  [1] Edwards' West Indies, vol. i. p. 255. [2] Macpherson's Annals of Commerce, vol. iii. 575. [3] Macpherson's Annals of Commerce, vol. iv. 155. [4] Martin's Colonial Library, West Indies, vol. i. 90. [5] Macpherson, vol. iv. 155. [6] Ibid. [7] Montgomery's West Indies, vol. ii. 114 [8] Macpherson, vol. iv. 155, 228. [9] Macpherson, vol. iv. 155. [10] The export to the foreign West Indies, from 1783 to 1787, is given by Macpherson at nearly 20,000. [11] The causes of these diminutions will be exhibited in a future chapter. [12] Macpherson, vol. iv. 144. [13] The Cape and the Kaffirs, by Harriet Ward, London, 1852. [14] Notes on Jamaica in 1850, p. 64. [15] Ibid. 68. [16] State and Prospects of Jamaica. [17] The Corentyne. [18] East bank of Berbice river. [19] West ditto. [20] West coast of Berbice. [21] Prospective Review, Nov. 1852, 504. [22] The Celt, the Roman, and the Saxon, by Thomas Wright, p. 87. [23] Ibid. p. 56. [24] Where population and wealth diminish, the rich soils are abandoned and men retire to the poorer ones, as is seen in the abandonment of the delta of Egypt, of the Campagna, of the valley of Mexico, and of the valleys of the Tigris and the Euphrates. [25] The land of England itself has become and is becoming more consolidated, the cause of which will be shown in a future chapter. [26] Dallas's History of the Maroons, vol. i. page c. [27] Macpherson, vol. iii. 394. [28] Ibid. 574. [29] Ibid. vol. iv. 255. [30] Dallas's History of the Maroons, vol. i. cvii. [31] Ibid. cv. [32] Dallas's History of the Maroons, vol. ii. 358. [33] See page 14, ante. [34] Coleridge's "Six Months in the West Indies," 131. [35] See pages 71-2, ante. [36] Martin's West Indies. [37] Tooke's History of Prices, vol. ii. 412. [38] The reader who may desire to see this law fully demonstrated, may do so on referring to the author's Principles of Political Economy, vol. i. chap. v. [39] Bigelow, Notes, 129. [40] Ibid, 31. [41] Ibid, 69. [42] Bigelow, 125. [43] Speech of Mr. James Wilson, December 10, 1852. On the same occasion it was stated that "the lower orders" are daily "putting aside all decency," while "the better class appear to have lost all hope," and that the Governor, Sir Charles Grey, "described things as going on from bad to worse." The cholera had carried off, as was stated, 40,000 persons. [44] The following case illustrates in a very striking manner the value that is given to things that must be wasted among an exclusively agricultural population,—and it is but one of thousands that might be adduced: WHAT OLD BONES AND BITS OF SKIN MAY BE GOOD FOR.—How to get a penny-worth of beauty out of old bones and bits of skin, is a problem which the French gelatine makers have solved very prettily. Does the reader remember some gorgeous sheets of colored gelatine in the French department of the Great Exhibition? We owed them to the slaughter-houses of Paris. These establishments are so well organized and conducted, that all the refuse is carefully preserved, to be applied to any purposes for which it may be deemed fitting. Very pure gelatine is made from the waste fragments of skin, bone, tendon, ligature, and gelatinous tissue of the animals slaughtered in the Parisian abbatoirs, and thin sheets of this gelatine are made to receive very rich and beautiful colors. As a gelatinous liquid, when melted, it is used in the dressing of woven stuffs, and in the clarification of wine; and as a solid, it is cut into threads for the ornamental uses of the confectioner, or made into very thin white sheets of papier glace, for copying, drawing, or applied to the making of artificial flowers, or used as a substitute for paper, on which gold printing may be executed. In good sooth, when an ox has given us our beef, and our leather, and our tallow, his career of usefulness is by no means ended; we can get a penny out of him as long as there is a scrap of his substance above ground—Household Words. [45] The superficial area of the State is 64,000 square miles, being greater than that of England, and double that of Ireland. [46] Despotism in America, 127. [47] De Bow's Commercial Review, new series, vol. ii. 137. [48] The tobacco grower "has the mortification of seeing his tobacco, bought from him at sixpence in bond, charged three shillings duty, and therefore costing the broker but 3s. 6d. and selling in the shops of London at ten, twelve, and sixteen shillings." (Urquhart's Turkey, 194.) The same writer informs his readers that the tobacco dealers were greatly alarmed when it was proposed that the duty