It will now readily be seen how perfectly accurate was Mr. Mill in his assertion that, "if the law were different, almost all the phenomena of the production and distribution of wealth would be other than they are." The doctrine of Malthus and Ricardo tends to make the labourer a slave to the owner of landed or other capital; but happily it has no foundation in fact, and therefore the natural laws of the production and distribution of wealth tend not to slavery, but to freedom.



CHAPTER VI.

HOW WEALTH TENDS TO INCREASE.

The first poor cultivator commences, as we have seen, his operations on the hillside. Below him are lands upon which have been carried by force of water the richer portions of those above, as well as the leaves of trees, and the fallen trees themselves, all of which have from time immemorial rotted and become incorporated with the earth, and thus have been produced soils fitted to yield the largest returns to labour; yet for this reason are they inaccessible. Their character exhibits itself in the enormous trees with which they are covered, and in their power of retaining the water necessary to aid the process of decomposition, but the poor settler wants the power either to clear them of their timber, or to drain them of the superfluous moisture. He begins on the hillside, but by degrees he obtains better machinery of cultivation, and with each step in this direction we find him descending the hill and obtaining larger return to labour. He has more food for himself, and he has now the means of feeding a horse or an ox. Aided by the manure that is thus yielded to him by the better lands, we see him next retracing his steps, improving the hillside, and compelling it to yield a return double that which he at first obtained. With each step down the hill, he obtains still larger reward for his labour, and at each he returns, with increased power, to the cultivation of the original poor soil. He has now horses and oxen, and while by their aid he extracts from the new soils the manure that had accumulated for ages, he has also carts and wagons to carry it up the hill; and at each step his reward is increased, while his labours are lessened. He goes back to the sand and raises the marl, with which he covers the surface; or he returns to the clay and sinks into the limestone, by aid of which he doubles its product. He is all the time making a machine which feeds him while he makes it, and which increases in its powers the more he takes from it. At first it was worthless. Having now fed and clothed him for years, it has acquired a large value, and those who might desire to use it would pay him a large rent for permission so to do.

The earth is a great machine given to man to be fashioned to his purpose. The more he works it, the better it feeds him, because each step is but preparatory to a new one more productive than the last—requiring less labour and yielding larger return. The labour of clearing is great, yet the return is small. The earth is covered with stumps, and filled with roots. With each year the roots decay, and the ground becomes enriched, while the labour of ploughing is diminished. At length, the stumps disappear, and the return is doubled, while the labour is less by one-half than at first. To forward this process the owner has done nothing but crop the ground, nature having done the rest. The aid he thus obtains from her yields him as much food as in the outset was obtained by the labour of felling the trees. This, however, is not all. The surplus thus yielded has given him means of improving the poorer lands, by furnishing manure with which to enrich them, and thus has he trebled his original return without further labour; for that which he saves in working the new soils suffices to carry the manure to the older ones. He is obtaining a daily increased power over the various treasures of the earth.

With every operation connected with the fashioning of the earth, the result is the same. The first step is, invariably, the most costly one, and the least productive. The first drain commences near the stream, where the labour is heaviest. It frees from water but a few acres. A little higher, the same quantity of labour, profiting by what has been already done, frees twice the number. Again the number is doubled; and now the most perfect system of thorough drainage may be established with less labour than was at first required for one of the most imperfect kind. To bring the lime into connection with the clay, upon fifty acres, is lighter labour than was the clearing of a single one, yet the process doubles the return for each acre of fifty. The man who needs a little fuel for his own use, expends much labour in opening the neighbouring vein of coal; but to enlarge this, so as to double the product, is a work of comparatively small labour. To sink a shaft to the first vein below the surface, and erect a steam-engine, are expensive operations; but these once accomplished, every future step becomes more productive, while less costly. To sink to the next vein below, and to tunnel to another, are trifles in comparison with the first, yet each furnishes a return equally large. The first line of railroad runs by houses and towns occupied by two or three hundred thousand persons. Half a dozen little branches, costing together far less labour than the first, bring into connection with it half a million, or perhaps a million. The trade increases, and a second track, a third, or a fourth, may be required. The original one facilitates the passage of the materials and the removal of the obstructions, and three new ones may now be made with less labour than was at first required for a single one.

All labour thus expended in fashioning the great machine is but the prelude to the application of further labour, with still increased returns. With each such application, wages rise, and hence it is that portions of the machine, as it exists, invariably exchange, when brought to market, for far less labour than they have cost. There is thus a steady decline of the value of capital in labour, and a daily increase in the power of labour over capital, and with each step in this direction man becomes more free. The man who cultivated the thin soils was happy to obtain a hundred bushels for his year's work. With the progress of himself and his neighbour down the hill into the more fertile soils, wages have risen, and two hundred bushels are now required. His farm will yield a thousand bushels; but it requires the labour of four men, who must have two hundred bushels each, and the surplus is but two hundred bushels. At twenty years' purchase this gives a capital of four thousand bushels, or the equivalent of twenty years' wages; whereas it has cost, in the labour of himself, his sons, and his assistants, the equivalent of a hundred years of labour, or perhaps far more. During all this time, however, it has fed and clothed them all, and the farm has been produced by the insensible contributions made from year to year, unthought of and unfelt.

It has become worth twenty years' wages, because its owner has for years taken from it a thousand bushels annually; but when it had lain for centuries accumulating wealth it was worth nothing. Such is the case with the earth everywhere. The more that is taken from it the more there is to be returned, and the greater our power to draw upon it. When the coal-mines of England were untouched, they were valueless. Now their value is almost countless; yet the land contains abundant supplies for thousands of years. Iron ore, a century since, was a drug, and leases were granted at almost nominal rents. Now, such leases are deemed equivalent to the possession of large fortunes, notwithstanding the great quantities that have been removed, although the amount of ore now known to exist is probably fifty times greater than it was then.

The earth is the sole producer. From her man receives the corn and the cotton-wool, and all that he can do is to change them in their form, or in their place. The first he may convert into bread, and the last into cloth, and both maybe transported to distant places, but there his power ends. He can make no addition to their quantity. A part of his labour is applied to the preparation and improvement of the great machine of production, and this produces changes that are permanent. The drain, once cut, remains a drain; and the limestone, once reduced to lime, never again becomes limestone. It passes into the food of man and animals, and ever after takes its part in the same round with the clay with which it has been incorporated. The iron rusts and gradually passes into soil, to take its part with the clay and the lime. That portion of his labour gives him wages while preparing the machine for greater future production. That other portion which he expends on fashioning and exchanging the products of the machine, produces temporary results and gives him wages alone. Whatever tends to diminish the quantity of labour required for the production of food tends to enable him to give more to the preparation of machinery required for the fashioning and exchanging of the products; and that machinery in its turn tends to augment the quantity that may be given to increasing the amount of products, and to preparing the great machine; and thus, while increasing the present return to labour, preparing for a future further increase.

The first poor cultivator obtains a hundred bushels for his year's wages. To pound this between two stones requires many days of labour, and the work is not half done. Had he a mill in the neighbourhood he would have better flour, and he would have almost the whole of those days to bestow upon his land. He pulls up his grain. Had he a scythe, he would have more time for the preparation of the machine of production. He loses his axe, and it requires days of himself and his horse on the road, to obtain another. His machine loses the time and the manure, both of which would have been saved had the axe-maker been at hand. The real advantage derived from the mill and the scythe, and from the proximity of the axe-maker, consists simply in the power which they afford him to devote his labour more and more to the preparation of the great machine of production, and such is the case with all the machinery of conversion and exchange. The plough enables him to do as much in one day as with a spade he could do in five. He saves four days for drainage. The steam-engine drains as much as, without it, could be drained by thousands of days of labour. He has more leisure to marl or lime his land. The more he can extract from his property the greater is its value, because every thing he takes is, by the very act of taking it, fashioned to aid further production. The machine, therefore, improves by use, whereas spades, and ploughs, and steam-engines, and all other of the instruments used by man, are but the various forms into which he fashions parts of the great original machine, to disappear in the act of being used; as much so as food, though not so rapidly. The earth is the great labour-savings' bank, and the value to man of all other machines is in the direct ratio of their tendency to aid him in increasing his deposites in that only bank whose dividends are perpetually increasing, while its capital is perpetually doubling. That it may continue for ever so to do, all that it asks is that it shall receive back the refuse of its produce, the manure; and that it may do so, the consumer and the producer must take their places by each other. That done, every change that is effected becomes permanent, and tends to facilitate other and greater changes. The whole business of the farmer consists in making and improving soils, and the earth rewards him for his kindness by giving him more and more food the more attention he bestows upon her. All that he receives from her must be regarded as a loan, and when he fails to pay his debts, she starves him out.

