Chapter XXI: Of the Duty of the People of England (2)

"Lord Erne held his annual show in Ballindreat, on Monday, the
25th ult, and after having delivered himself much as usual in
regard to agricultural matters, he proceeded to lecture the
assembled tenants on the necessity of implicit obedience to those
who were placed over them, in reference not only to practical
agriculture, but the elective franchise. To such of the tenants
as his lordship considered to be of the right stamp, and who
proved themselves so by voting for Sir Edmund Hayes and Thomas
Connolly, Esq., the 15 per cent. in full would be allowed--to
those who split their votes between one or other of these
gentlemen and Campbell Johnston, Esq., 7-1/2 per cent.; but to
the men who had the manliness to 'plump' for Johnston, no
reduction of rents would be allowed this year, or any other until
such parties might redeem their character at another
election."--_Cork Examiner_, Nov. 8, 1852.

[121] Thornton on Over-population, 248.

[122] Ibid. 250.

[123] McCulloch, Stat. Acct. of British Empire, vol. I. 315.

[124] Times Newspaper, June 7th, 1844.

[125] Report of Highland Emigration Committee, 1841.

[126] Lectures on the Social and Moral Condition of the People, by
various Ministers of the Gospel. Glasgow.

[127] See page 71, _ante_.

[128] Kay's Social Condition of England and of Europe, vol. i. 70

[129] Ibid. 359.

[130] Kay's Social Condition of England and of Europe, vol. 1, 183.

[131] On a recent occasion in the House of Lords, it was declared to
be important to retain Canada, on the express ground that it
greatly facilitated smuggling.

[132] Alton Locke.

[133] Lord Ashley informs us that there are 30,000 poor children such
as these in London alone.

[134] Reports of the Health of Towns Commission, vol. i. 127.

[135] City Mission Magazine, Oct. 1847.

[136] See page 224, _ante_.

[137] The import of 1850 was 103,713 lbs., and that of 1852, 251,792
lbs.

[138] The reader who may desire to see this more fully exhibited is
referred to the author's work, "The Past, the Present, and the
Future."

[139] See page 59, _ante_.

[140] "It may be doubted, considering the circumstances under which
most Irish landlords acquired their estates, the difference
between their religious tenets and those of their tenants, the
peculiar tenures under which the latter hold their lands, and the
political condition of the country, whether their residence would
have been of any considerable advantage. * * * The question
really at issue refers merely to the _spending_ of revenue, and
has nothing to do with the improvement of estates; and
notwithstanding all that has been said to the contrary, I am not
yet convinced that absenteeism is, in this respect, at all
injurious."--_Principles_, 157.

[141] Treatises and Essays on Subjects connected with Economical
Policy.

[142] Chapman, Commerce of India.

[143] During all this time there was a large increase in the import of
food from Ireland; and this, of course, constituted a portion of
domestic produce exported in the shape of manufactures, the whole
proceeds of which were to be retained at home. Since 1846, the
change in that country has been so great that she is now a large
importer of foreign grain. The official return for 1849 shows a
diminution in the quantity raised, as compared with 1844, of no
less than 9,304,607 quarters; and instead of sending to England,
as she had been accustomed to do, more than three millions of
quarters, she was an importer in that year and the following one
of more than a million. This deficiency had to be made up from
abroad, and thus was the United Kingdom transformed from the
position of seller of four or five millions of quarters--say about
40 millions of our bushels--of which it retained the _whole
proceeds_, to that of the mere shopkeeper, who retains only the
_profit_ on the same quantity. A similar state of things might be
shown in regard to many of the other articles of produce above
enumerated.

[144] in 1834, Mr. McCulloch estimated the produce of the land of
great Britain at 146 millions, but at that time wheat was
calculated at 50s. A quarter, or almost one-half more than the
average of the last two or three years. Other and larger
calculations may readily be found; but it would be difficult to
determine what becomes of the product if it be not found in rent,
farmers' profits, or labourers' wages.

[145] By reference to the report of the Assistant Commissioner,
charged with the inquiry into the condition of women and children
employed in agriculture, it will be seen that a change of clothes
seems to be out of the question. The upper parts of the
under-clothes of women at work, even their stays, quickly become
wet with perspiration, while the lower parts cannot escape getting
equally wet in nearly every kind of work in which they are
employed, except in the driest weather. It not unfrequently
happens that a woman, on returning from work, is obliged to go to
bed for an hour or two to allow her clothes to be dried. It is
also by no means uncommon for her, if she does not do this, to put
them on again the next morning nearly as wet as when she took them
off.

