The Slave Trade, Domestic And Foreign Part 3

"'If the present state of the county of Demerara affords cause for deep apprehension, your Commissioners find that Essequebo has retrograded to a still more alarming extent. In fact, unless a large and speedy supply of labour be obtained to cultivate the deserted fields of this once-flourishing district, there is great reason to fear that it will relapse into total abandonment.'"

Describing another portion of the colony--

"They say of one district, 'unless a fresh supply of labour be very soon obtained, there is every reason to fear that it will become completely abandoned.' Of a second, 'speedy immigration alone can save this island from total ruin.' 'The prostrate condition of this once beautiful part of the coast,' are the words which begin another paragraph, describing another tract of country. Of a fourth, 'the proprietors on this coast seem to be keeping up a hopeless struggle against approaching ruin. Again, 'the once famous Arabian coast, so long the boast of the colony, presents now but a mournful picture of departed prosperity. Here were formerly situated some of the finest estates in the country, and a large resident body of proprietors lived in the district, and freely expended their incomes on the spot whence they derived them.' Once more, the lower part of the coast, after pa.s.sing Devonshire Castle to the river Pomeroon, presents a scene of almost total desolation.' Such is Essequebo!"

"Berbice," says Lord Stanley, "has fared no better: its rural population amounts to 18,000. Of these, 12,000 have withdrawn from the estates, and mostly from the neighbourhood of the white man, to enjoy a savage freedom of ignorance and idleness, beyond the reach of example and sometimes of control. But, on the condition of the negro I shall dwell more at length hereafter; at present it is the state of property with which I have to do. What are the districts which together form the county of Berbice? The Corentyne coast--the Canje Creek--East and West banks of the Berbice River--and the West coast, where, however, cotton was formerly the chief article produced. To each of these respectively the following pa.s.sages, quoted in order, apply:--

"'The abandoned plantations on this coast,[17] which if capital and labour could be procured, might easily be made very productive, are either wholly deserted or else appropriated by hordes of squatters, who of course are unable to keep up at their own expense the public roads and bridges, and consequently all communication by land between the Corentyne and New Amsterdam is nearly at an end. The roads are impa.s.sable for horses or carriages, while for foot-pa.s.sengers they are extremely dangerous. The number of villagers in this deserted region must be upward of 2500, and as the country abounds with fish and game, they have no difficulty in making a subsistence; in fact, the Corentyne coast is fast relapsing into a state of nature.'

"'Canje Creek was formerly considered a flourishing district of the county, and numbered on its east bank seven sugar and three coffee estates, and on its west bank eight estates, of which two were in sugar and six in coffee, making a total of eighteen plantations. The coffee cultivation has long since been entirely abandoned, and of the sugar estates but eight still now remain. They are suffering severely for want of labour, and being supported princ.i.p.ally by African and Coolie immigrants, it is much to be feared that if the latter leave and claim their return pa.s.sages to India, a great part of the district will become abandoned.'

"'Under present circ.u.mstances, so gloomy is the condition of affairs here,[18] that the two gentlemen whom your Commissioners have examined with respect to this district, both concur in predicting "its slow but sure approximation to the condition in which civilized man first found it.'"

"'A district [19] that in 1829, gave employment to 3635 registered slaves, but at the present moment there are not more than 600 labourers at work on the few estates still in cultivation, although it is estimated there are upwards of 2000 people idling in villages of their own. The roads are in many parts several feet under water, and perfect swamps; while in some places the bridges are wanting altogether. In fact, the whole district is fast becoming a total wilderness, with the exception of the one or two estates which yet continue to struggle on, and which are hardly accessible now but by water.'

"'Except in some of the best villages,[20] they care not for back or front dams to keep off the water; their side-lines are disregarded, and consequently the drainage is gone; while in many instances the public road is so completely flooded that canoes have to be used as a means of transit. The Africans are unhappily following the example of the Creoles in this district, and buying land, on which they settle in contented idleness; and your Commissioners cannot view instances like these without the deepest alarm, for if this pernicious habit of squatting is allowed to extend to the immigrants also, there is no hope for the colony.'"