The absolute necessity for returning to the land the manure yielded by its products is so generally admitted that it would appear scarcely necessary to do more than state the fact; for every land-owner knows that when he grants the lease of a farm, one of the conditions he desires to insert is, that all the hay that is made shall be fed upon the land, and that manure shall be purchased to supply the waste resulting from the sale of corn or flax from off the land. In order, however, that it may be so supplied, it is indispensable that the place of consumption shall not be far distant from the place of production, as otherwise the cost of transportation will be greater than the value of the manure. In a recent work on the agriculture of Mecklenburgh, it is stated that a quantity of grain that would be worth close to market fifteen hundred dollars would be worth nothing at a distance of fifty German, or about two hundred English miles, from it, as the whole value would be absorbed in the cost of transporting the grain to market and the manure from market—and that the manure which close to the town would be worth five dollars to the farmer, would be worth nothing at a distance of 4-3/4 German, or 19 English miles from it—and that thus the whole question of the value of land and the wealth of its owner was dependent upon its distance from the place at which its products could be exchanged. At a greater distance than 28 German, or 112 English miles, in Mecklenburgh, the land ceases to yield rent, because it cannot be cultivated without loss. As we approach the place of exchange the value of land increases, from the simultaneous action of two causes: First, a greater variety of commodities can be cultivated, and the advantage resulting from a rotation of crops is well known. At a distance, the farmer can raise only those of which the earth yields but little, and which are valuable in proportion to their little bulk—as, for instance, wheat or cotton; but near the place of exchange he may raise potatoes, turnips, cabbages, and hay, of which the bulk is great in proportion to the value. Second, the cost of returning the manure to the land increases as the value of the products of land diminishes with the increase of distance; and from the combination of these two causes, land in Mecklenburgh that would be worth, if close to the town or city, an annual rent of 29,808 dollars, would be worth at a distance of but 4 German, or 16 English, miles, only 7,467 dollars.

We see thus, how great is the tendency to the growth of wealth as men are enabled more and more to combine their exertions with those of their fellow-men, consuming on or near the land the products of the land, and enabling the farmer, not only to repair readily the exhaustion caused by each successive crop, but also to call to his aid the services of the chemist in the preparation of artificial manures, as well as to call into activity the mineral ones by which he is almost everywhere surrounded. We see, too, how much it must be opposed to the interests of every community to have its products exported in their rude state, and thus to have its land exhausted. The same author from whom the above quotations have been made informs us that when the manure is not returned to the land the yield must diminish from year to year, until at length it will not be more than one-fourth of what it had originally been: and this is in accordance with all observation.

The natural tendency of the loom and the anvil to seek to take their place by the side of the plough and harrow, is thus exhibited by ADAM SMITH:—

"An inland country, naturally fertile and easily cultivated, produces a great surplus of provisions beyond what is necessary for maintaining the cultivators; and on account of the expense of land carriage, and inconveniency of river navigation, it may frequently be difficult to send this surplus abroad. Abundance, therefore, renders provisions cheap, and encourages a great number of workmen to settle in the neighbourhood, who find that their industry can there procure them more of the necessaries and conveniences of life than in other places. They work up the materials of manufacture which the land produces, and exchange their finished work, or, what is the same thing, the price of it, for more materials and provisions. They give a new value to the surplus part of the rude produce, by saving the expense of carrying it to the waterside, or to some distant market; and they furnish the cultivators with something in exchange for it, that is either useful or agreeable to them, upon easier terms than they could have obtained it before. The cultivators get a better price for their surplus produce, and can purchase cheaper other conveniences which they have occasion for. They are thus both encouraged and enabled to increase this surplus produce by a further improvement and better cultivation of the land; and as the fertility of the land has given birth to the manufacture, so the progress of the manufacture reacts upon the land, and increases still further its fertility. The manufacturers first supply the neighbourhood, and afterward, as their work improves and refines, more distant markets. For though neither the rude produce, nor even the coarse manufacture, could, without the greatest difficulty, support the expense of a considerable land carriage, the refined and improved manufacture easily may. In a small bulk it frequently contains the price of a great quantity of the raw produce. A piece of fine cloth, for example, which weighs, only eighty pounds, contains in it the price, not only of eighty pounds of wool, but sometimes of several thousand weight of corn, the maintenance of the different working people, and of their immediate employers. The corn which could with difficulty have been carried abroad in its own shape, is in this manner virtually exported in that of the complete manufacture, and may easily be sent to the remotest corners of the world."

Again:

"The greater the number and revenue of the inhabitants of the town, the more extensive is the market which it affords to those of the country; and the more extensive that market, it is always the more advantageous to a great number. The corn which grows within a mile of the town, sells there for the same price with that which comes from twenty miles distance. But the price of the latter must, generally, not only pay the expense of raising it and bringing it to market, but afford, too, the ordinary profits, of agriculture to the farmer. The proprietors and cultivators of the country, therefore, which lies in the neighbourhood of the town, over and above the ordinary profits of agriculture, gain, in the price of what they sell, the whole value of the carriage of the like produce that is brought from more distant parts; and they save, besides, the whole value of this carriage in the price of what they buy. Compare the cultivation of the lands in the neighbourhood of any considerable town, with that of those which lie at some distance from it, and you will easily satisfy yourself how much the country is benefited by the commerce of the town."

These views are in perfect accordance with the facts. The labourer rejoices when the market for his labour is brought to his door by the erection of a mill or a furnace, or the construction of a road. The farmer rejoices in the opening of a market for labour at his door giving him a market for his food. His land rejoices in the home consumption of the products it has yielded, for its owner is thereby enabled to return to it the refuse of its product in the form of manure. The planter rejoices in the erection of a mill in his neighbourhood, giving him a market for his cotton and his food. The parent rejoices when a market for their labour enables his sons and his daughters to supply themselves with food and clothing. Every one rejoices in the growth of a home market for labour and its products, for trade is then increasing daily and rapidly; and every one mourns the diminution of the home market, for it is one the deficiency of which cannot be supplied.

With each step in this direction man becomes more and more free as land becomes more valuable and labour becomes more productive, and as the land becomes more divided. The effect of this upon both the man and the land is thus exhibited by Dr. Smith:—

"A small proprietor, who knows every part of his little territory, views it with all the affection which property, especially small property, naturally inspires, and who upon that account takes pleasure not only in cultivating, but in adorning it, is generally of all improvers the most industrious, the most intelligent, and the most successful."

The tendency of the land to become divided as wealth and population increase will be obvious to the reader on an examination of the facts of daily occurrence in and near a growing town or city; and the contrary tendency to the consolidation of land in few hands may be seen in the neighbourhood of all declining towns or cities, and throughout all declining states.[25]



CHAPTER VII.

HOW LABOUR ACQUIRES VALUE AND MAN BECOMES FREE.

The proximity of the market enables the farmer not only to enrich his land and to obtain from it far more than he could otherwise do, but it also produces a demand for many things that would otherwise be wasted. In the West, men set no value upon straw, and in almost every part of this country the waste arising out of the absence of a market for any commodities but those which can be carried to a distance, must strike every traveller. Close to the town or city, almost every thing has some value. So too with labour, the value of which, like that of land, tends to increase with every increase in the facility of exchanging its products.

The solitary settler has to occupy the spots that, with his rude machinery, he can cultivate. Having neither horse nor cart, he carries home his crop upon his shoulders, as is now done in many parts of India. He carries a hide to the place of exchange, distant, perhaps, fifty miles, to obtain for it leather, or shoes. Population increases, and roads are made. The fertile soils are cultivated. The store and the mill come nearer to him, and he obtains shoes and flour with the use of less machinery of exchange. He has more leisure for the improvement of his land, and the returns to labour increase. More people now obtain food from the same surface, and new places of exchange appear. The wool is, on the spot, converted into cloth, and he exchanges directly with the clothier. The saw-mill is at hand, and he exchanges with the sawyer. The tanner gives him leather for his hides, and the papermaker gives him paper for his rags. With each of these changes he has more and more of both time and manure to devote to the preparation of the great food-making machine, and with each year the returns are larger. His power to command the use of the machinery of exchange increases, but his necessity therefor diminishes, for with each there is an increasing tendency toward having the consumer placed side by side with the producer, and with each he can devote more and more of his time and mind to the business of fashioning the great machine to which he is indebted for food and clothing; and thus the increase of a consuming population is essential to the progress of production.