[146] _London Labour and London Poor_.

[147] The returns of imports into Great Britain are given according to
an official value, established more than a century since, and
thus the sum of the values is an exact measure of the quantities
imported.

[148] The reader will remark that of all the machinery of England but
a small portion is required for the _forced_ foreign trade that is
thus produced.

[149] The whole appropriation for the education of ten millions of
people in Western India is stated, in recent memorial from Bombay,
to be only £12,500, or $60,000, being six cents for every ten
persons.

[150] North British Review, Nov. 1852.

[151] Edinburgh Review, Oct. 1849. The italics are those of the reviewer.

[152] See page 160, _ante_.

[153] Lawson's Merchants' Mag., Dec. 1852.

[154] Senior, Outlines of Political Economy, 152.

[155] At a recent discussion in the London Statistical Society, land
in England was valued at thirty years' purchase, houses at
fifteen, and land in Ireland at eighteen.

[156] This will appear a very small estimate when compared with those
usually made, but it is equal to the total production of the land
and labour of the country for a year and a half, if not for a
longer period; and it would be difficult to prove that if the
whole labour and capital of the country were applied to that
purpose--food and clothing being supplied from abroad--it could
not produce a quantity of commodities equal in value to those now
accumulated in England. Even, however, were the amount placed at a
thousand millions, the amount of wealth would still be small,
under the circumstances of the case.

[157] See page 105 _ante_.

[158] The latest number of the Bankers' Magazine contains statements
of two banks whose joint capitals and reserved funds are about
£200,000, while their investments are about a million!--and this,
would seem to be about the usual state of affairs with most of the
English banks.

[159] Bankers' Magazine, Sept. 1852

[160] The amount of expenditure for English railroads is put down at
from two to three hundreds of millions of pounds; and yet the
real investment was only that of the labour employed in grading
the roads, building the bridges, driving the tunnels, and making
the iron; and if we take that at £8000 per mile, we obtain only
54 millions. All the balance was merely a transfer of property
already existing from one owner to another, as in the case of the
land, which in some cases cost ten or twelve thousands of pounds
per mile.

[161] See page 240, _ante_.

[162] North British Review, Nov. 1852.

[163] This tendency is exhibited in most of the books that treat of
the system. Thus, Mr. McCulloch insists on the beneficial effect
of _the fear_ of taxation, as will be seen in the following
passage:--

"To the desire of rising in the world, implanted in the breast of
every individual, an increase of taxation superadds the fear of
being cast down to a lower station, of being deprived of
conveniences and gratifications which habit has rendered all but
indispensable--and the combined influence of the two principles
produces results that could not be produced by the unassisted
agency of either."

This is only the lash of the slave-driver in another form.

[164] Barter, The Dorp and the Veld.

[165] Estimating the average cost of raising men and women at only
$1000 each, the present forced export is equal to sending abroad a
capital of four hundred millions of dollars, no return from which
is to be looked for.

[166] The recent movement of this institution in raising the rate of
interest affords a striking example of its power, and of the
absence of the judgment required for its exercise. For two years
past the bank has aided in raising prices, but now it desires to
reduce them, and at the cost, necessarily, of the weaker portions
of the community, for the rich can always take care of
themselves. The whole tendency of its operations is toward making
the rich richer and the poor poorer. Sir Robert Peel undertook to
regulate the great machine, but his scheme for that purpose
failed, because he totally misconceived the cause of the evil,
and of course applied the wrong remedy. It was one that could
only aggravate the mischief, as he could scarcely have failed to
see, had he studied the subject with the care its importance
merited.

[167] Page 230, _ante_.

[168] Chap. VII. _ante_.

[169] Message of President Roberts, Dec. 1849

[170] Lecture on the Relations of Free and Slave Labour, by David
Christy, p. 46.

[171] The Social Condition and Education of the People of England and
Europe, i. 256.

[172] Handbuch der Allgemeinen Staatskunde, vol. ii. 5, quoted by Kay,
vol. i., 120.

