Germany and Russia, Spain, Denmark, Belgium, and other states, have been determined to protect their farmers in their efforts to bring the loom and the anvil to their side, and to have towns and other places of exchange in their neighbourhood, at which they could exchange raw products for manufactured ones and for manure; and in every one in which that protection has been efficient, labour and land have become, and are becoming, more valuable and man more free.
In this country protection has always, to some extent, existed; but at some times it has been efficient, and at others not; and our tendency toward freedom or slavery has always been in the direct ratio of its efficiency or inefficiency. In the period from 1824 to 1833, the tendency was steadily in the former direction, but it was only in the latter part of it that it was made really efficient. Then mills and furnaces increased in number, and there was a steady increase in the tendency toward the establishment of local places of exchange; and then it was that Virginia held her convention at which was last discussed in that State the question of emanc.i.p.ation. In 1833, however, protection was abandoned, and a tariff was established by which it was provided that we should, in a few years, have a system of merely revenue duties; and from that date the abandonment of the older States proceeded with a rapidity never before known, and with it grew the domestic slave trade and the pro-slavery feeling. Then it was that were pa.s.sed the laws restricting emanc.i.p.ation and prohibiting education; and then it was that the export of slaves from Virginia and the Carolinas was so great that the population of those States remained almost, if not quite stationary, and that the growth of black population fell from thirty per cent., in the ten previous years, to twenty-four percent.[203] That large export of slaves resulted in a reduction of the price of Southern products to a point never before known; and thus it was that the system called free trade provided cheap cotton. Slavery grew at the South, and at the North; for with cheap cotton and cheap food came so great a decline in the demand for labour, that thousands of men found themselves unable to purchase this cheap food to a sufficient extent to feed their wives and their children. A paper by "a farm labourer" thus describes that calamitous portion of our history, when the rapid approach of the system called free trade, under the strictly revenue provisions of the Compromise Tariff, had annihilated compet.i.tion for the purchase of labour:--
"The years 1839, 1840, and 1841 were striking elucidations of such cases; when the cry of sober, industrious, orderly men--"Give me _work_! only give me work; MAKE YOUR OWN TERMS--MYSELF AND FAMILY HAVE NOTHING TO EAT"--was heard in our land. In those years thousands of cases of the kind occurred in our populous districts."--_Pittsburgh Dispatch_.
That such was the fact must be admitted by all who recollect the great distress that existed in 1841-2. Throughout the whole length and breadth of the land, there was an universal cry of "Give me work; make your own terms--myself and family have nothing to eat;" and the consequence of this approach toward slavery was so great a diminution in the consumption of food, that the prices at which it was then exported to foreign countries were lower than they had been for many years; and thus it was that the farmer paid for the system which had diminished the freedom of the labourer and the artisan.
It was this state of things that re-established protection for the American labourer, whether in the field or in the workshop. The tariff of 1842 was pa.s.sed, and at once there arose compet.i.tion for the purchase of labour. Mills were to be built, and men were needed to quarry the stone and get out the lumber, and other men were required to lay the stone and fashion the lumber into floors and roofs, doors and windows; and the employment thus afforded enabled vast numbers of men again to occupy houses of their own, and thus was produced a new demand for masons and carpenters, quarrymen and lumbermen. Furnaces were built, and mines were opened, and steam-engines were required; and the men employed at these works were enabled to consume more largely of food, while ceasing to contend with the agricultural labourer for employment on the farm. Mills were filled with females, and the demand for cloths increased, with corresponding diminution in the compet.i.tion for employment in the making of shirts and coats.
Wages rose, and they rose in every department of labour; the evidence of which is to be found in the fact that the consumption of food and fuel greatly increased, while that of cloth almost doubled, and that of iron trebled in the short period of five years.