Under these circ.u.mstances it is that the London _Times_ furnishes its readers with the following paragraph,--and as that journal cannot be regarded as the opponent of the cla.s.ses which have lately controlled the legislation of England, we may feel a.s.sured that its information is to be relied upon:--

"Our legislation has been dictated by the presumed necessities of the African slave. After the Emanc.i.p.ation Act, a large charge was a.s.sessed upon the colony in aid of civil and religious inst.i.tutions for the benefit of the enfranchised negro, and it was hoped that those coloured subjects of the British Crown would soon be a.s.similated to their fellow-citizens. From all the information which has reached us, no less than from the visible probabilities of the case, _we are constrained to believe that these hopes have been falsified. The negro has not obtained with his freedom any habits of industry or morality. His independence is little better than that of an uncaptured brute_. Having accepted none of the restraints of civilization, he is amenable to few of its necessities, and the wants of his nature are so easily satisfied, that at the present rate of wages he is called upon for nothing but fitful or desultory exertion.

_The blacks_, therefore, _instead of becoming intelligent husbandmen, have become vagrants and squatters, and it is now apprehended that with the failure of cultivation in the island will come the failure of its resources for instructing or controlling its population_. So imminent does this consummation appear, that memorials have been signed by cla.s.ses of colonial society, hitherto standing aloof from politics, _and not only the bench and the bar, but the bishop, clergy, and the ministers of all denominations in the island, without exception, have recorded their conviction that in the absence of timely relief, the religious and educational inst.i.tutions of the island must be abandoned, and the ma.s.ses of the population retrograde to barbarism_."

The _Prospective Review_, (Nov. 1852,) seeing what has happened in the British colonies, and speaking of the possibility of a similar course of action on this side of the Atlantic, says--

"We have had experience enough in our own colonies, not to wish to see the experiment tried elsewhere on a larger scale. It is true that from some of the smaller islands, where there is a superabundance of negro population and no room for squatters, the export of sugar has not been diminished: it is true that in Jamaica and Demerara, the commercial distress is largely attributable to the folly of the planters--who doggedly refuse to accommodate themselves to the new state of things, and to entice the negroes from the back settlements by a promise of fair wages. But we have no reason to suppose that the whole tragi-comedy would not be re-enacted in the Slave States of America, if slavery were summarily abolished by act of Congress to-morrow. Property among the plantations consists only of land and negroes: emanc.i.p.ate the negroes--and the planters have no longer any capital for the cultivation of the land. Put the case of compensation: though it be difficult to see whence it could come: there is every probability that the planters of Alabama, accustomed all their lives to get black labour for nothing, would be as unwilling to pay for it as their compeers in Jamaica: and there is plenty of unowned land on which the disbanded gangs might settle and no one question their right. It is allowed on all hands that the negroes as a race will not work longer than is necessary to supply the simplest comforts of life. It would be wonderful were it otherwise. A people have been degraded and ground down for a century and a half: systematically kept in ignorance for five generations of any needs and enjoyments beyond those of the savage: and then it is made matter of complaint that they will not apply themselves to labour for their higher comforts and more refined luxuries, of which they cannot know the value!"

The systematic degradation here referred to is probably quite true as regards the British Islands, where 660,000 were all that remained of almost two millions that had been imported; but it is quite a mistake to suppose it so in regard to this country, in which there are now found ten persons for every one ever imported, and all advancing by gradual steps toward civilization and freedom; and yet were the reviewer discoursing of the conduct of the Spanish settlers of Hispaniola, he could scarcely speak more disparagingly of them than he does in regard to a people that alone has so treated the negro race as to enable it to increase in numbers, and improve in its physical, moral, and intellectual condition. Had he been more fully informed in relation to the proceedings in the British colonies, and in these colonies and states, he could scarcely have ventured to a.s.sert that "the responsibility of having degraded the African race rests upon the American people,"--the only people among whom they have been improved.

Nevertheless, it is right and proper to give due weight to all opinions in regard to the existence of an evil, and to all recommendations in regard to the mode of removal, let them come from what source they may; and the writer of the article from which this pa.s.sage is taken is certainly animated by a somewhat more liberal and catholic spirit than is found animating many of his countrymen.