[173] Until recently, the increase of Great Britain has been slightly
greater than that of Prussia, the former having grown at the rate
of 1.95 per cent. per annum, and the latter at that of 1.84; but
the rate of growth of the former has recently much diminished, and
all growth has now probably ceased.

[174] Die Agrarfrage.

[175] Etudes sur l'Economie Politique.

[176] Page 51, _ante_.

[177] In no other country than England would the editor of a daily
journal inflict upon his readers throughout the kingdom whole
columns occupied with the names of persons present at a private
entertainment, and with the dresses of the ladies. Where
centralization has reached a height like this, we need scarcely
be surprised to learn that there is but one _paying_ daily
newspaper for a population of more than seventeen millions.

[178] Rural and Domestic Life in Germany, 27.

[179] Pictures from St. Petersburg, by E. Jerrmann, 22.

[180] Pictures from St. Petersburg, 23.

[181] The cargo of a ship that has recently sailed is stated to have
consisted of more than a thousand females.

[182] Laing's Denmark and the Duchies, London, 1852, 299.

[183] Quoted by Kay, Social and Political Condition of England and the
Continent, vol. i. 91.

[184] Denmark and the Duchies, 42.

[185] Ibid. 136.

[186] Denmark and the Duchies, 368.

[187] Ibid. 394.

[188] Ibid. 388.

[189] Denmark and the Duchies, 362.

[190] Denmark and the Duchies, 294.

[191] Denmark and the Duchies, 269.

[192] _L'Espàgne en_ 1850, par M. Maurice Block, 145.

[193] Ibid. pp. 157-159.

[194] Bayard Taylor, in the _N. Y. Tribune_.

[195] _L'Espàgne en_ 1850, 160.

[196] Spain, her Institutions, her Politics, and her Public Men, by
S. T. Wallis, 341.

[197] The exact amount given by M. Block is 2,194,269,000 francs, but
he does not state in what year the return was made.

[198] By an official document published in 1849, it appears that while
wheat sold in Barcelona and Tarragona (places of consumption) at
an average of more than 25 francs, the price at Segovia, in Old
Castile, (a place of production,) not 300 miles distant, was less
than 10 francs for the same quantity.--_L'Espàgne en_ 1850, 131.

[199] North British Review, Nov. 1852, art. _The Modern Exodus_.

[200] M. de Jonnes, quoted by Mr. Wallis, p. 295.

[201] Wallis's Spain, chap: ix.

[202] It is a striking evidence of the injurious moral effect produced
by the system which looks to the conversion of all the other
nations of the world into mere farmers and planters, that
Mr. Macgregor, in his work of Commercial Statistics, says, in
speaking of the Methuen treaty, "we do not deny that there were
advantages in having a market for our woollens in Portugal,
especially one, of which, if not the principal, was the means
afforded of sending them afterward by contraband into
Spain."--Vol. ii. 1122.

[203] In the first half of this period the export was small, whereas
in the last one, 1836 to 1840, it must have been in excess of the
growth of population.

[204] From 1842 to 1845 the average crop was 2,250,000 bales, or half
a million more than the average of the four previous years. From
1847 to 1850 the average was only 2,260,000 bales, and the price
rose, which could not have been the case had the slave trade been
as brisk between 1840 and 1845 as it had been between 1835 and
1840.

[205] See page 108, _ante_, for the sale of the negroes of the Saluda
Manufacturing Company.

[206] The following passage from one of the journals of the day is
worthy of careful perusal by those who desire to understand the
working of the present system of revenue duties, under which the
mills and furnaces of the country have to so great an extent been
closed, and the farmers and planters of the country to so great
an extent been driven to New York to make all their exchanges:--

"Mr. Matsell [chief of police, New York] tells us that during the
six months ending 31st December, 1852, there have been 19,901
persons arrested for various offences, giving a yearly figure of
nearly 40,000 arrests. * * * The number of arrests being 40,000,
or thereabouts, in a population of say 600,000, gives a
percentage of 6.6 on the whole number of inhabitants. We have no
data to estimate the state of crime in Paris under the imperial
_régime_; but in London the returns of the metropolitan police
for 1850, show 70,827 arrests, out of a population of some two
millions and a half, giving a percentage of less than three on
the whole number of inhabitants. Thus crimes are in New York
rather more than twice as frequent as in London. Indeed, if we
make proper allowance for the superior vigilance, and
organization of the metropolitan police of London, and for the
notorious inefficiency of our own police force, we shall
probably find that, in proportion to the population, there is in
New York twice as much crime as in London. This is an appalling
fact--a disgraceful disclosure."--_New York Herald_, March 21,
1853.