How, indeed, could it be otherwise than that the reward of labour should rise? The cotton manufacturer needed labourers, male and female, and so did his neighbour of the woollens mill; and the labourers they now employed could buy shoes and hats. The iron- masters and the coal-miners needed workmen, and the men they employed needed cotton and woollen cloths; and they could consume more largely of food. The farmer"s markets tended to improve, and he could buy more largely of hats and shoes, ploughs and harrows, and the hatmakers and shoemakers, and the makers of ploughs and harrows, needed more hands; and therefore capital was everywhere looking for labour, where before labour had been looking for capital. The value of cottons, and woollens, and iron produced in 1846, as compared with that of 1842, was greater by a hundred millions of dollars; and all this went to the payment of labour, for all the profits of the iron-master and of the cotton and woollen manufacturer went to the building of new mills and furnaces, or to the enlargement of the old ones. Unhappily, however, for us, our legislators were smitten with a love of the system called free trade. They were of opinion that we were, by right, an agricultural nation, and that so we must continue; and that the true way to produce compet.i.tion for the purchase of labour was to resolve the whole nation into a body of farmers--and the tariff of 1842 was repealed.
If the reader will now turn to page 107, he will see how large must have been the domestic slave trade from 1835 to 1840, compared with that of the period from 1840 to 1845. The effect of this in increasing the crop and reducing the price of cotton was felt with great severity in the latter period,[204] and it required time to bring about a change. We are now moving in the same direction in which we moved from 1835 to 1840. For four years past, we have not only abandoned the building of mills and furnaces, but have closed hundreds of old ones, and centralization, therefore, grows from day to day. The farmer of Ohio can no longer exchange his food directly with the maker of iron.
He must carry it to New York, as must the producer of cotton in Carolina; who sees the neighbouring factory closed. [205] Local places of exchange decline, and great cities take their place; and with the growth of centralization grows the slave trade, North and South.
Palaces rise in New York and Philadelphia, while droves of black slaves are sent to Texas to raise cotton, and white ones at the North perish of disease, and sometimes almost of famine. "We could tell,"
says a recent writer in one of the New York journals--
"Of one room, twelve feet by twelve, in which were five resident families, comprising twenty persons of both s.e.xes and all ages, with only two beds, without part.i.tion or screen, or chair or table, and all dependent for their miserable support upon the sale of chips, gleaned from the streets, at four cents a basket--of another, still smaller and still more dest.i.tute, inhabited by a man, a woman, two little girls, and a boy, who were supported by permitting the room to be used as a rendezvous by the abandoned women of the street--of another, an attic room seven feet by five, containing scarcely an article of furniture but a bed, on which lay a fine-looking man in a raging fever, without medicine or drink or suitable food, his toil-worn wife engaged in cleaning dirt from the floor, and his little child asleep on a bundle of rags in the corner--of another of the same dimensions, in which we found, seated on low boxes around a candle placed on a keg, a woman and her oldest daughter, (the latter a girl of fifteen, and, as we were told, a prost.i.tute,) sewing on shirts, _for the making of which they were paid four cents apiece, and even at that price, out of which they had to support two small children, they could not get a supply of work_--of another of about the same size occupied by a street rag-picker and his family, the income of whose industry was eight dollars a month--of another, scarcely larger, into which we were drawn by the terrific screams of a drunken man beating his wife, containing no article of furniture whatever--another warmed only by a tin pail of lighted charcoal placed in the centre of the room, over which bent a blind man endeavouring to warm himself; around him three or four men and women swearing and quarrelling; in one corner on the floor a woman, who had died the day previous of disease, and in another two or three children sleeping on a pile of rags; (in regard to this room, we may say that its occupants were coloured people, and from them but a few days previous had been taken and adopted by one of our benevolent citizens a beautiful little white girl, four or five years of age, whose father was dead and whose mother was at Blackwell"s Island;) another from which not long; since twenty persons, sick with fever were taken to the hospital, and every individual of them died. But why extend the catalogue? Or why attempt to convey to the imagination by words the hideous squalor and the deadly effluvia; the dim, undrained courts, oozing with pollution; the dark narrow stairways decayed with age, reeking with filth, and overrun with vermin; the rotten floors, ceilings begrimed, crumbling, ofttimes too low to permit you to stand upright, and windows stuffed with rags; or why try to portray the gaunt shivering forms and wild ghastly faces in these black and beetling abodes, wherein from cellar to garret
----"All life dies, death lives, and nature breeds Perverse, all monstrous, all prodigious things, Abominable, unutterable!"" _N. York Courier and Inquirer_.
