Part 27 (2/2)
How strikingly does the following contrast with the description of London, and its hundred thousand people without a place to lay their heads!--
”The streets are but poorly lighted, gas is not yet introduced, and the police is an invisible force; yet one may walk at all hours through this town without seeing a disorderly person, a man in liquor unable to take care of himself, or a female street-walker. Every one appears to have a home and bed of some kind, and the houseless are unknown as a cla.s.s.”--P. 394.
Why this is so is, that, because of the growing improvement in the condition of the people, the land is daily increasing in value, and is becoming divided, and men are attracted from the city to the land and the smaller towns--directly the reverse of what is observed in England. ”There is,” says Mr. Laing--
”No such influx, as in our large towns, of operatives in every trade, who, coming from the country to better their condition, are by far too numerous for the demand, must take work at lower and lower wages to keep themselves from starving, and who reduce their fellow-craftsmen and themselves to equal misery. Employment is more fixed and stationary for the employed and the employers. There is no foreign trade or home consumption to occasion great and sudden activity and expansion in manufactures, and equally great and sudden stagnation and collapse.”--P. 394.
”Drunkenness has almost,” we are told, ”disappeared from the Danish character,” and it is
”The education of the tastes for more refined amus.e.m.e.nts than the counter of the gin-palace or the back parlour of the whisky-shop afford, that has superseded the craving for the excitement of spirituous liquor. The tea-gardens, concert-rooms, ball-rooms, theatres, skittle-grounds, all frequented indiscriminately by the highest and the lowest cla.s.ses, have been the schools of useful knowledge that have imparted to the lowest cla.s.s something of the manners and habits of the highest, and have eradicated drunkenness and brutality, in ordinary intercourse, from the character of the labouring people.”--P. 396.
Denmark is, says this high authority, ”a living evidence of the falsity of the theory that population increases more rapidly than subsistence where the land of the country is held by small working proprietors;”[190] and she is a living evidence, too, of the falsity of the theory that men commence with the cultivation of the most productive soils, and find themselves, as wealth and population increase, forced to resort to poorer ones, with diminished return to labour. Why she is enabled to afford such conclusive evidence of this is, that she pursues a policy tending to permit her people to have that real free trade which consists in having the power to choose between the foreign and domestic markets--a power, the exercise of which is denied to India and Ireland, Portugal and Turkey. She desires to exercise control over her own movements, and not over those of others; and therefore it is that her people become from day to day more free and her land from day to day more valuable.
Turkey is the paradise of the system commonly known by the name of free trade--that system under which the artisan _is not permitted_ to take his place by the side of the producer of silk and cotton--and the consequence is, seen in the growing depopulation of the country, the increasing poverty and slavery of its people, the worthlessness of its land, and in the weakness of its government. Denmark, on the contrary, is the paradise of the system supposed to be opposed to free trade--that system under which the artisan and the farmer _are_ permitted to combine their efforts--and the consequence is seen in the increase of population, in the growth of wealth and freedom, in the growing value of land, in the increasing tendency to equality, and in the strength of its government, as exhibited in its resistance of the whole power of Northern Germany during the late Schleswig-Holstein war, and as afterward exhibited toward those of its own subjects who had aided in bringing on the war. ”It is to the honour,” says Mr.
Laing [191] --
”Of the Danish king and government, and it is a striking example of the different progress of civilization in the North and in the South of Europe, that during the three years this insurrection lasted, and now that it is quelled, not one individual has been tried and put to death, or in any way punished for a civil or political offence by sentence of a court-martial, or of any other than the ordinary courts of justice; not one life has been taken but in the field of battle, and by the chance of war. Banishment for life has been the highest punishment inflicted upon traitors who, as military officers deserting their colours, breaking their oaths of fidelity, and giving up important trusts to the enemy, would have been tried by court-martial and shot in any other country. Civil functionaries who had abused their official power, and turned it against the government, were simply dismissed.”
These facts contrast strikingly with those recently presented to view by Irish history. Ireland had no friends in her recent attempt at change of government. Her leaders had not even attempted to call in the aid of other nations. They stood alone, and yet the English government deemed it necessary to place them in an island at a distance of many thousand miles, and to keep them there confined.
Denmark, on the contrary, was surrounded by enemies close at hand--enemies that needed no s.h.i.+ps for the invasion of her territory--and yet she contented herself with simple banishment. The policy of the former looks abroad, and therefore is it weak at home.
That of the latter looks homeward, and therefore is it that at home she is strong; small as she is, compared with other powers, in her territory and in the number of her population.
CHAPTER XIX.
HOW FREEDOM GROWS IN SPAIN AND IN BELGIUM.
Spain expelled the industrious portion of her population, and almost at the same time acquired colonies of vast extent, to which she looked for revenue. Centralization here was almost perfect--and here, as everywhere, it has been accompanied by poverty and weakness. With difficulty she has been enabled to defend her rights on her own soil, and she has found it quite impossible to maintain her power abroad, and for the reason that her system tended to the impoverishment of her people and the destruction of the value of labour and land. Her history tends throughout to show that nations which desire respect for their own rights, _must_ learn to respect those of others.