Diversification of employments, resulting from combination of action, thus enables men to economize labour and to increase production. Increased production, on the other hand, makes a demand for labour. The more wheat raised and the more cloth made, the more there will be to give in exchange for labour, the greater will be the number of persons seeking for labourers, and the greater will be the power of men to determine for themselves the mode in which they will employ their time or their talents. If, therefore, we desire to see men advance in freedom, we must endeavour to increase the productive power; and that, as we see, grows with the growth of the power to improve the land, while it diminishes with every diminution in the power to return to the land the manure yielded by its products. In purely agricultural countries there is little demand for labour, and it always tends to diminish, as may be proved by any reader of this volume who may chance to occupy a purely agricultural neighbourhood. Let him look around him, and he will, without difficulty, find hundreds of men, and hundreds of women and children, wasting more time than would, if properly employed, purchase twice the clothing and twice the machinery of production they are now enabled to obtain. Why, however, he will probably ask, is it that they do so waste it? Because there is no demand for it, except in agriculture; and when that is the case, there must necessarily be great waste of time. At one season of the year the farm requires much labour, while at another it needs but little; and if its neighbours are all farmers, they are all in the same situation. If the weather is fit for ploughing, they and their horses and men are all employed. If it is not, they are all idle. In winter they have all of them little to do; in harvest-time they are all overrun with work; and crops frequently perish on the ground for want of the aid required for making them. Now, it would seem to be quite clear that if there existed some other mode of employment that would find a demand for the surplus labour of the neighbourhood, all would be benefited. The man who had a day's labour to sell could sell it, and, with the proceeds of the labour of a very few days, now wasted, could purchase clothing for his children, if, indeed, the labour of those children, now also wasted, did not more than pay for all the clothing, not only of themselves, but of his wife and himself.

In order that the reader may see clearly how this state of things affects all labourers, even those who are employed, we must now ask him to examine with us the manner in which the prices of all commodities are affected by excess of supply over demand, or of demand over supply. It is well known to every farmer, that when the crop of peaches, or of potatoes, is, in even a very small degree, in excess of the regular demand, the existence of that small surplus so far diminishes the price that the larger crop will not yield as much as a much smaller one would have done. It is also known to them that when the crop is a little less than is required to supply the demand, the advance in price is large, and the farmer then grows rich. In this latter case the purchasers are looking for the sellers, whereas in the former one the sellers have to seek the buyers. Now, labour is a commodity that some desire to sell, and that others desire to buy, precisely as is the case with potatoes; but it has this disadvantage when compared with any other commodity, that it is less easily transferred from the place where it exists to that at which it is needed, and that the loss resulting from the absence of demand on the spot is greater than in reference to any other commodity whatsoever. The man who raises a hundred bushels of peaches, of which only seventy are needed at home, can send the remainder to a distance of a hundred or a thousand miles, and the loss he sustains is only that which results from the fact that the price of the whole is determined by what he can obtain for the surplus bushels, burdened as they are with heavy cost of transportation, that he must lose; for the man that must go to a distant market must always pay the expense of getting there. This is a heavy loss certainly, but it is trivial when compared with that sustained by him who has labour to sell, because that, like other very perishable commodities, cannot be carried to another market, and must be wasted. If he has two spare hours a day to sell, he finds that they waste themselves in the very act of seeking a distant market, and his children may go in rags, or even suffer from hunger, because of his inability to find a purchaser for the only commodity he has to sell. So, too, with the man who has days, weeks, or months of labour for which he desires to find a purchaser. Unwilling to leave his wife and his children, to go to a distance, he remains to be a constant weight upon the labour market, and must continue so to remain until there shall arise increased competition for the purchase of labour. It is within the knowledge of every one who reads this, whether he be shoemaker, hatter, tailor, printer, brickmaker, stonemason, or labourer, that a very few unemployed men in his own pursuit keep down the wages of all shoemakers, all hatters, all tailors, or printers; whereas, wages rise when there is a demand for a few more than are at hand. The reason for this is to be found in the difficulty of transferring labour from the place at which it exists to that at which it is needed; and it is to that we have to attribute the fact that the tendency to depression in the wages of all labour is so very great when there is even a very small excess of supply, and the tendency to elevation so great when there is even a very small excess of demand. Men starve in Ireland for want of employment, and yet the distance between them and the people who here earn a dollar a day, is one that could be overcome at the expense of fifteen or twenty dollars. Wages may be high in one part of the Union and low in another, and yet thousands must remain to work at low ones, because of the difficulty of transporting themselves, their wives, and their families, to the places at which their services are needed. Every such man tends to keep down the wages, of all other men who have labour to sell, and therefore every man is interested in having all other men fully employed, and to have the demand grow faster than the supply. This is the best state of things for all, capitalists and labourers; whereas, to have the supply in excess of the demand is injurious to all, employers and employed. All profit by increase in the competition for the purchase of labour, and all suffer from increased competition for the sale of it.

We had occasion, but a little while since, to visit a factory in which were employed two hundred females of various ages, from fourteen to twenty, who were earning, on an average, three dollars per week, making a total of six hundred dollars per week, or thirty thousand dollars a year; or as much as would, buy five hundred thousand yards of cotton cloth. Now supposing these two hundred females to represent one hundred families, it would follow that their labour produced five thousand yards of cloth per family, being probably three times as much in value as the total consumption of clothing by all its members, from, the parent down to the infant child.

Let us now suppose this factory closed; what then would be the value of the labour of these girls, few of whom have strength for field-work even if our habits of thought permitted that it should be so employed? It would be almost nothing, for they could do little except house-work, and the only effect of sending them home would be that, whereas one person, fully employed, performs now the labour of the house, it would henceforth be divided between two or three, all of whom would gradually lose the habit of industry they have been acquiring. The direct effect of this would be a diminution in the demand for female labour, and a diminution of its reward. While the factory continues in operation there is competition for the purchase of such labour. The parent desires to retain at least one child. A neighbour desires to hire another, and the factory also desires one. To supply these demands requires all the females of the neighbourhood capable of working and not provided with families of their own, and thus those who are willing to work have the choice of employers and employment; while the competition for the purchase of their services tends to raise the rate of wages. If, now, in the existing state of things, another factory were established in, the same neighbourhood, requiring a hundred or a hundred and fifty more females, the effect would be to establish increased competition for the purchase of labour, attended by increased power of choice on the part of the labourer, and increased reward of labour—and it is in this increased power of choice that freedom consists. If, on the contrary, the factories were closed, the reverse effect would be produced, the competition for the purchase of labour being diminished, with corresponding diminution of the power of choice on the part of the labourer, diminution in his compensation, and diminution of freedom.

What is true with regard to the females of this neighbourhood is equally true with regard to the men, women, and children of the world. Wherever there exists competition for the purchase of labour, there the labourer has his choice among employers, and the latter are not only required to pay higher wages, but they are also required to treat their workmen and workwomen with the consideration that is due to fellow-beings equal in rights with themselves: but wherever there is not competition for the purchase of labour, the labourer is compelled to work for any who are willing to employ him, and to receive at the hands of his employer low wages and the treatment of a slave, for slave he is. Here is a plain and simple proposition, the proof of which every reader can test for himself. If he lives in a neighbourhood in which there exists competition for the purchase of labour, he knows that he can act as becomes a freeman in determining for whom he will work, and the price he is willing to receive for his services; but if he lives in one in which there is competition for the sale of labour, he knows well that it does not rest with him to determine either where he will work or what shall be his wages.

