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

by Henry Charles Carey

"If his "blood boils" at the sufferings of the negro in Brazil, or of the Hindoo in the Mauritius, he must recollect that it is at the cost of those sufferings that he is supplied with cheap sugar. If he be shocked at the continuance of the African slave trade, he must recollect that if negroes ceased to be imported into Cuba, he might have to pay a higher price for his coffee. If he is excited at the idea of the domestic slave trade of this country, he must calm himself by reflecting that it is "for his advantage" it is continued, and that without it he could not have cheap cotton. The labourers of the various parts of the world are thus taught that there is among themselves an universal antagonism of interests, and this tends, of course, to the production of a bad state of moral feeling, and an universal tendency to decline in the feeling of self-dependence. Men, women, and children are becoming from day to day more dependent on the will of others, and as it is that dependence which constitutes slavery, we might with reason expect to find some of the vices of the slave—and were we to find them we should not greatly err in attributing their existence to the system thus described by Adam Smith:—

"The industry of Great Britain, instead of being accommodated to a great number of small markets, has been principally suited to one great market. Her commerce, instead of running in a great number of small channels, has been taught to run principally in one great channel. But the whole system of her industry and commerce has thereby been rendered less secure, the whole state of her body politic less healthful than it otherwise would have been. In her present condition, Great Britain resembles one of those unwholesome bodies in which some of the vital parts are overgrown, and which, upon that account, are liable to many dangerous disorders, scarce incident to those in which all the parts are more properly proportioned. A small stop in that great blood-vessel which has been artificially swelled beyond its natural dimensions, and through which an unnatural proportion of the industry and commerce of the country has been forced to circulate, is very likely to bring on the most dangerous disorders upon the whole body politic."

This is an accurate picture of that country under a system that seeks to direct the whole energies of its people into one direction, that of "buying in the cheapest market and selling in the dearest one,"—the pursuit that is, of all others, the least favourable to the development of the moral and intellectual faculties of man. How it is operating may be judged by the following description from an English writer already quoted:—

"Of the children of the poor, who are yearly born in England, vast numbers never receive any education at all, while many others never enter any thing better than a dame or a Sunday-school. In the towns they are left in crowds until about eight or nine years of age, to amuse themselves in the dirt of the streets, while their parents pursue their daily toil. In these public thoroughfares, during the part of their lives which is most susceptible of impressions and most retentive of them, they acquire dirty, immoral, and disorderly habits; they become accustomed to wear filthy and ragged clothes; they learn to pilfer and to steal; they associate with boys who have been in prison, and who have there been hardened in crime by evil associates; they learn how to curse one another, how to fight, how to gamble, and how to fill up idle hours by vicious pastimes; they acquire no knowledge except the knowledge of vice; they never come in contact with their betters; and they are not taught either the truths of religion or the way by which to improve their condition in life. Their amusements are as low as their habits. The excitements of low debauchery too horrible to be named, of spirituous liquors, which they begin to drink as early as they can collect pence wherewith to buy them, of the commission and concealments of thefts, and of rude and disgusting sports, are the pleasures of their life. The idea of going to musical meetings such as those of the German poor, would be scoffed at, even if there were any such meetings for them to attend. Innocent dancing is unknown to them. Country sports they cannot have. Read they cannot. So they hurry for amusement and excitement to the gratification of sensual desires and appetites. In this manner, filthy, lewd, sensual, boisterous, and skilful in the commission of crime, a great part of the populations of our towns grow up to manhood. Of the truth or falsehood of this description any one can convince himself, who will examine our criminal records, or who will visit the back streets of any English town, when the schools are full, and count the children upon the door-steps and pavements, and note their condition, manners, and appearance, and their degraded and disgusting practices."—Kay, vol. i. 33.[133]

This is, however, little different from what might be looked, for in a country whose provision for the education of its people is thus described:—

"About one-half of our poor can neither read nor write. The test of signing the name at marriage is a very imperfect absolute test of education, but it is a very good relative one: taking that test, how stands Leeds itself in the Registrar-General's returns? In Leeds, which is the centre of the movement for letting education remain as it is, left entirely to chance and charity to supply its deficiencies, how do we find the fact? This, that in 1846, the last year to which these returns are brought down, of 1850 marriages celebrated in Leeds and Hunslet, 508 of the men and 1020 of the women, or considerably more than one-half of the latter, signed their names with marks. 'I have also a personal knowledge of this fact—that of 47 men employed upon a railway in this immediate neighbourhood, only 14 men can sign their names in the receipt of their wages; and this not because of any diffidence on their part, but positively because they cannot write.' And only lately, the Leeds Mercury itself gave a most striking instance of ignorance among persons from Boeotian Pudsey: of 12 witnesses, 'all of respectable appearance, examined before the Mayor of Bradford at the court-house there, only one man could sign his name, and that indifferently.' Mr. Nelson has clearly shown in statistics of crime in England and Wales from 1834 to 1844, that crime is invariably the most prevalent in those districts where the fewest numbers in proportion to the population can read and write. Is it not indeed beginning at the wrong end to try and reform men, after they have become criminals? Yet you cannot begin, with children, from want of schools. Poverty is the result of ignorance, and then ignorance is again the unhappy result of poverty. 'Ignorance makes men improvident and thoughtless—women as well as men; it makes them blind to the future—to the future of this life as well as the life beyond. It makes them dead to higher pleasures than those of the mere senses, and keeps them down to the level of the mere animal. Hence the enormous extent of drunkenness throughout this country, and the frightful waste of means which it involves.' At Bilston, amidst 20,000 people, there are but two struggling schools—one has lately ceased; at Millenhall, Darlaston, and Pelsall, amid a teeming population, no school whatever. In Oldham, among 100,000, but one public day-school for the labouring classes; the others are an infant school, and some dame and factory schools. At Birmingham, there are 21,824 children at school, and 23,176, at no school; at Liverpool, 50,000 out of 90,000 at no school; at Leicester, 8200 out of 12,500; and at Leeds itself, in 1841, (the date of the latest returns,) some 9600 out of 16,400, were at no school whatever. It is the same in the counties. 'I have seen it stated, that a woman for some time had to officiate as clerk in a church in Norfolk, there being no adult male in the parish able to read and write. For a population of 17,000,000 we have but twelve normal schools; while in Massachusetts they have three such schools for only 800,000 of population."

Such being the education of the young, we may now look to see how Mr. Kay describes that provided for people of a more advanced period of life:—

"The crowd of low pot-houses in our manufacturing districts is a sad and singular spectacle. They are to be found in every street and alley of the towns, and in almost every lane and turning of the more rural villages of those districts, if any of those villages can be called rural.

"The habit of drunkenness pervades the masses of the operatives to an extent never before known in our country.

"In a great number of these taverns and pot-houses of the manufacturing districts, prostitutes are kept for the express purpose of enticing the operatives to frequent them, thus rendering them doubly immoral and pernicious. I have been assured in Lancashire, on the best authority, that in one of the manufacturing towns, and that, too, about third rate in point of size and population, there are sixty taverns, where prostitutes are kept by the tavern landlords, in order to entice customers into them. Their demoralizing influence upon the population cannot be exaggerated; and yet these are almost the only resorts which the operatives have, when seeking amusement or relaxation.