should be reduced, because then everybody with £10 capital could set up a shop. The slave who works in the tobacco-field is among the largest taxpayers for the maintenance of foreign traders and foreign governments. [49] Statistique de l'Agriculture de la France, 129. [50] Urquhart's Resources of Turkey, 179. [51] Equivalent to light port-charges, the anchorage being only sixteen cents per ship. [52] Beaujour's Tableau du Commerce de la Greece, quoted by Urquhart, 47. [53] Urquhart, 150. [54] The recent proceedings in regard to the Turkish loan are strikingly illustrative of the exhausting effects of a system that looks wholly to the export of the raw produce of the earth, and thus tends to the ruin of the soil and of its owner. [55] Urquhart, 257. [56] Ibid. 202. [57] Turkey, and its Destiny, by C. Mac Farlane, Esq., 1850. [58] Mac Farlane, vol. i, 46. [59] Mac Farlane, vol. ii, 242. [60] Ibid. 296. [61] Ibid. vol. i. 37. [62] History of British India, vol. i. 46. [63] Historical Fragments, 402. [64] "The country was laid waste with fire and sword, and that land distinguished above most others by the cheerful face of fraternal government and protected labour, the chosen seat of cultivation and plenty, is now almost throughout a dreary desert covered with rushes and briers, and jungles full of wild beasts. * * * That universal, systematic breach of treaties, which had made the British faith proverbial in the East! These intended rebellions are one of the Company's standing resources. When money has been thought to be hoarded up anywhere, its owners are universally accused of rebellion, until they are acquitted of their money and their treasons at once! The money once taken, all accusation, trial, and punishment ends."—Speech on Fox's East India Bill. [65] Quoted in Thompson's Lectures on India, 61. [66] Colonel Sykes states the proportion collected in the Deccan as much less than is above given [67] Rickards, vol. i. 288. [68] Vol. ii. 218. [69] Rickards, vol i. 500. [70] Ibid. 559. [71] Ibid. 558. [72] Ibid. 558. [73] Campbell's Modern India, London, 1852, 356. [74] Campbell's Modern India, 357. [75] Baines's History of the Cotton Manufacture. [76] Campbell's Modern India, 332. [77] Ibid. 381. [78] Campbell's Modern India, 105. [79] Rambles in India, by Col. Sleeman, vol. i. p. 296. [80] Speech of Mr. G. Thompson in the House of Commons. [81] See page 133 ante. [82] Chapman's Commerce and Cotton of India, 74. [83] Chapman, Cotton and Commerce of India, 28. [84] Taking the last six of the thirteen years, the price of cotton was 2d. a pound, and if the produce of a beegah was 6s. 6d., of this the government took sixty-eight per cent. of the gross produce; and taking the two years 1841 and 1842, cotton was 1-3/4 d. a pound, and the produce of a beegah was 5s. 8d. On this the assessment was actually equal to seventy-eight per cent. on the gross produce of the land.—Speech of Mr. Bright in the House of Commons. [85] Chapman's Commerce and Cotton of India, 110. [86] Chapman, 167. [87] Rambles, vol. i. 205. [88] Ibid. 268. [89] Ibid. vol. ii. 147. [90] Ibid. 153. [91] Ibid. 185. [92] Ibid. 199. [93] Chapman, 97. [94] Thompson's Lectures on India, 57. [95] Ibid. 185. [96] Chapman, 22. [97] Ibid, 25. [98] Rambles in India, vol. ii. 109. [99] Modern India, 394 [100] Thompson, Lectures on India, 25. [101] The destruction of life in China from this extension of the market for the produce of India is stated at no less than 400,000 per annum. How this trade is regarded in India itself, by Christian men, may be seen from the following extract from a review, recently published in the Bombay Telegraph, of papers in regard to it published in Hunt's Merchants' Magazine, in which the review is now republished:— "That a professedly Christian government should, by its sole authority and on its sole responsibility, produce a drug which is not only contraband, but essentially detrimental to the best interests of humanity; that it should annually receive into its treasury crores of rupees, which, if they cannot, save by a too licentious figure, be termed 'the price of blood,' yet are demonstrably the price of the physical waste, the social wretchedness, and moral destruction of the Chinese; and yet that no sustained remonstrances from the press, secular or spiritual, nor from society, should issue forth against the unrighteous system, is surely an astonishing fact in the history of our Christian ethics. "An American, accustomed to receive from us impassioned arguments against his own nation on account