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

by Henry Charles Carey

Weight of Cotton Retained
Weight of given to the by the
Cotton used. planters. manufacturers.
—————— ———————— ———————
1830 to 1835… 320,000,000… 110,000,000… 210,000,000
1845 and 1846.. 311,000,000… 74,000,000…. 237,000,000

In the first period, the planter would have had 34 per cent. of his cotton returned to him in the form of cloth, but in the second only 24 per cent. The grist miller gives the farmer from year to year a larger proportion of the product of his grain, and thus the latter has all the profit of every improvement. The cotton miller gives the planter from year to year a smaller proportion of the cloth produced. The one miller comes daily nearer to the producer. The other goes daily farther from him, for with the increased product the surface over which it is raised is increased.

How this operates on a large scale will now be seen on an examination of the following facts:—

The declared or actual value of exports of British produce in manufactures in 1815 was.. £51,632,971 And the quantity of foreign merchandise retained for consumption in that year was……. £17,238,841 [147]

This shows, of course, that the prices of the raw products of the earth were then high by comparison with those of the articles that Great Britain had to sell.

In 1849, the value of British exports was….. £63,596,025
And the quantity of foreign merchandise
retained for consumption was no less than……. £80,312,717

We see thus that while the value of exports had increased only one-fourth, the produce received in exchange was almost five times greater; and here it is that we find the effect of that unlimited competition for the sale in England of the raw products of the world, and limited competition for the purchase of the manufactured ones, which it is the object of the system to establish. The nation is rapidly passing from the strong and independent position of one that produces commodities for sale, into the weak and dependent one of the mere trader who depends for his living upon the differences between the prices at which he sells and those at which he buys—that is, upon his power to tax the producers and consumers of the earth. It is the most extraordinary and most universal system of taxation ever devised, and it is carried out at the cost of weakening and enfeebling the people of all the purely agricultural countries. The more completely all the world, outside of England, can be rendered one great farm, in which men, women, and children, the strong and the weak, the young and the aged, can be reduced to field labour as the only means of support, the larger will be the sum of those differences upon which the English people are now to so great an extent maintained, but the more rapid will be the tendency everywhere toward barbarism and slavery. The more, on the other hand, that the artisan can be brought to the side of the farmer, the smaller must be the sum of these differences, or taxes, and the greater will everywhere be the tendency toward civilization and freedom; but the greater will be that English distress which is seen always to exist when the producers of the world obtain much cloth and iron in exchange for their sugar and their cotton. The English system is therefore a war for the perpetuation and extension of slavery.

On a recent occasion the Chancellor of the Exchequer congratulated the House of Commons on the flourishing state of the revenue, notwithstanding, that, they had

"In ten years repealed or reduced the duties on coffee, timber, currants, wool, sugar, molasses, cotton wool, butter, cheese, silk manufactures, tallow, spirits, copper ore, oil and sperm, and an amazing number of other articles, which produced a small amount of revenue, with respect to which it is not material, and would be almost preposterous, that I should trouble the House in detail. It is sufficient for me to observe this remarkable fact, that the reduction of your customs duties from 1842 has been systematically continuous; that in 1842 you struck off nearly £1,500,000 of revenue calculated from the customs duties; that in 1843 you struck off £126,000; in 1844, £279,000; in 1845, upwards of £3,500,000; in 1846, upwards of £1,150,000; in 1847, upwards of £343,000; in 1848, upwards of £578,000; in 1849, upwards of £384,000; in 1850, upwards of £331,000; and in 1851, upwards of £801,000—making an aggregate, in those ten years, of nearly £9,000,000 sterling."

The reason of all this is, that the cultivator abroad is steadily giving more raw produce for less cloth and iron. The more exclusively the people of India can be forced to devote themselves to the raising of cotton and sugar, the cheaper they will be, and the larger will be the British revenue. The more the price of corn can be diminished, the greater will be the flight to Texas, and the cheaper will be cotton, but the larger will be the slave trade of America, India, and Ireland; and thus it is that the prosperity of the owners of mills and furnaces in England is always greatest when the people of the world are becoming most enslaved.