The free peasants as yet constitute small class, but they live

"As free and happy men, upon their own land; are active, frugal, and, without exception, well off. This they must be, for considerable means are necessary for the purchase of their freedom; and, once free, and in possession of a farm of their own, their energy and industry, manifested even in a state of slavery, are redoubled by the enjoyment of personal liberty, and their earnings naturally increase in a like measure.

"The second class, the crown peasants, are far better off (setting aside, of course, the consciousness of freedom) than the peasants of Germany. They must furnish their quota of recruits, but that is their only material burden. Besides that, they annually pay to the Crown a sum of five rubles (about four shillings) for each male person of the household. Supposing the family to include eight working men, which is no small number for a farm, the yearly tribute paid amounts to thirty-two shillings. And what a farm that must be which employs eight men all the year round! In what country of civilized Europe has the peasant so light a burden to bear? How much heavier those which press upon the English farmer, the French, the German, and above all the Austrian, who often gives up three-fourths of his harvest in taxes. If the Crown peasant be so fortunate as to be settled in the neighbourhood of a large town, his prosperity soon exceeds that even of the Altenburg husbandmen, said to be the richest in all Germany. On the other hand, he can never purchase his freedom; hitherto, at least, no law of the Crown has granted him this privilege."—Ibid, 156.

That this, however, is the tendency of every movement, must be admitted by all who have studied the facts already given, and who read the following account of the commencement of local self-government:—

"But what would our ardent anti-Russians say, if I took them into the interior of the empire, gave them an insight into the organization of parishes, and showed them, to their infinite astonishment, what they never yet dreamed of, that the whole of that organization is based upon republican principles, that there every thing has its origin in election by the people, and that that was already the case at a period when the great mass of German democrats did not so much as know the meaning of popular franchise. Certainly the Russian serfs do not know at the present day what it means; but without knowing the name of the thing, without having ever heard a word of Lafayette's ill-omened 'trne monarchique, environn d'institutions rpublicaines,' they choose their own elders, their administrators, their dispensers of justice and finance, and never dream that they, slaves, enjoy and benefit by privileges by which some of the most civilized nations have proved themselves incapable of profiting.

"Space does not here permit a more extensive sketch of what the Emperor Nicholas has done, and still is daily doing, for the true freedom of his subjects; but what I have here brought forward must surely suffice to place him, in the eyes of every unprejudiced person, in the light of a real lover of his people. That his care has created a paradise that no highly criminal abuse of power, no shameful neglect prevails in the departments of justice and police—it is hoped no reflecting reader will infer from this exposition of facts. But the still-existing abuses alter nothing in my view of the emperor's character, of his assiduous efforts to raise his nation out of the deep slough in which it still is partly sunk, of his efficacious endeavours to elevate his people to a knowledge and use of their rights as men—alter nothing in my profound persuasion that Czar Nicholas I. is the true father of his country."—Ibid, 27.

We are told that the policy, of Russia is adverse to the progress of civilization, while that of England is favourable to it, and that we should aid the latter in opposing the former. How is this to be proved? Shall we look to Ireland for the proof? If we do, we shall meet there nothing but famine, pestilence, and depopulation. Or to Scotland, where men, whose ancestors had occupied the same spot for centuries are being hunted down that they may be transported to the shores of the St. Lawrence, there to perish, as they so recently have done, of cold and of hunger? Or to India, whose whole class of small proprietors and manufacturers has disappeared under the blighting influence of her system, and whose commerce diminishes, now from year to year? Or to Portugal, the weakest and most wretched of the communities of Europe? Or to China, poisoned with smuggled opium, that costs the nation annually little less than forty millions of dollars, without which the Indian government could not be maintained? Look where we may, we see a growing tendency toward slavery wherever the British system is permitted to obtain; whereas freedom grows in the ratio in which that system is repudiated.

That such must necessarily be the case will be seen by every reader who will for a moment reflect on the difference between the effect of the Russian system on the condition of Russian women, and that of the British system on the condition of those of India. In the former there is everywhere arising a demand for women to be employed in the lighter labour of conversion, and thus do they tend from day to day to become more self-supporting, and less dependent on the will of husbands, brothers, or sons. In the other the demand for their labour has passed away, and their condition declines, and so it must continue to do while Manchester shall be determined upon closing the domestic demand for cotton and driving the whole population to the production of sugar, rice, and cotton, for export to England.

The system of Russia is attractive of population, and French, German, and American mechanics of every description find demand for their services. That of England is repulsive, as is seen by the forced export of men from England, Scotland, Ireland, and India, now followed by whole cargoes of women [181] sent out by aid of public contributions, presenting a spectacle almost as humiliating to the pride of the sex as can be found in the slave bazaar of Constantinople.



CHAPTER XVIII.

HOW FREEDOM GROWS IN DENMARK.

Compared with Ireland, India, or Turkey, DENMARK is a very poor country. She has, says one of the most enlightened of modern British travellers—

"No metals or minerals, no fire power, no water power, no products or capabilities for becoming a manufacturing country supplying foreign consumers. She has no harbours on the North Sea. Her navigation is naturally confined to the Baltic. Her commerce is naturally confined to the home consumption of the necessaries and luxuries of civilized life, which the export of her corn and other agricultural products enables her to import and consume. She stands alone in her corner of the world, exchanging her loaf of bread, which she can spare, for articles she cannot provide for herself, but still providing for herself every thing she can by her own industry."[182]

That industry is protected by heavy import duties, and those duties are avowedly imposed with the view of enabling the farmer everywhere to have the artisan at his side; thus bringing together the producers and the consumers of the earth. "The greater part of their clothing materials," says Mr. Laing—

"Linen, mixed linen and cotton, and woollen cloth, is home-made; and the materials to be worked up, the cotton yarns, dye stuffs, and utensils, are what they require from the shops. The flax and wool are grown and manufactured on the peasant's farm; the spinning and weaving done in the house; the bleaching, dyeing, fulling done at home or in the village." * * * "Bunches of ribbons, silver clasps, gold ear-rings, and other ornaments of some value, are profusely used in many of the female dresses, although the main material is home-made woollen and linen. Some of these female peasant costumes are very becoming when exhibited in silk, fine cloth, and lace, as they are worn by handsome country girls, daughters of rich peasant proprietors in the islands, who sometimes visit Copenhagen. They have often the air and appearance of ladies, and in fact are so in education, in their easy or even wealthy circumstances, and an inherited superiority over others of the same class." * * * "In a large country-church at Gettorf, my own coat and the minister's were, as far as I could observe, the only two in the congregation not of home-made cloth; and in Copenhagen the working and every-day clothes of respectable tradesmen and people of the middle class, and of all the artisans and the lower labouring classes, are, if not home-made and sent to them by their friends, at least country made; that is, not factory made, but spun, woven, and sold in the web, by peasants, who have more than they want for their family use, to small shopkeepers. This is particularly the case with linen. Flax is a crop on every farm; and the skutching, hackling, spinning, weaving, and bleaching are carried on in every country family."—Pp. 381, 382, 383.

The manufacture of this clothing finds employment for almost the whole female population of the country and for a large proportion of the male population during the winter months. Under a different system, the money price of this clothing would be less than it now is—as low, perhaps, as it has been in Ireland—but what would be its labour price? Cloth is cheap in that country, but man is so much cheaper that he not only goes in rags, but perishes of starvation, because compelled to exhaust his land and waste his labour. "Where," asks very justly Mr. Laing—

"Would be the gain to the Danish nation, if the small proportion of its numbers who do not live by husbandry got their shirts and jackets and all other clothing one-half cheaper, and the great majority, who now find winter employment in manufacturing their own clothing materials, for the time and labour which are of no value to them at that season, and can be turned to no account, were thrown idle by the competition of the superior and cheaper products of machinery and the factory?"—P. 385.

None! The only benefit derived by man from improvement in the machinery of conversion is, that he is thereby enabled to give more time, labour, and thought to the improvement of the earth, the great machine of production; and in that there can be no improvement under a system that looks to the exportation of raw products, the sending away of the soil, and the return of no manure to the land.