of slavery, might well be pardoned were he to say to us, with somewhat of intemperate feeling, 'Physician, heal thyself,' and to expose with bitterness the awful inconsistency of Britain's vehement denunciation of American slavery, while, by most deadly measures, furthering Chinese demoralization." The review, in referring to the waste of human life, closes as follows:-. "What unparalleled destruction! The immolations of an Indian Juggernauth dwindle into insignificance before it! We again repeat, nothing but slavery is worthy to be compared for its horrors with this monstrous system of iniquity. As we write, we are amazed at the enormity of its unprincipledness, and the large extent of its destructiveness. Its very enormity seems in some measure to protect it. Were it a minor evil, it seems as though one might grapple with it. As it is, it is beyond the compass of our grasp. No words are adequate to expose its evil, no fires of indignant feeling are fierce enough to blast it. "The enormous wealth it brings into our coffers is its only justification, the cheers of vice-enslaved wretches its only welcome; the curses of all that is moral and virtuous in an empire of three hundred and sixty millions attend its introduction; the prayers of enlightened Christians deprecate its course; the indignation of all righteous minds is its only 'God-speed.' "It takes with it fire and sword, slaughter and death; it leaves behind it bankrupt fortunes, idiotized minds, broken hearts, and ruined souls. Foe to all the interests of humanity, hostile to the scanty virtues of earth; and warring against the overflowing benevolence of heaven, may we soon have to rejoice over its abolition!" [102] Campbell, 390. [103] Ibid. 393. [104] Campbell, 384. [105] Ibid. 377. [106] Campbell, 359. [107] Ibid. 332. [108] Ibid. 345 [109] Chapman on the Commerce of India, 88. [110] Lawson's Merchants' Magazine, January, 1853, 58. [111] Ibid. 51. [112] See page 140, ante. [113] Backhouse's Visit to the Mauritius, 35. [114] The danger of interference, even with the best intentions, when unaccompanied by knowledge, is thus shown by the same author, in speaking of Madagascar:— "Dreadful wars are waged by the queen against other parts of the island, in which all the male prisoners above a certain stature are put to death, and the rest made slaves. This she is enabled to effect, by means of the standing army which her predecessor Radama was recommended to keep by the British. * * How lamentable is the reflection that the British nation, with the good intention of abolishing the slave trade, should have strengthened despotic authority and made way for all its oppressive and depopulating results, by encouraging the arts of war instead of those of peace!"—P. 24. [115] Thompson's Lectures on British India, 187. [116] Lawson's Merchants' Magazine, January, 1853, 14. [117] Bigelow's "Jamaica in 1850," 17. [118] Sophisms of Free Trade, by J. Barnard Byles, Esq. [119] Speech of Mr. T. F. Meagher, 1847. [120] The following paragraph from an Irish journal exhibits strikingly the amount of political freedom exercised at the scene of these evictions:— "Lord Erne held his annual show in Ballindreat, on Monday, the 25th ult, and after having delivered himself much as usual in regard to agricultural matters, he proceeded to lecture the assembled tenants on the necessity of implicit obedience to those who were placed over them, in reference not only to practical agriculture, but the elective franchise. To such of the tenants as his lordship considered to be of the right stamp, and who proved themselves so by voting for Sir Edmund Hayes and Thomas Connolly, Esq., the 15 per cent. in full would be allowed—to those who split their votes between one or other of these gentlemen and Campbell Johnston, Esq., 7-1/2 per cent.; but to the men who had the manliness to 'plump' for Johnston, no reduction of rents would be allowed this year, or any other until such parties might redeem their character at another election."