The Slave Trade, Domestic and Foreign: Why It Exists, and How It May Be ExtinguishedCarey, Henry Charles
History
The Slave Trade, Domestic and Foreign: Why It Exists, and How It May Be Extinguished
Carey, Henry Charles
Labor; Slave trade; Slavery; Slavery -- United States; Tariff -- United States; Working class
proportion; and scarcely one of them now draws two-thirds of the
income he drew from the same lands in 1817.
"There are in the valley of the Nerbudda, districts that yield a
great deal more produce every year than either Orcha, Jansee, or
Duteea; and yet, from the want of the same domestic markets, they do
not yield one-fourth of the amount of land revenue. The lands are,
however, rated equally high to the assessment, in proportion to their
value to the farmers and cultivators. To enable them to yield a
larger revenue to government, they require to have larger
establishments as markets for land produce. These establishments may
be either public, and paid by government, or they may be private, as
manufactories, by which the land produce of these districts would be
consumed by people employed in investing the value of their labour in
commodities suited to the demand of distant markets, and more
valuable than land produce in proportion to their weight and bulk.
These are the establishments which government should exert itself to
introduce and foster, since the valley of the Nerbudda, in addition
to a soil exceedingly fertile, has in its whole line, from its source
to its embouchure, rich beds of coal reposing for the use of future
generations, under the sandstone of the Sathpore and Vindhya ranges;
and beds no less rich of very fine iron. These advantages have not
yet been justly appreciated; but they will be so by and by."[79]
From the concluding lines of this extract the reader will see that
India is abundantly supplied with fuel and iron ore, and that if she
has not good machinery, the deficiency is not chargeable to nature. At
the close of the last century cotton abounded, and to so great an
extent was the labour of men, women, and children applied to its
conversion into cloth, that, even with their imperfect machinery, they
not only supplied the home demand for the beautiful tissues of Dacca
and the coarse products of Western India, but they exported to other
parts of the world no less than 200,000,000 of pieces per annum.[80]
Exchanges with every part of the world were so greatly in their favour
that a rupee which would now sell for but 1s. 10d. or 44 cents, was
then worth 2s. 8d. or 64 cents. The Company had a monopoly of
collecting taxes in India, but in return it preserved to the people
the control of their domestic market, by aid of which they were
enabled to convert their rice, their salt, and their cotton, into
cloth that could be cheaply carried to the most remote parts of the
world. Such protection was needed, because while England prohibited
the export of even a single collier who might instruct the people of
India in the mode of mining coal--of a steam engine to pump water or
raise coal, or a mechanic who could make one--of a worker in iron who
might smelt the ore--of a spinning-jenny or power-loom, or of an
artisan who could give instruction in the use of such machines--and
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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