The whole Danish system tends to the local employment of both labour and capital, and therefore to the growth of wealth and the division of the land, and the improvement of the modes of cultivation. "With a large and increasing proportion—

"Of the small farms belonging to peasant proprietors, working themselves with hired labourers, and of a size to keep from five to thirty or forty cows summer and winter, there are many large farms of a size to keep from two hundred to three hundred, and even four hundred cows, summer and winter, and let to verpachters, or large tenant farmers, paying money rents. This class of verpachters are farmers of great capital and skill, very intelligent and enterprising, well acquainted with all modern improvements in husbandry, using guano, tile-draining, pipe-draining, and likely to be very formidable rivals in the English markets to the old-fashioned, use-and-want English farmers, and even to most of our improving large farmers in Scotland."—Laing, 52.

The system of this country has attracted instead of repelling population, and with its growth there has been a constant and rapid advance toward freedom. The class of verpachters above described

"Were originally strangers from Mecklenburg, Brunswick, and Hanover, bred to the complicated arrangements and business of a great dairy farm, and they are the best educated, most skilful, and most successful farmers in the North of Europe. Many of them have purchased large estates. The extensive farms they occupy, generally on leases of nine years, are the domains and estates of the nobles, which, before 1784, were cultivated by the serfs, who were, before that period, adscripti gleb, and who were bound to work every day, without wages, on the main farm of the feudal lord, and had cottages and land, on the outskirts of the estate, to work upon for their own living when they were not wanted on the farm of the baron. Their feudal lord could imprison them, flog them, reclaim them if they had deserted from his land, and had complete feudal jurisdiction over them in his baronial court."—P. 53.

It is, however, not only in land, but in various other modes, that the little owner of capital is enabled to employ it with advantage. "The first thing a Dane does with his savings," says Mr. Brown,[183] British consul at Copenhagen—

"Is to purchase a clock; then a horse and cow, which he hires out, and which pay good interest. Then his ambition is to become a petty proprietor; and this class of persons is better off than any in Denmark. Indeed, I know no people in any country who have more easily within their reach all that is really necessary for life than this class, which is very large in comparison with that of labourers."

To the power advantageously to employ the small accumulations of the labourer, it is due that the proportion of small proprietors has become so wonderfully large. "The largest proportion of the country, and of the best land of it," says Mr. Laing,[184] is in their hands—

"With farms of a size to keep ten or fifteen cows, and which they cultivate by hired labour, along with the labour of the family. These small proprietors, called huffner, probably from hoff, a farm-steading and court-yard, correspond to the yeomen, small freeholders, and statesmen, of the North of England, and many of them are wealthy. Of this class of estates, it is reckoned there are about 125,150 in the two duchies: some of the huffners appear to be copyholders, not freeholders; that is, they hold their land by hereditary right, and may sell or dispose of it; but their land is subject to certain fixed payments of money, labour, cartages, ploughing yearly to the lord of the manor of which they hold it, or to fixed fines for non-payment. A class of smaller land-holders are called Innsters, and are properly cottars with a house, a yard, and land for a cow or two, and pay a rent in money and in labour, and receive wages, at a reduced rate, for their work all the year round. They are equivalent to our class of married farm-servants, but with the difference that they cannot be turned off at the will or convenience of the verpachter, or large farmer, but hold of the proprietor; and all the conditions under which they hold—sometimes for life, sometimes for a term of years—are as fixed and supported by law, as those between the proprietor and the verpachter. Of this class there are about 67,710, and of house-cottars without land; 17,480, and 36,283 day-labourers in husbandry. The land is well divided among a total population of only 662,500 souls."—P. 43.

Even the poorest of these labouring householders has a garden, some land, and a cow;[185] and everywhere the eye and hand of the little proprietor may be seen busily employed, while the larger farmers, says our author—

"Attend our English cattle-shows and agricultural meetings, are educated men, acquainted with every agricultural improvement, have agricultural meetings and cattle-shows of their own, and publish the transactions and essays of the members. They use guano, and all the animal or chemical manures, have introduced tile-draining, machinery for making pipes and tiles, and are no strangers to irrigation on their old grass meadows."—P. 127.

As a natural consequence, the people are well clothed. "The proportion," says Mr. Laing—

"Of well-dressed people in the streets is quite as great as in our large towns; few are so shabby in clothes as the unemployed or half-employed workmen and labourers in Edinburgh; and a proletarian class, half-naked and in rags, is not to be seen. The supply of clothing material for the middle and lower classes seems as great, whether we look at the people themselves or at the second or third rate class of shops with goods for their use."—P. 379.

In regard to house accommodation, he says:—

"The country people of Denmark and the duchies are well lodged. The material is brick. The roofing is of thatch in the country, and of tiles in the towns. Slate is unknown. The dwelling apartments are always floored with wood. I have described in a former note the great hall in which all the cattle and crops and wagons are housed, and into which the dwelling apartments open. The accommodations outside of the meanest cottage, the yard, garden, and offices, approach more to the dwellings of the English than of the Scotch people of the same class."—P. 420.

Every parish has its established schoolmaster, as well as

"Its established minister; but it appears to me that the class of parochial schoolmasters here stands in a much higher position than, in Scotland. They are better paid, their houses, glebes, and stipends are better, relatively to the ordinary houses and incomes of the middle class in country places, and they are men of much higher education than their Scotch brethren." * * * "It is quite free to any one who pleases to open a school; and to parents to send their children to school or not, as they please. If the young people are sufficiently instructed to receive confirmation from the clergyman, or to stand an examination for admission as students at the university, where or how they acquired their instruction is not asked. Government has provided schools, and highly qualified and well-paid teachers, but invests them with no monopoly of teaching, no powers as a corporate body, and keeps them distinct from and unconnected with the professional body in the university."—Pp. 170, 336.

"The most striking feature in the character of these small town populations," says our author—

"And that which the traveller least expects to find in countries so secluded, so removed from intercourse with other countries, by situation and want of exchangeable products, as Sleswick, Jutland, and the Danish islands, is the great diffusion of education, literature, and literary tastes. In towns, for instance, of 6000 inhabitants, in England, we seldom find such establishments as the 6000 inhabitants of Aalborg, the most northerly town in Jutland, possess. They enjoy, on the banks of the Lymfiord, a classical school for the branches of learning required from students entering the university; an educational institution, and six burger schools for the ordinary branches of education, and in which the Lancastrian method of mutual instruction is in use; a library of 12,000 volumes, belonging to the province of Aalborg, is open to the public; a circulating library of 2000 volumes; several private collections and museums, to which access is readily given; a dramatic association, acting every other Sunday; and two club-houses for balls and concerts. A printing office and a newspaper, published weekly or oftener, are, in such towns, establishments of course. Wyborg, the most ancient town in Jutland, the capital in the time of the pagan kings, and once a great city, with twelve parish churches and six monasteries, but now containing no remains of its former grandeur, and only about 3000 inhabitants, has its newspaper three times a week, its classical school, its burger school, its public library, circulating library, and its dramatic association acting six or eight plays in the course of the winter. These, being county towns, the seats of district courts and business, have, no doubt, more of such establishments than the populations of the towns themselves could support; but this indicates a wide diffusion of education and intellectual tastes in the surrounding country. Randers, on the Guden River, the only river of any length of course which runs into the Baltic or Cattegat from the peninsular land, and the only one in which salmon are caught, is not a provincial capital, and is only about twenty-five English miles from the capital Wyborg; but it has, for its 6000 inhabitants, a classical school, several burger schools; one of which has above 300 children taught by the mutual-instruction method, a book society, a musical society, a circulating library, a printing press, a newspaper published three times a week, a club-house, and a dramatic society. Aarhuus, with, about the same population as Randers, and about the same distance from it as Randers from Wyborg, has a high school, two burger schools, and a ragged or poor school, a provincial library of 3000 or 4000 volumes, a school library of about the same extent, a library belonging to a club, a collection of minerals and shells belonging to the high schools, a printing press, (from which a newspaper and a literary periodical are issued,) book and music shops, a club-house, concert and ball-room, and a dramatic society. Holstebro, a little inland town of about 800 inhabitants, about thirty-five English miles west from Wyborg, has its burger school on the mutual-instruction system, its reading society, and its agricultural society. In every little town in this country, the traveller finds educational institutions and indications of intellectual taste for reading, music, theatrical representations, which, he cannot but admit, surpass what he finds at home in England, in similar towns and among the same classes."—P.316.