That the English system in regard to the emanc.i.p.ation of the negro has proved a failure is now admitted even by those who most warmly advocated the measures that have been pursued. "There are many," says the London _Times_, "who think that, with proper regulations, and particularly with a system for the self-enfranchis.e.m.e.nt of slaves, we might have brought about the entire emanc.i.p.ation of the British West Indies, with much less injury to the property of the planter and to the character of the negro than have resulted from the Abolition Act.

Perhaps," it continues, "the warning will not be lost on the Americans, who may see the necessity of putting things in train for the ultimate abolition of slavery, and thereby save the sudden shock which the abolitionists may one day bring on all the inst.i.tutions of the Union and the whole fabric of American society."

The Falmouth [Jamaica] _Post_, of December 12, 1852, informs us that, even now, "in every parish of the island preparations are being made for the abandonment of properties that were once valuable, but on which cultivation can no longer be continued." "In Trelawny," it continues, "many estates have been thrown up during the last two years, and the exportation to the United States of America, within a few months, of upward of 80,000 tons of copper, which was used for the manufacture of sugar and rum, is one of the 'signs of the times,' to which the attention of the legislature should be seriously directed, in providing for the future maintenance of our various inst.i.tutions, both public and parochial. Unless the salaries of all official characters are reduced, it will be utterly impossible to carry on the government of the colony."

Eighty thousand tons of machinery heretofore used in aid of labour, or nearly one ton for every four persons on the island, exported within a few months! The _Bande Noire_ of France pulled down dwelling-houses and sold the materials, but as they left the machinery used by the labourers, their operations were less injurious than have been those of the negroes of Jamaica, the demand for whose labour must diminish with every step in the progress of the abandonment of land and the destruction of machinery. Under such circ.u.mstances we can feel little surprise at learning that every thing tends towards barbarism; nor is it extraordinary that a writer already quoted, and who is not to be suspected of any pro-slavery tendencies, puts the question, "Is it enough that they [the Americans] simply loose their chain and turn them adrift lower," as he is pleased to say, "than they found them?"[21] It is not enough. They need to be prepared for freedom.

"Immediate emanc.i.p.ation," as he says, "solves only the simplest forms of the problem."

The land-owner has been ruined and the labourer is fast relapsing into barbarism, and yet in face of this fact the land-owners of the Southern States are branded throughout the world as "tyrants" and "slave-breeders," because they will not follow in the same direction.

It is in face of this great fact that the people of the North are invited to join in a crusade against their brethren of the South because they still continue to hold slaves, and that the men of the South are themselves so frequently urged to a.s.sent to immediate and unconditional emanc.i.p.ation.

In all this there may be much philanthropy, but there is certainly much error,--and with a view to determine where it lies, as well as to show what is the true road to emanc.i.p.ation, it is proposed to inquire what has been, in the various countries of the world, the course by which men have pa.s.sed from poverty to wealth, from ignorance and barbarism to civilization, and from slavery to freedom. That done, we may next inquire for the causes now operating to prevent the emanc.i.p.ation of the negro of America and the occupant of "the sweater's den" in London; and if they can once be ascertained, it will be then easy to determine what are the measures needful to be adopted with a view to the establishment of freedom throughout the world.

CHAPTER V.

HOW MAN Pa.s.sES FROM POVERTY AND SLAVERY TOWARD WEALTH AND FREEDOM.

The first poor cultivator is surrounded by land unoccupied. _The more of it at his command the poorer he is._ Compelled to work alone, he is a slave to his necessities, and he can neither roll nor raise a log with which to build himself a house. He makes himself a hole in the ground, which serves in place of one. He cultivates the poor soil of the hills to obtain a little corn, with which to eke out the supply of food derived from snaring the game in his neighbourhood. His winter's supply is deposited in another hole, liable to injury from the water which filters through the light soil into which alone he can penetrate. He is in hourly danger of starvation. At length, however, his sons grow up. They combine their exertions with his, and now obtain something like an axe and a spade. They can sink deeper into the soil; and can cut logs, and build something like a house. They obtain more corn and more game, and they can preserve it better. The danger of starvation is diminished. Being no longer forced to depend for fuel upon the decayed wood which was all their father could command, they are in less danger of perishing from cold in the elevated ground which, from necessity, they occupy. With the growth of the family new soils are cultivated, each in succession yielding a larger return to labour, and they obtain a constantly increasing supply of the necessaries of life from a surface diminishing in its ratio to the number to be fed; and thus with every increase in the return to labour the power of combining their exertions is increased.