—Cork Examiner, Nov. 8, 1852. [121] Thornton on Over-population, 248. [122] Ibid. 250. [123] McCulloch, Stat. Acct. of British Empire, vol. I. 315. [124] Times Newspaper, June 7th, 1844. [125] Report of Highland Emigration Committee, 1841. [126] Lectures on the Social and Moral Condition of the People, by various Ministers of the Gospel. Glasgow. [127] See page 71, ante. [128] Kay's Social Condition of England and of Europe, vol. i. 70 [129] Ibid. 359. [130] Kay's Social Condition of England and of Europe, vol. 1, 183. [131] On a recent occasion in the House of Lords, it was declared to be important to retain Canada, on the express ground that it greatly facilitated smuggling. [132] Alton Locke. [133] Lord Ashley informs us that there are 30,000 poor children such as these in London alone. [134] Reports of the Health of Towns Commission, vol. i. 127. [135] City Mission Magazine, Oct. 1847. [136] See page 224, ante. [137] The import of 1850 was 103,713 lbs., and that of 1852, 251,792 lbs. [138] The reader who may desire to see this more fully exhibited is referred to the author's work, "The Past, the Present, and the Future." [139] See page 59, ante. [140] "It may be doubted, considering the circumstances under which most Irish landlords acquired their estates, the difference between their religious tenets and those of their tenants, the peculiar tenures under which the latter hold their lands, and the political condition of the country, whether their residence would have been of any considerable advantage. * * * The question really at issue refers merely to the spending of revenue, and has nothing to do with the improvement of estates; and notwithstanding all that has been said to the contrary, I am not yet convinced that absenteeism is, in this respect, at all injurious."—Principles, 157. [141] Treatises and Essays on Subjects connected with Economical Policy. [142] Chapman, Commerce of India. [143] During all this time there was a large increase in the import of food from Ireland; and this, of course, constituted a portion of domestic produce exported in the shape of manufactures, the whole proceeds of which were to be retained at home. Since 1846, the change in that country has been so great that she is now a large importer of foreign grain. The official return for 1849 shows a diminution in the quantity raised, as compared with 1844, of no less than 9,304,607 quarters; and instead of sending to England, as she had been accustomed to do, more than three millions of quarters, she was an importer in that year and the following one of more than a million. This deficiency had to be made up from abroad, and thus was the United Kingdom transformed from the position of seller of four or five millions of quarters—say about 40 millions of our bushels—of which it retained the whole proceeds, to that of the mere shopkeeper, who retains only the profit on the same quantity. A similar state of things might be shown in regard to many of the other articles of produce above enumerated. [144] in 1834, Mr. McCulloch estimated the produce of the land of great Britain at 146 millions, but at that time wheat was calculated at 50s. A quarter, or almost one-half more than the average of the last two or three years. Other and larger calculations may readily be found; but it would be difficult to determine what becomes of the product if it be not found in rent, farmers' profits, or labourers' wages. [145] By reference to the report of the Assistant Commissioner, charged with the inquiry into the condition of women and children employed in agriculture, it will be seen that a change of clothes seems to be out of the question. The upper parts of the under-clothes of women at work, even their stays, quickly become wet with perspiration, while the lower parts cannot escape getting equally wet in nearly every kind of work in which they are employed, except in the driest weather. It not unfrequently happens that a woman, on returning from work, is obliged to go to bed for an hour or two to allow her clothes to be dried. It is also by no means uncommon for her, if she does not do this, to put them on again the next morning nearly as wet as when she took them off. [146] London Labour and London Poor. [147] The returns of imports into Great Britain are given according to an official value, established more than a century since, and thus the sum of the values is an exact measure of the quantities imported. [148] The reader will remark that of all the machinery of England but a small portion is required for the forced foreign trade that is thus produced. [149] The whole appropriation for the education of ten millions of people in Western India is stated, in recent memorial from Bombay, to be only £12,500, or $60,000, being six cents for every ten persons. [150] North British Review, Nov. 1852. [151] Edinburgh Review, Oct. 1849. The italics are those of the reviewer. [152] See page 160, ante. [153] Lawson's Merchants' Mag., Dec. 1852. [154] Senior, Outlines of Political Economy, 152. [155] At a recent discussion in the London Statistical Society, land