duced by it, in all cases in which it is not restrained by some positive obstacle. Where competition, though free to exist, does not exist, or where it exists, but has its natural consequences overruled by any other agency, the conclusions will fail more or less of being applicable. To escape error, we ought, in applying the conclusions of political economy to the actual affairs of life, to consider not only what will happen supposing the maximum of competition, but how far the result will be affected if competition falls short of the maximum. The states of economical relation which stand first in order, to be discussed and appreciated, are those in which competition has no part, the arbiter of transactions being either brute force or established usage. These will be the subject of the next four chapters. Chapter V.-Of Slavery § 1. Among the forms which society assumes under the influence of the institution of property, there are, as I have already remarked, two, otherwise of a widely dissimilar character, but resembling in this, that the ownership of the land, the labor, and the capital, is in the same hands. One of these cases is that of slavery, the other is that of peasant proprietors. In the one, the landowner owns the labor, in the other the laborer owns the land. We begin with the first. In this system all the produce belongs to the landlord. The food and other necessaries of his laborers are part of his expenses. The laborers possess nothing but what he thinks fit to give them, and until he thinks fit to take it back: and they work as hard as he chooses, or is able, to compel them. Their wretchedness is only limited by his humanity, or his pecuniary interest. With the first consideration, we have on the present occasion nothing to do. What the second in so detestable a constitution of society may dictate, depends on the facilities for importing fresh slaves. If full-grown able-bodied slaves can be procured in sufficient numbers, and imported at a moderate expense, self-interest will recommend working the slaves to death, and replacing them by importation, in preference to the slow and expensive process of breeding them. Nor are the slave-owners generally backward in learning this lesson. It is notorious that such was the practice in our slave colonies, while the slave trade was legal; and it is said to be so still in Cuba. VOL. I.-16 When, as among the ancients, the slave-market could only be supplied by captives either taken in war, or kidnapped from thinly scattered tribes on the remote confines of the known world, it was generally more profitable to keep up the number by breeding, which necessitates a far better treatment of them; and for this reason, joined with several others, the condition of slaves, notwithstanding occasional enormities, was probably much less bad in the ancient world than in the colonies of modern nations. The Helots are usually cited as the type of the most hideous form of personal slavery, but with how little truth, appears from the fact that they were regularly armed (though not with the panoply of the hoplite) and formed an integral part of the military strength of the State. They were doubtless an inferior and degraded caste, but their slavery seems to have been one of the least onerous varieties of serfdom. Slavery appears in far more frightful colors among the Romans, during the period in which the Roman aristocracy was gorging itself with the plunder of a newly conquered world. The Romans were a cruel people, and the worthless nobles sported with the lives of their myriads of slaves with the same reckless prodigality with which they squandered any other part of their ill-acquired possessions. Yet, slavery is divested of one of its worst features when it is compatible with hope: enfranchisement was easy and common: enfranchised slaves obtained at once the full right of citizens, and instances were frequent of their acquiring not only riches, but latterly even honors. By the progress of milder legislation under the Emperors, much of the protection of law was thrown round the slave, he became capable of possessing property, and the evil altogether assumed a considerably gentler aspect. Until, however, slavery assumes the mitigated form of villanage, in which not only the slaves have property and legal rights, but their obligations are more or less limited by usage, and they partly labor for their own benefit; their condition is seldom such as to produce a rapid growth either of population or of production. § 2. So long as slave countries are underpeopled in proportion to their cultivable land, the labor of the slaves, under any tolerable management, produces much more than is sufficient for their support; especially as the great amount of superintendence which their labor requires, preventing the dispersion of the population, insures some of the advantages of combined labor. Hence, in a good soil and climate, and with reasonable care of his own interests, the owner of many slaves has the means of being rich. The influence, however, of such a state of society on production, is perfectly well understood. It is a truism to assert, that labor extorted by fear of punishment is inefficient and unproductive. It is true that in some circumstances, human beings can be driven by the lash to attempt, and even to accomplish, things which they would not have undertaken for any payment which it could have been worth while to an employer to offer them. And it is likely that productive operations which require much combination of labor, the production of sugar for example, would not have taken place so soon in the American colonies, if slavery had not existed to keep masses of labor together. There are also savage tribes so averse from regular industry, that industrial life is scarcely able to introduce itself among them until they are either conquered and made slaves of, or become conquerors and make others so. But after allowing the full value of these considerations, it remains certain that slavery is incompatible with any high state of the arts of life, and any great efficiency of labor. For all products which require much skill, slave countries are usually dependent on foreigners. Hopeless slavery effectually brutifies the