and from that time the statute-book of England became, from year to year, more and more filled with laws having for their object the bringing together of the farmer and the artisan, with a view to the production of association and combination-and thereby diminishing the necessity for exhausting the land by means of the exportation of its products in their rudest state. § 4. The insular position of England had given her security of person, and of property, so far as regarded the devastations of war, to an extent unknown in any part of Europe; and, in the days of Yarranton, she was waiting only the adoption of a system that should enable her people to combine together for the development of their various individualities. To effect a change in the movements of a nation requires, however, no inconsiderable time. The knowledge existed on the continent, but it was not to be found in England. In Holland, in the Netherlands, and in the manufacturing states of Germany, wealth abounded, and the loan of capital could be obtained at the rate of four or five per cent.; whereas, in the other it was with difficulty obtained for employment either in manufactures, or in agriculture. For centuries, the current of raw materials had been towards the continent, but now the course of that current was to be changed; and to accomplish this was a work requiring serious effort. Commerce, too, in England herself, was impeded by numerous restrictions, many of which had been created by law, while others had resulted from the anxiety of the existing manufacturers to discourage domestic competition for the purchase of raw products, as well as for the sale of finished commodities. Then, as now, they desired to buy cheaply and sell dearly; and the more they could prevent the extension of manufactures at home, the cheaper would be wool and the dearer would be cloth. Time, however, brought the change, but not until the English farmer had experienced in its full effect the loss resulting from the necessity for depending on distant markets for the sale of the raw products of the earth. In the long and warlike period that closed with the treaty of Utrecht, the power of wheat to command money in exchange had been equal to 438. 6d. per quarter, but with the return of peace, (1713,) the price fell to 35s., and thereafter continued gradually to decline until, in the ten years ending 1755, the average was but 21s. 3d.; or less than half of what before had been obtained for it. The product exceeding the consumption, a small portion needed to go abroad; and that the price obtained for the surplus fixed that of the whole crop, will be obvious to all who remark the course of trade. A deficiency to the extent of even a hundred thousand bushels raises the price of all to the level of that at which that small supply may be brought from the distant market; while an excess to that extent reduces the whole to the level of the price at which this trivial quantity must be sold. How very slight was the excess to which was due the great reduction that had taken place, is shown by the following figures: At the low price of 21s. 2d., the farmers of England obtained a market abroad for less than four millions of bushels — yielding scarcely two millions of dollars a year. The total product of wheat in Great Britain in this latter period must have been more than forty millions of bushels; and as that grain then entered little into consumption as compared with what it since has done, it would be, perhaps, fair to place the total production of food as being the equivalent of a hundred millions of bushels. Of this, about four per cent. constituted the surplus thrown upon the then regulating markets of the world, depressing the prices there, and in a corresponding degree depressing those obtained for the whole quantity produced; to the injury of the land and labor of the kingdom-to that of the artisan—and to that of all but those who were dependent upon fixed incomes for their support. The population of England was then but six millions, of whom the land-owners then numbering nearly two hundred thousand —and their families, must have been nearly one-sixth, or a million in number. Adding to them the laborers in husbandry, we have a large proportion of the community directly dependent upon the results of agriculture. The mechanic, however, was equally inte rested in the prosperity of the farming class, because, if they could sell at fair prices, they could buy the products of his skill and labor. The more instant the demand for food and wool, the greater was the ability of the agricultural laborer to purchase cloth and that of the proprietor of land to effect improvement upon his property, with a view to the larger production of both food and wool. What England then needed, was the direct motion between the producer and the consumer at home-by help of which her farmers might be emancipated from the dominion of trade. In default of this motion, the latter were obliged to accept 21s. 2d. per quarter for the whole wheat crop, and corresponding prices for all other descriptions of food-while exporting but four millions of quarters, and importing, in the forms of cloth and iron, probably thrice that quantity. - commerce Progress was, however, being made. With the middle of the century it came to be discovered that iron could be smelted by help of mineral coal; and thenceforward improvements tending to the diversification of the pursuits of men became numerous and rapid. The mighty power of steam was brought to supersede the labors of the human hand-the spinning-jenny was invented—and the processes required for the manufacture of iron continued to be improved with rapid increase in the circulation of labor and its products in the economy of human