The policy of Spain has been unfavourable to commerce, internal and external. Exchanges at home were burdened with heavy taxes, and the raw materials of manufacture, even those produced at home, were so heavily taxed on their pa.s.sage from the place of production to that of consumption, that manufactures could not prosper. The great middle cla.s.s of artisans could therefore scarcely be found, and the scattered agriculturists were thus deprived of their aid in the effort to establish or maintain their freedom. Towns and cities decayed, and land, became more and more consolidated in the hands of great n.o.blemen on one side and the church on the other, and talent found no field for its exercise, except in the service of the church or the state.
While thus destroying internal trade by taxation, efforts were made to build it up by aid of restrictions on external trade; but the very fact that the former was destroyed made it necessary for thousands and tens of thousands of persons to endeavour to earn wages in the smuggling of foreign merchandise, and the country was filled with men ever ready to violate the law, because of the cheapness of labour. The laws restraining the import of foreign merchandise were easily violated, because its bulk was small and its value great; whereas those interfering with the transit of raw materials were easily enforced, because the bulk was great and their value small; and therefore the whole system tended effectually to prevent the artisan from taking his place by the side of the grower of food and wool; and hence the depopulation, poverty, and weakness of this once rich and powerful country.
Fortunately for her, however, the day arrived when she was to lose her colonies, and find herself compelled to follow the advice of Adam Smith, and look to home for revenue; and almost from that date to the present, notwithstanding foreign invasions, civil wars, and revolutions, her course has been onward, and with each succeeding year there has been a greater tendency toward diversification of employment, the growth of towns and other places of local exchange, the improvement of agriculture, the strengthening of the people in their relations with the government, and the strengthening of the nation as regards the other nations of the earth.
Among the earliest measures tending toward the emanc.i.p.ation of the people of Germany, Russia, and Denmark, was, as has been seen, the removal of restrictions upon the trade in land, the great machine of production. So, too, was it in Spain. According to a return made to the Cortes of Cadiz, out of sixty millions of acres then in cultivation, only twenty millions were held by the men who cultivated them, while thirty were in the hands of great n.o.bles, and ten were held by the church. Under a decree of secularization, a large portion of the latter has been sold, and the result is seen in the fact that the number of owners cultivating their own properties has risen from 273,760 to 546,100; and the number of farms from 403,408 to 1,095,200.[192]
A further step toward freedom and the establishment of equal rights, is found in the abolition of a great variety of small and vexatious taxes, subst.i.tuting therefor a land-tax, payable alike by the small and the great proprietor; and in the abolition of internal duties on the exchange of the raw materials of manufacture. With each of these we find increasing tendency toward the establishment of that division of employment which gives value to labour and land. From 1841 to 1846, the number of spindles in Catalonia has grown from 62,000 to 121,000, and that of looms from 30,000 to 45,000, while cotton factories had been put in operation in various other parts of the kingdom.[193]
Still later, numerous others have been started, and a traveller of the past year informs us that the province of Granada now bids fair to rival Catalonia in her manufactures.[194] In 1841, the total value of the products of the cotton manufacture was estimated at about four millions of dollars, but in 1846 it had risen to more than six and a half millions. The woollen manufacture had also rapidly increased, and this furnishes employment at numerous places throughout the kingdom, one of which, Alcoy, is specially referred to by M. Block,[195] as situated among the mountains which separate the ancient kingdom of Valencia and Murcia, and as having no less than 24,000 spindles, and 12,000 men, in addition to a great number of women and children, engaged in this branch of manufacture.
In regard to the progress of manufactures generally, the following statement, furnished by a recent American traveller to whom we are indebted for an excellent work on Spain, furnishes much information, and cannot be read without interest by all those who derive pleasure from witnessing advance in civilization.[196]
”Of late years there has been a considerable effort to extend and improve the production and manufacture of silk, and the result has been very favourable. The silkworm, formerly confined, in a great degree, to Valencia and Murcia, is now an article of material importance in the wealth of the two Castiles, Rioja, and Aragon. The silk fabrics of Talavera, Valencia, and Barcelona are many of them admirably wrought, and are sold at rates which appear very moderate.
I had particular occasion to note the cheapness of the damasks which are sold in Madrid from the native looms. It is not easy to imagine any thing more magnificent, of their kind. The woollen cloths, too, of home manufacture, are, some of them, very admirable, and the coa.r.s.er kinds supply, I believe, a considerable part of the national demand. In cheapness I have never seen them surpa.s.sed. The finer qualities do not bear so favourable a comparison with the foreign article; but those who were familiar with the subject informed me that their recent improvement had been very decided. Many laudable efforts have been made to render the supply of wool more abundant, and to improve its quality, and there has been a considerable importation of foreign sheep, with a view to crossing on the native breeds. The sheep-rearing interest is so very large in Spain, that any material improvement in the quality of the wool must add greatly to the national wealth, as well as to the importance of the woollen manufacture and its ability to encounter foreign compet.i.tion.
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