We have here abundant evidence of the beneficial effect of local action, as compared with centralisation. Instead of having great establishments in Copenhagen, and no local schools, or newspapers, there is everywhere provision for education, and evidence that the people avail themselves of it. Their tastes are cultivated, and becoming more so from day to day; and thus do they present a striking contrast with the picture furnished by the opposite shore of the German Ocean, and for the reason that there the system is based on the idea of cheapening labour at home and underworking the labourer abroad. The windows of the poorest houses, says Mr. Laing—

"Rarely want a bit of ornamental drapery, and are always decked with flowers and plants in flower-pots. The people have a passion for flowers. The peasant girl and village beau are adorned with bouquets of the finest of ordinary flowers; and in the town you see people buying, flowers who with us, in the same station, would think it extravagance. The soil and climate favour this taste. In no part of Europe are the ordinary garden-flowers produced in such abundance and luxuriance as in Holstein and Sleswick."—P. 50.

The people have everywhere "leisure to be happy, amused, and educated,"[186] and, as a consequence, the sale of books is large. The number of circulating libraries is no less than six hundred,[187] and their demands give

"More impulse to literary activity than appears in Edinburgh, where literature is rather passive than active, and what is produced worth publishing is generally sent to the London market. This is the reason why a greater number of publications appear in the course of the year in Copenhagen than in Edinburgh." * * * "The transmission of books and other small parcels by post, which we think a great improvement, as it unquestionably is, and peculiar to our English post-office arrangement, is of old standing in Denmark, and is of great advantage for the diffusion of knowledge, and of great convenience to the people."—Pp. 373, 374.

The material and intellectual condition of this people is declared by Mr. Laing—and he is an experienced and most observant traveller—to be higher than that of any other in Europe;[188] while Mr. Kay, also very high authority, places the people of England among the most ignorant and helpless of those of Europe. The Danes consume more food for the mind

"Than the Scotch; have more daily and weekly newspapers, and other periodical works, in their metropolis and in their country towns, and publish more translated and original works; have more public libraries, larger libraries, and libraries more easily accessible to persons of all classes, not only in Copenhagen, but in all provincial and country towns; have more small circulating libraries, book-clubs, musical associations, theatres and theatrical associations, and original dramatic compositions; more museums, galleries, collections of statues, paintings, antiquities, and objects gratifying to the tastes of a refined and intellectual people, and open equally to all classes, than the people of Scotland can produce in the length and breadth of the land."—P. 390.

High moral condition is a necessary consequence of an elevated material and intellectual one; and therefore it is that we find the Dane distinguished for kindness, urbanity, and regard for others,[189] and this is found in all portions of society. In visiting the Museum of Northern Antiquities, which is open to the public, free of charge, on certain days—

"The visitors are not left to gape in ignorance at what they see. Professors of the highest attainments in antiquarian science—Professor Thomsen, M. Worsaae, and others—men who, in fact, have created a science out of an undigested mass of relics, curiosities, and specimens, of the arts in the early ages—go round with groups of the visitors, and explain equally to all, high and low, with the greatest zeal, intelligence, and affability, the uses of the articles exhibited, the state of the arts in the ages in which they were used, the gradual progress of mankind from shells, stones, and bones to bronze and iron, as the materials for tools, ornaments, and weapons, and the conclusions made, and the grounds and reasons for making them, in their antiquarian researches. They deliver, in fact, an extempore lecture, intelligible to the peasant and instructive to the philosopher."—P. 399.

In place of the wide gulf that divides the two great portions of English society, we find here great equality of social intercourse, and

"It seems not to be condescension merely on one side, and grateful respect for being noticed at all on the other, but a feeling of independence and mutual respect between individuals of the most different stations and classes. This may be accounted for from wealth not being so all-important as in our social state; its influence in society is less where the majority are merely occupied in living agreeably on what they have, without motive or desire to have more."—P. 423.

How strikingly does the following contrast with the description of London, and its hundred thousand people without a place to lay their heads!—

"The streets are but poorly lighted, gas is not yet introduced, and the police is an invisible force; yet one may walk at all hours through this town without seeing a disorderly person, a man in liquor unable to take care of himself, or a female street-walker. Every one appears to have a home and bed of some kind, and the houseless are unknown as a class."—P. 394.

Why this is so is, that, because of the growing improvement in the condition of the people, the land is daily increasing in value, and is becoming divided, and men are attracted from the city to the land and the smaller towns—directly the reverse of what is observed in England. "There is," says Mr. Laing—

"No such influx, as in our large towns, of operatives in every trade, who, coming from the country to better their condition, are by far too numerous for the demand, must take work at lower and lower wages to keep themselves from starving, and who reduce their fellow-craftsmen and themselves to equal misery. Employment is more fixed and stationary for the employed and the employers. There is no foreign trade or home consumption to occasion great and sudden activity and expansion in manufactures, and equally great and sudden stagnation and collapse."—P. 394.

"Drunkenness has almost," we are told, "disappeared from the Danish character," and it is

"The education of the tastes for more refined amusements than the counter of the gin-palace or the back parlour of the whisky-shop afford, that has superseded the craving for the excitement of spirituous liquor. The tea-gardens, concert-rooms, ball-rooms, theatres, skittle-grounds, all frequented indiscriminately by the highest and the lowest classes, have been the schools of useful knowledge that have imparted to the lowest class something of the manners and habits of the highest, and have eradicated drunkenness and brutality, in ordinary intercourse, from the character of the labouring people."—P. 396.

Denmark is, says this high authority, "a living evidence of the falsity of the theory that population increases more rapidly than subsistence where the land of the country is held by small working proprietors;"[190] and she is a living evidence, too, of the falsity of the theory that men commence with the cultivation of the most productive soils, and find themselves, as wealth and population increase, forced to resort to poorer ones, with diminished return to labour. Why she is enabled to afford such conclusive evidence of this is, that she pursues a policy tending to permit her people to have that real free trade which consists in having the power to choose between the foreign and domestic markets—a power, the exercise of which is denied to India and Ireland, Portugal and Turkey. She desires to exercise control over her own movements, and not over those of others; and therefore it is that her people become from day to day more free and her land from day to day more valuable.

Turkey is the paradise of the system commonly known by the name of free trade—that system under which the artisan is not permitted to take his place by the side of the producer of silk and cotton—and the consequence is, seen in the growing depopulation of the country, the increasing poverty and slavery of its people, the worthlessness of its land, and in the weakness of its government. Denmark, on the contrary, is the paradise of the system supposed to be opposed to free trade—that system under which the artisan and the farmer are permitted to combine their efforts—and the consequence is seen in the increase of population, in the growth of wealth and freedom, in the growing value of land, in the increasing tendency to equality, and in the strength of its government, as exhibited in its resistance of the whole power of Northern Germany during the late Schleswig-Holstein war, and as afterward exhibited toward those of its own subjects who had aided in bringing on the war. "It is to the honour," says Mr. Laing [191] —

"Of the Danish king and government, and it is a striking example of the different progress of civilization in the North and in the South of Europe, that during the three years this insurrection lasted, and now that it is quelled, not one individual has been tried and put to death, or in any way punished for a civil or political offence by sentence of a court-martial, or of any other than the ordinary courts of justice; not one life has been taken but in the field of battle, and by the chance of war. Banishment for life has been the highest punishment inflicted upon traitors who, as military officers deserting their colours, breaking their oaths of fidelity, and giving up important trusts to the enemy, would have been tried by court-martial and shot in any other country. Civil functionaries who had abused their official power, and turned it against the government, were simply dismissed."

These facts contrast strikingly with those recently presented to view by Irish history. Ireland had no friends in her recent attempt at change of government. Her leaders had not even attempted to call in the aid of other nations. They stood alone, and yet the English government deemed it necessary to place them in an island at a distance of many thousand miles, and to keep them there confined. Denmark, on the contrary, was surrounded by enemies close at hand—enemies that needed no ships for the invasion of her territory—and yet she contented herself with simple banishment. The policy of the former looks abroad, and therefore is it weak at home. That of the latter looks homeward, and therefore is it that at home she is strong; small as she is, compared with other powers, in her territory and in the number of her population.