If we look now to the solitary settler of the West, even where provided with both axe and spade, we shall see him obtaining, with extreme difficulty, the commonest log hut. A neighbour arrives, and their combined efforts produce a new house with less than half the labour required for the first. That neighbour brings a horse, and he makes something like a cart. The product of their labour is now ten times greater than was that of the first man working by himself. More neighbours come, and new houses are needed. A "bee" is made, and by the combined effort of the neighbourhood the third house is completed in a day; whereas the first cost months, and the second weeks, of far more severe exertion. These new neighbours have brought ploughs and horses, and now better soils are cultivated, and the product of labour is again increased, as is the power to preserve the surplus for winter's use. The path becomes a road. Exchanges increase. The store makes its appearance. Labour is rewarded by larger returns, because aided by better machinery applied to better soils. The town grows up.

Each successive addition to the population brings a consumer and a producer. The shoemaker desires leather and corn in exchange for his shoes. The blacksmith requires fuel and food, and the farmer wants shoes for his horses; and with the increasing facility of exchange more labour is applied to production, and the reward of labour rises, producing new desires, and requiring more and larger exchanges. The road becomes a turnpike, and the wagon and horses are seen upon it.

The town becomes a city, and better soils are cultivated for the supply of its markets, while the railroad facilitates exchanges with towns and cities yet more distant. The tendency to union and to combination of exertion thus grows with the growth of wealth. In a state of extreme poverty it cannot be developed. The insignificant tribe of savages that starves on the product of the superficial soil of hundreds of thousands of acres of land, looks with jealous eye on every intruder, knowing that each new mouth requiring to be fed tends to increase the difficulty of obtaining subsistence; whereas the farmer rejoices in the arrival of the blacksmith and the shoemaker, because they come to eat on the spot the corn which heretofore he has carried ten, twenty, or thirty miles to market, to exchange for shoes for himself and his horses. With each new consumer of his products that arrives he is enabled more and more to concentrate his action and his thoughts upon his home, while each new arrival tends to increase his _power_ of consuming commodities brought from a distance, because it tends to diminish his _necessity_ for seeking at a distance a market for the produce of his farm. Give to the poor tribe spades, and the knowledge how to use them, and the power of a.s.sociation will begin. The supply of food becoming more abundant, they hail the arrival of the stranger who brings them knives and clothing to be exchanged for skins and corn; wealth grows, and the habit of a.s.sociation--the first step toward civilization--arises.

The little tribe is, however, compelled to occupy the higher lands.

The lower ones are a ma.s.s of dense forests and dreary swamps, while at the foot of the hill runs a river, fordable but for a certain period of the year. On the hillside, distant a few miles, is another tribe; but communication between them is difficult, because, the river bottom being yet uncleared, roads cannot be made, and bridges are as yet unthought of. Population and wealth, however, continue to increase, and the lower lands come gradually into cultivation, yielding larger returns to labour, and enabling the tribe to obtain larger supplies of food with less exertion, and to spare labour to be employed for other purposes. Roads are made in the direction of the river bank.

Population increases more rapidly because of the increased supplies of food and the increased power of preserving it, and wealth grows still more rapidly. The river bank at length is reached, and some of the best lands are now cleared. Population grows again, and a new element of wealth is seen in the form of a bridge; and now the two little communities are enabled to communicate more freely with each other.