Where all are farmers, there can be no competition for the purchase of labour, except for a few days in harvest; but there must be competition for the sale of labour during all the rest of the year. Of course, where all are farmers or planters, the man who has labour to sell is at the mercy of the few who desire to buy it, as is seen in our Southern States, where the labourer is a slave; and in Ireland, where his condition is far worse than that of the slaves of the South; and in India, where men sell themselves for long terms of years to labour in the West Indies; and in Portugal, where competition for the purchase of labour has no existence. Where, on the contrary, there is a diversification of employments, there is a steady improvement in the condition of men, as they more and more acquire the power to determine for themselves for whom they will work and what shall be their reward, as is seen in the rapid improvement in the condition of the people of France, Belgium, and Germany, and especially of those of Russia, where competition for the purchase of labour is increasing with wonderful rapidity. Diversification of employment is absolutely necessary to produce competition for the purchase of labour. The shoemaker does not need to purchase shoes, nor does the miner need to buy coal, any more than the farmer needs to buy wheat or potatoes. Bring them together, and combine with them the hatter, the tanner, the cotton-spinner, the maker of woollen cloth, and the smelter and roller of iron, and each of them becomes a competitor for the purchase of the labour, or the products of the labour, of all the others, and the wages of all rise with the increase of competition.

In order that labour may be productive, it must be aided by machinery. The farmer could do little with his hands, but when aided by the plough and the harrow he may raise much wheat and corn. He could carry little on his shoulders, but he may transport much when aided by a horse and wagon, and still more when aided by a locomotive engine or a ship. He could convert little grain into flour when provided only with a pestle and mortar, but he may do much when provided with a mill. His wife could convert little cotton into cloth when provided only with a spinning-wheel and hand-loom, but her labour becomes highly productive when aided by the spinning-jenny and the power-loom. The more her labours and those of her husband are thus aided the larger will be the quantity of grain produced, the more speedily will it be converted into flour, the more readily will it be carried to market, the larger will be the quantity of cloth for which it will exchange, the greater will be the quantity of food and clothing to be divided among the labourers, and the greater will be the facility on the part of the labourer to acquire machinery of his own, and to become his own employer, and thus to increase that diversification in the employment of labour which tends to increase the competition for its purchase.

It will next, we think, be quite clear to the reader that the nearer the grist-mill is to the farm, the less will be the labour required for converting the wheat into flour, the more will be the labour that may be given to the improvement of the farm, and the greater will be the power of the farmer to purchase shoes, hats, coats, ploughs, or harrows, and thus to create a demand for labour. Equally clear will it be that the nearer he can bring the hatter, the shoemaker, and the tailor, the maker of ploughs and harrows, the less will be the loss of labour in exchanging his wheat for their commodities, and the greater will be his power to purchase books and newspapers, to educate his children, and thus to introduce new varieties in the demand for labour; and each such new variety in the demand for that commodity tends to raise the wages of those engaged in all other pursuits. If there be none but farmers, all are seeking employment on a farm. Open a carpenter's or a blacksmith's shop, and the men employed therein will cease to be competitors for farm labour, and wages will tend to rise. Open a mine, or quarry stone and build a mill, and here will be a new competition for labour that will tend to produce a rise in the wages of all labourers. Build a dozen mills, and men will be required to get out timber and stone, and to make spindles, looms, and steam- engines; and when the mills are completed, the demand for labour will withdraw hundreds of men that would be otherwise competitors for employment in the ploughing of fields, the making of shoes or coats, and hundreds of women that would otherwise be seeking to employ themselves in binding shoes or making shirts. Competition for the purchase of labour grows, therefore, with every increase in the diversification of employment, with constant tendency to increase in the reward of labour. It declines with every diminution in the modes of employing labour, with steady tendency to decline in wages.

If the reader will now trace the course of man toward freedom, in the various nations of the world, he will see that his progress has been in the ratio of the growth of towns at which he and his neighbours could exchange the products of their labour, and that it has declined as the near towns have given way to the distant cities. The people of Attica did not need to go abroad to effect their exchanges, and therefore they became rich and free; whereas the Spartans, who tolerated nothing but agriculture, remained poor and surrounded by hosts of slaves. The towns and cities of Italy gave value to the land by which they were surrounded, and freedom to the people by whom that land was cultivated. So was it in Holland, and in Belgium, and so again in England. In each and all of these land increased in value with every increase in the facility of exchanging its products for clothing and machinery, and with each step in this direction men were enabled more readily to maintain and to increase the power of the land, and to permit larger numbers to obtain increased supplies from the same surfaces. Association thus increased the power of accumulating wealth, and wealth thus diminished in its power over labour, while with augmented numbers the people everywhere found an increase in their power to assert and to defend their rights. Having reflected on the facts presented to him in the pages of history, and having satisfied himself that they are in perfect accordance with the views here presented, the reader will perhaps find himself disposed to admit, the correctness of the following propositions:—

I. That the nearer the market the less must be the cost to the farmer for transporting his products to market and for bringing back the manure to maintain and improve his land.

II. That the nearer the market the less must be the loss of labour in going to market, and the greater the quantity that can be given to the improvement of the land.

III. That the more the labour and manure that can be given to land, the larger will be the product and the greater its value.

IV. That the larger the quantity of commodities produced the greater will be the demand for labour to be employed in converting them into forms that fit them for consumption, and the larger the quantity to be divided among the labourers.

V. That the greater the competition for the purchase of labour the greater must be the tendency toward the freedom of the labourer.

VI. That the freedom of man in thought, speech, action, and trade, tends thus to keep pace with increase in the habit of association among men, and increase in the value of land;—and

VII. That the interests of the labourer and land-owner are thus in perfect harmony with each other, the one becoming free as the other becomes rich.

Equally correct will be found the following propositions:—

I. That the more distant the market the greater must be the cost to the farmer for transporting his products to market, the greater must be the difficulty of obtaining manure, and the more must his land be impoverished.

II. That the more distant the market the greater must be the loss of labour on the road, and the less the quantity that can be given to the improvement of the land.

III. That the less the labour and manure applied to the land the less must be the product, and the less its value.

IV. That the longer this process is continued the poorer must become the land, until at length it ceases to have value, and must be abandoned.

V. That the smaller the quantity of commodities produced the less must be the demand for labour to be employed in their conversion, and the less the quantity to be divided among the labourers.

VI. That the less the competition for the purchase of labour the less must be the power of the labourer to determine for whom he will work, or what must be his reward, and the greater the tendency toward his becoming enslaved.

VII. That the tendency toward slavery tends thus to keep pace with the decline in the habit of association among men, and the loss of value in land;—and

VIII. That thus the labourer and land-owner suffer together, the one becoming enslaved as the other becomes impoverished.

If evidence be desired of the correctness of these propositions, it may found in the history of Egypt, Greece, Rome, Mexico, and of every other country that has declined in wealth and population.



CHAPTER VIII.

HOW MAN PASSES FROM WEALTH AND FREEDOM TOWARD POVERTY AND SLAVERY.

The views that have thus been presented are entirely in harmony those of the illustrious author of "The Wealth of Nations." "In seeking for employment to a capital," says Dr. Smith,

"Manufactures are, upon equal or nearly equal profits, naturally preferred to foreign commerce, for the same reason that agriculture is naturally preferred to manufactures. As the capital of the landlord or farmer is more secure than that of the manufacturer, so the capital of the manufacturer, being at all times more within his view and command, is more secure than that of the foreign merchant. In every period, indeed, of every society, the surplus part both of the rude and manufactured produce, or that for which there is no demand at home, must be sent abroad, in order to be exchanged for something for which there is some demand at home. But whether the capital which carries this surplus produce abroad be a foreign or domestic one, is of little importance."

It is thus, in his estimation, of small importance whether the capital engaged in the work of transportation be foreign or domestic—the operations most essential to the comfort and improvement of man being, first, the production, and next, the conversion of the products of the land, by men occupying towns and cities placed among the producers. The nearer the market the less must be, as he clearly saw, the loss of transportation, and the greater the value of the land. If the number or the capital of those markets were insufficient for the conversion of all the rude produce of the earth, there would then be "considerable advantage" to be derived from the export of the surplus by the aid of foreign capital, thus leaving "the whole stock of the society" to be employed at home "to more useful purpose." These views are certainly widely different from those of modern economists, who see in tables of imports and exports the only criterion of the condition of society. Commerce, by which is meant exchanges with distant people, is regarded as the sole measure of the prosperity of a nation; and yet every man is rejoiced when the market for his products is brought home to him, and he is thereby enabled to economize transportation and enrich his land by returning to it the elements of which-those products had been composed.

"According to the natural course of things," says Dr. Smith, "the greater part of the capital of every growing society is, first, directed to agriculture, afterward to manufactures, and, last of all, to foreign commerce."