Our shops are now everywhere filled with the products of the cheap labour of England--of the labour of those foreign women who make shirts at a penny apiece, finding the needles and the thread, and of those poor girl"s who spend a long day at making artificial flowers for which they receive two pence, and then eke out the earnings of labour by the wages of prost.i.tution; and our women are everywhere driven from employment--the further consequences of which may be seen in the following extract from another journal of the day:--
"A gentleman who had been deputed to inquire into the condition of this cla.s.s of operatives, found one of the most expert of them working from five o"clock in the morning until eleven at night, yet earning only about three dollars a week. Out of this, she had to pay a dollar and a half for board, leaving a similar amount for fuel, clothing, and all other expenses. Her condition, however, as compared with that of her cla.s.s generally, was one of opulence. The usual earnings were but two dollars a week, which, as respectable board, could be had nowhere for less; than a dollar and a half, _left only fifty cents for everything else_. The boarding-houses, even at this price, are of the poorest character, always noisome and unhealthy, and not unfrequently in vile neighbourhoods. With such positive and immediate evils to contend with, what wonder that so many needlewomen take "the wages of sin?""
"Among the cases brought to light in New York, was that of an intelligent and skilful dressmaker, who was found in the garret of a cheap boarding-house, out of work, and nor are such instances unfrequent. The small remuneration which these workwomen receive keeps them living from hand to mouth, so that, in case of sickness, or scarcity of work, _they are sometimes left literally without a crust_."--_Philada. Evening-Bulletin_.
If females cannot tend looms, make flowers, or do any other of those things in which mind takes in a great degree the place of physical power, they must make shirts at four cents apiece, or resort to prost.i.tution--or, they may work in the fields; and this is nearly the lat.i.tude of choice allowed to them under the system called free trade.
Every furnace that is closed in Pennsylvania by the operation of this system, lessens the value of labour in the neighbourhood, and drives out some portion of the people to endeavour to sell elsewhere their only commodity, labour. Some seek the cities and some go West to try their fortunes. So, too, with the closing of woollens mills in New York, and cotton mills in New England. Every such ease _compels_ people to leave their old homes and try to find new ones--and in this form the slave trade now exists at the North to a great extent. The more people thus _driven_ to the cities, the cheaper is labour, and the more rapid is the growth of drunkenness and crime; and these effects are clearly visible in the police reports of all our cities.[206] Centralization, poverty, and crime go always hand in hand with each other.
The closing of mills and furnaces in Maryland lessens the demand for labour there, and the smaller that demand the greater _must_ be the necessity on the part of those who own slaves to sell them to go South; and here we find the counterpart of the state of things already described as existing in. New York. The Virginian, limited to negroes as the only commodity into which he can manufacture his corn and thus enable it to travel cheaply to market, sends his crop to Richmond, and the following extract of a letter from that place shows how the system works:--
"_Richmond, March_ 3, 1853.
"I saw several children sold; the girls brought the highest price.
Girls from 12 to 18 years old brought from $500 to $800.
"I must say that the slaves did not display as much feeling as I had expected, as a general thing--but there was _one_ n.o.ble exception--G.o.d bless her! and save her, too!! as I hope he will in some way, for if he does not interpose, there were no men there that would.
"She was a fine-looking woman about 25 years old, with three _beautiful_ children. Her children as well as herself were neatly dressed. She attracted my attention at once on entering the room, and I took my stand near her to learn her answers to the various questions put to her by the traders. _One_ of these traders asked her what was the matter with her eyes? Wiping away the tears, she replied, "I s"pose I have been crying." "Why do you cry?" "Because I have left my man behind, and his master won"t let him come along."
