The Slave Trade, Domestic And Foreign Part 16

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 s.e.x--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 s.e.x, 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 pa.s.sed 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 va.s.sal, then hereditary tenant, then tenant at will, and thus the property in land pa.s.sed 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 pa.s.sage 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 princ.i.p.alities. 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-sh.o.r.e, 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 a.s.sembled, 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 dest.i.tution, 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 cla.s.ses more industrious, and to augment at the same time the ma.s.s 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 dest.i.tute tenants and cotters under the most cruel and delusive temptations; a.s.suring them that they would be taken care of immediately on their arrival at Quebec by the emigrant agent, receive a free pa.s.sage 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 pa.s.sage to Montreal, where on arrival they presented the same appearance of dest.i.tution as those from South Uist, sent out by Colonel -----, that is, 'entirely dest.i.tute 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 antic.i.p.ated 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 pa.s.s 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 cla.s.s, thieves, and prost.i.tutes, 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 cla.s.s 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 cla.s.s 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 surpa.s.sing 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 circ.u.mstances 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 prost.i.tution 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 cla.s.ses, have thus subst.i.tuted 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 sh.o.r.e 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.

CHAPTER XIV.

HOW SLAVERY GROWS IN ENGLAND.