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
We see thus, how great is the tendency to the growth of wealth as men
are enabled more and more to combine their exertions with those of
their fellow-men, consuming on or near the land the products of the
land, and enabling the farmer, not only to repair readily the
exhaustion caused by each successive crop, but also to call to his aid
the services of the chemist in the preparation of artificial manures,
as well as to call into activity the mineral ones by which he is
almost everywhere surrounded. We see, too, how much it must be opposed
to the interests of every community to have its products exported in
their rude state, and thus to have its land exhausted. The same author
from whom the above quotations have been made informs us that when the
manure is not returned to the land the yield must diminish from year
to year, until at length it will not be more than one-fourth of what
it had originally been: and this is in accordance with all
observation.
The natural tendency of the loom and the anvil to seek to take their
place by the side of the plough and harrow, is thus exhibited by ADAM
SMITH:--
"An inland country, naturally fertile and easily cultivated, produces
a great surplus of provisions beyond what is necessary for
maintaining the cultivators; and on account of the expense of land
carriage, and inconveniency of river navigation, it may frequently be
difficult to send this surplus abroad. Abundance, therefore, renders
provisions cheap, and encourages a great number of workmen to settle
in the neighbourhood, who find that their industry can there procure
them more of the necessaries and conveniences of life than in other
places. They work up the materials of manufacture which the land
produces, and exchange their finished work, or, what is the same
thing, the price of it, for more materials and provisions. _They give
a new value to the surplus part of the rude produce, by saving the
expense of carrying it to the waterside, or to some distant market_;
and they furnish the cultivators with something in exchange for it,
that is either useful or agreeable to them, upon easier terms than
they could have obtained it before. _The cultivators get a better
price for their surplus produce, and can purchase cheaper other
conveniences which they have occasion for._ They are thus both
encouraged and enabled to increase this surplus produce by a further
improvement and better cultivation of the land; and _as the fertility
of the land has given birth to the manufacture, so the progress of
the manufacture reacts upon the land, and increases still further its
fertility_. The manufacturers first supply the neighbourhood, and
afterward, as their work improves and refines, more distant markets.
_For though neither the rude produce, nor even the coarse
manufacture, could, without the greatest difficulty, support the
expense of a considerable land carriage, the refined and improved
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