"Oh, if I buy you, I will furnish you with a better husband, or man, as you call him, than your old one." "I don"t want any _better_ and won"t have any _other_ as long as he lives." "Oh, but you will though, if I buy you," "_No, ma.s.sa, G.o.d helping me, I never will_.""--_New York Tribune_.
At the North, the poor girl driven out from the cotton or the woollens mill is forced to make shirts at four cents each, or sell herself to the horrible slavery of prost.i.tution. At the South, this poor woman, driven put from Virginia, may perhaps at some time be found making one of the _dramatis personae_ in scenes similar to those here described by Dr. Howe:--
"If Howard or Mrs. Fry ever discovered so ill-administered a den of thieves as the New Orleans prison, they never described it. In the negro"s apartment I saw much which made me blush that I was a white man; and which for a moment stirred up an evil spirit in my animal nature. Entering a large paved court-yard, around which ran galleries filled with slaves of all ages, s.e.xes, and colours, I heard the snap of a whip, every stroke of which sounded like the sharp crack of a pistol. I turned my head, and beheld a sight which absolutely chilled me to the marrow of my bones, and gave me, for the first time in my life, the sensation of my hair stiffening at the roots. There lay a black girl flat upon her face on a board, her two thumbs tied, and fastened to one end, her feet tied and drawn tightly to the other end, while a strap pa.s.sed over the small of her back, and fastened around the board, compressed her closely to it. Below the strap she was entirely naked. By her side, and six feet off, stood a huge negro, with a long whip, which he applied with dreadful power and wonderful precision. Every stroke brought away a strip of skin, which clung to the lash, or fell quivering on the pavement, while the blood followed after it. The poor creature writhed and shrieked, and in a voice which showed alike her fear of death and her dreadful agony, screamed to her master who stood at her head, "Oh, spare my life; don"t cut my soul out!" But still fell the horrid lash; still strip after strip peeled off from the skin; gash after gash was cut in her living flesh, until it became a livid and b.l.o.o.d.y ma.s.s of raw and quivering muscle.
"It was with the greatest difficulty I refrained from springing upon the torturer, and arresting his lash; but alas, what could I do, but turn aside to hide my tears for the sufferer, and my blushes for humanity!
"This was in a public and regularly organized prison; the punishment was one recognised and authorized by the law. But think you the poor wretch had committed a heinous offence, and had been convicted thereof, and sentenced to the lash? Not at all! She was brought by her master to be whipped by the common executioner, without trial, judge, or jury, just at his beck or nod, for some real or supposed offence, or to gratify his own whim or malice. And he may bring her day after day, without cause a.s.signed, and inflict any number of lashes he pleases, short of twenty-five, provided only he pays the fee. Or if he choose, he may have a private whipping-board on his own premises, and brutalize himself there.
"A shocking part of |his horrid punishment was its publicity, as I have said; it was in a court-yard, surrounded by galleries, which were filled with coloured persons of all s.e.xes--runaway slaves committed for some crime, or slaves up for sale. You would naturally suppose they crowded forward and gazed horror-stricken at the brutal spectacle below; but they did not; many of them hardly noticed it, and many were entirely indifferent to it. They went on in their childish pursuits, and some were laughing outright in the distant parts of the galleries;--so low can man created in G.o.d"s image be sunk in brutality."
Where, however, lies the fault of all this? Cheap cotton cannot be supplied to the world unless the domestic slave trade be maintained, and all the measures of England are directed toward obtaining a cheap and abundant supply of that commodity, to give employment to that "cheap and abundant supply of labour" so much desired by the writers in the very journal that furnished to its readers this letter of Dr.
Howe.[207] To produce this cheap cotton the American labourer must be expelled from his home in Virginia to the wilds of Arkansas, there to be placed, perhaps, under the control of a _Simon Legree_.[208] That he may be expelled, the price of corn must be cheapened in Virginia; and that it may be cheapened, the cheap labourer of Ireland must be brought to England there, to compete with the Englishman for the reduction of labour to such a price as will enable England to "smother in their infancy" all attempts at manufacturing corn into any thing but negroes for Arkansas. That done, should the Englishman"s "blood boil" on reading Uncle Tom"s Cabin, he is told to recollect that it is "to his advantage that the slave should be permitted to wear his chains in peace." And yet this system, which looks everywhere to the enslavement of man, is dignified by the name of "free trade."