CHAPTER XIX.

HOW FREEDOM GROWS IN SPAIN AND IN BELGIUM.

Spain expelled the industrious portion of her population, and almost at the same time acquired colonies of vast extent, to which she looked for revenue. Centralization here was almost perfect—and here, as everywhere, it has been accompanied by poverty and weakness. With difficulty she has been enabled to defend her rights on her own soil, and she has found it quite impossible to maintain her power abroad, and for the reason that her system tended to the impoverishment of her people and the destruction of the value of labour and land. Her history tends throughout to show that nations which desire respect for their own rights, must learn to respect those of others.

The policy of Spain has been unfavourable to commerce, internal and external. Exchanges at home were burdened with heavy taxes, and the raw materials of manufacture, even those produced at home, were so heavily taxed on their passage from the place of production to that of consumption, that manufactures could not prosper. The great middle class of artisans could therefore scarcely be found, and the scattered agriculturists were thus deprived of their aid in the effort to establish or maintain their freedom. Towns and cities decayed, and land, became more and more consolidated in the hands of great noblemen on one side and the church on the other, and talent found no field for its exercise, except in the service of the church or the state.

While thus destroying internal trade by taxation, efforts were made to build it up by aid of restrictions on external trade; but the very fact that the former was destroyed made it necessary for thousands and tens of thousands of persons to endeavour to earn wages in the smuggling of foreign merchandise, and the country was filled with men ever ready to violate the law, because of the cheapness of labour. The laws restraining the import of foreign merchandise were easily violated, because its bulk was small and its value great; whereas those interfering with the transit of raw materials were easily enforced, because the bulk was great and their value small; and therefore the whole system tended effectually to prevent the artisan from taking his place by the side of the grower of food and wool; and hence the depopulation, poverty, and weakness of this once rich and powerful country.

Fortunately for her, however, the day arrived when she was to lose her colonies, and find herself compelled to follow the advice of Adam Smith, and look to home for revenue; and almost from that date to the present, notwithstanding foreign invasions, civil wars, and revolutions, her course has been onward, and with each succeeding year there has been a greater tendency toward diversification of employment, the growth of towns and other places of local exchange, the improvement of agriculture, the strengthening of the people in their relations with the government, and the strengthening of the nation as regards the other nations of the earth.

Among the earliest measures tending toward the emancipation of the people of Germany, Russia, and Denmark, was, as has been seen, the removal of restrictions upon the trade in land, the great machine of production. So, too, was it in Spain. According to a return made to the Cortes of Cadiz, out of sixty millions of acres then in cultivation, only twenty millions were held by the men who cultivated them, while thirty were in the hands of great nobles, and ten were held by the church. Under a decree of secularization, a large portion of the latter has been sold, and the result is seen in the fact that the number of owners cultivating their own properties has risen from 273,760 to 546,100; and the number of farms from 403,408 to 1,095,200.[192]

A further step toward freedom and the establishment of equal rights, is found in the abolition of a great variety of small and vexatious taxes, substituting therefor a land-tax, payable alike by the small and the great proprietor; and in the abolition of internal duties on the exchange of the raw materials of manufacture. With each of these we find increasing tendency toward the establishment of that division of employment which gives value to labour and land. From 1841 to 1846, the number of spindles in Catalonia has grown from 62,000 to 121,000, and that of looms from 30,000 to 45,000, while cotton factories had been put in operation in various other parts of the kingdom.[193] Still later, numerous others have been started, and a traveller of the past year informs us that the province of Granada now bids fair to rival Catalonia in her manufactures.[194] In 1841, the total value of the products of the cotton manufacture was estimated at about four millions of dollars, but in 1846 it had risen to more than six and a half millions. The woollen manufacture had also rapidly increased, and this furnishes employment at numerous places throughout the kingdom, one of which, Alcoy, is specially referred to by M. Block,[195] as situated among the mountains which separate the ancient kingdom of Valencia and Murcia, and as having no less than 24,000 spindles, and 12,000 men, in addition to a great number of women and children, engaged in this branch of manufacture.

In regard to the progress of manufactures generally, the following statement, furnished by a recent American traveller to whom we are indebted for an excellent work on Spain, furnishes much information, and cannot be read without interest by all those who derive pleasure from witnessing advance in civilization.[196]

"Of late years there has been a considerable effort to extend and improve the production and manufacture of silk, and the result has been very favourable. The silkworm, formerly confined, in a great degree, to Valencia and Murcia, is now an article of material importance in the wealth of the two Castiles, Rioja, and Aragon. The silk fabrics of Talavera, Valencia, and Barcelona are many of them admirably wrought, and are sold at rates which appear very moderate. I had particular occasion to note the cheapness of the damasks which are sold in Madrid from the native looms. It is not easy to imagine any thing more magnificent, of their kind. The woollen cloths, too, of home manufacture, are, some of them, very admirable, and the coarser kinds supply, I believe, a considerable part of the national demand. In cheapness I have never seen them surpassed. The finer qualities do not bear so favourable a comparison with the foreign article; but those who were familiar with the subject informed me that their recent improvement had been very decided. Many laudable efforts have been made to render the supply of wool more abundant, and to improve its quality, and there has been a considerable importation of foreign sheep, with a view to crossing on the native breeds. The sheep-rearing interest is so very large in Spain, that any material improvement in the quality of the wool must add greatly to the national wealth, as well as to the importance of the woollen manufacture and its ability to encounter foreign competition.

"In the general movement toward an increased and more valuable production of the raw material for manufacture, the flax of Leon and Galicia and the hemp of Granada have not been forgotten. But the article in which the most decided and important progress has been made, is the great staple, iron. In 1832; the iron-manufacture of Spain was at so low an ebb, that it was necessary to import from England the large lamp-posts of cast metal, which adorn the Plaza de Armas of the Palace. They bear the London mark, and tell their own story. A luxury for the indoors enjoyment or personal ostentation of the monarch, would of course have been imported from any quarter, without regard to appearances. But a monument of national dependence upon foreign industry would hardly have been erected upon such a spot, had there been a possibility of avoiding it by any domestic recourse. In 1850 the state of things had so far changed, that there were in the kingdom twenty-five founderies, eight furnaces of the first class, with founderies attached, and twenty-five iron-factories, all prosperously and constantly occupied. The specimens of work from these establishments, which are to be seen in the capital and the chief cities of the provinces, are such as to render the independence and prospective success of the nation in this particular no longer matters of question. In the beginning of 1850, the Marquis of Molins, then Minister of Marine Affairs, upon the petition of the iron-manufacturers, directed inquiries to be made, by a competent board, into the quality of the native iron, and the extent to which the home manufacture might be relied on for the purposes of naval construction. The result was so satisfactory, that in March of the same year a royal order was issued from the department, directing all future contracts to be made with the domestic establishments. This, indeed, has been the case since 1845, at the arsenal of Ferrol, which has been supplied altogether from the iron-works of Biscay. The government, however, had determined for the future to be chiefly its own purveyor, and national founderies at Ferrol and Trubia, constructed without regard to expense, were about to go into operation when the royal order was published."

A necessary consequence of all these steps toward freedom and association has been great agricultural improvement. "The impoverished industry and neglected agriculture of the land," says Mr. Wallis—

"Have received an accession of vigorous labour, no longer tempted into sloth by the seductions of a privileged and sensual life. In the cities and larger towns the convent buildings have been displaced, to make room for private dwellings of more or less convenience and elegance, or have been appropriated as public offices or repositories of works of art. The extensive grounds which were monopolized by some of the orders, in the crowded midst of populous quarters, have been converted into walks or squares, dedicated to the public health and recreation. In a word, what was intended in the beginning as the object of monastic endowments, has been to some extent realized. What was meant for the good of all, though intrusted to a few, has been taken from the few who used it as their own, and distributed, rudely it may be, but yet effectually, among the many who were entitled to and needed it."—P. 276.