One rejoices in the possession of a wheelwright, while the other has a windmill. One wants carts, and the other has corn to grind. One has cloth to spare, while the other has more leather than is needed for its purpose. Exchanges increase, and the little town grows because of the increased amount of trade. Wealth grows still more rapidly, because of new modes of combining labour, by which that of all is rendered more productive. Roads are now made in the direction of other communities, and the work is performed rapidly, because the exertions of the two are now combined, and because the machinery used is more efficient. One after another disappear forests and swamps that have occupied the fertile lands, separating ten, twenty, fifty, or five hundred communities, which now are brought into connection with each other; and with each step labour becomes more and more productive, and is rewarded with better food, clothing, and shelter. Famine and disease disappear, life is prolonged, population is increased, and therewith the tendency to that combination of exertion among the individuals composing these communities, which is the distinguishing characteristic of civilization in all nations and in all periods of the world. With further increase of population and wealth, the desires of man, and his ability to gratify them, both increase. The nation, thus formed, has more corn than it needs; but it has no cotton, and its supply of wool is insufficient. The neighbouring nation has cotton and wool, and needs corn. They are still divided, however, by broad forests, deep swamps, and rapid rivers. Population increases, and the great forests and swamps disappear, giving place to rich farms, through which broad roads are made, with immense bridges, enabling the merchant to transport his wool and his cotton to exchange with his now-rich neighbours for their surplus corn or sugar. Nations now combine their exertions, and wealth grows with still increased rapidity, facilitating the drainage of marshes, and thus bringing into activity the richest soils; while coal-mines cheaply furnish the fuel for converting limestone into lime, and iron ore into axes and spades, and into rails for the new roads needed for transporting to market the vast products of the fertile soils now in use, and to bring back the large supplies of sugar, tea, coffee, and the thousand other products of distant lands with which intercourse now exists. At each step population and wealth and happiness and prosperity take a new bound; and men realize with difficulty the fact that the country, which now affords to tens of millions all the necessaries, comforts, conveniences, and luxuries of life, is the same that, when the superabundant land was occupied by tens of thousands only, gave to that limited number scanty supplies of the worst food; so scanty that famines were frequent and sometimes so severe that starvation was followed in its wake by pestilence, which, at brief intervals, swept from the earth the population of the little and scattered settlements, among which the people were forced to divide themselves when they cultivated only the poor soils of the hills.

The course of events here described is in strict accordance with the facts observed in every country as it has grown in wealth and population. The early settlers of all the countries of the world are seen to have been slaves to their necessities--and often slaves to their neighbours; whereas, with the increase of numbers and the increased power of cultivation, they are seen pa.s.sing from the poorer soils of the hills to the fertile soils of the river bottoms and the marshes, with constant increase in the return to labour, and constantly increasing power to determine for themselves for whom they will work, and what shall be their reward. This view is, however, in direct opposition to the theory of the occupation of land taught in the politico-economical school of which Malthus and Ricardo were the founders. By them we are a.s.sured that the settler commences always on the low and rich lands, and that, as population increases, men are required to pa.s.s toward the higher and poorer lands--and of course up the hill--with constantly diminishing return to labour, and thus that, as population grows, man becomes more and more a slave to his necessities, and to those who have power to administer to his wants, involving a necessity for dispersion throughout the world in quest of the rich lands upon which the early settler is supposed to commence his operations. It is in reference to this theory that Mr. J. S. Mill says--

"This general law of agricultural industry is the most important proposition in political economy. If the law were different, almost all the phenomena of the production and distribution of wealth would be other than they are."

In the view thus presented by Mr. Mill there is no exaggeration. The law of the occupation of the land by man lies at the foundation of all political economy; and if we desire to know what it is that tends to the emanc.i.p.ation of the people of the earth from slavery, we must first satisfy ourselves that the theory of Messrs. Malthus and Ricardo has not only no foundation in fact, but that the law is directly the reverse, and tends, therefore, toward the adoption of measures directly opposed to those that would he needed were that theory true.