The cheap-labour system of England produces the slave trade of America, India, and Ireland; and the manner in which it is enabled to produce that effect, and the extent of its "advantage" to the people of England itself, is seen in the following extract from a speech delivered at a public meeting in that country but a few weeks since:--
"The factory-law was so unblushingly violated that the chief inspector of that part of the factory district, Mr. Leonard Horner, had found himself necessitated to write to the Home Secretary, to say that he dared not, and would not send any of his sub-inspectors into certain districts until he had police protection. * * * And protection against whom? Against the factory-masters! Against the richest men in the district, against the most influential men in the district, against the magistrates of the district, against the men who hold her Majesty"s commission, against the men who sat in the Petty Sessions as the representatives of royalty. * * * _And did the masters suffer for their violation of the law?_ In his own district it was a settled custom of the male, and to a great extent of the female workers in factories, to be in bed from 9, 10 or 11 o"clock on Sunday, because they were tired out by the labour of the week. Sunday was the only day on which they could rest their wearied frames. * *
It would generally be found that, the longer the time of work, the smaller the wages. * * _He would rather be a slave in South Carolina, than a factory operative in England."_--_Speech of Rev, Dr. Bramwell, at Crampton_.
The whole profit, we are told, results from "the last hour," and were that hour taken from the master, then the people of Virginia might be enabled to make their own cloth and iron, and labour might there become so valuable that slaves would cease to be exported to Texas, and cotton _must_ then rise in price; and in order to prevent the occurrence of such unhappy events, the great cotton manufacturers set at defiance the law of the land! The longer the working hours the more "cheap and abundant" will be the "supply of labour,"--and it is only by aid of this cheap, or slave, labour that, as we are told, "the supremacy of England in manufactures can be maintained." The cheaper the labour, the more rapid must be the growth of individual fortunes, and the more perfect the consolidation of the land. Extremes thus always meet. The more splendid the palace of the trader, whether in cloth, cotton, negroes, or Hindoos, the more squalid will be the poverty of the labourer, his wife and children,--and the more numerous the diamonds on the coat of Prince Esterhazy, the more ragged will be his serfs. The more that local places of exchange are closed, the greater will be the tendency to the exhaustion and abandonment of the land, and the more flourishing will be the slave trade, North and South,--and the greater will be the growth of pro-slavery at the South, and anti-slavery at the North. The larger the export of negroes to the South, the greater will be their tendency to run from their masters to the North, and the greater will be the desire at the North to shut them out, as is proved by the following law of Illinois, now but a few weeks old, by which negro slavery is, as is here seen, re-established in the territory for the government of which was pa.s.sed the celebrated ordinance of 1787:--
"_Be it enacted by the People of the State of Illinois, represented in the General a.s.sembly._
3. If any negro, or mulatto, bond or free, shall come into this State, and remain ten days, with the evident intention of residing in the same, every such negro or mulatto shall be deemed guilty of a high misdemeanour, and for the first offence shall Be fined the sum of fifty dollars, to be recovered before any justice of the peace, in the county where said negro or mulatto may be found; said proceeding shall he in the name of the people Of the State of Illinois, and shall be tried by a jury of twelve men.
4. If said negro or mulatto shall be found guilty, and the fine a.s.sessed be not paid forthwith to the justice of the peace before whom said proceedings were had, said justice shall forthwith advertise said negro or mulatto, by posting up notices thereof in at least three of the most public places in his district; which said notices shall be posted up for ten days; and on the day, and at the time and place mentioned in said advertis.e.m.e.nt, the said justice shall at PUBLIC AUCTION proceed TO SELL said negro or mulatto to any person who will pay said fine and costs."
