Chapter XIV: How Slavery Grows in England (2)

A necessary consequence of this demoralization is that infanticide prevails to a degree unknown in any other part of the civilized world. The London _Leader_ informs its readers that upon a recent occasion--

"It was declared by the coroner of Leeds, and assented to as probable by the surgeon, that there were, as near as could be calculated, about three hundred children put to death yearly in Leeds alone that were not registered by the law. In other words, three hundred infants were murdered to avoid the consequences of their living, and these murders, as the coroner said, are never detected."

The reader may now advantageously turn to the account of the state of education in Leeds, already given,[136] with a view to ascertain the intellectual condition of the women guilty of the foul and unnatural crime of child-murder. Doing so, he will find that out of eighteen hundred and fifty that were married there were _one thousand and twenty who could not sign their names_--and this in the centre of civilization in the middle of the nineteenth century!

But a short time since, the _Morning Chronicle_ gave its readers a list of twenty-two trials, for child-murder alone, that had been _reported_ in its columns, and these were stated to be but one-half of those that had taken place in the short period of twenty-seven days! On the same occasion it stated that although English ruffianism had "not taken to the knife," it had

"Advanced in the devilish accomplishment of biting off noses and scooping out eyes. Kicking a man to death while he is down," it continued, "or treating, a wife in the same way--stamping on an enemy or a paramour with hobnailed boots--smashing a woman's head with a hand-iron--these atrocities, which are of almost daily occurrence in our cities, are not so much imputed crimes as they are the extravagant exaggerations of the coarse, brutal, sullen temper of an Englishman, brutified by ignorance and stupefied by drink."

On the same occasion the _Chronicle_ stated that in villages few young people of the present day marry until, as the phrase is, it has "become necessary." It is, it continued, the rural practice to "keep company in a very loose sense, till a cradle is as necessary as a ring." On another, and quite recent occasion, the same journal furnished its readers with the following striking illustration of the state of morals:--

"In one of the recent Dorsetshire cases, [of child murder,] common cause was made by the girls of the county. They attended the trial in large numbers; and we are informed that on the acquittal of the prisoner a general expression of delight was perceptible in the court; and they left the assizes town boasting 'that they might now do as they liked.' We are then, it seems, with all our boasted civilization, relapsing into a barbarous and savage state of society."

Lest it might be supposed that this condition of things had been inherited, the editor stated that--

"This deplorable state of morals was of comparatively recent growth. Old people," he continued, "can often tell the year when the first of such cases occurred in their families; and what a sensation of shame it then excited; while they will also tell us that the difficulty now is to find a lowly couple in village life with whom the rule of decency and Christianity is not the exception. It is a disgraceful fact--and one which education, and especially religious education, has to account for--that a state of morals has grown up in which it can no longer be said that our maidens are given in marriage."

Infanticide is not, however, confined to the unmarried. Burial clubs abound. "In our large provincial towns," says Mr. Kay--

"The poor are in the habit of entering their children in what are called 'burial clubs.' A small sum is paid every year by the parent, and this entitles him to receive from 3£. to 5£. from the club, on the death of the child. Many parents enter their children in several clubs. One man in Manchester has been known to enter his child in _nineteen_ different clubs. On the death of such a child, the parent becomes entitled to receive a large sum of money; and as the burial of the child does not necessarily cost more than 1£., or, at the most, 1£.10s., the parent realizes a considerable sum after all the expenses are paid!

"It has been clearly ascertained, that it is a common practice among the more degraded classes of poor in many of our towns, to enter their infants in these clubs, and then to cause their death either by starvation, ill-usage, or poison! What more horrible symptom of moral degradation can be conceived? One's mind revolts against it, and would fain reject it as a monstrous fiction. But, alas! it seems to be but too true.

"Mr. Chadwick says, 'officers of these burial societies, relieving officers, and others, whose administrative duties put them in communication with the lowest classes in these districts,' (the manufacturing districts,) 'express their moral conviction of the operation of such bounties to produce instances of the visible neglect of children of which they are witnesses. They often say, 'You are not treating that child properly; it will not live: _is it in the club_?' And the answer corresponds with the impression produced by the sight."--Vol. i. 433.

Commenting on these and numerous other facts of similar kind, the same author says--

"These accounts are really almost too horrible to be believed at all; and were they not given us on the authority of such great experience and benevolence, we should totally discredit them.

"But, alas, they are only too true! There can be no doubt, that a great part of the poorer classes of this country are sunk into such a frightful depth of hoplessness, misery, and utter moral degradation, that even mothers forget their affection for their helpless little offspring, and kill them, as a butcher does his lambs, in order to make money by the murder, and therewith to lessen their pauperism and misery?"--P. 446.

