Instead of complaining of the sixty thousand emigrants per annum, and lowering the price of land, so as to induce dispersion, it would be wise, if it were possible, in the people of the United States to bring in sixty thousand more labourers per annum, and raise the price of land. This last cannot, perhaps, be done: but why should not the other? With a surplus revenue that they do not know what to do with, and a scarcity of the labour which they do not know how to do without, why not use the surplus funds accruing from the lands in carrying labour to the soil?
It is true, Europeans have the same passion for land as the Americans; and such immigrants would leave their employers, and buy for themselves, as soon as they had earned the requisite funds: but these, again, would supply the means of bringing over more labour; and the intermediate services of the labourers would be so much gained. If the arrangements were so made as to bring over sober, respectable labourers, without their being in any way bound to servitude, (as a host of poor Germans once were made white slaves of,) if, the land and labour being once brought together, and repayment from the benefited parties being secured, (if desired,) things were then left to take their natural course, a greater blessing could hardly befal the United States than such an importation of labourers.
I was told, in every eastern city, that it was a common practice with parish officers in England to ship off their paupers to the United States. I took some pains to investigate the grounds of this charge, and am convinced that it is a mistake; that the accusation has arisen out of some insulated case. I was happy to be able to show my American friends how the supposed surplus population of the English agricultural counties has shrunk, and in most cases disappeared, under the operation of the new Poor Law, so that, even if the charge had ever been true, it could not long remain so. By the time that we shall be enabled to say the same of the parishes of Ireland, the Americans will, doubtless, have discovered that they would be glad of all the labourers we had ever been able to spare; if only we could send them in the form of respectable men and women, instead of squalid paupers, looking as if they were going from shore to shore, to rouse the world to an outcry against the sins and sorrows of our economy.
It will scarcely be credited by those who are not already informed on the subject, that a proposition has been made to send out of the country an equal number of persons to the amount brought into it; ship loads of labourers going to and fro, like buckets in a well: that this proposition has been introduced into Congress, and has been made the basis of appropriations in some State legislatures: that itinerant lecturers are employed to advocate the scheme: that it is preached from the pulpit, and subscribed for in the churches, and that in its behalf are enlisted members of the administration, a great number of the leading politicians, clergy, merchants, and planters, and a large proportion of the other citizens of the United States. It matters little how many or how great are the men engaged in behalf of a bad scheme, which is so unnatural that it cannot but fail:—it matters little, as far as the scheme itself is concerned; but it is of incalculable consequence as creating an obstruction. For itself, the miserable abortion—the Colonisation scheme—might be passed over; for its active results will be nothing; but it is necessary to refer to it in its passive character of an obstruction. It is necessary to refer thus to it, not only as a matter of fact, but because, absurd and impracticable as the scheme clearly is, when viewed in relation to the whole state of affairs in America, it is not so easy on the spot to discern its true character. So many perplexing considerations are mixed up with it by its advocates; so many of those advocates are men of earnest philanthropy, and well versed in the details of the scheme, while blind to its general bearing, that it is difficult to have general principles always in readiness to meet opposing facts; to help adopting the partial views of well-meaning and thoroughly persuaded persons; and to know where to doubt, and what to disbelieve. I went to America extremely doubtful about the character of this institution. I heard at Baltimore and Washington all that could be said in its favour, by persons conversant with slavery, which I had not then seen. Mr. Madison, the President of the Colonisation Society, gave me his favourable views of it. Mr. Clay, the Vice-President, gave me his. So did almost every clergyman and other member of society whom I met for some months. Much time, observation, and reflection were necessary to form a judgment for myself, after so much prepossession, even in so clear a case as I now see this to be. Others on the spot must have the same allowance as was necessary for me: and, if any pecuniary interest be involved in the question, much more. But, I am firmly persuaded that any clear-headed man, shutting himself up in his closet for a day's study of the question, or taking a voyage, so as to be able to look back upon the entire country he has left,—being careful to take in the whole of its economical aspect, (to say nothing, at present, of the moral,) can come to no other conclusion than that the scheme of transporting the coloured population of the United States to the coast of Africa is absolutely absurd; and, if it were not so, would be absolutely pernicious. But, in matters of economy, the pernicious and the absurd are usually identical.