Slavery now travels North, whereas only twenty years ago freedom was travelling South. That such is the case is the natural consequence of our submission, even in part, to the system that looks to _compelling_ the export of raw products, the exhaustion of the land, the cheapening of labour, and the export of the labourer. Wherever it is submitted to, slavery grows. Wherever it is resisted, slavery dies away, and freedom grows, as is shown in the following list of--
Countries whose policy looks Countries whose policy looks to cheapening labour. to raising the value of labour.
---------------------------- ------------------------------- The West Indies, Northern-Germany, Portugal, Russia, Turkey, Denmark, India, Spain, Ireland, Belgium, United States under the United States under the Compromise, and the tariffs of 1828 and 1842.
tariff of 1846.
Population declines in all the foreign countries in the first column, and it became almost stationary in the Northern Slave States, as it is now likely again to do, because of the large extent of the domestic slave trade. Population grows in the foreign countries of the second column, and it grew rapidly in the Northern Slave States, because of the limited export of negroes at the periods referred to. The first column gives the--so-called--free-trade countries, and the other those which have protected themselves against the system; and yet slavery grows in all those of the first column, and freedom in all those of the second. The first column gives us the countries in which education diminishes and intellect declines, and the period in our own history in which were pa.s.sed the laws prohibiting the education of negroes. The second, those countries in which education advances, with great increase of intellectual activity; and in our own history it gives the period at which the Northern Slave States held conventions having in view the adoption of measures looking to the abolition of slavery. The first gives those foreign countries in which women and children must labour in the field or remain unemployed. The second those in which there is a daily increasing demand for the labour of women, to be employed in the lighter labour of manufactures. The first gives those in which civilization advances; and the second those in which there is a daily increasing tendency toward utter barbarism. We are now frequently invited to an alliance with Great Britain, and for what? For maintaining and extending the system whose effects are found in all the nations enumerated in the first column. For increasing the supply of cheap cotton, cheap corn, and cheap sugar, all of which require cheap, or slave, labour, and in return for these things we are to have cheap cloth, the produce of the cheap, or slave, labour of England, Scotland, and Ireland.
It is as the advocate of freedom that Britain calls upon us to enter into more intimate relations with her. Her opponents are, as we are told, the despots of Europe, the men who are trampling on the rights of their subjects, and who are jealous of her because her every movement looks, as we are a.s.sured, to the establishment of freedom throughout the world. Were this so, it might furnish some reason for forgetting the advice of Washington in regard to "entangling alliances;" but, before adopting such a course, it would be proper to have evidence that the policy of Britain, at any time since the days of Adam Smith, has tended to the enfranchis.e.m.e.nt of man in any part of the world, abroad or at home. Of all the despots now complained of, the King of Naples stands most conspicuous, and it is in relation to him that a pamphlet has recently been published by the present Chancellor of the Exchequer, in which are found the following pa.s.sages:--
"The general belief is, that the prisoners for political offences in the kingdom of the Two Sicilies are between fifteen or twenty and thirty thousand. The government withholds all means of accurate information, and accordingly there can be no certainty on the point.
I have, however, found that this belief is shared by persons the most intelligent, considerate, and well informed. It is also, supported by what is known of the astonishing crowds confined in particular prisons, and especially by what is accurately known in particular provincial localities, as to the numbers of individuals missing from among the community. I have heard these numbers, for example, at Reggio and at Salerno; and from an effort to estimate them in reference to population, I do believe that twenty thousand is no unreasonable estimate. In Naples alone some hundreds are at this moment under indictment _capitally_; and when I quitted it a trial was expected to come on immediately, (called that of the fifteenth of May,) in which the number charged was between four and five hundred; including (though this is a digression) at least one or more persons of high station whoso opinions would in this country be considered more conservative than your own." * * * "In utter defiance of this law, the government, of which the Prefect of Police is an important member, through the agents of that department, watches and dogs the people, pays domiciliary visits, very commonly at night, ransacks houses, seizing papers and effects, and tearing up floors at pleasure under pretence of searching for arms, and imprisons men by the score, by the hundred, by the thousand, without any warrant whatever, sometimes without even any written authority at all, or any thing beyond the word of a policeman; constantly without any statement whatever of the nature of the offence.
