The Slave Trade, Domestic And Foreign Part 33

WHAT OLD BONES AND BITS OF SKIN MAY BE GOOD FOR.--How to get a penny-worth of beauty out of old bones and bits of skin, is a problem which the French gelatine makers have solved very prettily. Does the reader remember some gorgeous sheets of colored gelatine in the French department of the Great Exhibition? We owed them to the slaughter-houses of Paris. These establishments are so well organized and conducted, that all the refuse is carefully preserved, to be applied to any purposes for which it may be deemed fitting. Very pure gelatine is made from the waste fragments of skin, bone, tendon, ligature, and gelatinous tissue of the animals slaughtered in the Parisian _abbatoirs_, and thin sheets of this gelatine are made to receive very rich and beautiful colors. As a gelatinous liquid, when melted, it is used in the dressing of woven stuffs, and in the clarification of wine; and as a solid, it is cut into threads for the ornamental uses of the confectioner, or made into very thin white sheets of _papier glace_, for copying, drawing, or applied to the making of artificial flowers, or used as a subst.i.tute for paper, on which gold printing may be executed. In good sooth, when an ox has given us our beef, and our leather, and our tallow, his career of usefulness is by no means ended; we can get a penny out of him as long as there is a sc.r.a.p of his substance above ground--_Household Words_.

[45] The superficial area of the State is 64,000 square miles, being greater than that of England, and double that of Ireland.

[46] Despotism in America, 127.

[47] De Bow's Commercial Review, new series, vol. ii. 137.

[48] The tobacco grower "has the mortification of seeing his tobacco, bought from him at sixpence in bond, charged three shillings duty, and therefore costing the broker but 3s. 6d. and selling in the shops of London at ten, twelve, and sixteen shillings."

(Urquhart's Turkey, 194.) The same writer informs his readers that the tobacco dealers were greatly alarmed when it was proposed that the duty should be reduced, because then everybody with 10 capital could set up a shop. The slave who works in the tobacco-field is among the largest taxpayers for the maintenance of foreign traders and foreign governments.

[49] Statistique de l'Agriculture de la France, 129.

[50] Urquhart's Resources of Turkey, 179.

[51] Equivalent to light port-charges, the anchorage being only sixteen cents per ship.

[52] Beaujour's Tableau du Commerce de la Greece, quoted by Urquhart, 47.

[53] Urquhart, 150.

[54] The recent proceedings in regard to the Turkish loan are strikingly ill.u.s.trative of the exhausting effects of a system that looks wholly to the export of the raw produce of the earth, and thus tends to the ruin of the soil and of its owner.

[55] Urquhart, 257.

[56] Ibid. 202.

[57] Turkey, and its Destiny, by C. Mac Farlane, Esq., 1850.

[58] Mac Farlane, vol. i, 46.

[59] Mac Farlane, vol. ii, 242.

[60] Ibid. 296.

[61] Ibid. vol. i. 37.

[62] History of British India, vol. i. 46.

[63] Historical Fragments, 402.

[64] "The country was laid waste with fire and sword, and that land distinguished above most others by the cheerful face of fraternal government and protected labour, the chosen seat of cultivation and plenty, is now almost throughout a dreary desert covered with rushes and briers, and jungles full of wild beasts. * * * That universal, systematic breach of treaties, which had made the British faith proverbial in the East! These intended rebellions are one of the Company's standing resources. When money has been thought to be h.o.a.rded up anywhere, its owners are universally accused of rebellion, until they are acquitted of their money and their treasons at once! The money once taken, all accusation, trial, and punishment ends."--_Speech on Fox's East India Bill_.

[65] Quoted in Thompson's Lectures on India, 61.

[66] Colonel Sykes states the proportion collected in the Deccan as much less than is above given

[67] Rickards, vol. i. 288.

[68] Vol. ii. 218.

[69] Rickards, vol i. 500.

[70] Ibid. 559.

[71] Ibid. 558.

[72] Ibid. 558.

[73] Campbell's Modern India, London, 1852, 356.

[74] Campbell's Modern India, 357.

[75] Baines's History of the Cotton Manufacture.

[76] Campbell's Modern India, 332.

[77] Ibid. 381.

[78] Campbell's Modern India, 105.

[79] Rambles in India, by Col. Sleeman, vol. i. p. 296.

[80] Speech of Mr. G. Thompson in the House of Commons.

[81] See page 133 _ante_.

[82] Chapman's Commerce and Cotton of India, 74.

[83] Chapman, Cotton and Commerce of India, 28.

[84] Taking the last six of the thirteen years, the price of cotton was 2d. a pound, and if the produce of a beegah was 6s. 6d., of this the government took sixty-eight per cent. of the gross produce; and taking the two years 1841 and 1842, cotton was 1-3/4 d. a pound, and the produce of a beegah was 5s. 8d. On this the a.s.sessment was actually equal to seventy-eight per cent. on the gross produce of the land.--_Speech of Mr. Bright in the House of Commons_.

[85] Chapman's Commerce and Cotton of India, 110.

[86] Chapman, 167.

[87] Rambles, vol. i. 205.

[88] Ibid. 268.

[89] Ibid. vol. ii. 147.

[90] Ibid. 153.

[91] Ibid. 185.

[92] Ibid. 199.

[93] Chapman, 97.