The great importance of the question will excuse the occupation of a few minutes of the reader's attention in placing before him some facts tending to enable him to satisfy himself in regard to the universality of the law now offered for his consideration. Let him inquire where he may, he will find that the early occupant _did not_ commence in the flats, or on the heavily timbered-land, but that he _did_ commence on the higher land, where the timber was lighter, and the place for his house was dry. With increasing ability, he is found draining the swamps, clearing the heavy timber, turning up the marl, or burning the lime, and thus acquiring control over more fertile soils, yielding a constant increase in the return to labour. Let him then trace the course of early settlement, and he will find that while it has often followed the course of the streams, it has always avoided the swamps and river bottoms. The earliest settlements of this country were on the poorest lands of the Union--those of New England. So was it in New York, where we find the railroads running through the lower and richer, and yet uncultivated, lands, while the higher lands right and left have long been cultivated. So is it now in Pennsylvania, Virginia, and Ohio. In South Carolina it has been made the subject of remark, in a recent discourse, that their predecessors did not select the rich lands, and that millions of acres of the finest meadow-land in that State still remain untouched. The settler in the prairies commences on the higher and drier land, leaving the wet prairie and the _slough_--the richest soil--for his successors. The lands below the mouth of the Ohio are among the richest in the world; yet they are unoccupied, and will continue so to be until wealth and population shall have greatly increased. So is it now with the low and rich lands of Mexico. So was it in South America, the early cultivation of which was upon the poor lands of the western slope, Peru and Chili, while the rich lands of the Amazon and the La Plata remained, as most of them still remain, a wilderness. In the West Indies, the small dry islands were early occupied, while Porto Rico and Trinidad, abounding in rich soils, remained untouched. The early occupants of England were found on the poorer lands of the centre and south of the kingdom, as were those of Scotland in the Highlands, or on the little rocky islands of the Channel. Mona's Isle was celebrated while the rich soil of the Lothians remained an almost unbroken ma.s.s of forest, and the mora.s.ses of Lancashire were the terror of travellers long after Hampshire had been cleared and cultivated. If the reader desire to find the birthplace of King Arthur and the earliest seat of English power, he must look to the vicinity of the royal castle of Tintagel, in the high and dry Cornwall. Should he desire other evidence of the character of the soil cultivated at the period when land abounded and men were few in number, he may find it in the fact that in some parts of England there is scarcely a hill top that does not bear evidence of early occupation,[22] and in the further fact that the mounds, or barrows, are almost uniformly composed of stone, because those memorials "are found most frequently where stone was more readily obtained than earth."[23] Caesar found the Gauls occupying the high lands surrounding the Alps, while the rich Venetia remained a marsh.

The occupation of the Campagna followed long after that of the Samnite hills, and the earliest settlers of the Peloponnesus cultivated the high and dry Arcadia, while the cities of the Argive kings of the days of Homer, Mycenae and Tiryns, are found in eastern Argolis, a country so poor as to have been abandoned prior to the days of the earliest authentic history. The occupation of the country around Meroe, and of the Thebaid, long preceded that of the lower lands surrounding Memphis, or the still lower and richer ones near Alexandria. The negro is found in the higher portions of Africa, while the rich lands along the river courses are uninhabited. The little islands of Australia, poor and dry, are occupied by a race far surpa.s.sing in civilization those of the neighbouring continent, who have rich soils at command.

The poor Persia is cultivated, while the rich soils of the ancient Babylonia are only ridden over by straggling hordes of robbers.[24]

Layard had to seek the hills when he desired to find a people at home.

Affghanistan and Cashmere were early occupied, and thence were supplied the people who moved toward the deltas of the Ganges and the Indus, much of both of which still remains, after so many thousands of years, in a state of wilderness. Look where we may, it is the same.

The land obeys the same great and universal law that governs light, power, and heat. The man who works alone and has poor machinery must cultivate poor land, and content himself with little light, little power, and little heat, and those, like his food, obtained in exchange for much labour; while he who works in combination with his fellow-men may have good machinery, enabling him to clear and cultivate rich land, giving him much food, and enabling him to obtain much light, much heat, and much power, in exchange for little labour. The first is _a creature of necessity_--a slave--and as such is man universally regarded by Mr. Ricardo and his followers. The second is _a being of power_--a freeman--and as such was man regarded by Adam Smith, who taught that the more men worked in combination with each other, the greater would be the facility of obtaining food and all other of the necessaries and comforts of life--and the more widely they were separated, the less would be the return to labour and capital, and the smaller the power of production, as common sense teaches every man must necessarily be the case.