At the close of the last century, the value of agricultural products was officially returned at 5143 millions of reals, or about 260 millions of dollars. In 1829, a similar return made it somewhat less, or about 232 millions, but since that time the increase has been so rapid, that it is now returned at nearly 450 millions of dollars.[197]

Twenty years since, the means of transporting produce throughout the country were so bad that famine might prevail in Andalusia, and men might perish there in thousands, while grain wasted on the fields of Castile, because the silos of the latter no longer afforded room to store it. Even now, "in some districts, it is a familiar fact,

"That the wine of one vintage has to be emptied, in waste, in order to furnish skins for the wine of the next—the difficulty and cost of transportation to market being such as utterly to preclude the producer from attempting a more profitable disposition of it. Staples of the most absolute and uniform necessity—wheat, for instance—are at prices absurdly different in different parts of the kingdom; the proximity to market being such as to give them their current value in one quarter, while in another they are perhaps rotting in their places of deposite, without the hope of a demand. Until such a state of things shall have been cured, it will be useless to improve the soil, or stimulate production in the secluded districts; and of course every circumstance which wears the promise of such cure must enter into the calculations of the future, and avail in them according to its probabilities."—Wallis, P. 328.

We see thus that here, as everywhere, the power to make roads is least where the necessity for them is greatest. Had the farmers of Castile a near market in which their wheat could be combined with the wool that is shorn in their immediate neighbourhood, they could export cloth, and that could travel even on bad roads. As it is, they have to export both wheat and wool, and on such roads, whereas if the artisan could, in accordance, with the doctrines of Adam Smith, everywhere take his place by the side of the ploughman and the shepherd; and if women and children could thus everywhere be enabled to find other employment than in field labour, towns would grow up, and men would become rich and strong, and roads could be made without difficulty. Even now, however, there is a rapidly increasing tendency toward the construction of railroads, and the completion and enlargement of canals, and not a doubt can be entertained that in a few years the modes of intercourse will be so improved as to put an end to the enormous differences in prices here observed.[198]

Those differences are, however, precisely similar to those now regarded as desirable by English writers who find compensation for the loss of men, "in the great stimulus that our extensive emigration will give to every branch of the shipping interest."[199] The nearer the place of exchange the fewer ships and seamen are needed, and the richer must grow the producer and the consumer, because the number of persons among whom the total product is to be divided is then the least.

With increased power of association there is a steady improvement in the provision for education. Half a century since, the whole number of students at all the educational establishments in the kingdom was but 30,000,[200] and it had not materially varied in 1835; whereas the number now in the public schools alone, for the support of which there is an annual appropriation of $750,000, is above 700,000, or one to 17 of the population. The primary and other schools reach the number of 16,000; and besides these and the universities, there are numerous other institutions devoted to particular branches of education, some of which are provided for by government, and others by public bodies or private subscription. "No impediment," says Mr. Wallis—

"Is thrown by law in the way of private teachers—except that they are required to produce certain certificates of good character and conduct, and of having gone through a prescribed course, which is more or less extensive, in proportion to the rank of the institution they may desire to open."

As a necessary consequence of these changes there has been a great increase in the value of land, and of real estate generally. Mr. Wallis states that the church property has "commanded an average of nearly double the price at which it was officially assessed according to the standard of value at the time of its seizure," and we need desire no better evidence that man is tending gradually toward freedom than is to be found in this single fact.

It might be supposed, that with the increased tendency to convert at home the raw products of the earth, there would be a diminution of foreign commerce; but directly the reverse is the case. In the three years, from 1846 to 1849, the import of raw cotton rose from 16,000,000 to 27,000,000 of pounds; that of yarn from 5,200,000 to 6,800,000 pounds; and that of bar-iron from 5,400,000 to more than 8,000,000; and the general movements of exports and imports for the last twenty-four years, as given by M. Block, (p. 18,) has been, as follows:—

Imports, in francs. Exports, in francs. —————————- —————————- 1827......... 95,235,000......... 71,912,000

1843......... 114,325,000......... 82,279,000

1846......... 157,513,000......... 129,106,000

And to this may be added, as since published by the government, the account for

1851......... 171,912,000......... 124,377,000

With each step in the direction of bringing the consumer and the producer to take their places by the side of each other, the people acquire power to protect themselves, as is seen in the freedom of debate in the Chamber of Deputies, and in the extent to which those debates, with their comments thereon, are made known throughout the kingdom by the writers of a newspaper press that, although restricted, has been well characterized as, "fearless and plain speaking." In 1826, Madrid had but two daily newspapers, both of them most contemptible in character. In February, 1850, there were thirteen, with an aggregate circulation of 35,000 copies; and yet Madrid has no commerce, and can furnish little advertising for their support. [201]

With the increase of production and of wealth, and with the growth of the power of association, and of intelligence among the people, the government gradually acquires strength in the community of nations, and power to enforce its laws, as is here shown in the large decline that has taken place in the English exports to Portugal and Gibraltar, heretofore the great smuggling depots for English manufactures,[202]

as compared with those to Spain direct:

Portugal. Gibraltar. Spain. ————- ————— ——— In 1839..... 1,217,082..... 1,433,932...... 262,231 1852..... 1,048,356..... 481,286...... 1,015,493

The system that looks to consolidation of the land tends toward inequality, and that such has been, and is, the tendency of that of England, wherever fully carried out, has been shown. Those of Germany, Russia, and Denmark tend in the opposite direction, and under them men are becoming daily more independent in their action, and consequently more and more kindly and respectful in their treatment of each other. Such, likewise, is the case in Spain. "The Spaniard," says Mr. Wallis—

"Has a sense of equality, which blesses him who gives as well as him who takes. If he requires the concession from others, he demands it chiefly and emphatically through the concessions which he makes to them. There is so much self-respect involved in his respect to others, and in his manifestation of it, that reciprocity is unavoidable. To this, and this mainly, is attributable the high, courteous bearing, which is conspicuous in all the people, and which renders the personal intercourse of the respective classes and conditions less marked by strong and invidious distinctions, than in any other nation with whose manners and customs I am familiar. It is this, perhaps, more than any other circumstance, which has tempered and made sufferable the oppression of unequal and despotic institutions, illustrating 'the advantage to which,' in the words of a philosophic writer, 'the manners of a people may turn the most unfavourable position and the worst laws.'"—P. 383.

Again, he says—

"If in the midst of the very kindness which made him at home upon the briefest acquaintance, he should perceive an attentive politeness, approaching so near to formality as now and then to embarrass him, he would soon be brought to understand and admire it as the expression of habitual consideration for the feelings of others. He would value it the more when he learned from its universality, that what was elsewhere chiefly a thing of manners and education, was there a genial instinct developed into a social charity."—P. 207.

The "popular element is fully at work," and it requires, says the same author, but a comparison of the present with the past, "to remove all doubts of the present, and to justify the happiest augury." "The lotos of freedom has," he continues—

"Been tasted, and it cannot readily be stricken from their lips. So long as the more important guaranties are not altogether violated—so long as the government substantially, dedicates itself to the public good, by originating and fostering schemes of public usefulness, it may take almost any liberties with forms and non-essentials. Much further it will not be permitted to go, and every day diminishes the facility with which it may go even thus far. Every work of internal improvement, which brings men closer together, enabling them to compare opinions with readiness and concentrate strength for their maintenance; every new interest that is built up; every heavy and permanent investment of capital or industry; every movement that develops and diffuses the public intelligence and energy, is a bulwark more or less formidable against reaction. Nay, every circumstance that makes the public wiser, richer, or better, must shorten the career of arbitrary rule. The compulsion, which was and still is a necessary evil for the preservation of peace, must be withdrawn when peace becomes an instinct as well as a necessity. The existence of a stringent system will no longer be acquiesced in when the people shall have grown less in need of government, and better able to direct it for themselves. Thus, in their season, the very interests which shall be consolidated and made vigorous by forced tranquillity will rise, themselves, into the mastery. The stream of power as it rolls peacefully along, is daily strengthening the banks, which every day, though imperceptibly, encroach on it." —P. 381.

* * * * *

BELGIUM.