How rapid is the progress of demoralization may be seen from the fact that in the thirty years from 1821 to 1851, the consumption of British spirits increased from 4,125,616 to 9,595,368 gallons, or in a ratio more than double that of the population. The use of opium is also increasing with rapidity.[137] Intemperance and improvidence go hand in hand with each other, and hence arises a necessity for burial clubs for the disposal of the children and the maintenance of the parents.

A recent English journal states that--

"It is estimated that in Manchester there are 1500 'unfortunate females;' that they lead to an annual expenditure of £470,000; and that some 250 of them die, in horror and despair, yearly. In England it is calculated that there are 40,000 houses of ill-fame, and 280,000 prostitutes; and, further, that not less than £8,000,000 are spent annually in these places."

This may, or may not, be exaggerated, but the condition to which are reduced so many of the weaker sex would warrant us in expecting a great decay of morality. When severe labour cannot command a sufficiency of food, can we be surprised that women find themselves forced to resort to prostitution as a means of support?

A committee of gentlemen who had investigated the condition of the sewing-women of London made a report stating that no less than 33,000 of them were "permanently at the starvation point," and were compelled to resort to prostitution as a means of eking out a subsistence. But a few weeks since, the _Times_ informed its readers that shirts were made for a _penny a piece_ by women who found the needles and thread, and the _Daily News_ furnished evidence that hundreds of young women had no choice but between prostitution and making artificial flowers at _twopence a day_! Young ladies seeking to be governesses, and capable of giving varied instruction, are expected to be satisfied with the wages and treatment of scullions, and find it difficult to obtain situations even on such terms. It is in such facts as these that we must find the causes of those given in the above paragraph.

If we desire to find the character of the young we must look to that of the aged, and especially to that of the mothers. We see here something of the hundreds of thousands of young women who are to supply the future population of England; and if the character of the latter be in accordance with that of the former, with what hope can we look to the future?

Nothing indicates more fully the deterioration resulting from this unceasing struggle for life, than the harsh treatment to which are subjected persons who need aid in their distress. A case of this kind, furnished by the _Times_, as occurring at the Lambeth workhouse, so strongly indicates the decay of kind and generous feeling, that, long as it is, it is here given:--

"A poor creature, a young English girl--to be sure, she is not a black--a parcel of drenched rags clinging to her trembling form, every mark of agony and despair in her countenance, lifts her hand to the bell. She rings once and again, and at length the door porter appears, accompanied by a person holding a situation under the guardians--his name is Brooke--and he is a policeman. She is starving, she is pregnant, and almost in the pains of labour, but the stern officials will not take her in. Why? Because she had been in the workhouse until Tuesday morning last, and had then been discharged by 'order of the guardians.' Nor is this all. The tale of parochial bounty is not yet half told out. During that long wet Tuesday she wandered about. She had not a friend in this great town to whom she could apply for the smallest assistance, and on Tuesday night she came back to implore once more the kindly shelter of the parish workhouse. For yet that night she was taken in, but the next morning cast forth into the world again with a piece of dry bread in her hand. On Wednesday the same scene was renewed--the same fruitless casting about for food and shelter, the same disappointment, and the same despair. But parochial bounty can only go thus far, and no farther. Charity herself was worn out with the importunity of this persevering pauper, and on Thursday night the doors of the parish workhouse were finally and sternly shut in her face.

"But she was not alone in her sufferings. You might have supposed that the misery of London--enormous as the amount of London misery undoubtedly is--could have shown no counterpart to the frightful position of this unfortunate creature--without a home, without a friend, without a character, without a shelter, without a bite of food--betrayed by her seducer, and the mark for the last twelve hours of the floodgates of heaven. * * * Can it be there are two of them? Yes! Another young woman, precisely in the same situation, knocks at the same workhouse door, and is refused admittance by the same stern guardians of the ratepayers' pockets. The two unfortunates club their anguish and their despair together, and set forth in quest of some archway or place of shelter, beneath which they may crouch until the gas-lamps are put out, and the day breaks once more upon their sufferings. Well, on they roamed, until one of the two, Sarah Sherford, was actually seized with the pangs of labour, when they resolved to stagger back to the workhouse; but again the door was shut in their faces. What was to be done? They were driven away from the house, and moved slowly along, with many a pause of agony, no doubt, until they met with a policeman, one Daniel Donovan, who directed them to a coffee-house where they might hope to get shelter. The coffee-house did not open till 2 o'clock, when they had two hours' shelter. But at that hour they were again cast out, as the keeper was obliged to come into the street with his stall and attend to it. 'At this time (we will here copy the language of our report) Sherford's labour pains had considerably increased, and they again spoke to the same policeman, Donovan, and told him that, unless she was taken into the workhouse or some other place, she must give birth to her infant in the street.' Daniel Donovan accordingly conveyed the two unfortunate creatures to the workhouse once more, at 4 o'clock in the morning. 'The policeman on duty there,' said this witness, 'told him that they had been there before, and seemed to have some _hesitation_ about admitting them, but on being told that one was in the pains of labour, he let them in.'"