"Nor is this last fact wonderful. Men are arrested, not because they have committed, or are believed to have committed, any offence; but because they are persons whom it is thought convenient to confine and to get rid of, and against whom, therefore, some charge must be found or fabricated."[209]
Why is it that the king is enabled to do these things? Obviously, because his people are poor and weak. If they were strong, he could not do them. Men, however, never have anywhere become strong to resist power, except where the artisan has come to the side of the farmer; and it is because he has not done so in Naples and Sicily that the people are so poor, ignorant, and weak as we see them to be. Has England ever endeavoured to strengthen the Neapolitan people by teaching them how to combine their efforts for the working of their rich ores, or for the conversion of their wool into cloth? a.s.suredly not. She desires that wool and sulphur, and all other raw materials, may be cheap, and that iron may be dear; and, that they may be so, she does all that is in her power to prevent the existence in that country of any of that diversification of interests that would find employment for men, women, and children, and would thus give value to labour and land. That she may do this, she retains Malta and the Ionian Islands, as convenient places of resort for the great reformer of the age--the smuggler--whose business it is to see that no effort at manufactures shall succeed, and to carry into practical effect the decree that all such attempts must be "smothered in their infancy." If, under these circ.u.mstances, King Ferdinand is enabled to play the tyrant, upon whom rests the blame? a.s.suredly, on the people who refuse to permit the farmers of the Two Sicilies to strengthen themselves by forming that natural alliance between the loom and the plough to which the people of England were themselves indebted for their liberties. Were the towns of that country growing in size, and were the artisan everywhere taking his place by the side of the farmer, the people would be daily becoming stronger and more free, whereas they are now becoming weaker and more enslaved.
So, too, we are told of the tyranny and bad faith prevailing in Spain.
If, however, the people of that country are poor and weak, and compelled to submit to measures that are tyrannical and injurious, may it not be traced to the fact that the mechanic has never been permitted to place himself among them? And may not the cause of this be found in the fact that Portugal and Gibraltar have for a century past been the seats of a vast contraband trade, having for _its express object_ to deprive the Spanish people of all power to do any thing but cultivate the soil? Who, then, are responsible for the subjection of the Spanish people? Those, a.s.suredly, whose policy looks to depriving the women and children of Spain of all employment except in the field, in order that wool may be cheap and that cloth may be dear.
Turkey is poor and weak, and we hear much of the designs of Russia, to be counteracted by England; but does England desire that Turkey shall grow strong and her people become free? Does she desire that manufactures shall rise, that towns shall grow, and that the land shall acquire value? a.s.suredly not. The right to inundate that country with merchandise is "a golden privilege" never to be abandoned, because it would raise the price of silk and lower the price of silk goods.
The people of Austria and Hungary are weak, but has England ever tried to render them strong to obtain their freedom? Would she not now oppose any measures calculated to enable the Hungarians to obtain the means of converting their food and their wool into cloth--to obtain mechanics and machinery, by aid of which towns could grow, and their occupants become strong and free? To render any aid of that kind would be in opposition to the doctrine of cheap food and cheap labour.
Northern Germany is becoming strong and united, and the day is now at hand when all Germany will have the same system under which the North has so much improved; but these things are done in opposition to England, who disapproves of them because they tend to raise the price of the raw products of the earth and lower that of manufactured ones, and to enable the agricultural population to grow rich and strong; and the more exclusively she depends on trade, the greater is her indisposition to permit the adoption of any measures tending to limit her power over the people of the world.
The people of China are weak, but does the consumption of opium to the extent of forty millions of dollars a year tend to strengthen them?
The government, too, is weak, and therefore is Hong Kong kept for the purpose of enabling "the great reformer" to evade the laws against the importation of a commodity that yields the East India Company a profit of sixteen millions of dollars a year, and the consumption of which is so rapidly increasing.
Burmah, too, is weak, and therefore is her territory to be used for the purpose of extending the trade in opium throughout the interior provinces of China. Will this tend to strengthen, or to free, the Chinese people?