"The departure of the redundant population of the Highlands of Scotland is an indispensable preliminary to every kind of improvement."—Ibid.
Further, we are informed that the emigration from England, Wales, and the Lowlands of Scotland has "almost entirely consisted of able-bodied agricultural labourers," and that few or none of the manufacturing population have emigrated, except "a few Spitalfields and Paisley hand-loom weavers."[215] The loss of all these agriculturists, and the rapid conversion of the whole people of the kingdom into mere buyers and sellers of the products of other nations, is regarded as not only not to be regretted, but as a thing to be rejoiced at; and another influential journal assures its readers that the "mere anticipation" of any deficiency in the export of man from the kingdom "would lead to the most disastrous suspension of industry and enterprise," and that "the emigration must not only continue, but it must be maintained with all possible steadiness and activity."[216]
Little effort would seem to be required to bring about the abandonment of England, as well as of Ireland. Of the latter the latest journals furnish accounts of which the following is a fair specimen:—
"The people are fast passing away from the land in the West of Ireland. The landlords of Connaught are tacitly combined to weed out all the smaller occupiers, against whom a regular systematic war of extermination is being waged. * * * The most heart-rending cruelties are daily practised in this province, of which the public are not at all aware."—Galway Mercury.
In the former, we are told that
"The wheel of 'improvement' is now seizing another class, the most stationary class in England. A startling emigration movement has sprung up among the smaller English farmers, especially those holding heavy clay soils, who, with bad prospects for the coming harvest, and in want of sufficient capital to make the great improvements on their farms which would enable them to pay their old rents, have no other alternative but to cross the sea in search of a new country and of new lands. I am not speaking now of the emigration caused by the gold mania, but only of the compulsory emigration produced by landlordism, concentration of farms, application of machinery to the soil, and introduction of the modern system of agriculture on a great scale."—Correspondence of the New York Tribune.
Nevertheless, wages do not rise. Hundreds of thousands, and even millions, of the poor people of the kingdom have now been expelled, and yet there is "no regular demand for labour," and wages continue as low as ever. That such should be the case is not extraordinary, but it will be so if this diminution of the power of association do not result in lowering the reward of labour, and accelerating the dispersion of the labourers. Every man that goes was a producer of something, to be given in exchange for another thing that he required, that was produced by others; and from the moment of his departure he ceases to be a producer, with correspondent diminution in the demand for the cloth, the iron, or the salt produced by his neighbours. The less the competition for purchase the more becomes the competition for sale, and the lower must be the compensation of the labourer. A recent journal informs us that the condition of one class of operatives, the salt-boilers, has "gradually become most deplorable."
"Their wages at present do not average 15s. a week, because they are not employed full time; 2s. 6d. a day is the highest price given, and one of these days consists of fourteen or sixteen hours. In addition to this, some of the employers have latterly introduced a new mode of diminishing the actual payment in wages. As has already been stated, the salt-pans in the course of a few days require cleansing from the impurities and dross thrown down with the process of boiling. The accumulation may vary from one-eighth of an inch to one foot, according to the quality of the brine. Therefore, every fortnight the fires are let out and the pans picked and cleaned, a process which occupies a full day; and this unavoidable and necessary work it is becoming the fashion to require the men to perform without any remuneration whatever; or, in other words, to demand one month's work out of the twelve from them without giving any wages in return!"—Dawson's Merchants' Magazine, February, 1853, 98.
The more steady and active the emigration of the agricultural labourers, and the larger the remainder of factory operatives, the greater must be the necessity for depending on other countries for supplies, and the less must be the power of the nation in the community of nations, the richer must grow the great manufacturer, and the poorer must become the labourer; and, as this system is now being so vigorously carried out, the cause of weakness may readily be understood. It is a natural consequence of the purely selfish policy to which the Ricardo-Malthusian doctrines inevitably lead.
Can such a system be a natural one? Is it possible that an all-wise, all-powerful, and all-merciful Being, having constructed this world for the occupation of man, should have inflicted upon it such a curse as is found in a system of laws the study of which leads to the conclusion that men can live only "by snatching the bread out of the mouths" of their fellow-men? Assuredly not. What, then, are the laws under which man "lives and moves and has his being?" To obtain an answer to this question, we must go back to the proposition which lies at the base of the British system—that which teaches that men begin the work of cultivation with the rich soils of the earth, and are afterward compelled to resort to inferior ones the most important one in political economy; so important, says Mr. J. S. Mill, that were it otherwise, "almost all the phenomena of the production and distribution of wealth would be other than they are."