What slavery can be worse than this? Here are young women, women in distress, starving and almost in the pains of labour, driven about from post to pillar, and from pillar to post, by day and by night, totally unable to obtain the smallest aid. Assuredly it would be difficult to find any thing to equal this in any other country claiming to rank among the civilized nations of the world.

At the moment of writing this page, an English journal furnishes a case of death from starvation, and closes its account with the following paragraph, strikingly illustrative of the state of things which naturally arises where every man is "trying to live by snatching the bread from his neighbour's mouth."

"It is hardly possible to conceive a more horrible case. A stalwart, strong-framed man, in the prime of life--his long pilgrimage of martyrdom from London to Stoney-Stratford--his wretched appeals for help to the "_civilization_" around him--his seven days fast--his brutal abandonment by his fellow-men--his seeking shelter and being driven from resting-place to resting-place--the crowning inhumanity of the person named Slade and the patient, miserable death of the worn-out man--are a picture perfectly astonishing to contemplate.

"No doubt he invaded the rights of property, when he sought shelter in the shed and in the lone barn!!!"

The recent developments in regard to Bethlem Hospital are thus described:--

"Some of the cases of cruelty brought to light by the examiners are almost too revolting to describe. It appears that the incurables are lodged in cells partially under ground, where their only conches are troughs filled with straw and covered with a blanket. On these miserable beds, worse than many a man gives to his horse or dog, the victims lie in the coldest weather, without night-clothes, frequently creeping into the straw in order to keep warm. These poor unfortunates also are often fed in a way as disgusting as it is cruel, being laid on their backs, and held down by one of the nurses, while another forces into the mouth the bread and milk which is their allotted food. This revolting practice is adopted to save time, for it was proved on oath that patients, thus treated, ate their meals by themselves, if allowed sufficient leisure. The imbecile patients, instead of being bathed with decency, as humanity and health demands, are thrown on the stone-floor, in a state of nudity, and there mopped by the nurses. Such things would seem incredible, if they had not been proved on oath. Some who were not incurable, having been treated in this manner, exposed these atrocities, after their recovery; and the result was an investigation, which led to the discovery of the abominable manner in which this vast charity has been administered."

These things are a necessary consequence of an universal trading spirit. For the first time in the annals of the world it has been proclaimed in England that the paramount object of desire with the people of a great and Christian nation is to buy cheaply and sell dearly; and when men find themselves, in self-defence, compelled to beat down the poor sewing-woman to a penny for making a shirt, or the poor flower-girl to a scale of wages so low that she must resort to prostitution for the purpose of supporting life, they can neither be expected to be charitable themselves, nor to tolerate much charity in the public officers charged with the expenditure of their contributions. There is consequently everywhere to be seen a degree of harshness in the treatment of those who have the misfortune to be poor, and a degree of contempt in the mode of speech adopted in relation to them, totally incompatible with the idea of advance in _real_ civilization.

* * * * *

The facts thus far given rest, as the reader will have seen, on the highest English authority. It is scarcely possible to study them without arriving at the conclusion that the labouring people of England are gradually losing all control over the disposition of their own labour--or in other words, that they are becoming enslaved--and that with the decay of freedom there has been a decay of morality, such as has been observed in every other country similarly circumstanced. To ascertain the cause of this we must refer again to Adam Smith, who tells us that--

"No equal quantity of productive labour or capital employed in manufacture can ever occasion so great a reproduction as if it were employed in agriculture. In these, nature does nothing, man does all, and the reproduction must always be proportioned to the strength of the agents that occasion it. The capital employed in agriculture, therefore, not only puts into motion a greater quantity of productive labour than any equal capital employed in manufacture; but, in proportion, too, to the quantity of productive labour which it employs, it adds a much greater value to the annual value of the land and labour of the country, to the real wealth and revenue of its inhabitants. Of all the ways which a capital can be employed, it is by far the most advantageous to society."

This is the starting point of his whole system, and is directly the opposite of that from which starts the modern English politico-economical school that professes to follow in his footsteps, as will now be shown. The passage here given, which really constitutes the base upon which rests the whole structure of Dr. Smith's work, is regarded by Mr. McCulloch as "the most objectionable" one in it, and he expresses great surprise that "so acute and sagacious a reasoner should have maintained a doctrine so manifestly erroneous." "So far indeed," says that gentleman--

"Is it from being true that nature does much for man in agriculture, and nothing for manufactures, that the fact is more nearly the reverse. There are no limits to the bounty of nature in manufactures; but there are limits, and those not very remote, to her bounty in agriculture. The greatest possible amount of capital might be expended in the construction of steam-engines, or of any other sort of machinery, and, after they had been multiplied indefinitely, the last would be as prompt and efficient in producing commodities and saving labour as the first. Such, however, is not the case with the soil. Lands of the first quality are speedily exhausted; and it is impossible to apply capital indefinitely even to the best soils, without obtaining from it a constantly diminishing rate of profit."--_Principles of Political Economy_.