Belgium is a country with four and a half millions of inhabitants, or about one-half more than the State of New York. It is burdened with a heavy debt assumed at the period of its separation from Holland, and it finds itself compelled to maintain an army that is large in proportion to its population, because in the vicinity of neighbours who have at all times shown themselves ready to make it the battle-ground of Europe. In no country of Europe has there been so great a destruction, of property and life, and yet in none has there been so great a tendency toward freedom; and for the reason that in none has there been manifested so little disposition to interfere with the affairs of other nations. It is burdened now with a taxation amounting to about twenty-three millions of dollars, or five dollars and a half per head; and yet, amid all the revolutions and attempts at revolution by which the peace of Europe is disturbed, we hear nothing of the Belgians, whose course is as tranquil as it was before the days of 1848—and this is a consequence of following in the path indicated by Adam Smith.

The policy of Belgium looks more homeward than that of any nation of Europe. She has no colonies, and she seeks none. To a greater extent than almost any other nation, she has sought to enable her farmers to have local places of exchange, giving value to her labour and her land. Where these exist, men are certain to become free; and equally certain is it that where they do not exist, freedom must be a plant of exceedingly slow growth, even where it does not absolutely perish for want of nourishment. If evidence be desired of the freedom of the Belgians, it is to be found in the fact that there is nowhere to be seen, as we are on all hands assured, a more contented, virtuous, and generally comfortable population than that engaged in the cultivation of her fields. The following sketch is from a report published by order of Parliament, and cannot fail to be read with interest by those who desire to understand how it is that the dense population of this little country is enabled to draw from a soil naturally indifferent such large returns, while the Hindoo, with all his advantages of early civilization, wealth, and population, perishes of famine or flies from pestilence, leaving behind him, uncultivated, the richest soils, and sells himself to slavery in Cuba:—

"The farms in Belgium rarely exceed one hundred acres. The number containing fifty acres is not great; those of thirty or twenty are more numerous, but the number of holdings of from five to ten and twenty acres is very considerable.

"The small farms of from five to ten acres, which abound in many parts of Belgium, closely resemble the small holdings in Ireland; but the small Irish cultivator exists in a state of miserable privation of the common comforts and conveniences of civilized life, while the Belgian peasant farmer enjoys a large share of those comforts. The houses of the small cultivators of Belgium are generally substantially built, and in good repair; they have commonly a sleeping room in the attic, and closets for beds connected with the lower apartment, which is convenient in size; a small cellarage for the dairy, and store for the grain, as well as an oven, and an outhouse for the potatoes, with a roomy cattle-stall, piggery, and poultry loft. The house generally contains decent furniture, the bedding sufficient in quantity, and an air of comfort, pervades the establishment. In the cow-house the cattle are supplied with straw for bedding; the dung and moisture are carefully collected in the tank; the ditches had been secured to collect materials for manure; the dry leaves, potato-tops, &c. had been collected in a moist ditch to undergo the process of fermentation, and heaps of compost were in course of preparation. The premises were kept in neat and compact order, and a scrupulous attention to a most rigid economy was everywhere apparent. The family were decently clad; none of them were ragged or slovenly, even when their dress consisted of the coarsest material.

"In the greater part of the flat country of Belgium the soil is light and sandy, and easily worked; but its productive powers are certainly inferior to the general soil of Ireland, and the climate does not appear to be superior. To the soil and climate therefore, the Belgian does not owe his superiority. The difference is to be found in the system, of cultivation, and the forethought of the people. The cultivation of small farms in Belgium differs from the Irish: 1. In the quantity of stall-fed stock which is kept, and by which a supply of manure is regularly secured; 2. In the strict attention paid to the collection of manure, which is skilfully husbanded; 3. By the adoption of rotations of crop. We found no plough, horse, or cart—only a spade, fork, wheelbarrow, and handbarrow. The farmer had no assistance besides that of his family. The whole land is trenched very deep with the spade. The stock consisted of a couple of cows, a calf or two, one or two pigs; sometimes a goat or two, and some poultry. The cows are altogether stall-fed, on straw, turnips, clover, rye, vetches, carrots, potatoes, and a kind of soup made by boiling up the potatoes, peas, beans, bran, cut-hay, &e., which, given warm, is said to be very wholesome, and promotive of the secretion of milk. Near distilleries and breweries grains are given.

"Some small farmers agree to find stall-room and straw for sheep, and furnish fodder at the market price, for the dung. The dung and moisture are collected in a fosse in the stable. Lime is mingled with the scouring of the ditches, vegetable garbage, leaves, &c. On six-acre farms, plots are appropriated to potatoes, wheat, barley, clover, flax, rye, carrots, turnips, or parsnips, vetches, and rye, as green food for cattle. The flax is heckled and spun by the wife in winter; and three weeks at the loom in spring weaves up all the thread. In some districts every size, from a quarter acre to six acres, is found. The former holders devoted their time to weaving. As far as I could learn, there was no tendency to subdivision of the small holdings. I heard of none under five acres held by the class of peasant farmers; and six, seven, or eight acres is the more common size. The average rent is 20s. an acre. Wages, 10d. a day.

"A small occupier, whose farm we examined near Ghent, paid 9 7s. 6d. for six acres, with a comfortable house, stabling, and other offices attached, all very good of their kind—being 20s. an acre for the land, and 3 7s. 6d. for house and offices. This farmer had a wife and five children, and appeared to live in much comfort. He owed little or nothing."—Nicholls's Report.

These people have employment for every hour in the year, and they find a market close at hand for every thing they can raise. They are not forced to confine themselves to cotton or sugar, tobacco or wheat; nor are they forced to waste their labour in carrying their products to a distance so great that no manure can be returned. From this country there is no export of men, women, and children, such as we see from Ireland. The "crowbar brigade" is here unknown, and it may be doubted if any term conveying the meaning of the word "eviction" is to be found in their vocabulary. With a surface only one-third as great as that of Ireland, and with a soil naturally far inferior, Belgium supports a population almost half as great as Ireland has ever possessed; and yet we never hear of the cheap Belgian labour inundating the neighbouring countries, to the great advantage of those who desire to build up "great works" like those of Britain. The policy of Belgium looks to increasing the value of both labour and land, whereas that of England looks to diminishing the value of both.

With every advantage of soil and climate, the population of Portugal declines, and her people become more enslaved from day to day, while her government, is driven to repudiation of her debts. Belgium, on the contrary, grows in wealth and population, and her people become more free; and the cause of difference is, that the policy of the former has always looked to repelling the artisan, and thus preventing the growth of towns and of the habit of association; while that of the latter has always looked to bringing the artisan to the raw material, and thus enabling her people to combine their efforts for their improvement in material, moral, and intellectual condition, without which there can be no increase of freedom.

Russia and Spain seek to raise the value of labour and land, and they are now attracting population. The English system, based on cheap labour, destroys the value of both labour and land, and therefore it is that there is so large an export of men from the countries subject to it—Africa, India, Ireland, Scotland, England, Virginia, and Carolina.



CHAPTER XX.

OF THE DUTY OF THE PEOPLE OF THE UNITED STATES.

The slave must apply himself to such labour as his master may see fit to direct him to perform, and he must give to that master the produce of his exertions, receiving in return whatever the master may see fit to give him. He is limited to a single place of exchange.