No one is to be blamed for the origin of slavery. Because it is now, under conviction, wicked, it does not follow that it was instituted in wickedness. Those who began it, knew not what they did. It has been elsewhere[17] ably shown how slavery has always, and, to all appearance, unavoidably existed, in some form or other, wherever large new tracts of land have been taken possession of by a few agricultural settlers. Let it be granted that negro slavery was begun inadvertently in the West India islands, and continued, by an economical necessity, in the colonies of North America.
What is now the state of the case? Slavery, of a very mild kind, has been abolished in the northern parts of the Union, where agricultural labour can be carried on by whites, and where such employments bear a very reduced proportion to manufacturing and commercial occupations. Its introduction into the north-western portions of the country has been prohibited by those who had had experience of its evils. Slavery, generally of a very aggravated character, now subsists in thirteen States out of twenty-six, and those thirteen are the States which grow the tobacco, rice, cotton and sugar; it being generally alleged that rice and sugar cannot be raised by white labour, while some maintain that they may. I found few who doubted that tobacco and cotton may be grown by white labour, with the assistance from brute labour and machinery which would follow upon the disuse of human capital; The amount of the slave population is now above two millions and a half. It increases rapidly in the States which have been impoverished by slavery; and is killed off; but not with equal rapidity, on the virgin soils to which alone it is, in any degree, appropriate. It has become unquestionably inappropriate in Maryland, Delaware, Virginia, and Kentucky. To these I should be disposed to add Missouri, and North Carolina, and part of Tennessee and South Carolina. The States which have more slave labour than their deteriorated lands require, sell it to those which have a deficiency of labour to their rich lands. Virginia, now in a very depressed condition, derives her chief revenue from the rearing of slaves, as stock, to be sent to Alabama, Mississippi, and Louisiana. The march of circumstance has become too obvious to escape the attention of the most short-sighted. No one can fail to perceive that slavery, like an army of locusts, is compelled to shift its place, by the desolation it has made. Its progress is southwards; and now, having reached the sea there, south-westwards. If there were but an impassable barrier there, its doom would be certain, and not very remote. This doom was apparently sealed a while ago, by the abolition of slavery in Mexico, and the fair chance there seemed of Missouri and Arkansas being subjected to a restriction of the same purport with that imposed on the new States, north-west of the Ohio. This doom has been, for the present, cancelled by the admission of slavery into Missouri and Arkansas, and by the seizure of Texas by American citizens. The open question, however, only regards its final limits. Its speedy abolition in many of the States may be, and is, regarded as certain.
The institution of slavery was a political anomaly at the time of the Revolution. It has now become an economical one also. Nothing can prevent the generality of persons from seeing this, however blind a few, a very few persons on the spot may be to the truth.[18]
It has thus obviously become the interest of all to whom slavery still is, or is believed to be, a gain; of those who hold the richest lands; of those who rear slaves for such lands; of all who dread change; of all who would go quietly through life, and leave it to a future generation to cope with their difficulty,—it has become the interest of all such to turn their own attention and that of others from the fact that the time has come when the slaves ought to be made free labourers. They cannot put down the fact into utter silence. Some sort of compromise must be made with it. A tub must be thrown to the whale. A tub has been found which will almost hold the whale.
It is proposed by the Colonisation Society that free persons of colour shall be sent to establish and conduct a civilised community on the shores of Africa. The variety of prospects held out by this proposition to persons of different views is remarkable. To the imaginative, there is the picture of the restoration of the coloured race to their paternal soil: to the religious, the prospect of evangelising Africa. Those who would serve God and Mammon are delighted at being able to work their slaves during their own lives, and then leave them to the Colonisation Society with a bequest of money, (when money must needs be left behind,) to carry them over to Africa. Those who would be doing, in a small way, immediately, let certain of their slaves work for wages which are to carry them over to Africa. Those who have slaves too clever or discontented to be safe neighbours, can ship them off to Africa. Those who are afraid of the rising intelligence of their free coloured neighbours, or suffer strongly under the prejudice of colour, can exercise such social tyranny as shall drive such troublesome persons to Africa. The clergy, public lecturers, members of legislatures, religious societies, and charitable individuals, both in the north and south, are believed to be, and believe themselves to be, labouring on behalf of slaves, when they preach, lecture, obtain appropriations, and subscribe, on behalf of the Colonisation Society. Minds and hearts are laid to rest,—opiated into a false sleep.