This, says he, is in accordance with natural laws. As subsistence precedes luxuries, so must the production, of commodities precede their conversion or their exchange.

"Necessity imposes," he continues, "that order of things" which "is in every country promoted by the natural inclinations of man. If human institutions had never thwarted those natural inclinations, the towns could nowhere have increased beyond what the improvement and cultivation of the territory in which they were situated could support; till such time, at least, as the whole of that territory was completely cultivated and improved. Upon equal, or nearly equal profits, most men will choose to employ their capitals rather in the improvement and cultivation of land, than either in manufactures or in foreign trade. The man who employs his capital in land, has it more under his view and command; and his fortune is much less liable to accidents than that of the trader, who is obliged frequently to commit it, not only to the winds and the waves, but to the more uncertain elements of human folly and injustice, by giving great credits, in distant countries, to men with whose character and situation he can seldom be thoroughly acquainted. The capital of the landlord, on the contrary, which is fixed in the improvement of his land, seems to be as well secured as the nature of human affairs can admit of. The beauty of the country, besides the pleasures of a country life, the tranquillity of mind which it promises, and, wherever the injustice of human laws does not disturb it, the independency which it really affords, have charms that, more or less, attract everybody; and as to cultivate the ground was the original destination of man, so, in every stage of his existence, he seems to retain a predilection for this primitive employment.

"Without the assistance of some artificers, indeed, the cultivation of land cannot be carried on, but with great inconveniency and continual interruption. Smiths, carpenters, wheelwrights and ploughwrights, masons and bricklayers, tanners, shoemakers, and tailors, are people whose service the farmer has frequent occasion for. Such artificers, too, stand occasionally in need of the assistance of one another; and as their residence is not, like that of the farmer, necessarily tied down to a precise spot, they naturally settle in the neighbourhood of one another, and thus form a small town or village. The butcher, the brewer, and the baker soon join them, together with many other artificers and retailers, necessary or useful for supplying their occasional wants, and who contribute still further to augment the town. The inhabitants of the town and those of the country are mutually the servants of one another. The town is a continual fair or market, to which the inhabitants of the country resort, in order to exchange their rude for manufactured produce. It is this commerce which supplies the inhabitants of the town, both with the materials of their work and the means of their subsistence. The quantity of the finished work which they sell to the inhabitants of the country, necessarily regulates the quantity of the materials and provisions which they buy. Neither their employment nor subsistence, therefore, can augment, but in proportion to the augmentation of the demand from the country for finished work; and this demand can augment only in proportion to the extension of improvement and cultivation. Had human institutions, therefore, never disturbed the natural course of things, the progressive wealth and increase of the towns would, in every political society, be consequential, and in proportion to the improvement and cultivation of the territory or country."

The demand on the artisan "can augment only in proportion to the extension of improvement and cultivation." Nothing can be more true. The interests of the farmer and the mechanic are in perfect harmony with each other. The one needs a market for his products, and the nearer the market the greater must be the produce of his land, because of his increased power to carry back to it the manure. The other needs a market for his labour, and the richer the land around him the greater will be the quantity of products to be offered in exchange for labour, and the greater his freedom to determine for himself for whom he will work and what shall be his wages. The combination of effort between the labourer in the workshop and the labourer on the farm thus gives value to land, and the more rapid the growth of the value of land the greater has everywhere been the tendency to the freedom of man.

These views were opposed to those then universally prevalent. "England's treasure in foreign trade" had become

"A fundamental maxim in the political economy, not of England only, but of all other commercial countries. The inland or home trade, the most important of all, the trade in which an equal capital affords the greatest revenue, and creates the greatest employment to the people of the country, was considered as subsidiary only to foreign trade. It neither brought money into the country, it was said, nor carried any out of it. The country, therefore, could never become richer or poorer by means of it, except as far as its prosperity or decay might indirectly influence the state of foreign trade."

It was against this error chiefly that Dr. Smith cautioned his countrymen. He showed that it had led, and was leading, to measures tending to disturb the natural course of things in all the countries connected with England, and to produce among them a necessity, for trade while diminishing the power to maintain trade. "Whatever tends," says he, "to diminish in any country the number of artificers and manufacturers, tends to diminish the home market, the most important of all markets, for the rude produce of the land, and thereby still further to discourage agriculture," and consequently to diminish the power of producing things with which to trade. He nowhere refers to the fact that any system which looks to compelling a nation to export raw produce, tends necessarily to the impoverishment of the land and its owner, and to the diminution, of the freedom of the labourer, and yet that such was the case could scarcely have escaped his observation. The tendency of the then existing English policy was, as he showed, to produce in various countries a necessity for exporting every thing in its rudest form, thus increasing the cost of transportation, while impoverishing the land and exhausting the people. The legislature had been, he said, "prevailed upon" to prevent the establishment of manufactures in the colonies, "sometimes by high duties, and sometimes by absolute prohibitions." In Grenada, while a colony of France, every plantation had its own refinery of sugar, but on its cession to England they were all abandoned, and thus was the number of artisans diminished, to "the discouragement of agriculture." The course of proceeding relative to these colonies is thus described:—

"While Great Britain encourages in America the manufacturing of pig and bar iron, by exempting them from duties to which the like commodities are subject when imported from any other country, she imposes an absolute prohibition upon the erection of steel furnaces and slit-mills in any of her American plantations: She will not suffer her colonies to work in those more refined manufactures, even for their own consumption; but insists upon their purchasing of her merchants and manufactures all goods of this kind which they have occasion for.

"She prohibits the exportation from one province to another by water, and even the carriage by land upon horseback, or in a cart, of hats, of wools, and woollen goods, of the produce of America; a regulation which effectually prevents the establishment of any manufacture of such commodities for distant sale, and confines the industry of her colonists in this way to such coarse and household manufactures as a private family commonly makes for its own use, or for that of some of its neighbours in the same province."

His views, in regard to such measures, are thus given:—

"To prohibit a great people from making all they can of every part of their own produce, or from employing their stock and industry in a way that they judge most advantageous to themselves, is a manifest violation of the most sacred rights of mankind."

Further to carry out this view of compelling the people of the colonies to abstain from manufacturing for themselves, and to carry their products to distant markets, to the exhaustion of the land and to the diminution of the value of labour, bounties were paid on the importation into England of various articles of raw produce, while the export of various raw materials, of artisans, and of machinery, was prohibited. The whole object of the system was, he said, to "raise up colonies of customers, a project," he added, "fit only for a nation of shopkeepers." Indeed, he thought it "unfit even for a nation of shopkeepers," although "extremely fit for a nation whose government was influenced by shopkeepers." He was therefore entirely opposed to all such arrangements as the Methuen treaty, by which, in consideration of obtaining the control of the market of Portugal for the sale of her manufactures, Great Britain agreed to give to the wines of that country great advantage over those of France.

Against all the errors of the system, Dr. Smith, however, raised in vain his warning voice. "England's treasure" was, it was thought, to be found "in foreign trade," and every measure adopted by the government had in view the extension of that trade. With each new improvement of machinery there was a new law prohibiting its export. The laws against the export of artisans were enforced, and a further one prohibited the emigration of colliers. The reader will readily see that a law prohibiting the export of cotton or woollen machinery was precisely equivalent to a law to compel all the producers of wool or cotton to seek the distant market of England if they desired to convert their products into cloth. The inventors of machinery, and the artisans who desired to work it, were thus deprived of freedom of action, in order that foreigners might be made the slaves of those who controlled the spinning-jenny, the loom, and the steam-engine, in whose hands it was desired to centralize the control of the farmers and planters of the world. England was to be made "the workshop of the world," although her people had been warned that the system was not only unnatural, but in the highest degree unjust, and even more impolitic than unjust, because while tending to expel capital and labour from the great and profitable home market, it tended greatly to the "discouragement of agriculture" in the colonies and nations subjected to the system, and to prevent the natural increase of the smaller and less profitable distant market upon which she was becoming more and more dependent.