It will now readily be seen how perfectly accurate was Mr. Mill in his a.s.sertion that, "if the law were different, almost all the phenomena of the production and distribution of wealth would be other than they are." The doctrine of Malthus and Ricardo tends to make the labourer a slave to the owner of landed or other capital; but happily it has no foundation in fact, and therefore the natural laws of the production and distribution of wealth tend not to slavery, but to freedom.

CHAPTER VI.

HOW WEALTH TENDS TO INCREASE.

The first poor cultivator commences, as we have seen, his operations on the hillside. Below him are lands upon which have been carried by force of water the richer portions of those above, as well as the leaves of trees, and the fallen trees themselves, all of which have from time immemorial rotted and become incorporated with the earth, and thus have been produced soils fitted to yield the largest returns to labour; yet for this reason are they inaccessible. Their character exhibits itself in the enormous trees with which they are covered, and in their power of retaining the water necessary to aid the process of decomposition, but the poor settler wants the power either to clear them of their timber, or to drain them of the superfluous moisture. He begins on the hillside, but by degrees he obtains better machinery of cultivation, and with each step in this direction we find him descending the hill and obtaining larger return to labour. He has more food for himself, and he has now the means of feeding a horse or an ox. Aided by the manure that is thus yielded to him by the better lands, we see him next retracing his steps, improving the hillside, and compelling it to yield a return double that which he at first obtained. With each step down the hill, he obtains still larger reward for his labour, and at each he returns, with increased power, to the cultivation of the original poor soil. He has now horses and oxen, and while by their aid he extracts from the new soils the manure that had acc.u.mulated for ages, he has also carts and wagons to carry it up the hill; and at each step his reward is increased, while his labours are lessened. He goes back to the sand and raises the marl, with which he covers the surface; or he returns to the clay and sinks into the limestone, by aid of which he doubles its product. He is all the time making a machine which feeds him while he makes it, and which increases in its powers the more he takes from it. At first it was worthless. Having now fed and clothed him for years, it has acquired a large value, and those who might desire to use it would pay him a large rent for permission so to do.

The earth is a great machine given to man to be fashioned to his purpose. The more he works it, the better it feeds him, because each step is but preparatory to a new one more productive than the last--requiring less labour and yielding larger return. The labour of clearing is great, yet the return is small. The earth is covered with stumps, and filled with roots. With each year the roots decay, and the ground becomes enriched, while the labour of ploughing is diminished.

At length, the stumps disappear, and the return is doubled, while the labour is less by one-half than at first. To forward this process the owner has done nothing but crop the ground, nature having done the rest. The aid he thus obtains from her yields him as much food as in the outset was obtained by the labour of felling the trees. This, however, is not all. The surplus thus yielded has given him means of improving the poorer lands, by furnishing manure with which to enrich them, and thus has he trebled his original return without further labour; for that which he saves in working the new soils suffices to carry the manure to the older ones. He is obtaining a daily increased power over the various treasures of the earth.

With every operation connected with the fashioning of the earth, the result is the same. The first step is, invariably, the most costly one, and the least productive. The first drain commences near the stream, where the labour is heaviest. It frees from water but a few acres. A little higher, the same quant.i.ty of labour, profiting by what has been already done, frees twice the number. Again the number is doubled; and now the most perfect system of thorough drainage may be established with less labour than was at first required for one of the most imperfect kind. To bring the lime into connection with the clay, upon fifty acres, is lighter labour than was the clearing of a single one, yet the process doubles the return for each acre of fifty. The man who needs a little fuel for his own use, expends much labour in opening the neighbouring vein of coal; but to enlarge this, so as to double the product, is a work of comparatively small labour. To sink a shaft to the first vein below the surface, and erect a steam-engine, are expensive operations; but these once accomplished, every future step becomes more productive, while less costly. To sink to the next vein below, and to tunnel to another, are trifles in comparison with the first, yet each furnishes a return equally large. The first line of railroad runs by houses and towns occupied by two or three hundred thousand persons. Half a dozen little branches, costing together far less labour than the first, bring into connection with it half a million, or perhaps a million. The trade increases, and a second track, a third, or a fourth, may be required. The original one facilitates the pa.s.sage of the materials and the removal of the obstructions, and three new ones may now be made with less labour than was at first required for a single one.