Precisely similar to this is the system which looks to limiting all the people of the earth, outside of England, to agriculture as the sole means of employment; and carried out by smothering in their infancy the manufactures of other nations, while crushing the older ones of India by compelling her to receive British manufactures free of duty, and refusing to permit her to have good machinery, while taxing her spindles and looms at home, and their products when sent to Britain. It is one which looks to allowing the nations of the world to have but one market, in which all are to compete for the sale of their raw products, and one market, in which all are to compete for the purchase of manufactured ones; leaving to the few persons who control that market the power to fix the prices of all they require to buy and all they desire to sell. Cotton and corn, indigo and wool, sugar and coffee, are merely the various forms in which labour is sold; and the cheaper they are sold, the cheaper must be the labour employed in producing them, the poorer and more enslaved must be the labourer, the less must be the value of land, the more rapid must be its exhaustion and abandonment, and the greater must be the tendency toward the transport of the enslaved labourer to some new field of action, there to repeat the work of exhaustion and abandonment. Hence it is that we see the slave trade prevail to so great an extent in all the countries subject to the British system, except those in which famine and pestilence are permitted silently to keep down the population to the level of a constantly diminishing supply of food, as in Portugal, Turkey, and Jamaica. The system to which the world is indebted for these results is called "free-trade;" but there can be no freedom of trade where there is no freedom of man, for the first of all commodities to be exchanged is labour, and the freedom of man consists only in the exercise of the right to determine for himself in what manner his labour shall be employed, and how he will dispose of its products. If the British system tends toward freedom, proof of the fact will be found in the free employment of labour where it exists, and in the exercise by the labourer of a large control over the application of its produce. Are these things to be found in India? Certainly not. The labourer there is driven from the loom and forced to raise sugar or cotton, and his whole control over what is paid by the consumer for the products of his labour cannot exceed fifteen per cent. Can they be found in Ireland, in Turkey, or in Portugal? Certainly not. The labourers of those countries now stand before the world distinguished for their poverty, and for their inability to determine for themselves for whom they will labour or what shall be their reward. Were it otherwise, the "free trade" system would fail to produce the effect intended. Its object is, and has always been, that of preventing other communities from mining the coal or smelting the ore provided for their use by the great Creator of all things, and in such vast abundance; from making or obtaining machinery to enable them to avail themselves of the expansive power of steam; from calling to their aid any of the natural agents required in the various processes of manufacture; from obtaining knowledge that might lead to improvement in manufactures of any kind; and, in short, from doing any thing but raise sugar, coffee, cotton, wool, indigo, silk, and other raw commodities, to be carried, as does the slave of Virginia or Texas with the product of his labour, to one great purchaser, who determines upon their value and upon the value of all the things they are to receive in exchange for them. It is the most gigantic system of slavery the world has yet seen, and therefore it is that freedom gradually disappears from every country over which England is enabled to obtain control, as witness the countries to which reference has just been made.

There are, however, as has been shown, several nations of Europe in which men are daily becoming more free; and the reason for this is to be found in the fact that they have resisted this oppressive system. Germany and Russia, Spain, Denmark, Belgium, and other states, have been determined to protect their farmers in their efforts to bring the loom and the anvil to their side, and to have towns and other places of exchange in their neighbourhood, at which they could exchange raw products for manufactured ones and for manure; and in every one in which that protection has been efficient, labour and land have become, and are becoming, more valuable and man more free.

In this country protection has always, to some extent, existed; but at some times it has been efficient, and at others not; and our tendency toward freedom or slavery has always been in the direct ratio of its efficiency or inefficiency. In the period from 1824 to 1833, the tendency was steadily in the former direction, but it was only in the latter part of it that it was made really efficient. Then mills and furnaces increased in number, and there was a steady increase in the tendency toward the establishment of local places of exchange; and then it was that Virginia held her convention at which was last discussed in that State the question of emancipation. In 1833, however, protection was abandoned, and a tariff was established by which it was provided that we should, in a few years, have a system of merely revenue duties; and from that date the abandonment of the older States proceeded with a rapidity never before known, and with it grew the domestic slave trade and the pro-slavery feeling. Then it was that were passed the laws restricting emancipation and prohibiting education; and then it was that the export of slaves from Virginia and the Carolinas was so great that the population of those States remained almost, if not quite stationary, and that the growth of black population fell from thirty per cent., in the ten previous years, to twenty-four percent.[203] That large export of slaves resulted in a reduction of the price of Southern products to a point never before known; and thus it was that the system called free trade provided cheap cotton. Slavery grew at the South, and at the North; for with cheap cotton and cheap food came so great a decline in the demand for labour, that thousands of men found themselves unable to purchase this cheap food to a sufficient extent to feed their wives and their children. A paper by "a farm labourer" thus describes that calamitous portion of our history, when the rapid approach of the system called free trade, under the strictly revenue provisions of the Compromise Tariff, had annihilated competition for the purchase of labour:—

"The years 1839, 1840, and 1841 were striking elucidations of such cases; when the cry of sober, industrious, orderly men—'Give me work! only give me work; MAKE YOUR OWN TERMS—MYSELF AND FAMILY HAVE NOTHING TO EAT'—was heard in our land. In those years thousands of cases of the kind occurred in our populous districts."—Pittsburgh Dispatch.

That such was the fact must be admitted by all who recollect the great distress that existed in 1841-2. Throughout the whole length and breadth of the land, there was an universal cry of "Give me work; make your own terms—myself and family have nothing to eat;" and the consequence of this approach toward slavery was so great a diminution in the consumption of food, that the prices at which it was then exported to foreign countries were lower than they had been for many years; and thus it was that the farmer paid for the system which had diminished the freedom of the labourer and the artisan.

It was this state of things that re-established protection for the American labourer, whether in the field or in the workshop. The tariff of 1842 was passed, and at once there arose competition for the purchase of labour. Mills were to be built, and men were needed to quarry the stone and get out the lumber, and other men were required to lay the stone and fashion the lumber into floors and roofs, doors and windows; and the employment thus afforded enabled vast numbers of men again to occupy houses of their own, and thus was produced a new demand for masons and carpenters, quarrymen and lumbermen. Furnaces were built, and mines were opened, and steam-engines were required; and the men employed at these works were enabled to consume more largely of food, while ceasing to contend with the agricultural labourer for employment on the farm. Mills were filled with females, and the demand for cloths increased, with corresponding diminution in the competition for employment in the making of shirts and coats. Wages rose, and they rose in every department of labour; the evidence of which is to be found in the fact that the consumption of food and fuel greatly increased, while that of cloth almost doubled, and that of iron trebled in the short period of five years.

How, indeed, could it be otherwise than that the reward of labour should rise? The cotton manufacturer needed labourers, male and female, and so did his neighbour of the woollens mill; and the labourers they now employed could buy shoes and hats. The iron- masters and the coal-miners needed workmen, and the men they employed needed cotton and woollen cloths; and they could consume more largely of food. The farmer's markets tended to improve, and he could buy more largely of hats and shoes, ploughs and harrows, and the hatmakers and shoemakers, and the makers of ploughs and harrows, needed more hands; and therefore capital was everywhere looking for labour, where before labour had been looking for capital. The value of cottons, and woollens, and iron produced in 1846, as compared with that of 1842, was greater by a hundred millions of dollars; and all this went to the payment of labour, for all the profits of the iron-master and of the cotton and woollen manufacturer went to the building of new mills and furnaces, or to the enlargement of the old ones. Unhappily, however, for us, our legislators were smitten with a love of the system called free trade. They were of opinion that we were, by right, an agricultural nation, and that so we must continue; and that the true way to produce competition for the purchase of labour was to resolve the whole nation into a body of farmers—and the tariff of 1842 was repealed.

If the reader will now turn to page 107, he will see how large must have been the domestic slave trade from 1835 to 1840, compared with that of the period from 1840 to 1845. The effect of this in increasing the crop and reducing the price of cotton was felt with great severity in the latter period,[204] and it required time to bring about a change. We are now moving in the same direction in which we moved from 1835 to 1840. For four years past, we have not only abandoned the building of mills and furnaces, but have closed hundreds of old ones, and centralization, therefore, grows from day to day. The farmer of Ohio can no longer exchange his food directly with the maker of iron. He must carry it to New York, as must the producer of cotton in Carolina; who sees the neighbouring factory closed. [205] Local places of exchange decline, and great cities take their place; and with the growth of centralization grows the slave trade, North and South. Palaces rise in New York and Philadelphia, while droves of black slaves are sent to Texas to raise cotton, and white ones at the North perish of disease, and sometimes almost of famine. "We could tell," says a recent writer in one of the New York journals—