The error here results from the general error of Mr. Ricardo's system, which places the poor cultivator among the rich soils of the swamps and river-bottoms, and sends his rich successors to the poor soils of the hills,--being directly the reverse of what has happened in every country of the world, in every county in England, and on every farm in each and all of those counties.[138] Had he not been misled by the idea of "the constantly increasing sterility of the soil," Mr. McCulloch could not have failed to see that the only advantage resulting from the use of the steam-engine, or the loom, or any other machine in use for the conversion of the products of the earth, was, that it diminished the quantity of labour required to be so applied, and increased the quantity that might be given to the work of production.

It is quite true that wheelbarrows and carts, wagons and ships, may be increased indefinitely; but of what use can they possibly be, unless the things to be carried be first produced, and whence can those things be obtained except from the earth? The grist-mill is useful, provided there is grain to be ground, but not otherwise. The cotton-mill would be useless unless the cotton was first produced. Agriculture _must_ precede manufactures, and last of all, says Dr. Smith, comes foreign commerce.[139]

The reader has had before him a passage from Mr. J.S. Mill, in which that gentleman says that "if the law [of the occupation of the land] were different, almost all the phenomena of the production and distribution of wealth would be different from what they now are." In the days of Adam Smith it had not yet been suggested that men began by the cultivation of rich soils, and then passed to poor ones, with constantly diminishing power to obtain food. Population, therefore, had not come to be regarded as "a nuisance" to be abated by any measures, however revolting, and imposing upon Christian men the necessity of hardening their hearts, and permitting their fellow-men to suffer every extremity of poverty and distress "short of absolute death," with a view to bring about a necessity for refraining to gratify that natural inclination which leads men and women to associate in the manner tending to promote the growth of numbers and the development of the best feelings of the human heart. It was then considered right that men and women should marry, and increase of population was regarded as evidence of increased wealth and strength. Dr. Smith, therefore, looked at the affairs of the world as they were, and he saw that the production of commodities not only preceded their conversion and exchange, but that in the work of production the earth aided man by increasing the _quantity_ of things to, be consumed; whereas labour applied in other ways could change them only in their _form_ or in their _place_, making no addition to their quantity. He, therefore, saw clearly that the nearer the spinner and the weaver came to the producer of food and wool, the more would be the quantity of food and cloth to be divided between them; and thus was he led to see how great an act of injustice it was on the part of his countrymen to endeavour to compel the people of the world to send their raw materials to them to be converted, at such vast loss of transportation. He had no faith in the productive power of ships or wagons. He knew that the barrel of flour or the bale of cotton, put into the ship, came out a barrel of flour or a bale of cotton, the weight of neither having been increased by the labour employed in transporting it from this place of production to that of consumption. He saw clearly that to place the consumer by the side of the producer was to economize labour and aid production, and therefore to increase the power to trade. He was, therefore, in favour of the local application of labour and capital, by aid of which towns should grow up in the midst of producers of food; and he believed that if "human institutions" had not been at war with the best interests of man, those towns would "nowhere have increased beyond what, the improvement and cultivation of the territory in which they were situated could support." Widely different is all this from the system which builds up London, Liverpool, Manchester, and Birmingham, to be the manufacturing centres of the world, and urges upon all nations the adoption of a system looking directly to their maintenance and increase!

Directly opposed in this respect to Dr. Smith, Mr. McCulloch has unbounded faith in the productive power of ships and wagons. To him--

"It is plain that the capital and labour employed in carrying commodities from where they are to be produced to where they are to be consumed, and in dividing them into minute portions so as to fit the wants of consumers, are really as productive as if they were employed in agriculture or in manufactures."--_Principles_, 166.

The man who carries the food adds, as he seems to think, as much to the quantity to be consumed as did the one who ploughed the ground and sowed the seed; and he who stands at the counter measuring cloth adds as much to the quantity of cloth as did he who produced it. No benefit, in his view, results from any saving of the labour of transportation or exchange. He has, therefore, no faith in the advantage to be derived from the local application of labour or capital. He believes that it matters nothing to the farmer of Ireland whether his food be consumed on the farm or at a distance from it--whether his grass be fed on the land or carried to market--whether the manure be returned to the land or wasted on the road--whether, of course, the land be impoverished or enriched. He is even disposed to believe that it is frequently more to the advantage of the people of that country that the food there produced should be divided among the labourers of France or Italy than among themselves.[140]

He believes in the advantage of large manufacturing towns at a distance from those who produce the food and raw materials of manufacture; and that perfect freedom of trade consists in the quiet submission of the farmers and planters of the world to the working of a system which Dr. Smith, regarded as tending so greatly to "the discouragement of agriculture," that it was the main object of his work to teach the people of Britain that it was not more unjust to others than injurious to themselves.