in England was valued at thirty years' purchase, houses at fifteen, and land in Ireland at eighteen. [156] This will appear a very small estimate when compared with those usually made, but it is equal to the total production of the land and labour of the country for a year and a half, if not for a longer period; and it would be difficult to prove that if the whole labour and capital of the country were applied to that purpose—food and clothing being supplied from abroad—it could not produce a quantity of commodities equal in value to those now accumulated in England. Even, however, were the amount placed at a thousand millions, the amount of wealth would still be small, under the circumstances of the case. [157] See page 105 ante. [158] The latest number of the Bankers' Magazine contains statements of two banks whose joint capitals and reserved funds are about £200,000, while their investments are about a million!—and this, would seem to be about the usual state of affairs with most of the English banks. [159] Bankers' Magazine, Sept. 1852 [160] The amount of expenditure for English railroads is put down at from two to three hundreds of millions of pounds; and yet the real investment was only that of the labour employed in grading the roads, building the bridges, driving the tunnels, and making the iron; and if we take that at £8000 per mile, we obtain only 54 millions. All the balance was merely a transfer of property already existing from one owner to another, as in the case of the land, which in some cases cost ten or twelve thousands of pounds per mile. [161] See page 240, ante. [162] North British Review, Nov. 1852. [163] This tendency is exhibited in most of the books that treat of the system. Thus, Mr. McCulloch insists on the beneficial effect of the fear of taxation, as will be seen in the following passage:— "To the desire of rising in the world, implanted in the breast of every individual, an increase of taxation superadds the fear of being cast down to a lower station, of being deprived of conveniences and gratifications which habit has rendered all but indispensable—and the combined influence of the two principles produces results that could not be produced by the unassisted agency of either." This is only the lash of the slave-driver in another form. [164] Barter, The Dorp and the Veld. [165] Estimating the average cost of raising men and women at only $1000 each, the present forced export is equal to sending abroad a capital of four hundred millions of dollars, no return from which is to be looked for. [166] The recent movement of this institution in raising the rate of interest affords a striking example of its power, and of the absence of the judgment required for its exercise. For two years past the bank has aided in raising prices, but now it desires to reduce them, and at the cost, necessarily, of the weaker portions of the community, for the rich can always take care of themselves. The whole tendency of its operations is toward making the rich richer and the poor poorer. Sir Robert Peel undertook to regulate the great machine, but his scheme for that purpose failed, because he totally misconceived the cause of the evil, and of course applied the wrong remedy. It was one that could only aggravate the mischief, as he could scarcely have failed to see, had he studied the subject with the care its importance merited. [167] Page 230, ante. [168] Chap. VII. ante. [169] Message of President Roberts, Dec. 1849 [170] Lecture on the Relations of Free and Slave Labour, by David [171] The Social Condition and Education of the People of England and [172] Handbuch der Allgemeinen Staatskunde, vol. ii. 5, quoted by Kay, [173] Until recently, the increase of Great Britain has been slightly greater than that of Prussia, the former having grown at the rate of 1.95 per cent. per annum, and the latter at that of 1.84; but the rate of growth of the former has recently much diminished, and all growth has now probably ceased. [174] Die Agrarfrage. [175] Etudes sur l'Economie Politique. [176] Page 51, ante. [177] In no other country than England would the editor of a daily journal inflict upon his readers throughout the kingdom whole columns occupied with the names of persons present at a private entertainment, and with the dresses of the ladies. Where centralization has reached a height like this, we need scarcely be surprised to learn that there is but one paying daily newspaper for a population of more than seventeen millions. |
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