By degrees the tendency of the system became obvious. Bounties on the import of wood, and wool, and flax, and other raw materials, tended to "the discouragement of agriculture" at home, and bounties on the export of manufactures tended to drive into the work of converting, and exchanging the products of other lands the labour and capital that would otherwise have been applied to the work of production at home. The necessary consequence of this was, that the difficulty of obtaining these raw materials, instead of diminishing with the progress of population, tended to increase, and then it was, at the distance of a quarter of a century from the date of the publication of "The Wealth of Nations," that the foundation of the new school was laid by Mr. Malthus, who taught that all the distress existing in the world was the inevitable consequence of a great law of nature, which provided that food should increase only in arithmetical progression, while population might increase in geometrical progression. Next came Mr. Ricardo, who furnished a law of the occupation of the earth, showing, and conclusively, as he supposed, that the work of cultivation was always commenced on the rich soils, yielding a large return to labour, and that as population increased, men were compelled to resort to others, each in succession less fertile than its predecessor—the consequence of which was that labour became daily less productive, the power to obtain food diminished, and the power to demand rent increased, the poor becoming daily poorer, weaker, and more enslaved, as the rich became richer and more powerful. Next came the elder Mill, who showed that, in obedience to the law thus propounded by Mr. Ricardo, the return to capital and labour applied to the work of cultivation must be "continually decreasing," and the annual fund from which sayings are made, continually diminishing. "The difficulty of making savings is thus," he adds, "continually augmented, and at last they must totally cease." He regarded it therefore as certain that "wages would be reduced so low that a portion of the population would regularly die from the consequences of want." In such a state of things, men sell themselves, their wives, or their children, for mere food. We see, thus, that the modern British theory looks directly to the enslavement of man.

In this manner, step by step, did the British political economists pass from the school of Adam Smith, in which it was taught that agriculture preceded manufactures and commerce, the latter of which were useful to the extent that they aided the former,—to that new one in which was, and is, taught, that manufactures and commerce were the great and profitable pursuits of man, and that agriculture, because of the "constantly increasing sterility of the soil," was the least profitable of all. Hence it is that we see England to have been steadily passing on in the same direction, and devoting all her energies to the prevention of the establishment, in any country of the world, of markets in which the raw produce of the land could be exchanged directly with the artisan for the products of his labour.

For a time this prospered, but at length the eyes of the world were opened to the fact that they and their land were being impoverished as she was being enriched; and that the effect of the system was that of constituting herself sole buyer of the raw products of their labour and their land, and sole seller of the manufactured commodities to be given in exchange for them, with power to fix the prices of both; and thus that she was really acting in the capacity of mistress of the world, with power to impose taxes at discretion. By degrees, machinery and artisans were smuggled abroad, and new machinery was made, and other nations turned their attention more and more to manufacturing; and now it became necessary to make new exertions for the purpose of securing to England the monopoly she had so long enjoyed. To enable her to do this we find her at length throwing open her ports for the free admission of corn and numerous other of the raw products of the earth, free from the payment of any duty whatever, and thus offering to the various nations of the world a bounty on the further exhaustion of their land. The adoption of this measure would, it was supposed, induce Prussia, Austria, Russia, and Denmark, and all America, to devote themselves exclusively to the cultivation of the earth, abandoning all attempts at the creation of nearer places of exchange; and thus that all the world outside of England would become producers of raw materials to be carried to that single and distant market, there to be consumed or converted, and the refuse thereof to be deposited on the land of England. That such was the object of this measure was admitted by all. It was announced as a boon to the agriculturists of the world. How far it was calculated to be so, the reader may judge, after satisfying himself of the truth of the following propositions:—

I. That if there is to be but one place of exchange or manufacture for the world, all the rest of the people of the world must limit themselves to agriculture.

II. That this necessarily implies the absence of towns, or local places of exchange, and a necessity for resorting to a place of exchange far distant.

III. That the distance of the place of consumption from the place of production forbids the possibility of returning to the land any of the manure yielded by its products.

IV. That this in turn implies the exhaustion of the land and the impoverishment of its owner.

V. That the impoverishment of the land renders necessary a removal to new and more distant lands.

VI. That this renders necessary a larger amount of transportation, while the impoverishment of the farmer increases the difficulty of making roads.

VII. That the increased distance of the market produces a steadily increased necessity for limiting the work of cultivation to the production of those commodities which can be obtained from high and dry lands, and that the quantity of products tends therefore to diminish with the increased distance from market.

VIII. That with each step in the progress of exhausting the land, men are compelled to separate more widely from each other, and that there is therefore a steady diminution in the power of association for the making of roads, or the establishment of schools, and that the small towns, or near places of exchange, tend gradually toward depopulation and ruin.

IX. That the more men separate from each other the less is the power to procure machinery, and the greater the necessity for cultivating the poorest soils, even though surrounded by lead, iron, and copper ore, coal, lime, and all other of the elements of which machinery is composed.

X. That with the diminished power of association, children grow up uneducated, and men and women become rude and barbarous.

XI. That the power to apply labour productively tends steadily to diminish, and that women, in default of other employment, are forced to resort to the field, and to become slaves to their fathers, husbands, and brothers.

XII. That the power to accumulate capital tends likewise to diminish—that land becomes from day to day more consolidated—and that man sinks gradually into the condition of a slave to the landed or other capitalist.

XIII. That with this steady passage of man from the state of a freeman to that of a slave, he has steadily less to sell, and can therefore purchase less; and that thus the only effect of a policy which compels the impoverishment of the land and its owner is to destroy the customer, who, under a different system of policy, might have become a larger purchaser from year to year.

That the object of the present English policy is that of converting all the nations of the world into purely agricultural communities will not be denied; but as it may be doubted if the effects would be such as are here described, it is proposed now to inquire into the movement of some of the non-manufacturing communities of the world, with a view to determine if the facts observed are in correspondence with those that, reasoning a priori, we should be led to expect. Before entering upon this examination, the reader is, however, requested to peruse the following extracts from "Gee on Trade," in which is described the former colonial system, and afterward the extract from a recent despatch of Lord Grey, late Colonial Secretary, with a view to satisfy himself how perfectly identical are the objects now sought to be attained with those desired by the statesmen of the last century, and denounced by Adam Smith.

JOSHUA GEE—1750.

First—"Manufactures in American colonies should be discouraged, prohibited."

"Great Britain with its dependencies is doubtless as well able to subsist within itself as any nation in Europe. We have an enterprising people, fit for all the arts of peace or war. We have provisions in abundance, and those of the best sort, and we are able to raise sufficient for double the number of inhabitants. We have the very best materials for clothing, and want nothing either for use or for luxury, but what we have at home, or might have from our colonies; so that we might make such an intercourse of trade among ourselves, or between us and them, as would maintain a vast navigation. But, we ought always to keep a watchful eye over our colonies, to restrain them from setting up any of the manufactures which are carried on in Great Britain; and any such attempts should be crushed in the beginning, for if they are suffered to grow up to maturity it will be difficult to suppress them."

"Our colonies are much in the same state as Ireland was in when they began the woollen manufactory, and as their numbers increase, will fall upon manufactures for clothing themselves, if due care be not taken to find employment for them in raising such productions as may enable them to furnish themselves with all the necessaries from us."

"I should, therefore, think it worthy the care of the government to endeavour by all possible means to encourage them in the raising of silk, hemp, flax, iron, (only pig, to be hammered in England,) potash, &c., by giving them competent bounties in the beginning, and sending over skilful and judicious persons, at the public charge, to assist and instruct them in the most proper methods of management, which in my apprehension would lay a foundation for establishing the most profitable trade of any we have. And considering the commanding situation of our colonies along the seacoast, the great convenience of navigable rivers in all of them, the cheapness of land, and the easiness of raising provisions, great numbers of people would transport themselves thither to settle upon such improvements. Now, as people have been filled with fears that the colonies, if encouraged to raise rough materials, would set up for themselves, a little regulation would be necessary; and as they will have the providing rough materials for themselves, a little regulation would remove all those jealousies out of the way. They have never thrown or wove any silk, as yet, that we have heard of,—therefore, if a law was made prohibiting the use of any throwing mill, of doubling or throstling silk, with any machine whatever, they would then send it to us raw. And as they will have the providing rough materials to themselves, so shall we have the manufacturing of them. If encouragement be given for raising hemp, flax, &c., doubtless they will soon begin to manufacture, if not prevented. Therefore, to stop the progress of any such manufacture, it is proposed that no weaver have liberty to set up any looms, without first registering at an office kept for that purpose, and the name and place of abode of any journeyman that shall work for him. But if any particular inhabitant shall be inclined to have any linen or woollen made of their own spinning, they should not be abridged of the same liberty that they now make use of, namely to have a weaver who shall be licensed by the Governor, and have it wrought up for the use of the family, but not to be sold to any person in a private manner, nor exposed to any market or fair, upon pain of forfeiture." "That all slitting mills and engines for drawing wire, or weaving stockings, be put down." "That all negroes shall be prohibited from weaving either linen or woollen, or spinning or combing of wool, or working at any manufacture of iron, further than making it into pig or bar- iron. That they also be prohibited from manufacturing hats, stockings, or leather of any kind. This limitation will not abridge the planters of any liberty they now enjoy—on the contrary, it will then turn their industry to promoting and raising those rough materials."