In a work just issued from the press, Mr. McCulloch tells his readers that--

"For the reasons now stated, a village built in the immediate vicinity of a gentleman's seat generally declines on his becoming an absentee. That, however, is in most cases any thing but an injury. The inhabitants of such villages are generally poor, needy dependants, destitute of any invention, and without any wish to distinguish themselves. But when the proprietors are elsewhere, they are forced to trust to their own resources, and either establish some sort of manufacture, or resort to those manufacturing and commercial cities where there is _always_ a ready demand for labourers, and where every latent spark of genius is sure to be elicited. Although, therefore, it be certainly true that absenteeism has a tendency to reduce the villages which are found in the neighbourhood of the residences of extensive proprietors, it is not on that account prejudicial to the country at large, but the reverse."[141]

It is here seen that the people who own large estates are supposed to be surrounded by "poor and needy dependants," who are to be stimulated to exertion by the pressure of want, and that this pressure is to be produced by the absenteeism of the proprietor. We have here the master administering the lash to his poor slave, and the only difference between the English master and the Jamaica one appears to be, that absenteeism in the one case forces the poor labourer to seek the lanes and alleys of a great city, and in the other causes him to be worked to death. The slavery of Ireland, Jamaica, and India is a natural consequence of the absenteeism of the great land-owners; and the larger the properties, the greater must be the tendency to absenteeism, centralization, and slavery; and yet Mr. McCulloch assures his readers that

"The advantage of preserving large estates from being frittered down by a scheme of equal division is not limited to its effects on the younger children of their owners. It raises universally the standard of competence, and gives new force to the springs which set industry in motion. The manner of living in great landlords is that in which every one is ambitious of being able to indulge; and their habits of expense, though somewhat injurious to themselves, act as powerful incentives to the ingenuity and enterprise of other classes, who never think their fortunes sufficiently ample unless they will enable them to emulate the splendour of the richest landlords; so that the custom of primogeniture seems to render all classes more industrious, and to augment at the same time the mass of wealth and the scale of enjoyment."--_ Principles_.

The modern system tends necessarily to the consolidation of land, and the more completely that object can be attained, the greater must, be "the splendour of the richest landlords," the greater the habits of expense among the few, the greater their power to absent themselves, the greater the power of the rapacious middleman or agent, the greater the poverty and squalor of "the poor and needy dependants," and the greater the necessity for seeking shelter in the cellars of Manchester, the wynds of Glasgow, or the brothels of London and Liverpool; but the larger must be the supply of the commodity called "cheap labour." In other words, slaves will be more numerous, and masters will be more able to decide on what shall be the employment of the labourer, and what shall be its reward.

Adam Smith knew nothing of all this. He saw that capital was always best managed by its owner, and therefore had no faith in a universal system of agencies. He saw that the little proprietor was by far the greatest improver, and he had no belief in the advantage of great farmers surrounded by day-labourers. He believed in the advantage of making twelve exchanges in a year in place of one, and he saw clearly that the nearer the consumer could come to the producer the larger and more profitable would be commerce. He therefore taught that the workman should go to the place where, food being abundant, moderate labour would command much food. His successors teach that the food should come to the place where, men being abundant and food scarce, much labour will command little food, and that when population has thus been rendered superabundant, the surplus should go abroad to raise more food for the supply of those they left behind. The one teaches the concentration of man, and the _local_ division of labour. The other, the dispersion of man, and the _territorial_ division of labour. They differ thus in every thing, except that they both use the _word_ free trade--but with reference to totally distinct ideas. With the one, COMMERCE has that enlarged signification which embraces every description of intercourse resulting from the exercise of "man's natural inclination" for association, while with the other TRADE has reference to no idea, beyond that of the mere pedler who buys in the cheapest market and sells in the dearest one. The system of the one is perfectly harmonious, and tends toward peace among men. The other is a mass of discords, tending toward war among the men and the nations of the earth.

