Charles Brockden Brown - "Memoirs of Carwin the Biloquist"

Thomas Chandler Haliburton - "The Attache; or, Sam Slick in England (V2)"

Charlotte M. Yonge - "Stray Pearls"

William Shakespeare - "The Tempest"

The trade, domestic and foreign

H >> Henry Charles Carey >> The trade, domestic and foreign




We are told of the principle of population that men increase faster
than food, and, for evidence that such must always be the case, are
pointed to the fact that when men are few in number they always
cultivate the rich soils, and then food is abundant, but as population
increases they are forced to resort to the poor soils, and then food
becomes scarce. That the contrary of all this is the fact is shown by
the history of England, France, Italy, Greece, India, and every other
nation of the world, and is proved in our own day by all that is at
this moment being done in this country. It is proved by the fact that
Ireland possesses millions of acres of the most fertile soil remaining
in a state of nature, and so likely to remain until she shall have
markets for their produce that will enable their owners readily to
exchange turnips, potatoes, cabbages, and hay, for cloth, machinery,
and MANURE.

It is singular that all the political economists of England should so
entirely have overlooked the fact that man is a mere borrower from the
earth, and that when he does not pay his debts, she does as do all
other creditors, that is, she expels him from his holding. England
makes of her soil a grand reservoir for the waste yielded by all the
sugar, coffee, wool, indigo, cotton and other raw commodities of
almost half the world, and thus does she raise a crop that has been
valued at five hundred millions of dollars, or five times more than
the average value of the cotton crop produced by so many millions of
people in this country; and yet so important is manure that she
imports in a single year more than two hundred thousand tons of guano,
at a cost of almost two millions of pounds, and thus does she make
labour productive and land valuable. Nevertheless, her writers teach
other nations that the true mode of becoming rich is to exhaust the
land by sending from it all its products in their rudest state, and
then, when the people of Ireland attempt to follow the soil which they
have sent to England, the people of the latter are told by Mr.
McCulloch that

"The unexampled misery of the Irish people is directly owing to the
excessive augmentation of their numbers; and, nothing can be more
perfectly futile than to expect any real or lasting amendment of
their situation until an effectual check has been given to the
progress of population. It is obvious too," he continues, "that the
low and degraded condition into which the people of Ireland are now
sunk is the condition to which every people must be reduced whose
numbers continue, for any considerable period, to increase faster
than the means of providing for their comfortable and decent
subsistence."--_Principles_, 383.

The population of Ireland did increase with some rapidity, and the
reason for this was to be found in the fact that poverty had not yet
produced that demoralization which restricts the growth of numbers.
The extraordinary morality of the women of Ireland is admitted
everywhere. In England it is remarked upon by poor-law commissioners,
and here it is a fact that cannot fail to command the attention of the
most superficial observer. How it is at home we are told by Sir
Francis Head, whose statements on this subject cannot be read without
interest:--

"As regards the women of Ireland, their native modesty cannot fail to
attract the observation of any stranger. Their dress was invariably
decent, generally pleasing, and often strikingly picturesque. Almost
all wore woollen petticoats, dyed by themselves, of a rich madder
colour, between crimson and scarlet. Upon their shoulders, and
occasionally from their heads, hung, in a variety of beautiful folds,
sometimes a plaid of red and green, sometimes a cloak, usually dark
blue or dingy white. Their garments, however, like those of the men,
were occasionally to be seen in tatters."--P. 119.

Anxious to be fully informed on the subject, the traveller took
occasion to interrogate various police-officers and gentlemen, and the
result of his inquiries will be seen on a perusal of the following
questions and answers:--

Q. "How long have you been on duty in Galway?"

A. "Above nine years."

Q. "Have you much crime here?"

A. "Very little; it principally consists of petty larcenies."

Q. "Have there been here many illegitimate children?"

A. "Scarcely any. During the whole of the eight years I have been on
duty here I have not known of an illegitimate child being reared up
in any family in the town."

Q. "What do you mean by being reared up?"

A. "I mean that, being acquainted with every family in Galway, I have
never known of a child of that description being born."--P. 208.

