotton, in the four years 1839-40 to 1842-3, was 1,950,000 bales. That of the four ending 1856-7, has been about 3,000,000 the increase having been 1,050,000. In the last twenty years, the consumption of Germany has increased more than 1,000,000 cwts. 250,000 bales. From 1842 to 1847, the American consumption increased 380,000 bales. Adding to this, the increase of Sweden, Denmark, Russia, and France, under steady protection, and that of the United States, consequent upon the perfect protection so long given to coarse cottons, it will be found that the whole increase of crop has been absorbed by the protected countries of the world.-That the countries which, being themselves manufacturers, purchase raw materials, are the best customers of France, is shown, ante, vol. i. p. 557. That those which sell them, and thereby exhaust their soil, are her poorest customers, is shown by the fact, that, of an export averaging, during five years, 1,092,000,000 francs, the whole quantity taken by the hundred millions of the people of India, and the foreigners by whom they were governed, scarcely exceeded 3,000,000; Portugal took 3,000,000; Turkey, 17,000,000; but, of the latter, no inconsiderable portion was probably intended for consumption without the limits of the Turkish empire. Germany, now so vigorously engaged in manufacturing for herself, was a customer for French labor to the extent of 42,000,000; while the whole of South America, capable of maintaining hundreds of millions of people, could pay for only 72,000,000. See L'Annuaire de l'Economie Politique, 1855, p. 61.

Totally forgetful of the extermination of the population of the Scottish Highlands, of the annihilation of the Irish nation, of the entire disappearance of the millions of blacks that should now be found in the British islands, and of the conversion of millions of small proprietors in India into mere laborers, the British people regard themselves as the special protectors of those of Greece and Italy-although maintaining colonies for the single object of preventing that combination of action without which freedom can neither be obtained nor maintained.-The American people rejoice in revolutions abroad, as leading to freedom, while pursuing a policy tending to the production of slavery abroad-the whole energies of the Federal Government being, meanwhile, directed to the re-establishment, throughout the Union, of the right to buy and sell men, women, and children. Exclusive advocates of freedom, the American and British people are ever ready to patronise disturbers of the public peace abroad-disturbance being favorable to the growth of trade. Both now rejoice in the growing freedom of VOL. III.-16

§ 5. Cheap raw materials are, however, as we are assured, indispensable to the prosperity of the British people. If so, there can be no harmony of interests-cheap raw materials being, and that invariably, the accompaniment of barbarism, slavery, and valueless land. That it is not so, is obvious from the facts, that the advocates of the system regard the cheapening of English labor as being essential to the maintenance of manufacturing prosperity; and that eminent Englishmen now present us with pictures of vice, crime, and degradation, not to be exceeded in the world.†

Cheap labor and cheap raw materials mean, simply, barbarism -they being a natural result of the absence of that competition for the purchase of both, which results from small production. Production declines in England; and hence it is, that one of the most philanthropic of travellers, after a careful survey of England, is impelled to tell his readers, that, while "much is, in that country, being done, and of the noblest sort, for the lower classes-much which has called forth humane sympathy, patient labor, and genuine sacrifice- you cannot avoid the reflection, that it has been begun too late.

"It is not," as he continues, "merely, that you pass through filthy streets, meeting with wretched and abandoned men and women, and seeing old rookeries of murder and of crime. Such things are to be met with, in some degree, even in the new streets of our newest cities in America.

"It is the amount, the mass of these evils, which astounds. To go through school after school, refuge after refuge, and see, in every new place-not merely ragged, and dirty, and criminal children but children absolutely homeless, and cast out, with all the marks on face and body of being the wild animals of the street; to hear that those in the private institutions are but a small part of this refuse population in the city, and that, still beyond them, is the class of foundlings and orphans, cared for by the government; to walk on and on by the day, through lanes crowded with filthy, blear-eyed, tattered multitudes; to watch the almost agonising, and, in any other circumstances, Neufchatel-its growth having already manifested itself in the imposition of heavy indirect taxes, where, before, all contributions for the service of the State had been direct, and therefore light.

* See ante, vol. i. p. 239.