effort-in the accumulation of wealth-and in the power of further progress. The farmer being now freed from his dependence on the distant market, the price of grain rapidly rose-as a necessary consequence of the approximation of the consumer and the producer, and the extension of commerce. The power of wheat to command money in exchange increased in the ten years ending in 1765 to £1 19s. 3d.; and in those ending in 1775, to £2 11s. 3d., at or near which price it remained in the twenty following years. Taking the average quantity, of food of all descriptions, consumed, as being the equivalent of twenty bushels of wheat, the total advance in the return to agricultural labor, consequent upon the increase in the rapidity of circulation resulting from the creation of a domestic demand, could thus be little short of twenty millions of pounds sterling, or a hundred millions of dollars. Agriculture, therefore, advanced rapidly-creating new demands for labor, and enabling the laborer to claim a constantly increasing proportion of the augmented quantity of things produced.* § 5. So far as protection had been resorted to with a view to enable the farmers to call to their aid the skill and the machinery already in use abroad, and to obtain command of the various natural forces required for finishing their products and fitting them for consumption, it was right. It relieved them from the heavy tax of transportation; it promoted the diversification of employments and the development of intellect; and it tended to give to society that natural form in which strength and beauty are most combined; and therefore is it that we see in the movements of the years immediately preceding the breaking out of the wars of the French Revolution, so strong a tendency towards a reform in the constitution of Parliament-looking towards a fairer representation of the various portions of which the society was composed. - Had that been the limit of the movement had the British policy looked solely to the creation of a domestic market for the British farmers had it been limited to their own emancipation from dependence on the casualties of distant markets-had British statesmen been governed by that great fundamental law of Christianity, which requires that we should respect the rights of others as carefully as we desire that they should respect our own— all would have been well; and the doctrines of over-populationof the necessity of a cheap and abundant supply of labor of the expediency of expelling a kindred nation, with a view to supply its place by one more mixed, more docile, and more servicewhich can submit to a master" t-the doctrines, in short, of modern political economy, would have remained unheard of. able," and one Such, however, was not to be the course of events. Here, as *How immense was the effect of the creation of a home market in making a demand for land and labor, is shown in the fact, that in the reigns of Anne and George I.—1702 to 1751 - the whole number of enclosure acts obtained was 18, and the quantity of land embraced therein but 19,339 acres. From 1751 to 1760, the number was 226, and the quantity of land, 318,778 acres; but from 1760 to 1797, the former rose to 1532, and the latter to 2,804,197 - and nearly all of this in the period from 1771 to 1791. † London Times, on the Exodus of Ireland. everywhere else had been the case, there arose a disposition to monopolize within themselves the knowledge by means of which progress had been obtained; and the more free the people by whom the monopoly was desired, the more unscrupulous were certain to be the measures by aid of which it would be sought to be secured. Had it been otherwise, it would have been in opposition to all the lessons taught by the history of the world; and should, at any future time, the people of the American Union be so unfortunate as to have colonies, and they should then fail to prove themselves the most tyrannical and unscrupulous of masters, the fact would constitute the most remarkable one in history. It is, therefore, no matter of surprise that to the freest people of Europe we owe the invention of the system described in former chapters of all that have ever existed, the most oppressive and exhausting. Nothing comparable with it in its capacity for evil had ever been devised. Invasions by bodies of armed men are attended with waste of property, destruction of life, and temporary suspension of commerce; but with the return of peace men are enabled again to combine their efforts, and at the close of a few short years all is again as it before had been. Such, however, is not the case with invasions looking to the permanent substitution of trade for commerce; for under them, the power of association dies away, the intellect declines in its development, and man gradually loses all the power over nature that he before had gained. He, himself, then diminishes in value, while that of the commodities required for his support as regularly increases-and with every step in that direction he becomes more and more enslaved. The one is a sudden shock from which, with care, the patient may recover; whereas, the other consists in opening the veins and permitting the life's blood slowly to ebb away-rendering recovery from day to day more difficult, and closing at length in death. Of all the countries of Europe, none has so frequently been overrun — none has so much suffered from the evils of war. as Belgium; and yet it has at all times ranked among those most prosperous. Of all, the only ones that have for centuries been almost unprofaned by a hostile foot, are the British islands; yet, there was invented the Malthusian theory, and in one of them is found the great treasury of facts by means of which it is attempted to be supported. |