Q. "How long have you been on duty here?"

A. "Only six months."

Q. "During that time have you known of any instance of an
illegitimate child being born in the village of the Claddagh?"

A. "Not only have I never known of such a case, but I have never
heard any person attribute such a case to the fisherwomen of
Claddagh. I was on duty in the three islands of Arran, inhabited
almost exclusively by fishermen, who also farm potatoes, and I never
heard of one of their women--who are remarkable for their
beauty--having had an illegitimate child, nor did I ever hear it
attributed to them; indeed, I have been informed by Mr. -----, a
magistrate who has lived in Galway for eight years, and has been on
temporary duty in the island of Arran, that he also had never heard
there of a case of that nature."--P. 209.

A. "I have been here better than two years, and during that time I
have never known of any woman of Claddagh having had an illegitimate
child--indeed, I have never even heard of it."

Q. "Have you ever known of any such case in Galway?"

A. "Oh, I think there have been some cases in _town_. Of my own
knowledge I cannot say so, but I have _heard_ of it."--_Ibid_.

Q. "How long have you been in charge of the Claddagh village?"

A. "I have been nine years here, for five years of which last March I
have been in charge of Claddagh."

Q. "During that time has there been an illegitimate child born
there?"

A. "No, I have never heard of it, and if it had happened I should
have been sure to have heard of it, as they wouldn't have allowed her
to stop in the village."--P. 210.

The reader will now be pleased to recollect that the production of
food, flax, cotton, and other raw commodities requires hard labour and
exposure, and it is for such labour men are fitted--that the
conversion of food, flax, and cotton into cloth requires little
exertion and is unattended with exposure, and is therefore especially
fitted for the weaker sex--and that when the work of conversion is
monopolized by people who live at a distance from the place of
production, the woman and the child must be driven to the labour of
the field; and therefore it is that we see the women and the children
of Jamaica and Carolina, of Portugal and Turkey, of India and of
Ireland, compelled to remain idle or to cultivate the land, because of
the existence of a system which denies to all places in the world but
one the power to bring the consumer to the side of the producer. It
was time for woman to take up the cause of her sex, and it may be
hoped that she will prosecute the inquiry into the causes of the
demoralization and degradation of the women of so large a portion of
the world, until she shall succeed in extirpating the system so long
since denounced by the greatest of all economists, as "a manifest
violation of the most sacred rights of man [and woman] kind."

* * * * *

SCOTLAND.

Centralization tends everywhere to the exhaustion of the land, and to
its consolidation in fewer hands, and with every step in this
direction man becomes less and less free to determine for whom he will
work and what shall be his reward. That such has been the tendency in
Jamaica, India, and Ireland, has been shown, and it is now proposed to
show that the same tendency exists in Scotland, the Northern part of
which has become exclusively agricultural as even its home
manufactures have passed away, and must look to a distance for a
market for all its products, involving, of course, a necessity for
exhausting the land.

The Highland tacksman, originally co-proprietor of the land of the
clan, became at first vassal, then hereditary tenant, then tenant at
will, and thus the property in land passed from the many into the
hands of the few, who have not hesitated to avail themselves of the
power so obtained. The payment of money rents was claimed by them
eighty years since, but the amount was very small, as is shown by the
following passage from a work of that date:--

"The rent of these lands is very trifling compared to their extent,
but compared to the number of mouths which a farm maintains, it will
perhaps be found that a plot of land in the highlands of Scotland
feeds ten times more people than a farm of the same extent in the
richest provinces."--_Stewart's Political Economy_, vol. i. chap.
xvi.

Of some of the proceedings of the present century the following sketch
is furnished by a recent English writer:--

"Even in the beginning of the 19th century the rental imposts were
very small, as is shown by the work of Mr. Lock, (1820,) the steward
of the Countess of Sutherland, who directed the improvements on her
estates. He gives for instance the rental of the Kintradawell estate
for 1811, from which it appears that up to then, every family was
obliged to pay a yearly impost of a few shillings in money, a few
fowls, and some days' work, at the highest.

"It was only after 1811 that the ultimate and real usurpation was
enacted, the forcible, transformation of _clan-property_ into the
_private property_, in the modern sense, _of the chief_. The person
who stood at the head of this economical revolution, was the Countess
of Sutherland and Marchioness of Stafford.