As ordinarily used, the word Commerce has scarcely any signification except that of trade with distant men, and yet that is the least profitable commerce that can be maintained,--as the reader may satisfy himself if he will reflect that when the miller and the farmer are near neighbours they divide between them all the flour that is made, whereas, when they are widely separated, a third man, the carrier, intervenes between them and takes a large portion of it, leaving less to be divided between those who raise the wheat and those who convert it into flour. The more perfect the power of association the greater must be the power to maintain commerce, for _every act of association is an act of commerce_, as it is proposed now to show, beginning at the beginning, in the family, which long precedes the nation. Doing so, we find the husband exchanging his services in the raising of food and the materials of clothing, for those of his wife, employed in the preparation of food for the table, and the conversion of raw materials into clothing,--and here it is we find the greatest of all trades. Of all the labour employed on the farms and in the farm-houses of the Union, we should, could we have an accurate statement, find that the proportion of its products exchanged beyond their own limits, scarcely exceeded one-third, and was certainly far less than one-half, the remainder being given to the raising of food and raw materials for their own consumption, and the conversion of that food and those materials into the forms fitting them for their own uses.

At the next step we find ourselves in the little community, of which the owner of this farm constitutes a portion; and here we find the farmer exchanging his wheat with one neighbour for a day's labour--the use of his wagon and his horse for other days of labour--his potatoes with a third for the shoeing of his horse, and with a fourth for the shoeing of himself and his children, or the making of his coat. On one day he or his family have labour to spare, and they pass it off to a neighbour to be repaid by him in labour on another day. One requires aid in the spring, the other in the autumn; one gives a day's labour in hauling lumber, in exchange for that of another, employed in mining coal or iron ore. Another trades the labour that has been employed in the purchase of a plough for that of his neighbour which had been applied to the purchase of a cradle. Exchanges being thus made on the spot, from hour to hour and from day to day, with little or no intervention of persons whose business is trade, their amount is large, and, combined with those of the family, equals probably four-fifths of the total product of the labour of the community, leaving not more than one-fifth to be traded off with distant men; and this proportion is often greatly diminished as with increasing population and wealth a market is made on the land for the products of the land.

This little community forms part of a larger one, styled a nation, the members of which are distant hundreds or thousands of miles from each other, and here we find difficulties tending greatly to limit the power to trade. The man in latitude 40° may have labour to sell for which he can find no purchaser, while he who lives in latitude 50° is at the moment grieving to see his crop perish on the ground for want of aid in harvest. The first may have potatoes rotting, and his wagon and horses idle, while the second may need potatoes, and have his lumber on his hands for want of means of transportation--yet distance forbids exchange between them.

Again, this nation forms part of a world, the inhabitants of which are distant tens of thousands of miles from each other, and totally unable to effect exchanges of labour, or even of commodities, except of certain kinds that will bear transportation to distant markets. Commerce tends, therefore, to diminish in its amount with every circumstance tending to increase the necessity for going to a distance, and to increase in amount with every one tending to diminish the distance within which it must be maintained. As it now stands with the great farming interest of the Union, the proportions are probably as follows:--

Exchanges in the family................... 55 per cent.
" in the neighbourhood............ 25 "
" in the nation................... 15 "
" with other nations.............. 5 "
---
Total.................................... 100

It will now be obvious that any law, domestic or foreign, tending to interfere with the exchanges of the family or the neighbourhood, would be of more serious importance than one that should, to the same extent, affect those with the rest of the nation, and that one which should affect the trade of one part of the nation with another, would be more injurious than one which should tend to limit the trade with distant nations. Japan refuses to have intercourse with either Europe or America, yet this total interdiction of trade with a great empire is less important to the farmers of the Union than would be the imposition of a duty of one farthing a bushel upon the vegetable food raised on their farms to be consumed in their families.

The great trade is the home trade, and the greater the tendency to the performance of trade at home the more rapid will be the increase of prosperity, and the greater the power to effect exchanges abroad. The reason of this is to be found in the fact that the power of production increases with the power of combined exertion, and all combination is an exchange of labour for labour, the exchange being made at home. The more exchanges are thus effected the smaller is the number of the men, wagons, ships, or sailors employed in making them, and the greater the number of persons employed in the work of production, with increase in the quantity of commodities produced, and the _power_ to exchange grows with the power to produce, while the power to produce diminishes with every increase in the _necessity_ for exchange. Again, when the work of exchange is performed at home, the power of combination facilitates the disposal of a vast amount of labour that would otherwise be wasted, and an infinite number of things that would otherwise have no value whatever, but which, combined with the labour that is saved, are quite sufficient to make one community rich by comparison with another in which such savings cannot be effected. Virginia wastes more labour and more commodities that would have value in New England, than would pay five times over for all the cloth and iron she consumes.

