The Slave Trade, Domestic and Foreign / Why It Exists, and How It May Be Extinguished

by Henry Charles Carey

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 passed 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 assured, 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 enfranchisement 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 passages:—

"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? Assuredly 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 circumstances, King Ferdinand is enabled to play the tyrant, upon whom rests the blame? Assuredly, 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, assuredly, 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? Assuredly 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.