|
|
|
|
Henry Carey Excerpts from: The Slave Trade, Domestic and Foreign (1853)
Hence it is that we see the slave trade prevail to so great an extent in all
the countries subject to the British system.... The system to which the
world is indebted for these results is called "free trade"; but there can be
no freedom of trade where there is no freedom of man, for the first of all
commodities to be exchanged is labour, and the freedom of man consists only
in the exercise of the right to determine for himself in what manner his
labour shall be employed, and how he will dispose of its products.... It
[the British System] is the most gigantic system of slavery the world has
yet seen, and therefore it is that freedom gradually disappears from every
country over which England is enabled to obtain control.... In this country
protection has always, to some extent, existed; but at some times it has
been efficient, and at others not; and our tendency toward freedom or
slavery has always been in the direct ratio of its efficiency or
inefficiency. In the period from 1824 to 1833, the tendency was steadily in
the former direction, but it was only in the latter part of it that it was
made really efficient. Then mills and furnaces increased in number, and
there was a steady increase in the tendency toward the establishment of
local places of exchange; and then it was that Virginia held her convention
at which was last discussed in that State the question of emancipation.
In 1833, however, protection was abandoned, and a tariff was established by
which it was provided that we should, in a few years, have a system of
merely revenue duties; and from that date the abandonment of the older State
proceeded with a rapidity never before known, and with it grew the domestic
slave trade and the pro-slavery feeling. Then it was that were passed the
laws restricting emancipation and prohibiting education; and then it was
that the exports of slaves from Virginia and the Carolinas was so great that
the population of those States remained almost, if not quite stationary, and
the growth of the black population fell from thirty percent, in the ten
previous years, to twenty-four percent....
Slavery now travels North, whereas only twenty years ago freedom was
traveling South. That such is the case is the natural consequence of our
submission, even in part, to the system that looks to compelling the export
of raw products, the exhaustion of the land, the cheapening of labour, and
the export of the labourer. Wherever it is resisted, slaver dies away and
freedom grows.
excerpts from the XV chapter on
"How Can Slavery Be Extinguished?"
The system commonly called free trade tends to produce the former results
("the cheapening of labour and land everywhere, the perpetuation of slavery,
and the extension of its domain"--ed.); and where man is enslaved there can
be no real freedom of trade. That one which looks to protection against this
extraordinary system of taxation, tends to enable men to determine for
themselves whether they will make their exchanges abroad or at home; and it
is in this power of choice that consists the freedom of trade and of man. By
adopting the 'free trade,' or British, system we place ourselves side by
side with the men who have ruined Ireland and India, and are now poisoning
and enslaving the Chinese people. By adopting the other, we place ourselves
by the side of those whose measures tend not only to the improvement of
their own subjects, but to the emancipation of the slave everywhere, whether
in the British Islands, India, Italy, or America.
It will be said, however, that protection tends to destroy commerce, the
civilizer of mankind. Directly the reverse, however, is the fact. It is the
system now called free trade that tends to the destruction of commerce, as
is shown wherever it obtains. Protection looks only to resisting a great
scheme of foreign taxation that everywhere limits the power of man to
combine his efforts with those of his neighborman for the increase of his
production, the improvement of his mind, and the enlargement of his desires
for, and his power to procure, the commodities produced among the different
nations of the world. The commerce of India does not grow, nor does that of
Portugal, or of Turkey; that but that of the protected countries does
increase, as has been shown in the case of Spain, and can now be shown in
that of Germany. In 1834, before the formation of the Zollverein, Germany
took from Great Britain her own produce and manufactures, only 4,429,727
pounds, whereas in 1852 she took 7,694,069 pounds.
And as regards this country, in which protection has always to some extent
existed, it is the best customer that England ever had, and our demands upon
her grow most steadily and regularly under protection, because the greater
our power to make coarse goods, the greater are those desires which lead to
the purchase of iron ones, and the greater our ability to gratify them.
Whatever tends to increase the power of man to associate with his
neighborman, tends to promote the growth of commerce, and to produce that
material, moral, and intellectual improvement which leads to freedom. To
enable men to exercise that power is the object of protection. The men of
this country, therefore, who desire that all men, black, white and brown,
shall at the earliest period enjoy perfect freedom of thought, speech,
action, and trade, will find, on full consideration, that duty to themselves
and to their fellow-men requires that they should advocate efficient
protection, as the true and only mode of abolishing the domestic trade in
slaves, whether black or white.'
|
|
|
|
|
|
Home
