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
The tendency toward the transfer of English capital to India, as he
informs us, retrogrades instead of advancing, and this is precisely
what we might expect to find to be the case. _Capital never seeks a
country from which men are flying as they now fly from India._ The
English houses bring none, but being in general mere speculators, they
borrow largely and enter into large operations, and when the bubble
bursts, the poor Hindoo suffers in the prostration of trade and
decline in the prices of cotton and sugar. "The consequence is," as
Mr. Campbell says--
"That European speculation has retrograded. Far up the country, where
the agents of the old houses were formerly numerous and well supplied
with money, the planters are now few and needy, and generally earn
but a precarious subsistence as in fact the servants of native
capitalists."--P. 204.
Iron, by aid of which the people might improve their processes of
cultivation and manufacture, has little tendency toward India. The
average export of it to that country in 1845 and '46 was but 13,000
tons, value £160,000, or about two-pence worth for every five of the
population. Efforts are now being made for the construction of
railroads, but their object is that of carrying out the system of
centralization, and thus still further destroying the power of
association, because they look to the annihilation of what still
remains of domestic manufacture, and thus _cheapening cotton_. With
all the improvements in the transportation of that commodity, its poor
cultivator obtains less for it than he did thirty years since, and the
effect of further improvement can be none other than that of producing
a still further reduction, and still further deterioration of the
condition of the men who raise food and cotton. As yet the power of
association continues in the Punjab, but it is proposed now to hold
there great fairs for the sale of English manufactures, and the day
cannot be far distant when the condition of the people of the new
provinces will be similar to that of those of the old ones, as no
effort will be spared to carry out the system which looks to driving
the whole people to agriculture, and thus compelling them to exhaust
their land. It is needed, says Mr. Chapman, the great advocate of
railways in India, that the connection between "the Indian grower and
English spinner" become more intimate, and "_the more the English is
made to outweigh the native home demand, the more strongly will the
native agriculturist feel that his personal success depends on
securing and improving his British connection_"[109]6750--that is, the
more the natives can be prevented from combining, their labours, the
greater, as Mr. Chapman thinks, will be the prosperity of India.
Centralization has impoverished, and to a considerable extent
depopulated, that country, but its work is not yet done. It remains
yet to reduce the people of the Punjab, of Affghanistan and Burmah, to
the condition of the Bengalese.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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