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These striking instances of the arbitrary depopulation of large districts are not adduced to throw odium upon the authors of them. The fault is not imputable so much to the great proprietors in England, Scotland, and Ireland, who have effected these wholesale "clearances" of their estates, as to the system, the policy of the law, the course of legislation, and the state of public opinion, which has caused such an accumulation of real property in the hands of a few, and has authorized such a use of it. These are the necessary results of a system which is upheld by English theologians and political economists, as well as by English statesmen, for the avowed purpose of sustaining a splendid aristocracy. "It is not true," declares Dr. Chalmers with his wonted earnestness, "that, in virtue of elegance, and luxury, and leisure being the inheritance of a few, there is not a blessing in the present system of things to the whole mass of society. Under the opposite system, there would be nearly one unbroken level, the whole of which behoved, in time, to be as sunk and degraded as is the state of our present laborers. Now, it is a level rising into frequent eminences of greater or less height [a very remarkable level, indeed], and of radiance more or less conspicuous. And what we affirm is, that, from this higher galaxy of rank and fortune, there are the droppings, as it were, of a bland and benignant influence on the general platform of humanity.”

May Heaven shield every other nation from the droppings of such "a bland and benignant influence" as have rendered the Highlands of Scotland, and the dreariest hills and bogs in the sister isle, more wild and desolate even than Nature's hand had left them, because the blackened walls of many a roofless hut now tell us that man once lived there, but that he has been dispossessed and exiled in order to make room for the ptarmigan, the red deer, and the fox, and thus to afford new huntinggrounds for a magnificent aristocracy!

The system has been carried out, not merely by such princely proprietors as the Duchess of Sutherland and the Marquis of Breadalbane, and the great absentee landlords of Ireland, but by nearly all the owners of real estate in the United Kingdom. There has been a systematic depopulation of all the rural districts, as the necessary consequence of the national policy of favoring the aggregation of landed property for political pur

poses, or to keep up aristocratic institutions. Large estates are naturally divided into large farms, both because it is easier and safer for the owners thus to manage them and collect their rents, and because the aggregate of rent thus obtained is more considerable, though this increase of net income is procured by diminishing the gross product.

The fact that most Irish estates, till within a few years, were parcelled out into a great number of very small holdings, is only an apparent contradiction of this statement. Irish landlords, as well as English and Scotch, did in fact lease their property in a few immense farms; but the practice of underletting being sanctioned by law and custom in Ireland, while it is entirely prohibited in the sister isle, the lease-holders found it more convenient, as well as more profitable, to let out the land again in smaller parcels, and thus to become "middlemen" instead of farmers. They thus retained a higher social position, and were able to make greater profits by rack-renting the inferior tenantry, than by carrying out the most scientific processes of husbandry. The absenteeism of the landlords, and the practice of granting perpetual leases, favored this result. The middlemen under these circumstances differed but little from actual proprietors, though they held the estate under a heavy encumbrance, and were therefore more extortionate in demanding heavy rents, and rigidly exacting all their dues. Few of the kindly relations existed between them and their tenantry which generally sprang up in England between a resident landlord and a tenant family, which, in many instances, had occupied the same farm for several successive generations. The land, and all that was connected with it, were not endeared to the lease-holder by the indefinable charm which springs from absolute ownership; he was, after all, only a great speculator, and, in one sense, a hireling. Hence one of the peculiar aggravating causes of the wretched condition of Irish property, and the destitution of Irish tenants.

Abundant evidence has now been adduced, that the larger net income accruing to the landlords from leasing their estates in large rather than in small farms, arises from diminishing the quantity, and enhancing the price, of the products of the soil, instead of increasing its productiveness by improved processes of husbandry. Here, surely, the gains of the individual are a

loss to the nation; such gains are the result of the acquisition of wealth, not of its creation, for they are extorted from the consumers by raising the price of food. The Scotch Highland lords, who also have immense estates in England, would not so readily convert their property at the North into sheep-walks and game-preserves, if they did not find that, by raising more grain, they lowered its price so much that their aggregate receipts would be diminished. In truth, it may be demonstrated that it is for the interest of English landlords always to keep the home supply a little short of the demand, so that some importation of food shall be necessary. Suppose, for instance, that the consumption exceeds one million of quarters by only 40,000 bushels, and that, if this additional 40,000 bushels are raised at home, the price averages fifty shillings a quarter. But if only one million of quarters should be grown in England, then, before the 40,000 bushels can be imported, the price of the whole must rise enough to defray the cost of importation, which amounts, on an average, to at least twelve shillings a quarter. By keeping the supply thus far short, therefore, they will be able to sell one million of quarters at sixtytwo shillings, which will produce £ 3,100,000; whereas, if the extra quantity be produced at home, they will have 1,005,000 quarters to dispose of at only fifty shillings a quarter, which will amount to but £ 2,512,500; so that the farmers will lose £ 587,500 by their imprudent increase of production.