intellect; and intelligence in the slaves, though often encouraged in the ancient world and in the East, is in a more advanced state of society a source of so much danger and an object of so much dread to the masters, that in some of the States of America it is a highly penal offence to teach a slave to read. All processes carried on by slave labor are conducted in the rudest and most unimproved manner. And even the animal strength of the slave is, on an average, not half exerted. The unproductiveness and wastefulness of the industrial system in the Slave States are instructively. displayed in the valuable writings of Mr. Olmsted. The mildest form of slavery is certainly the condition of the serf, who is attached to the soil, supports himself from his allotment, and works. a certain number of days in the week for his lord. Yet there is but one opinion on the extreme inefficiency of serf labor. The following passage is from Professor Jones,* whose "Essay on the Distribution of Wealth" (or rather on Rent), is a copious repertory of valuable facts on the landed tenures of different countries: Essay on the Distribution of Wealth and on the Sources of Taxation." By the Rev. Richard Jones. Page 50. "The Russians, or rather those German writers who have observed the manners and habits of Russia, state some strong facts on this point. Two Middlesex mowers, they say, will mow in a day as much grass as six Russian serfs, and in spite of the dearness of provisions in England and their cheapness in Russia, the mowing a quantity of hay which would cost an English farmer half a copeck, will cost a Russian proprietor three or four copecks.* The Prussian counsellor of state, Jacob, is considered to have proved, that in Russia, where everything is cheap, the labor of a serf is doubly as expensive as that of a laborer in England. M. Schmalz gives a startling account of the unproductiveness of serf labor in Prussia, from his own knowledge and observation. In Austria, it is distinctly stated, that the labor of a serf is equal to only one-third of that of a free hired laborer. This calculation, made in an able work on agriculture (with some extracts from which I have been favored), is applied to the practical purpose of deciding on the number of laborers necessary to cultivate an estate of a given magnitude. So palpable, indeed, are the ill effects of labor rents on the industry of the agricultural population, that in Austria itself, where proposals of changes of any kind do not readily make their way, schemes and plans for the commutation of labor rents are as popular as in the more stirring German provinces of the North." t What is wanting in the quality of the labor itself, is not made up by any excellence in the direction and superintendence. As the same writer § remarks, the landed proprietors "are necessarily, in their character of cultivators of their own domains, the only guides and directors of the industry of the agricultural population," since there can be no intermediate class of capitalist farmers where the laborers are the property of the lord. Great landowners are everywhere an idle class, or if they labor at all, addict themselves only to the more exciting kinds of exertion; that lion's share which superiors always reserve for themselves. "It would," as Mr. Jones observes, "be hopeless and irrational to expect, that a race of noble proprietors, fenced round with privileges and dignity, and attracted to military and political * Schmalz, "Economie Politique," French translation, vol. i. p. 66. Vol. ii. p. 107. The Hungarian revolutionary gov ernment, during its brief existence, bestowed on that country one of the greatest benefits it could receive, and one which the tyranny that succeeded has not dared to take away: it freed the pursuits by the advantages and habits of their station, should ever become attentive cultivators as a body." Even in England, if the cultivation of every estate depended upon its proprietor, any one can judge what would be the result. There would be a few cases of great science and energy, and numerous individual instances of moderate success, but the general state of agriculture would be contemptible. §3. Whether the proprietors themselves would lose by the emancipation of their slaves, is a different question from the comparative effectiveness of free and slave labor to the community. There has been much discussion of this question as an abstract thesis; as if it could possibly admit of any universal solution. Whether slavery or free labor is most profitable to the employer, depends on the wages of the free laborer. These, again, depend on the numbers of the laboring population, compared with the capital and the land. Hired labor is generally so much more efficient than slave labor, that the employer can pay a considerably greater value in wages, than the maintenance of his slaves cost him before, and yet be a gainer by the change: but he cannot do this without limit. The decline of serfdom in Europe, and its extinction in the Western nations, were doubtless hastened by the changes which the growth of population must have made in the pecuniary interests of the master. As population pressed harder upon the land, without any improvement in agriculture, the maintenance of the serfs necessarily became more costly, and their labor less valuable. With the rate of wages such as it is in Ireland, or in England (where, in proportion to its efficiency, labor is quite as cheap as in Ireland), no one can for a moment imagine that slavery could be profitable. If the Irish peasantry were slaves, their masters would be as willing, as their landlords now are, to pay large sums merely to get rid of them. In the rich and underpeopled soil of the West India islands, there is just as little doubt that the balance of profits between free and slave labor was greatly on the side of slavery, and that the compensation granted to the slave owners for its abolition was not more, perhaps even less, than an equivalent for their loss. More needs not be said here on a cause so completely judged and decided as that of slavery. Its demerits are no longer a question requiring argument; though the temper of mind manifested by the larger part of the influential classes in Great |