The records of history might be searched in vain for a case like hers--for a nation voluntarily subjecting itself to a process of the most exhaustive kind. They present no previous case of a great community, abounding in men of high intelligence, rejoicing in the diminution of the proportion of its people _capable of feeding themselves and others_, and in the increasing proportion _requiring to be fed_. England now exports in a year nearly 400,000 men and women that have been raised at enormous cost,[165] and she rejoices at receiving in exchange 300,000 infants yet to be raised. She exports the young, and retains the aged. She sends abroad the sound, and keeps at home the unsound. She expels the industrious, and retains the idle. She parts with the small capitalist, but she keeps the pauper. She sends men from her own land, and with them the commodities they must consume while preparing for cultivation distant lands;--and all these things are regarded as evidences of growing wealth and power. She sends men from where they could make twelve or twenty exchanges in a year to a distance from, which they can make but one; and this is taken as evidence of the growth of commerce. She sends her people from the land to become trampers in her roads, or to seek refuge in filthy lanes and cellars; and this is hailed as tending to promote the freedom of man. In all this, however, she is but realizing the prophecies of Adam Smith, in relation to the determination of his countrymen to see in foreign trade alone "England's treasure." In all nations, ancient and modern, freedom has come with the growth of association, and every act of association is an act of commerce. Commerce, and freedom grow, therefore, together, and whatever tends to lessen the one must tend equally to lessen the other. The object of the whole British system is to destroy the power of association, for it seeks to prevent everywhere the growth of the mechanic arts, and without them there can be no local places of exchange, and none of that combination so needful to material, moral, intellectual, and political improvement. That such has been its effect in Portugal and Turkey, the West Indies, and India, and in our Southern States, we know--and in all of these freedom declines as the power of association diminishes. That such has been its effect in Ireland and Scotland, the reader has seen. In England we may see everywhere the same tendency to prevent the existence of association, or of freedom of trade. Land, the great instrument of production, is becoming from day to day more consolidated. Capital, the next great instrument, is subjected to the control of the Bank of England--an institution that has probably caused more ruin than any other that has ever existed.[166]