was too glad of an excuse not to interfere: the constantly destitute condition of the Treasury, and the ceaseless clamour against taxation, in consequence of the wasting away of the national resources under the action of Free Trade and a contracted currency, made them too happy of any excuse for avoiding any payments from the public Treasury, even on behalf of the most suffering and destitute of the community. This excuse was found in the plausible plea, that any advances on their part would interfere with the free exercise of individual enterprise – a plea somewhat similar to what it would be if all laws for the protection of paupers, minors, and lunatics, were swept away, lest the free action of the creditors on their estates should be disturbed. The consequence has been that the whole, or nearly the whole, of the immense stream of emigration which general distress has now caused to flow from the British Islands, has been sustained by the efforts of private individuals, and left to the tender mercies of the owners or freighters of emigrant ships. The result is well known. Frightful disasters, from imperfect manning and equipment, have occurred to several of these misery-laden vessels. A helpless multitude is thrown ashore at New York and Montreal, destitute alike of food, clothing, or the means of getting on to the frontier, where its labour could be of value; and the competition for employment at home has been increased to a frightful degree by the removal of so large a proportion of such of the tenantry or middle class as were possessed of little capitals; and had the means either of maintaining themselves or giving employment to others. At least L.3,000,000 yearly goes abroad with the emigrant ships, and that is drawn almost entirely from the lower class of farmers, the very men who employ the poor. The class who have gone away was for the most part that which should have remained, for it had the means of doing, something in the world, and employing others; that which was left at home, was that which should have been removed, because they were the destitute who could neither find employment in these islands, nor do anything on their own account from want of funds. Hence above a million and a-half of persons in Great Britain, and above seven hundred thousand in Ireland, on an average of years, are constantly maintained by the poor-rates, for the most part in utter idleness, although the half of them are able-bodied, and their labour – if they could only be forwarded to the frontier of civilisation in America – would be of incalculable service to our own colonies or the United States.
The very magnitude of the trade employed in the exportation of the emigrants, and the importation of food for those who remain, has gone far to conceal the ruinous effects of Free Trade. Between the carrying out of emigrants, and the bringing in of grain – the exportation of our strength, and the importation of our weakness – our chief seaports may continue for some time to drive a gainful traffic. The Liverpool Times observes: —
"The number of emigrant vessels which sailed from Liverpool during the last year, was 568. Of these vessels, many are from 1500 to 2000 tons burden, and a few of them even reach 3000 tons. They are amongst the finest vessels that ever were built, are well commanded, well-manned, fitted out in excellent style, and present a wonderful improvement in all respects, when compared with the same class of vessels even half a dozen years ago. Taking the average passage-money of each passenger in these vessels at £6, the conveying of emigrants yields a revenue of upwards of £1,000,000 sterling to the shipping which belongs to or frequents this port, independent of the great amount of money which the passage of such an immense multitude of persons through the town must cause to be spent in it. In fact, the passage and conveyance of emigrants has become one of the greatest trades of Liverpool." —Liverpool Times, Jan. 10, 1851.
The number of emigrants from the Mersey and the Clyde, since the days of Free Trade began, have been prodigious, and rapidly increasing. They have stood thus: —
It was precisely the same in the declining days of the Roman empire – the great seaport towns continued to flourish when all other interests in the state were rapidly sinking; and when the plains in the interior were desolate, or tenanted only by the ox or the buffalo, the great cities were still the abodes of vast realised wealth and unbounded private luxury. We are rapidly following in the same path. The realised capital of Great Britain was estimated in 1814 at L.1,200,000,000; in 1841, Mr Porter estimated it at L.2,000,000,000; the capital subject to legacy duty in Great Britain, on an average of forty-one years, from 1797 to 1841, was L.26,000,000; in the single year 1840 it was L.40,500,000. The increase of realised capital among the rich has been nearly as great as that of pauperism, misery, and consequent emigration among the poor – the well-known and oft-observed premonitory symptoms of the decline of nations.
It is in the midst of these numerous and overwhelming evils, the result mainly of theoretical innovation and class government in the country – when above two millions of paupers in the two islands are painfully supported by public assessment; when three hundred thousand are annually driven into exile, and a hundred and fifty thousand more are constantly supported in jails, one-half of whom are committed for serious crimes;17 when all classes, excepting those engaged in the export trade of human beings and the import of human food, are languishing from the decline of domestic employment, and the constantly increasing influx of foreign goods, both rude and manufactured – that we are assured by one benevolent set of philanthropists that all will be right, if we only give the starving working-classes model houses, rented at L.8 each, to live in; by another, that ragged schools for their destitute children will set all in order; by a third, that a schoolmaster in every wynd is alone required to remove all the evils under which we labour; by a fourth, that cold baths and wash-houses to lave their emaciated limbs, are the great thing; by a fifth, that church extension is the only effectual remedy, and that, till there is a minister for every seven hundred inhabitants, it is in vain to hope for any social amelioration. We respect the motives which actuate each and all of these benevolent labourers in the great vineyard of human suffering; we acknowledge that each within a limited sphere does some good, and extricates a certain number of individuals or families out of the abyss of degradation or suffering in which they are immersed. As to anything like national relief, or alleviation of distress in any sensible degree, from their united efforts, when the great causes of evil which have been mentioned continue in undiminished activity, it is as chimerical as to expect by the schoolmaster or the washing-woman to arrest the ravages of the plague or the cholera.
Two circumstances of general operation, and overwhelming importance, render all these various and partial remedies, while the great causes which depress the demand for labour and deprive the people of employment continue in operation, entirely nugatory and ineffectual, in a general view, to arrest our social evils.
The first of these is, that these remedies, one and all of them, are calculated for the elevation and intellectual or moral improvement of the people, but have no tendency to improve their circumstances, or diminish the load of pauperism, destitution, and misery with which they are overwhelmed. Until the latter is done, however, all the efforts made for the attainment of the former, how benevolent and praiseworthy soever, will have no general effect, and, in a national point of view, may be regarded as almost equal to nothing. The reason is that, generally speaking, the human race are governed, in the first instance, almost entirely by their physical sufferings or comforts, and that intellectual or moral improvement cannot be either thought of or attended to till a certain degree of ease as to the imperious demands of physical nature has been attained. In every age, doubtless, there are some persons of both sexes who will heroically struggle against the utmost physical privation, and pursue the path of virtue, or sedulously improve their minds, under circumstances the most adverse, and with facilities the most inconsiderable. But these are the exceptions, not the rule. The number of such persons is so inconsiderable, compared to the immense mass who are governed by their physical sensations, that remedies addressed to the intellect of man, without reference to the improvement of his circumstances, can never operate generally upon society. Even the most intellectual and powerful minds must give way under a certain amount of physical want or necessity. Take Newton and Milton, Bacon and Descartes, Cervantes and Cicero, and make them walk thirty miles in a wintry day, and come in to a wretched hovel at night, and see what they will desire. Rely upon it, it will be neither philosophy nor poetry, but warmth and food. A good fire and a good supper
Including the police committals, much more numerous than those for trial.