Ibid, pp. 442, 446.

amusingly ingenious contrivances, without number, to earn only bread; to go on, day after day, through scenes of poverty, drunkenness, and degradation, through streets where the nuisances and sources of poison of ages have collected; and to know that, not merely is this misery heaped up among these crowded two millions and a quarter of London, but, that it is relatively worse, in some of the other great cities, and is sprinkled like a curse over the country; it is all this which makes one feel that, in England, they have waited too long for the cure. The Englishman is sure, when he begins to move against his social evils. We have great confidence in his reforms; but he is very slow. The evils of London, alone, seem to me gigantic; against which the operations of ragged schools, model lodginghouses, bath-houses, and the like- useful as these are like the sand-dykes against the tide.

[ocr errors]

appear

"There are thousands and thousands of poor children, who never enter the schools; and the great majority of them must grow up and make their living among old haunts of wickedness. The lodging-houses can affect but a small number of the hundreds of thousands of laboring people. New acts of Parliament to improve pestilential streets, may purify certain quarters; but the great proportion of the old districts are badly built, and the laborers must live near their business, even if the street be undrained, and the house cover a typhus-breeding cesspool."*

That the facts are so, is proved by all the contemporaneous literature of England. Reading the works of Dickens, Thackeray, or Kingsley, we are ever presented with pictures of an incessant struggle for the means of sustaining life, as existing throughout that portion of English society which needs to sell its labor. Turning thence, to public documents, we find abundant confirmation of the sad truth, that, as power has been obtained for commanding the services of nature, the condition of the people has not improved.†

BRACE: Walks among the Poor of Great Britain; published in the New York Daily Times.

"The scenes through which the reader has accompanied us are, it is believed, truthful representations of what may be termed the poor man's world. That world, for him, is for the most part stagnant, foul, and dreary. The comfort of a real home is too often denied him. Himself, his wife, and his little ones, are exposed to the poisonous influences of bad air and bad water, or to the miasma of imperfectly drained rural districts. The mor

-

A hundred thousand men, employed in producing coal and iron, give command over the services of a willing slave, that does the work of 600,000,000 requiring, in return, neither food, clothing, nor shelter; and yet, the strife for life becomes more intense, with every increase of wealth and power. Why is it so? Because English policy is based upon the idea,that domestic interests are to be promoted by the adoption of measures tending to the cheapening of the land and labor of other people, and leading, inevitably, towards the enslavement of man in all the countries subject to it. Fortunately, however, there is, throughout the world, a harmony of interests so perfect, that no nation can commit injustice, without being required to bear a part, at least, of the burdens thereby imposed upon the communities affected by it. Whatever tends to deteriorate the condition of man anywhere, tends to do so everywhere—the land and the men of Europe profiting, by all that is wisely done in America, and those of America suffering, by all that is unwisely done, in Europe, Asia, or Africa.

In the physical world, action and re-action are equal and opposite. So, too, is it, in the social one-the community that devotes its potential energies to the stoppage of motion elsewhere, being arrested in its own. So was it with Athens and Rome, and so, too, during many centuries, with France. So is it, now, with Great Britain. whose people become poorer, with every increase of power to command the aid of steam, electricity, and other wonderful forces placed at the command of man. Where, however, is it to end? "In the same misery," says the Rev. Mr. Kingsley, speaking in the person of a poor tailor, "as

[ocr errors]

tality amongst his class is heavy. Thousands are annually permitted to perish, who might be preserved from disease and death, at a less cost than that of the most economical war we could indulge in. The children of this class are growing up, not only enfeebled in body, but neglected in mind. Nearly a million receive no education at all, or none that is of any practical value; whilst of those who are professedly taught, few carry away from school a wholesome and permanent impression. Moreover, there are millions in this country, belonging to the same class, who, more or less, habitually neglect even the outward ordinances of religion. In short, as has been well said, there are two nations in the same kingdom: the one, poor, ignorant, and suffering; the other, comfortable, moderately well instructed, fairly enjoying life. Yet the needy and distressed far outnumber those who are wealthy or at ease. The rich and educated are insignificant in point of numbers, compared with the poor and ignorant."-Inquiry into the War with Russia, by an English Landowner, chap. vi.

« НазадПродовжити »