Second—"The advantages to Great Britain from keeping the colonies dependent on her for their essential supplies."

"If we examine into the circumstances of the inhabitants of our plantations, and our own, it will appear that not one-fourth part of their product redounds to their own profit, for out of all that comes here, they only carry back clothing and other accommodations for their families, all of which is of the merchandise and manufacture of this kingdom." "All these advantages we receive by the plantations, besides the mortgages on the planters' estates and the high interest they pay us, which is very considerable, and, therefore, very great care ought to be taken, in regulating all the affairs of the colonists, that the planters are not put under too many difficulties, but encouraged to go on cheerfully." "New England and the northern colonies have not commodities and products enough to send us in return for purchasing their necessary clothing, but are under very great difficulties; and, therefore, any ordinary sort sell with them,—and when they have grown out of fashion with us, they are new-fashioned enough for them."

LORD GREY—1850.

"If, as has been alleged by the complainants, and as in some instances would appear to be the case, any of the duties comprised in the tariff have been imposed, not for the purpose of revenue, but with a view of protecting the interest of the Canadian manufacturer, her Majesty's government are clearly of opinion that such a course is injurious alike to the interests of the mother country and to those of the colony. Canada possesses natural advantages for the production of articles which will always exchange in the markets of this country for those manufactured goods of which she stands in need. By such exchange she will obtain these goods much more cheaply than she could manufacture, them for herself, and she will secure an advantageous market for the raw produce which she is best able to raise. On the other hand, by closing her markets against British manufactures, or rendering their introduction more costly, she enhances their price to the consumer, and by the imposition of protective duties, for the purpose of fostering an unnatural trade, she gives a wrong direction to capital, by withdrawing it from more profitable employment, and causing it to be invested in the manufacture of articles which might be imported at a cost below that of production in the colony, while at the same time she inflicts a blow on her export trade by rendering her markets less eligible to the British customer." "If the merchant finds that by exporting his goods to Canada, they produce him in return a large quantity of corn, and thus yield a greater profit than they would if exported to any other country, he will of course give the preference to Canada. But if by reason of increased import duties, those goods produce a diminished return the result will be either that the Canadian farmer must submit to a proportionate reduction in the price of his produce, or the British manufacturer must resort to another market. It is, therefore, obvious, that it is not less the interest of Canada herself than of Great Britain, that this tariff of import duties should undergo a careful revision."

The phraseology of the two is different, but the object is the same—that of rendering it necessary to send all the raw products of the land to a market far distant, and thus depriving the farmer or planter of the power to return any portion of the loan made to him by the earth, and which she is always willing to renew, on the simple condition that when the borrower has used it, he shall return to the lender the elements of which it had been composed.



CHAPTER IX.

HOW SLAVERY GREW, AND HOW IT IS NOW MAINTAINED, IN THE WEST INDIES.

The system described in the last chapter was fully carried out in the West India colonies. Manufactures were so entirely interdicted from the date of their coming under the crown of Great Britain, that the colonists were not permitted even to refine their own sugar, and still less to convert their cotton into cloth. The necessary consequence was that women and children could have no employment but that of the field. This, of course, tended to sink both mother and child far lower in the scale of civilization than would have been the case had the lighter labour of conversion been associated with the more severe one of production. The next effect was, that as all were bound to remain producers of raw commodities, there could be no markets at hand, and no exchanges could be made except at a distance of thousands of miles. Difficulties, too, arose in regard to the diversification of labour, even in agriculture itself. Indigo was tried, but of the price for which it sold in England so large a portion was absorbed by ship-owners, commission merchants, and the government, that its culture was abandoned. Coffee, was extensively introduced, and as it grows on higher and more salubrious lands its cultivation would have been of great advantage to the community; but here, as in the case of indigo, so small a portion of the price for which it sold was received by the producer that its production was about being abandoned, and was saved only by the government agreeing to reduce its claim to a shilling, or twenty-four cents, a pound. This amounted to about a hundred and eighty dollars per acre, the estimated produce being about 750 pounds of merchantable coffee;[26] and very much of it came out of the producer—the poor negro. How enormously burdensome such a tax must have been may be judged by the farmers who feel now so heavily the pressure of the malt duties; and it must always be borne in mind that the West India labourers were aided by the most indifferent machinery of production. By degrees these various taxes rendered necessary the abandonment of all cultivation but that of the sugar-cane, being of all others the most destructive of health, and as the whole population, men, women, and children, were limited to that single pursuit, we shall scarcely err in attributing to this fact the great waste of life recorded in a former chapter.

Commerce, too, was interdicted, except with Great Britain and her colonies; and this led to efforts at a smuggling trade with the Spanish possessions on the continent; but this was brought to a close by the watchfulness of the ships of war.[27] Slaves, however, might be imported and exported, and this traffic was carried on a most extensive scale, most of the demand for the Spanish colonies being supplied from the British Islands. In 1775, however, the colonial legislature, desirous to prevent the excessive importation of negroes, imposed a duty of 2 per head, but this was petitioned against by the merchants of England, and the home government directed the discontinuance of the tax.[28] At this period the annual export of sugar is stated,[29] to have been 980,346 cwt., the gross sales of which, duty free, averaged 1 14s. 8d. per cwt., making a total of 1,699,421,—so large a portion of which, however, was absorbed by freight, commissions, insurance, &e., that the net proceeds, of 775 sugar estates are stated to have been only 726,992, or less than 1000 each. If to the 973,000 thus deducted be added the share of the government, (12s. 3d. per cwt.,) and the further charges before the sugar reached the consumer, it will be seen that its grower could not have received more than one-fourth of the price at which it sold. The planter thus appears to have been little more than a superintendent of slaves, who were worked for the benefit of the merchants and the government of Great Britain, by whom was absorbed the lion's share of the produce of their labour. He was placed between the slave, whom he was obliged to support, on the one hand, and the mortgagee, the merchants, and the government, whom he was also obliged to support, on the other, and he could take for himself only what was left—and if the crop proved large, and prices fell, he was ruined. The consequences of this are seen in the fact that in twenty years following this period, there were sold for debt no less than 177 estates, while 92 remained unsold in the hands of creditors, and 55 were wholly abandoned. Seeing these things, it will not be difficult to understand the cause of the extraordinary waste of life exhibited in the British Islands. The planter could exist, himself, only by overworking his people; and notwithstanding all his efforts, no less than 324 out of 775 estates changed hands by reason of failure in the short space of twenty years. Whatever might be his disposition to improve the condition of the labourer, to do so was quite impossible while receiving for himself and them so small a portion of the price of his commodity.

In the early years of the present century, land had become more valuable. The price of sugar had risen about 80 per cent., and the planters were gradually extricating themselves from their difficulties; and a consequence of this was seen in a considerable amelioration of the condition of the slave, who was now much better fed, clothed, and otherwise provided for.[30] Slaves that had been as low as 34, average price, had risen to 50, at which the 250,000 in the island amounted to 12,500,000, and the real and personal property, exclusive of the slaves, was estimated at 25,000,000.[31] How great, however, were the difficulties under which the planters still laboured, may be seen from the following extract, which, long as it is, is given because it illustrates so forcibly the destructive effects of the policy that looks to the prevention of that association which results from bringing the loom and the anvil to the side of plough and the harrow.

"I have now to enter upon a painful part of my task, a part in which I am under the necessity of stating such circumstances as cannot but reflect disgrace on those who give rise to them, and from which the weakness, I will not use a harsher term, of the legislature, is but too apparent. These circumstances arise from the various modes of agency, such as that of the attorney of estates, mortgagee in possession, receiver in chancery, &c. The first of these characters requires a definition. By the word attorney, in this sense, is meant agent; and the duties annexed to his office are so similar to those of a steward in England, that were it not for the dissimilarity of executing them, and the dignity attendant upon the former, I should pronounce them one and the same, But as this colonial stewardship is the surest road to imperial fortune, men of property and distinguished situation push eagerly for it. Attorneys are of two sorts; six per cent. attorneys, and salaried attorneys; the profits of the former arise from commissions of six per cent. on all the produce of an estate, and various interior resources; the latter are paid a certain stipend by some unincumbered proprietors, who have lately discovered that a steward in Jamaica may be hired like a steward in England, by which several thousand pounds a year are saved, and instead of enriching their agents, are poured into their own coffers. The office of both is to attend to the estates of their employers, and to all their interests in the island, deputed to them that the proprietors themselves may live at home, that is to say, in Europe.