Again, the quantity of capital required for effecting exchanges tends to diminish as commerce comes nearer home. The ship that goes to China performs no more exchanges in a year than the canal-boat that trades from city to city performs in a month; and the little and inexpensive railroad car passing from village to village may perform almost twice as many as the fine packet-ship that has cost ninety or a hundred thousand dollars. With the extension of the home trade, labour and capital become, therefore, more productive of commodities required for the support and comfort of man, and the wages of the labourer and the profits of the capitalist tend to increase, and commerce tends still further to increase. On the other hand, with the diminution of the power to effect exchanges at home, labour and capital become less productive of commodities; the wages of the labourer and the profits of the capitalist tend to decrease, and trade tends still further to diminish. All this will be found fully exemplified among ourselves on a comparison of the years 1835-36 with 1841-42, while the contrary and upward tendency is exemplified by the years 1845-6 and 7, as compared with 1841-2.

The fashionable doctrine of our day is, however, that the prosperity of a nation is to be measured by the amount of its trade with people, who are distant, as manifested by custom-house returns, and not by the quantity of exchanges among persons who live near each other, and who trade without the intervention of ships, and with little need of steamboats or wagons. If the trade of a neighbourhood be closed by the failure of a furnace or a mill, and the workman be thus deprived of the power to trade off the labour of himself or his children, or the farmer deprived of the power to trade off his food, consolation is found in the increased quantity of exports--_itself, perhaps, the direct consequence of a diminished ability to consume at home_. If canal-boats cease to be built, the nation is deemed to be enriched by the substitution of ocean steamers requiring fifty times the capital for the performance of the same quantity of exchanges. If the failure of mills and furnaces causes men to be thrown out of employment, the remedy is to be found, not in the revisal of the measures that have produced these effects, but in the exportation of the men themselves to distant climes, thus producing a necessity for the permanent use of ships instead of canal-boats, with diminished power to maintain trade, and every increase of this _necessity_ is regarded as an evidence of growing wealth and power.

The whole tendency of modern commercial policy is to the substitution of the distant market for the near one. England exports her people to Australia that they may there grow the wool that might be grown at home more cheaply; and we export to California, by hundreds of thousands, men who enjoy themselves in hunting gold, leaving behind them untouched the real gold-mines--those of coal and iron--in which their labour would be thrice more productive. The reports of a late Secretary of the Treasury abound in suggestions as to the value of the distant trade. Steam-ships were, he thought, needed to enable us to obtain the control of the commerce of China and Japan. "With our front on both oceans and the gulf," it was thought, "we might secure this commerce, and with it, in time, command the trade of the world." England, not to be outdone in this race for "the commerce of the world," adds steadily to her fleet of ocean steamers, and the government contributes its aid for their maintenance, by the payment of enormous sums withdrawn from the people at home, and diminishing the home market to thrice the extent that it increases the foreign one. The latest accounts inform us of new arrangements about to be made with a view to competition with this country for the passenger traffic to and within the tropics, while the greatest of all trades now left to British ships is represented to be the transport of British men, women, and children, so heavily taxed at home for the maintenance of this very system that they are compelled to seek an asylum abroad. In all this there is nothing like freedom of trade, or freedom of man; as the only real difference between the freeman and the slave is, that the former exchanges himself, his labour and his products, while the latter must permit another to do it for him.

Mr. McCulloch regards himself as a disciple of Adam Smith, and so does Lord John Russell. We, too, are his disciple, but in _The Wealth of Nations_, can find no warrant for the system advocated by either. The system of Dr. Smith tended to the production of that natural freedom of trade, each step toward which would have been attended with improvement in the condition of the people, and increase in the _power to trade_, thus affording proof conclusive of the soundness of the doctrine; whereas every step in the direction now known as free trade is attended with deterioration of condition, and _increased necessity_ for trade, with _diminished power_ to trade. Those who profess to be his followers and suppose that they are carrying out his principles, find results directly the reverse of their anticipations; and the reason for this may readily be found in the fact that the English school of political economists long since repudiated the whole of the system of Dr. Smith, retaining of it little more than _the mere words_ "free trade."

The basis of all commerce is to be found in production, and therefore it was that Dr. Smith looked upon agriculture, the science of production, as the first pursuit of man, and manufactures and commerce as beneficial only to the extent that they tended to aid agriculture and increase the quantity of commodities to be converted or exchanged, preparatory to their being consumed. He held, therefore, that the return to labour would be greater in a trade in which exchanges could be made once a month than in another in which they could only be made once in a year, and he was opposed to the system then in vogue, because it had, "in all cases," turned trade,

"From a foreign trade of consumption with a neighbouring, into one with a more distant country; in many cases, from a direct foreign trade of consumption, into a round-about one; and in some cases, from all foreign trade of consumption, into a carrying trade. It has in all cases, therefore," he continues, "turned it from a direction in which it would have maintained a greater quantity of productive labour, into one in which it can maintain a much smaller quantity."