"Let us first state that the ancestors of the marchioness were the
'great men' of the most northern part of Scotland, of very near
three-quarters of Sutherlandshire. This county is more extensive than
many French departments or small German principalities. When the
Countess of Sutherland inherited these estates, which she afterward
brought to her husband, the Marquis of Stafford, afterward Duke of
Sutherland, the population of them was already reduced to 15,000. The
countess resolved upon a radical economical reform, and determined
upon transforming the whole tract of country into sheep-walks. From
1814 to 1820, these 15,000 inhabitants, about 3000 families, were
systematically expelled and exterminated. All their villages were
demolished and burned down, and all their fields converted into
pasturage. British soldiers were commanded for this execution, and
came to blows with the natives. An old woman refusing to quit her
hut, was burned in the flames of it. Thus the countess appropriated
to herself _seven hundred and ninety-four thousand acres of land_,
which from time immemorial had belonged to the clan. She allotted to
the expelled natives about six thousand acres--two acres per family.
These six thousand acres had been lying waste until then, and brought
no revenue to the proprietors. The countess was generous enough to
sell the acre at 2s. 6d. on an average, to the clan-men who for
centuries past had shed their blood for her family. The whole of the
unrightfully appropriated clan-land she divided into twenty-nine
large sheep-farms, each of them inhabited by one single family,
mostly English farm-labourers; and in 1821 the 15,000 Gaels had
already been superseded by 131,000 sheep.

"A portion of the aborigines had been thrown upon the sea-shore, and
attempted to live by fishing. They became amphibious, and, as an
English author says, lived half on land and half on water, and after
all did not half live upon both."

Throughout the North of Scotland the tenants of the small grazing
farms into which the Highland counties had been divided, have been
ousted for the purpose of creating sheep-walks, and to such an extent
has this been carried, that where once, and at no distant period, were
numerous black-cattle farms, not an inhabitant is now to be seen for
many miles.[121] The work, too, is still going on. "The example of
Sutherland," says Mr. Thornton,[122] "is imitated in the neighbouring
counties."

The misery of these poor people is thus described:--

"Hinds engaged by the year are seldom paid more than two-thirds of
what they would receive in the South, and few of them are fortunate
enough to obtain regular employment. Farm-servants, however, form
only a small proportion of the peasantry, a much greater number being
crofters, or tenants of small pieces of ground, from which they
derive almost their whole subsistence. Most of them live very
miserably. The soil is so poor, and rents in some instances so
exorbitant, that occupiers of four or five acres can do little more
than maintain themselves, yet it is their aid alone that saves their
still poorer brethren from starvation. This is true even of
Sutherland, which is commonly represented as a highly improved
county, and in which a signal change for the better is said to have
taken place in the character and habits of the people.[123] Recent
inquiry has discovered that even there, in districts once famous for
fine men and gallant soldiers, the inhabitants have degenerated into
a meagre and stunted race. In the healthiest situations, on hillsides
fronting the sea, the faces of their famished children are as thin
and pale as they could be in the foul atmosphere of a London
alley.[124] Still more deplorable are the scenes exhibited in the
Western Highlands, especially on the coasts and in the adjoining
islands. A large population has there been assembled, so ill provided
with any means of support, that during part of almost every year from
45,000 to 80,000 [125] of them are in a state of destitution, and
entirely dependent upon charity. Many of the heads of families hold
crofts from four to seven acres in extent, but these, notwithstanding
their small size, and the extreme barrenness of the soil, have often
two, three, and sometimes even four families upon them. One estate in
the Hebrides, the nominal rent of which is only £5200 a year, is
divided into 1108 crofts, and is supposed to have more than 8300
persons living upon it. In another instance a rental of £1814 is
payable (for little is really paid) by 365 crofters, and the whole
population of the estate is estimated at more than 2300. In Cromarty,
1500 persons are settled upon an estate let nominally for £750, but
"paying not more than half that sum."--_Thornton_, 74.

