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The trade, domestic and foreign

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




To the women of England much credit is due for having brought this
question before the world. It is one that should have for them the
deepest interest. Wherever man is unable to obtain machinery, he is
forced to depend on mere brute labour; and he is then so poor that his
wife must aid him in the labours of the field, to her own degradation,
and to the neglect of her home, her husband, her children, and
herself. She is then the most oppressed of slaves. As men obtain
machinery, they obtain command of great natural agents, and mind
gradually takes the place of physical force; and then labour in the
field becomes more productive, and the woman passes from out-of-door
to in-door employments, and with each step in this direction she is
enabled to give more care to her children, her husband, and herself.
From being a slave, and the mother of slaves, she passes to becoming a
free woman, the mother of daughters that are free, and the instructor
of those to whom the next generation is to look for instruction.

The English system looks to confining the women of the world to the
labours of the field, and such is its effect everywhere. It looks,
therefore, to debasing and enslaving them and their children. The
other looks to their emancipation from slavery, and their elevation in
the social scale; and it can scarcely fail to be regarded by the women
as well as by the men of England as a matter of duty to inquire into
the grounds upon which their policy is based, and to satisfy
themselves if it can be possible that there is any truth in a system
which tends everywhere to the production of slavery, and therefore to
the maintenance of the slave trade throughout the world.




FOOTNOTES:


[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
Christy, p. 46.

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