All labour thus expended in fashioning the great machine is but the prelude to the application of further labour, with still increased returns. With each such application, wages rise, and hence it is that portions of the machine, as it exists, invariably exchange, when brought to market, for far less labour than they have cost. There is thus a steady decline of the value of capital in labour, and a daily increase in the power of labour over capital, and with each step in this direction man becomes more free. The man who cultivated the thin soils was happy to obtain a hundred bushels for his year's work. With the progress of himself and his neighbour down the hill into the more fertile soils, wages have risen, and two hundred bushels are now required. His farm will yield a thousand bushels; but it requires the labour of four men, who must have two hundred bushels each, and the surplus is but two hundred bushels. At twenty years' purchase this gives a capital of four thousand bushels, or the equivalent of twenty years' wages; whereas it has cost, in the labour of himself, his sons, and his a.s.sistants, the equivalent of a hundred years of labour, or perhaps far more. During all this time, however, it has fed and clothed them all, and the farm has been produced by the insensible contributions made from year to year, unthought of and unfelt.

It has become worth twenty years' wages, because its owner has for years taken from it a thousand bushels annually; but when it had lain for centuries acc.u.mulating wealth it was worth nothing. Such is the case with the earth everywhere. The more that is taken from it the more there is to be returned, and the greater our power to draw upon it. When the coal-mines of England were untouched, they were valueless. Now their value is almost countless; yet the land contains abundant supplies for thousands of years. Iron ore, a century since, was a drug, and leases were granted at almost nominal rents. Now, such leases are deemed equivalent to the possession of large fortunes, notwithstanding the great quant.i.ties that have been removed, although the amount of ore now known to exist is probably fifty times greater than it was then.

_The earth is the sole producer._ From her man receives the corn and the cotton-wool, and all that he can do is to change them in their form, or in their place. The first he may convert into bread, and the last into cloth, and both maybe transported to distant places, but there his power ends. He can make no addition to their quant.i.ty. A part of his labour is applied to the preparation and improvement of the great machine of production, and this produces changes that are permanent. The drain, once cut, remains a drain; and the limestone, once reduced to lime, never again becomes limestone. It pa.s.ses into the food of man and animals, and ever after takes its part in the same round with the clay with which it has been incorporated. The iron rusts and gradually pa.s.ses into soil, to take its part with the clay and the lime. That portion of his labour gives him wages while preparing the machine for greater future production. That other portion which he expends on fashioning and exchanging _the products_ of the machine, produces temporary results and gives him wages alone.

Whatever tends to diminish the quant.i.ty of labour required for the production of food tends to enable him to give more to the preparation of machinery required for the fashioning and exchanging of the products; and that machinery in its turn tends to augment the quant.i.ty that may be given to increasing the amount of products, and to preparing the great machine; and thus, while increasing the present return to labour, preparing for a future further increase.

The first poor cultivator obtains a hundred bushels for his year's wages. To pound this between two stones requires many days of labour, and the work is not half done. Had he a mill in the neighbourhood he would have better flour, and he would have almost the whole of those days to bestow upon his land. He pulls up his grain. Had he a scythe, he would have more time for the preparation of the machine of production. He loses his axe, and it requires days of himself and his horse on the road, to obtain another. His machine loses the time and the manure, both of which would have been saved had the axe-maker been at hand. The real advantage derived from the mill and the scythe, and from the proximity of the axe-maker, consists simply in the power which they afford him to devote his labour more and more to the preparation of the great machine of production, and such is the case with all the machinery of conversion and exchange. The plough enables him to do as much in one day as with a spade he could do in five. He saves four days for drainage. The steam-engine drains as much as, without it, could be drained by thousands of days of labour. He has more leisure to marl or lime his land. The more he can extract from his property the greater is its value, because every thing he takes is, by the very act of taking it, fashioned to aid further production.

The machine, therefore, improves by use, whereas spades, and ploughs, and steam-engines, and all other of the instruments used by man, are but the various forms into which he fashions parts of the great original machine, to disappear in the act of being used; as much so as food, though not so rapidly. The earth is the great labour-savings'