"Of all the evils in the island of Jamaica, which call for a remedy, and by means of which the most unjustifiable practices are continued, the first and most crying is that of the business of a certain description of attorneys of orphans, mortgagees in possession, trustees, executors, guardians, and receivers under the court of chancery; and these evils arise in a great measure from the unjust and impolitic law which allows six per cent. commission on the gross produce of the estates under their charge and direction. The iniquitous practices, screened, if not authorized by that law have long been too glaring to be unnoticed; and attempts have been made to reduce the commission, and to fix it on some more equitable principle; but unfortunately there have always been in the House of Assembly too many of its members interested in benefits resulting from the present law to admit the adoption of the measure. That the interest of attorneys is not always the interest of those whose estates they hold is an undeniable fact, of which I think you will be convinced by the time you arrive at the conclusion of this letter. In many instances, too, this superior collateral interest militates against the happiness and amelioration of the state and condition of the slaves, which is now professed by the colonists to be an object of their most serious attention; and it proves not unfrequently the total ruin of the unfortunate planter, whose involved situation compels him to submit to the condition of consigning his estate to the management of an attorney appointed by his creditor, who is generally his merchant, and who throws the full legal advantages of his debtor's estate into the hands of his own agent in the island, to compensate for the economical bargain he makes for the management of his own concerns; a practice common also to trustees, guardians, &c. The law allowing such enormous commissions for services so inadequate, is also very defective in an important point; for it establishes no data for fixing the charge of this commission, which is never made according to the sales of sugar, for that is not soon, if ever known to the attorney. Hence, in the different accounts, the charges are estimated on sugar at several prices, from 20s. per cwt. to 45s., and even 50s.; and in the same books of one and the same attorney, these charges are found to differ according to his connection with his employer, generally increasing in proportion to the distress of the property and of the proprietor. To form some notion of the advantages attending these appointments, and of their injurious tendency to involved proprietors, and even to their creditors, let us see what a receiver under the court of chancery can do. In the first place, it has not always been the practice to select him from among the inhabitants in the vicinity of the unfortunate estates, or from among the friends of the proprietor; he is frequently a resident in one of the towns, with perhaps as little knowledge of the management of an estate as is possessed by the sweeper of the chancery office; and indeed it would not be inapplicable to distinguish such receivers by the appellation of chancery-sweepers. These gentlemen seldom if ever see the estates which they are to direct, and have no other directions to give than, in a lumping way, to make as much sugar as possible, and to ship it, most likely to their own correspondents. Whatever the estates clear is so much in their hands, and of course the more money the better for them; money takes root in every soil, and propagates itself a thousand ways; not a dollar of it therefore finds its way into the chancery chest, for the receiver having given security, the treasure is, by a common fiction in use, held to be fully as safe in his hands. While the different creditors of the estate are fighting the battle of priority, the receiver continues to direct the management of it, to ship the crop, and to take care of the money. At length a prior debt is established, and the creditor having gained the point, remains for a time satisfied; but finding, though his principal accumulates, that he receives nothing, he becomes clamorous for a sale. This may take place in five or six years time, when all pretexts for delay are worn out, and in the mean time the receiver takes care to have money, adequate to the simple sums received, turned over by his consignee or merchant to another hand, his banker's, to be ready to answer bills to be drawn on his own account, for which he must have a premium of from twelve to seventeen and a half per cent. The estate at last is advertised for sale by a master in chancery, in consequence of an order from the chancellor. The sale, however, is spun out, a year or two longer, till the creditor or his attorney begins to remonstrate with the master: stipulations for an amicable settlement ensue, that is, for an admission of the receiver's accounts such as they may be, and for time allowed him for payment of the mesne profits or balance in his hands; which agreed to, the sale is positively to take place when the next crop is over. The sale then is actually concluded, the accumulations of these annual funds go unperceived to the further propagation of wealth for the receiver; and the purchaser, who is no other than the prior creditor, is put in possession of an estate in ruin, with a gang of negroes dispirited and miserable, who had been long sensible of their situation, conceiving themselves belonging to nobody, and almost despairing of ever falling into the hands of a kind master, interested in their welfare and happiness. Let us now turn to the attorney of a mortgagee in possession, and see what better he offers. The debt of the involved estate is due to a man of large property, or to a merchant; if to the former, he has a merchant to whom the consignment is of considerable value. It is immaterial what the debt is, an estate in possession of a mortgagee is generally made to pay full commissions to the attorney employed for it. In justice to all parties the most is to be made of the property, and it is soon found that the negroes upon it are not equal to the returns it is capable of making, consequently hired negroes are added to the plantation-gangs, to plant, weed, and take off the crop; the works are extended, to be adequate to the proposed increase; more stock, more carts are bought, more white people employed. To keep pace with these grand designs, the poor plantation negroes are of course overworked. What is the result? A great deal of sugar and rum is made, to the credit as well as profit of the attorney, and by which the merchant is benefited, as the consignments are augmented; but six per cent. interest on the principal, six per cent. on that interest by compound arithmetic become principal, six per cent. commissions, with the contingent charges for labour, improvements, stores, etc., absorb the whole produce, and the planter daily sinks under an accumulating debt, till he is completely ruined. The greater the distress, the more the attorney fattens; in a war, for instance, a considerable additional benefit occurs; he becomes lumber-merchant, and having the rum of the estate at his command, and perhaps a little sugar, though in the latter article he is usually restricted, as the disposal of it in the island would interfere with the loading of ships and consignments, he purchases wholesale cargoes, and retails them out to the estate at a large profit. Staves bought by the attorney at 18 per thousand, have been known to be sold to the estate for 45 per thousand; and the cart belonging to the property has carried the rum to pay for them. It is well known that the rum made upon an estate will seldom pay its contingent expenses, and that frequently bills are drawn on Great Britain to the amount of one thousand pounds, and sometimes two thousand pounds, for the excess of the contingencies over and above the amount of the sale of the rum: here the attorney finds another avenue of amassing for himself. Settling the excess from his own means, he appropriates the bills which it enabled him to draw to the purchase of the remainder of a cargo of negroes, after the best have been culled at the rate of from ninety to ninety-five pounds per head: these inferior negroes he disposes of to his dependent overseers, jobbers, doctors, tradesmen, distillers, and book-keepers, at forty or fifty pounds a head profit; nor is it without example, that the very estates on the credit of which some of the bills are drawn, have been supplied with negroes in the same manner, and at the same rate. This manoeuvre indeed is ventured only on estates of minors, whose trustees are merchants in Great Britain, ignorant of such practices; or may be, when they have committed the estates to the attorney, liable to the full advantages to be made of them, to compensate for the moderate allowance they give for the management of their own concerns. An island merchant, or according to the West India appellation, storekeeper, in great business, told a friend of mine, that he had sold a cargo of mules at eighteen pounds per head to an attorney, which were dispersed in separate spells of eight each to several estates, but that at the special instance of the purchaser, he had made out the bills of parcels at thirty pounds per head. This does not speak much in favour of the virtue of the storekeeper, but it must be observed that he would have lost his customer had he demurred, and would probably have been considered as righteous overmuch. There is a variety of smaller advantages enjoyed by the attorney, such as forming connections with butchers who may purchase the fatted cattle, with jobbers of negroes for the purpose of intermingling negroes at a proportionable profit, fattening horses, and a long et cetera. To the attorney the commanders of the ships in the trade look up with due respect, and as they are proper persons to speak of him to the merchant, their good-will is not neglected. To the involved planter their language often is, 'Sir, I must have your sugars down at the wharf directly;' that is, your sugars are to make the lowest tier, to stand the chance of being washed out should the ship leak or make much water in a bad passage. When they address an attorney, they do not ask for sugars, but his favours, as to quantity and time; and his hogsheads form the upper tier."[32]