[207] North British Review, Nov. 1852.

[208] See Uncle Tom's Cabin, chap. xxxi.

[209] Letters to Lord Aberdeen, by the Right Hon. W. E. Gladstone, 9,
10, 12.

[210] Rev. Sidney Smith.

[211] See page 109, _ante_.

[212] It is commonly supposed that the road toward freedom lies
through cheapening the products of slave labour; but the reader
may readily satisfy himself that it is in that direction lies
slavery. Freedom grows with growing wealth, not growing
poverty. To increase the cost of raising slaves, and thus to
_increase the value of man at home_, produces exactly the effect
anticipated from the other course of operation, because the value
of the land and its produce grows more rapidly than the value of
that portion of the negro's powers that can be obtained from him
as a slave--that is, without the payment of wages.

[213] See page 280, _ante_.

[214] The following statement of the operations of the past year
completes the picture presented in Chapter IV.:--

"A tabular return, prepared by order of the House of Assembly of
Jamaica, exhibiting the properties in that island 'upon which
cultivation has been wholly or partially abandoned since the 1st
day of January, 1852,' presents in a striking light one of the
many injurious consequences that have followed the measure of
negro emancipation in the British West Indies. The return, which
is dated January 27, 1853, shows that 128 sugar estates have been
totally abandoned during the year, and 71 partially abandoned; of
coffee plantations, 96 have been totally, and 56 partially,
abandoned; of country seats--residences of planters or their
agents--30 have been totally, and 22 partially, abandoned. The
properties thus nearly or wholly ruined by the ill-considered
legislation of the British Parliament cover an area of 391,187
acres."

[215] _Economist_, (London,) Feb. 12, 1863.

[216] Spectator, Feb. 12, 1853.

[217] The net revenue from the opium trade, for the current year, is
stated to be no less than four millions of pounds sterling, or
nearly twenty millions of dollars; and it is to that revenue,
says _The Friend of India_, Nov. 25, 1852, that the Indian
government has been indebted for its power to carry on the wars
since 1838, those of Affghanistan, Seinde, Gwalior, the Punjab,
and that now existing with Burmah. Well is it asked by Dr. Allen,
in his pamphlet on "The Opium Trade," (Lowell, 1853,) "Can such
an unrighteous course in a nation always prosper?" "How," says
the same author, "can the Chinese

"Regard the English in any other light than wholesale smugglers
and wholesale dealers in poison? The latter can expend annually
over two millions of dollars on the coast of Great Britain to
protect its own revenue laws, but at the same time set at bold
defiance similar laws of protection enacted by the former. The
English are constantly supplying the Chinese a deadly poison,
with which thousands yearly put an end to their existence. In
England, even the druggists are expressly forbidden to sell
arsenic, laudanum, or other poison, if they have the least
suspicion that their customer intends to commit suicide. But in
China every facility is afforded and material supplied under the
British flag, and sanctioned by Parliament itself, for wholesale
slaughter. How long will an enlightened and Christian nation
continue to farm and grow a means of vice, with the proceeds of
which, even when in her possession, a benighted and pagan nation
disdains to replenish her treasury, being drawn from the ruin and
misery of her people? Where is the consistency or humanity of a
nation supporting armed vessels on the coast of Africa to
intercept and rescue a few hundreds of her sons from a foreign
bondage, when, at the same time, she is forging chains to hold
millions on the coast of China in a far more hopeless bondage?
And what must the world think of the religion of a nation that
consecrates churches, ordains ministers of the gospel, and sends
abroad missionaries of the cross, while, in the mean time, it
encourages and upholds a vice which is daily inflicting misery
and death upon more than four millions of heathen? And what must
be the verdict of future generations, as they peruse the history
of these wrongs and outrages? Will not the page of history, which
now records £20,000,000 as consecrated on the altar of humanity
to emancipate 800,000 slaves, lose all its splendour and become
positively odious, when it shall be known that this very money
was obtained from the proceeds of a contraband traffic on the
shores of a weak and defenceless heathen empire, at the
sacrifice, too, of millions upon millions of lives?"