This is not all. Large estates and large farms impoverish the country, not only by enhancing the cost of food, but by lowering the rate of wages, and increasing the number of those who are solely dependent upon wages for their support. I have already shown, in the chapter on this subject (pp. 199 – 201), that wages are higher in the United States than anywhere else, chiefly because almost every native American has the option of beginning life on his own account, as a small tradesman, an independent mechanic, or a small landholder, and that he can be tempted to forego the superior independence and respectability of such an occupation, and the greater chance that it offers of making a fortune, only by the offer of comparatively high wages. Any considerable reduction of the rate of wages is sure to be followed by a great diminution in the number of those who are willing to work for hire. Mr.

Laing happily illustrates the same principle, while accounting for the higher real wages that are paid in many parts of the Continent than in England. "It is the possession of property," he says, "that regulates the standard of living in a country, and this standard regulates the wages of labor. People who have at home some kind of property to apply their labor to, will not sell their labor for wages that do not afford them a better diet than potatoes and maize; although, in saving for themselves, they may live very much on potatoes and maize. It is want of the necessity or inclination to take work, that makes labor scarce, and, considering the price of provisions, dear, in many parts of the Continent where property in land is widely diffused among the people."

Now the whole civilized world affords no parallel to the condition of the people of Great Britain in these respects. The concentration of landed property, as we have seen, is such, that only one person out of every 112 has any proprietary interest in the soil; and the large-farm system, with the consequent reduction in numbers of the agricultural class, has been carried so far, that only one in five has anything to do with the cultivation of it. Thus the whole ground of independence of the laboring classes has been taken away; they have been obliged to offer themselves as laborers for hire, or to starve. While two thirds of the whole French population are owners of land, full two thirds of the whole British people are hirelings, solely dependent upon wages for a livelihood. The

*

* Mr. Morrison, one of the latest English writers on the "Relations between Labor and Capital," and a very candid and judicious reasoner, understates the contrast when he says, that, in France, "the class of manual laborers living on wages received from capitalists is seen to be only a minority, and not even a large minority, of the nation"; they certainly do not form more than one sixth of the whole. "But in England and Scotland," he says, "the classes living by wages form the majority of the population," and, according to the best estimate that can be formed from the last census, a very considerable majority.

Mr. Morrison states one of the consequences of this contrast very fairly, when he says, in reference to the mad proceedings of the Provisional Government in France, in 1848, which had raised an alarm about the safety of property, "the great mass of the nation, the peasant proprietors and others, who were neither payers nor receivers of wages, and had a great and direct interest in the preservation of the right of property, intervened before the mischief had gone very far." But in England, he adds, "not only is the division of the nation into a minority of possessors of property, and a majority of workingmen having little or no property, more complete than in France or most Continental countries, but both the wealth and the labor are col

field for the employment of labor is not unbounded; its limits are as fixed as those of the field for the use of capital. According to the natural distribution of industry, agriculture ought to be the occupation or the chief resource of a majority of the people. The production of food is the first and greatest want of the human race; as it must be carried on over the whole face of the country, it does not admit of the division and the economy of labor so much as the other two departments of industry. Every square mile, every acre, must be cultivated by itself, wholly irrespective of the work which is done upon the neighboring mile or acre. Improvements in the processes of husbandry may enable us to raise more products from the land, but cannot materially lessen the number of tillers of the ground, or the proportion which they bear to the other classes of society, without diminishing at the same time the gross produce. The facts here are in accordance with the theory. In the whole civilized world, except Great Britain, there is not probably one country which employs less than half of its population in cultivating the soil; the usual proportion is from two thirds to three fourths. The improvements in manufacture and commerce have been proportionably so much greater than in agriculture, that one third of the people can supply the aggregate want of the nation in the two former respects, more easily than two thirds can supply its want of food.

In the extrusion of four fifths of the English people from the pursuits of agriculture, and from any connection with the soil, we find the cause of so large a class of the population being entirely dependent upon wages, of the consequent depression of wages, the extraordinary increase of pauperism, the unnatural development of manufacturing enterprise, and the other peculiar circumstances of the present social condition of Great Britain. In this single fact, we find a sufficient explanation of those social phenomena which first suggested the theories of Malthus and Ricardo respecting population, wages, and rent.

lected into great masses in a greater degree than elsewhere. Hence, if the improvement of the relations between capital and labor by the authority of government should ever become a practical political question, it will assume dimensions unknown in most other countries. It will be a direct appeal to the interests and passions of the majority of the whole nation against a minority; and there will be no third party capable of holding the balance between them."

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