"Of one room, twelve feet by twelve, in which were five resident families, comprising twenty persons of both sexes and all ages, with only two beds, without partition or screen, or chair or table, and all dependent for their miserable support upon the sale of chips, gleaned from the streets, at four cents a basket—of another, still smaller and still more destitute, inhabited by a man, a woman, two little girls, and a boy, who were supported by permitting the room to be used as a rendezvous by the abandoned women of the street—of another, an attic room seven feet by five, containing scarcely an article of furniture but a bed, on which lay a fine-looking man in a raging fever, without medicine or drink or suitable food, his toil-worn wife engaged in cleaning dirt from the floor, and his little child asleep on a bundle of rags in the corner—of another of the same dimensions, in which we found, seated on low boxes around a candle placed on a keg, a woman and her oldest daughter, (the latter a girl of fifteen, and, as we were told, a prostitute,) sewing on shirts, for the making of which they were paid four cents apiece, and even at that price, out of which they had to support two small children, they could not get a supply of work—of another of about the same size occupied by a street rag-picker and his family, the income of whose industry was eight dollars a month—of another, scarcely larger, into which we were drawn by the terrific screams of a drunken man beating his wife, containing no article of furniture whatever—another warmed only by a tin pail of lighted charcoal placed in the centre of the room, over which bent a blind man endeavouring to warm himself; around him three or four men and women swearing and quarrelling; in one corner on the floor a woman, who had died the day previous of disease, and in another two or three children sleeping on a pile of rags; (in regard to this room, we may say that its occupants were coloured people, and from them but a few days previous had been taken and adopted by one of our benevolent citizens a beautiful little white girl, four or five years of age, whose father was dead and whose mother was at Blackwell's Island;) another from which not long; since twenty persons, sick with fever were taken to the hospital, and every individual of them died. But why extend the catalogue? Or why attempt to convey to the imagination by words the hideous squalor and the deadly effluvia; the dim, undrained courts, oozing with pollution; the dark narrow stairways decayed with age, reeking with filth, and overrun with vermin; the rotten floors, ceilings begrimed, crumbling, ofttimes too low to permit you to stand upright, and windows stuffed with rags; or why try to portray the gaunt shivering forms and wild ghastly faces in these black and beetling abodes, wherein from cellar to garret

——'All life dies, death lives, and nature breeds Perverse, all monstrous, all prodigious things, Abominable, unutterable!'" N. York Courier and Inquirer.

Our shops are now everywhere filled with the products of the cheap labour of England—of the labour of those foreign women who make shirts at a penny apiece, finding the needles and the thread, and of those poor girl's who spend a long day at making artificial flowers for which they receive two pence, and then eke out the earnings of labour by the wages of prostitution; and our women are everywhere driven from employment—the further consequences of which may be seen in the following extract from another journal of the day:—

"A gentleman who had been deputed to inquire into the condition of this class of operatives, found one of the most expert of them working from five o'clock in the morning until eleven at night, yet earning only about three dollars a week. Out of this, she had to pay a dollar and a half for board, leaving a similar amount for fuel, clothing, and all other expenses. Her condition, however, as compared with that of her class generally, was one of opulence. The usual earnings were but two dollars a week, which, as respectable board, could be had nowhere for less; than a dollar and a half, left only fifty cents for everything else. The boarding-houses, even at this price, are of the poorest character, always noisome and unhealthy, and not unfrequently in vile neighbourhoods. With such positive and immediate evils to contend with, what wonder that so many needlewomen take 'the wages of sin?'"

"Among the cases brought to light in New York, was that of an intelligent and skilful dressmaker, who was found in the garret of a cheap boarding-house, out of work, and nor are such instances unfrequent. The small remuneration which these workwomen receive keeps them living from hand to mouth, so that, in case of sickness, or scarcity of work, they are sometimes left literally without a crust."—Philada. Evening-Bulletin.

If females cannot tend looms, make flowers, or do any other of those things in which mind takes in a great degree the place of physical power, they must make shirts at four cents apiece, or resort to prostitution—or, they may work in the fields; and this is nearly the latitude of choice allowed to them under the system called free trade. Every furnace that is closed in Pennsylvania by the operation of this system, lessens the value of labour in the neighbourhood, and drives out some portion of the people to endeavour to sell elsewhere their only commodity, labour. Some seek the cities and some go West to try their fortunes. So, too, with the closing of woollens mills in New York, and cotton mills in New England. Every such ease compels people to leave their old homes and try to find new ones—and in this form the slave trade now exists at the North to a great extent. The more people thus driven to the cities, the cheaper is labour, and the more rapid is the growth of drunkenness and crime; and these effects are clearly visible in the police reports of all our cities.[206] Centralization, poverty, and crime go always hand in hand with each other.

The closing of mills and furnaces in Maryland lessens the demand for labour there, and the smaller that demand the greater must be the necessity on the part of those who own slaves to sell them to go South; and here we find the counterpart of the state of things already described as existing in. New York. The Virginian, limited to negroes as the only commodity into which he can manufacture his corn and thus enable it to travel cheaply to market, sends his crop to Richmond, and the following extract of a letter from that place shows how the system works:—

"Richmond, March 3, 1853.

"I saw several children sold; the girls brought the highest price. Girls from 12 to 18 years old brought from $500 to $800.

"I must say that the slaves did not display as much feeling as I had expected, as a general thing—but there was one noble exception—God bless her! and save her, too!! as I hope he will in some way, for if he does not interpose, there were no men there that would.

"She was a fine-looking woman about 25 years old, with three beautiful children. Her children as well as herself were neatly dressed. She attracted my attention at once on entering the room, and I took my stand near her to learn her answers to the various questions put to her by the traders. One of these traders asked her what was the matter with her eyes? Wiping away the tears, she replied, 'I s'pose I have been crying.' 'Why do you cry?' 'Because I have left my man behind, and his master won't let him come along.' 'Oh, if I buy you, I will furnish you with a better husband, or man, as you call him, than your old one.' 'I don't want any better and won't have any other as long as he lives.' 'Oh, but you will though, if I buy you,' 'No, massa, God helping me, I never will.'"—New York Tribune.

At the North, the poor girl driven out from the cotton or the woollens mill is forced to make shirts at four cents each, or sell herself to the horrible slavery of prostitution. At the South, this poor woman, driven put from Virginia, may perhaps at some time be found making one of the dramatis person in scenes similar to those here described by Dr. Howe:—

"If Howard or Mrs. Fry ever discovered so ill-administered a den of thieves as the New Orleans prison, they never described it. In the negro's apartment I saw much which made me blush that I was a white man; and which for a moment stirred up an evil spirit in my animal nature. Entering a large paved court-yard, around which ran galleries filled with slaves of all ages, sexes, and colours, I heard the snap of a whip, every stroke of which sounded like the sharp crack of a pistol. I turned my head, and beheld a sight which absolutely chilled me to the marrow of my bones, and gave me, for the first time in my life, the sensation of my hair stiffening at the roots. There lay a black girl flat upon her face on a board, her two thumbs tied, and fastened to one end, her feet tied and drawn tightly to the other end, while a strap passed over the small of her back, and fastened around the board, compressed her closely to it. Below the strap she was entirely naked. By her side, and six feet off, stood a huge negro, with a long whip, which he applied with dreadful power and wonderful precision. Every stroke brought away a strip of skin, which clung to the lash, or fell quivering on the pavement, while the blood followed after it. The poor creature writhed and shrieked, and in a voice which showed alike her fear of death and her dreadful agony, screamed to her master who stood at her head, 'Oh, spare my life; don't cut my soul out!' But still fell the horrid lash; still strip after strip peeled off from the skin; gash after gash was cut in her living flesh, until it became a livid and bloody mass of raw and quivering muscle.

"It was with the greatest difficulty I refrained from springing upon the torturer, and arresting his lash; but alas, what could I do, but turn aside to hide my tears for the sufferer, and my blushes for humanity!

"This was in a public and regularly organized prison; the punishment was one recognised and authorized by the law. But think you the poor wretch had committed a heinous offence, and had been convicted thereof, and sentenced to the lash? Not at all! She was brought by her master to be whipped by the common executioner, without trial, judge, or jury, just at his beck or nod, for some real or supposed offence, or to gratify his own whim or malice. And he may bring her day after day, without cause assigned, and inflict any number of lashes he pleases, short of twenty-five, provided only he pays the fee. Or if he choose, he may have a private whipping-board on his own premises, and brutalize himself there.