The Slave Trade, Domestic And Foreign Part 36

[184] Denmark and the Duchies, 42.

[185] Ibid. 136.

[186] Denmark and the Duchies, 368.

[187] Ibid. 394.

[188] Ibid. 388.

[189] Denmark and the Duchies, 362.

[190] Denmark and the Duchies, 294.

[191] Denmark and the Duchies, 269.

[192] _L'Espagne en_ 1850, par M. Maurice Block, 145.

[193] Ibid. pp. 157-159.

[194] Bayard Taylor, in the _N. Y. Tribune_.

[195] _L'Espagne en_ 1850, 160.

[196] Spain, her Inst.i.tutions, her Politics, and her Public Men, by S. T. Wallis, 341.

[197] The exact amount given by M. Block is 2,194,269,000 francs, but he does not state in what year the return was made.

[198] By an official doc.u.ment published in 1849, it appears that while wheat sold in Barcelona and Tarragona (places of consumption) at an average of more than 25 francs, the price at Segovia, in Old Castile, (a place of production,) not 300 miles distant, was less than 10 francs for the same quant.i.ty.--_L'Espagne en_ 1850, 131.

[199] North British Review, Nov. 1852, art. _The Modern Exodus_.

[200] M. de Jonnes, quoted by Mr. Wallis, p. 295.

[201] Wallis's Spain, chap: ix.

[202] It is a striking evidence of the injurious moral effect produced by the system which looks to the conversion of all the other nations of the world into mere farmers and planters, that Mr. Macgregor, in his work of Commercial Statistics, says, in speaking of the Methuen treaty, "we do not deny that there were advantages in having a market for our woollens in Portugal, especially one, of which, if not the princ.i.p.al, was the means afforded of sending them afterward by contraband into Spain."--Vol. ii. 1122.

[203] In the first half of this period the export was small, whereas in the last one, 1836 to 1840, it must have been in excess of the growth of population.

[204] From 1842 to 1845 the average crop was 2,250,000 bales, or half a million more than the average of the four previous years. From 1847 to 1850 the average was only 2,260,000 bales, and the price rose, which could not have been the case had the slave trade been as brisk between 1840 and 1845 as it had been between 1835 and 1840.

[205] See page 108, _ante_, for the sale of the negroes of the Saluda Manufacturing Company.

[206] The following pa.s.sage from one of the journals of the day is worthy of careful perusal by those who desire to understand the working of the present system of revenue duties, under which the mills and furnaces of the country have to so great an extent been closed, and the farmers and planters of the country to so great an extent been driven to New York to make all their exchanges:--

"Mr. Matsell [chief of police, New York] tells us that during the six months ending 31st December, 1852, there have been 19,901 persons arrested for various offences, giving a yearly figure of nearly 40,000 arrests. * * * The number of arrests being 40,000, or thereabouts, in a population of say 600,000, gives a percentage of 6.6 on the whole number of inhabitants. We have no data to estimate the state of crime in Paris under the imperial _regime_; but in London the returns of the metropolitan police for 1850, show 70,827 arrests, out of a population of some two millions and a half, giving a percentage of less than three on the whole number of inhabitants. Thus crimes are in New York rather more than twice as frequent as in London. Indeed, if we make proper allowance for the superior vigilance, and organization of the metropolitan police of London, and for the notorious inefficiency of our own police force, we shall probably find that, in proportion to the population, there is in New York twice as much crime as in London. This is an appalling fact--a disgraceful disclosure."--_New York Herald_, March 21, 1853.

[207] North British Review, Nov. 1852.

[208] See Uncle Tom's Cabin, chap. x.x.xi.

[209] Letters to Lord Aberdeen, by the Right Hon. W. E. Gladstone, 9, 10, 12.

[210] Rev. Sidney Smith.

[211] See page 109, _ante_.

[212] It is commonly supposed that the road toward freedom lies through cheapening the products of slave labour; but the reader may readily satisfy himself that it is in that direction lies slavery. Freedom grows with growing wealth, not growing poverty. To increase the cost of raising slaves, and thus to _increase the value of man at home_, produces exactly the effect antic.i.p.ated from the other course of operation, because the value of the land and its produce grows more rapidly than the value of that portion of the negro's powers that can be obtained from him as a slave--that is, without the payment of wages.

[213] See page 280, _ante_.

[214] The following statement of the operations of the past year completes the picture presented in Chapter IV.:--

"A tabular return, prepared by order of the House of a.s.sembly of Jamaica, exhibiting the properties in that island 'upon which cultivation has been wholly or partially abandoned since the 1st day of January, 1852,' presents in a striking light one of the many injurious consequences that have followed the measure of negro emanc.i.p.ation in the British West Indies. The return, which is dated January 27, 1853, shows that 128 sugar estates have been totally abandoned during the year, and 71 partially abandoned; of coffee plantations, 96 have been totally, and 56 partially, abandoned; of country seats--residences of planters or their agents--30 have been totally, and 22 partially, abandoned. The properties thus nearly or wholly ruined by the ill-considered legislation of the British Parliament cover an area of 391,187 acres."

[215] _Economist_, (London,) Feb. 12, 1863.

[216] Spectator, Feb. 12, 1853.

[217] The net revenue from the opium trade, for the current year, is stated to be no less than four millions of pounds sterling, or nearly twenty millions of dollars; and it is to that revenue, says _The Friend of India_, Nov. 25, 1852, that the Indian government has been indebted for its power to carry on the wars since 1838, those of Affghanistan, Seinde, Gwalior, the Punjab, and that now existing with Burmah. Well is it asked by Dr. Allen, in his pamphlet on "The Opium Trade," (Lowell, 1853,) "Can such an unrighteous course in a nation always prosper?" "How," says the same author, "can the Chinese

"Regard the English in any other light than wholesale smugglers and wholesale dealers in poison? The latter can expend annually over two millions of dollars on the coast of Great Britain to protect its own revenue laws, but at the same time set at bold defiance similar laws of protection enacted by the former. The English are constantly supplying the Chinese a deadly poison, with which thousands yearly put an end to their existence. In England, even the druggists are expressly forbidden to sell a.r.s.enic, laudanum, or other poison, if they have the least suspicion that their customer intends to commit suicide. But in China every facility is afforded and material supplied under the British flag, and sanctioned by Parliament itself, for wholesale slaughter. How long will an enlightened and Christian nation continue to farm and grow a means of vice, with the proceeds of which, even when in her possession, a benighted and pagan nation disdains to replenish her treasury, being drawn from the ruin and misery of her people? Where is the consistency or humanity of a nation supporting armed vessels on the coast of Africa to intercept and rescue a few hundreds of her sons from a foreign bondage, when, at the same time, she is forging chains to hold millions on the coast of China in a far more hopeless bondage?

And what must the world think of the religion of a nation that consecrates churches, ordains ministers of the gospel, and sends abroad missionaries of the cross, while, in the mean time, it encourages and upholds a vice which is daily inflicting misery and death upon more than four millions of heathen? And what must be the verdict of future generations, as they peruse the history of these wrongs and outrages? Will not the page of history, which now records 20,000,000 as consecrated on the altar of humanity to emanc.i.p.ate 800,000 slaves, lose all its splendour and become positively odious, when it shall be known that this very money was obtained from the proceeds of a contraband traffic on the sh.o.r.es of a weak and defenceless heathen empire, at the sacrifice, too, of millions upon millions of lives?"