"Of course, they live most wretchedly. Potatoes are the usual food,
for oatmeal is considered a luxury, to be reserved for high days and
holidays, but even potatoes are not raised in sufficient abundance.
The year's stock is generally exhausted before the succeeding crop is
ripe, and the poor are then often in a most desperate condition, for
the poor-law is a dead letter in the North of Scotland, and the want
of a legal provision for the necessitous is but ill supplied by the
spontaneous contributions of the land-owners."--_Ibid_. 76.

At the moment of writing this, the journals of the day furnish
information that famine prevails in the Hebrides, and that "in the
Isle of Skye alone there are 10,000 able-bodied persons at this time
without work, without food, and without credit."

The condition of these poor people would certainly be much improved
could they find some indulgent master who would purchase them at such
prices as would make it to his interest to feed, clothe, and lodge
them well in return for their labour.

In the days of Adam Smith about one-fifth of the surface of Scotland
was supposed to be entailed, and he saw the disadvantages of the
system to be so great that he denounced the system as being "founded
upon the most absurd of all suppositions--the supposition that every
successive generation of men have not an equal right to the earth and
all that it possesses; but that the property of the present generation
should be retained and regulated according to the fancy of those who
died perhaps five hundred years ago." Instead of changing the system,
and doing that which might tend to the establishment of greater
freedom of trade in land, the movement has been in a contrary
direction, and to such an extent that one-half of Scotland is now
supposed to be entailed; and yet, singularly enough, this is the
system advocated by Mr. McCulloch, a follower in the foot-steps of
Adam Smith, as being the one calculated "to render all classes more
industrious, and to augment at the same time the mass of wealth and
the scale of enjoyment."

The effects of the system are seen in the enormous rents contracted to
be paid for the use of small pieces of land at a distance from market,
the failure in the payment of which makes the poor cultivator a mere
slave to the proprietor. How the latter use their power, may be seen
by the following extract from a Canadian journal of 1851:--

"A Colonel -----, the owner of estates in South Uist and Barra, in
the highlands of Scotland, has sent off over 1100 destitute tenants
and cotters under the most cruel and delusive temptations; assuring
them that they would be taken care of immediately on their arrival at
Quebec by the emigrant agent, receive a free passage to Upper Canada,
where they would be provided with work by the government agents, and
receive grants of land on certain imaginary conditions. Seventy-one
of the last cargo of four hundred and fifty have signed a statement
that some of them fled to the mountains when an attempt was made to
force them to emigrate. 'Whereupon,' they add, 'Mr. Fleming gave
orders to a policeman, who was accompanied by the ground officer of
the estate in Barra, and some constables, to pursue the people who
had run away among the mountains, which they did, and succeeded in
capturing about twenty from the mountains and from other islands in
the neighbourhood; but only came with the officers on an attempt
being made to handcuff them, and that some who ran away were not
brought back; in consequence of which four families, at least, have
been divided, some having come in the ships to Quebec, while other
members of the same families are left in the highlands.'"

"On board the Conrad and the Birman were 518 persons from Mull and
Tyree, sent out by his grace the Duke of -----, who provided them
with a free passage to Montreal, where on arrival they presented the
same appearance of destitution as those from South Uist, sent out by
Colonel -----, that is, 'entirely destitute of money and
provisions.'"

Numbers of these people perished, as we are told, of disease and want
of food in the winter which followed their arrival in Canada; and that
such would have been the case might naturally have been anticipated by
those who exported them.

The wretched cotters who are being everywhere expelled from the land
are forced to take refuge in cities and towns, precisely as we see now
to be the case in Ireland. "In Glasgow," says Mr. Thornton--

"There are nearly 30,000 poor Highlanders, most of them living in a
state of misery, which shows how dreadful must have been the
privations to which such misery is preferred. Such of them as are
able-bodied obtain employment without much difficulty, and may not
perhaps have much reason to complain of deficiency of the first
requisites of life; but the quarter they inhabit is described as
enclosing a larger amount of filth, crime, misery, and disease, than
could have been supposed to exist in one spot in any civilized
country. It consists of long lanes called 'wynds,' so narrow that a
cart could scarcely pass through them, opening upon 'closes,' or
courts, about 15 or 20 feet square, round which the houses, mostly
three stories high, are built, and in the centre of which is a
dunghill. The houses are occupied indiscriminately by labourers of
the lowest class, thieves, and prostitutes, and every apartment is
filled with a promiscuous crowd of men and women, all in the most
revolting state of filth. Amid such scenes and such companions as
these, thousands of the most intelligent of the Highlanders are
content to take refuge, for it is precisely those who are best
educated and best informed that are most impatient of the penury they
have to endure at home.