All this is directly the reverse of what is taught by the modern British economists; and we have thus two distinct schools, that of Adam Smith and that of his successors. The one taught that labour directly applied to production was most advantageous, and that by bringing the consumer to take his place by the side of the producer, production and the consequent power to trade would be increased. The other teaches, that every increase of capital or labour applied to production must be attended with diminished return, whereas ships and steam-engines may be increased _ad infinitum_ without such diminution: the necessary inference from which is, that the more widely the consumer and the producer are separated, with increased necessity for the use of ships and engines, the more advantageously labour will be applied, and the greater will be the power to trade. The two systems start from a different base, and tend in an opposite direction, and yet the modern school claims Dr. Smith as founder. While teaching a theory of production totally different, Mr. McCulloch informs us that "the fundamental principles on which the _production_ of wealth depends" were established by Dr. Smith, "beyond the reach of cavil or dispute."

The difference between the two schools may be thus illustrated: Dr. Smith regarded commerce as forming a true pyramid, thus--

Exchanges abroad.
Exchanges at home.
Conversion into cloth and iron.
Production of food and other raw materials.

This is in exact accordance with what we know to be true; but according to the modern school, commerce forms an inverted pyramid, thus--

Exchanges with distant men.
Exchanges at home.
Conversion.
Production.

The difference between these figures is great, but not greater than that between two systems, the one of which regards the earth as the great and perpetually improving machine to which the labour of man may be profitably applied, while the other gives precedence to those very minute and perpetually deteriorating portions of it which go to the construction of ships, wagons, and steam-engines. An examination of these figures will perhaps enable the reader to understand the cause of the unsteadiness observed wherever the modern system is adopted.

* * * * *

It will be easy now to see why it is that the commercial policy of England has always been so diametrically opposed to that advocated by the author of _The Wealth of Nations_. He saw clearly that the man and the easily transported spindle should go to the food and the cotton, and that, when once there, 'they were there for ever; whereas the bulky food and cotton might be transported to the man and the spindle for a thousand years, and that the necessity for transportation in the thousand and first would be as great as it had been in the first; and that the more transportation was needed, the less food and cloth would fall to the share of both producer and consumer. His countrymen denied the truth of this, and from that day to the present they have endeavoured to prevent the other nations of the world from obtaining machinery of any kind that would enable them to obtain the aid of those natural agents which they themselves regard as more useful than the earth itself. "The power of water," says Mr. McCulloch--

"And of wind, which move our machinery, support our ships, and impel them over the deep--the pressure of the atmosphere, and the elasticity of steam, which enables us to work the most powerful engines, are they not the spontaneous gifts of nature? Machinery is advantageous only because it gives us the means of pressing some of the powers of nature into our service, and of making them perform the principal part of what, we must otherwise have wholly performed ourselves. In navigation is it possible to doubt that the powers of nature--the buoyancy of the water, the impulse of the wind, and the polarity of the magnet--contribute fully as much as the labours of the sailor to waft our ships from one hemisphere to another? In bleaching and fermentation the whole processes are carried on by natural agents. And it is to the effects of heat in softening and melting metals, in preparing our food, and in warming our houses, that we owe many of our most powerful and convenient instruments, and that those northern climates have been made to afford a comfortable habitation."--_Principles_, 165.

This is all most true, but what does it prove in regard to British policy? Has not its object been that of preventing the people of the world from availing themselves of the vast deposites, of iron ore and of fuel throughout the earth, and thus to deprive them of the power to call to their aid the pressure of the atmosphere and the elasticity of steam? Has it not looked to depriving them of all power to avail themselves of the natural agents required in the processes of bleaching and fermentation, in softening woods, and melting metals, and was not that the object had in view by a distinguished statesman, since Chancellor of England, when he said, that "the country could well afford the losses then resulting from the exportation of manufactured goods, as its effect would be to smother in the cradle the manufactures of other nations?" Has not this been the object of every movement of Great Britain since the days of Adam Smith, and does not the following diagram represent exactly what would be the state of affairs if she could carry into full effect her desire to become "the workshop of the world?"

\British ships/
Producers of raw materials\ / Consumers of cloth and iron
Europe, Asia, Africa > < in Europe, Asia, Africa
America / \ North and South America
/ And rails \

Mr. McCulloch insists that agriculture is less profitable than manufactures and trade, and his countrymen insist that all the world outside of England shall be one great farm, leaving to England herself the use of all the various natural agents required in manufactures and commerce, that they may remain poor while she becomes rich. There is in all this a degree of selfishness not to be paralleled, and particularly when we reflect that it involves a necessity on the part of all other nations for abstaining from those scientific pursuits required for the development of the intellect, and which so naturally accompany the habit of association in towns, for the purpose of converting the food, the wool, the hides, and the timber of the farmer into clothing and furniture for his use. It is the policy of barbarism, and directly opposed to any advance in civilization, as will be fully seen when we examine into its working in reference to any particular trade or country.