"The inhabitants of the Glasgow wynds and closes may be likened to
those of the Liverpool cellars, or to those of the worst parts of
Leeds, St. Giles's, and Bethnal Green, in London; and every other
class of the Scottish urban labouring population may likewise be
delineated with the same touches (more darkened, however,) which have
been used in describing the corresponding class in English towns.
Manufacturing operatives are in pretty much the same position in both
countries. Those of Scotland shared even more largely than their
Southern brethren in the distress of 1840-2, when Paisley in
particular exhibited scenes of wo far surpassing any thing that has
been related of Bolton or Stockport."--P. 77.

The extent to which these poor people have been driven from the land
may be judged by the following statement of population and
house-accommodation:--

Persons to
Population. Inhabited houses. a house.
----------- ----------------- ----------
1841...... 2,628,957...... 503,357...... 5.22
1851...... 2,870,784...... 366,650...... 7.83

Intemperance and immorality keep pace with the decline in the power of
men over their own actions, as is shown in the following statement of
the consumption of British spirits, under circumstances almost
precisely similar as regards the amount of duty:--

Duty. Gallons.
----- --------
1802.............. 3.10-1/2..... 1,158,558
1831.............. 3.4 ........ 5,700,689
1841.............. 3.8 ........ 5,989,905
1851.............. 3.8 ........ 6,830,710

In 1801 the population was 1,599,068, and since that time it has
increased eighty per cent., whereas the consumption of spirits has
grown almost six hundred per cent.!

The poor people who are expelled from the land cannot be sold. The
hammer of the auctioneer cannot be allowed to separate parents from
children, or husbands from wives, but poverty, drunkenness, and
prostitution produce a similar effect, and in a form even more
deplorable. In the five years preceding 1840, every fifth person in
Glasgow had been attacked by fever, and the deaths therefrom amounted
to almost five thousand.

It is impossible to study the condition of this portion of the United
Kingdom without arriving at the conclusion that society is rapidly
being divided into the very rich and the very poor, and that the
latter are steadily declining in their power of self-government, and
becoming more and more slaves to the former. Centralization tends
here, as everywhere, to absenteeism, and "absenteeism," says Dr.
Forbes of Glasgow [126] --

"Is in its results everywhere the same. All the transactions and
communications between the richer and the poorer classes, have thus
substituted for them the sternness of official agency, in the room of
that kind and generous treatment which, let them meet unrestrained,
the more prosperous children of the same parent would in almost every
case pay to their less fortunate brothers. * * * Where the power of
sympathy has been altogether or nearly abolished among the different
ranks of society, one of the first effects appears in a yawning and
ever-widening gulf of poverty which gathers round its foundations. As
the lofty shore indicates the depth of the surrounding ocean, the
proud pinnacles of wealth in society are the indices of a
corresponding depression among the humbler ranks. The greatest misery
of man is ever the adjunct of his proudest splendour."

Such are the results everywhere of that system which looks to
converting England into a great workshop and confining the people of
all other nations to the labours of the field. In Jamaica, it
annihilated three-fifths of all the negroes imported, and it is now
rapidly driving the remainder into barbarism and ultimately to
annihilation. In the Southern States, it causes the export of men,
women, and children, and the breaking up of families. In India, it has
caused famines and pestilences, and is now establishing the slave
trade in a new form. In Ireland, it has in half a century carried the
people back to a condition worthy only of the darkest part of the
Middle Ages, and is now extirpating them from the land of their
fathers. In Scotland, it is rapidly dividing the population into two
parts--the master on one hand, and the slave on the other. How it has
operated, and is now operating, in England itself, we may how examine.

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