OUTLINE OF THE ECONOMY OF SLAVE SOCIETIES. 77 CHAPTER V. INTERNAL DEVELOPMENT OF SLAVE SOCIETIES. Ir may be well here to trace briefly the salient features of the system which in the previous chapters it has been attempted to describe. A race superior to another in power and civilization holds that other in bondage, compelling it to work for its profit. The enslaved race, separated broadly from the dominant one in its leading physical and moral attributes, is further distinguished from it by the indelible mark of colour, which prevents the growth of mutual sympathy and transmits to posterity the brand of its disgrace. Kept in compulsory ignorance and deprived of all motive for intelligent exertion, this people can only furnish its possessors with the crudest form of manual labour. It is thus rendered unfit for every branch of industry which requires, in any but the lowest forms, the exercise of care, intelligence, or skill, and is virtually restricted to the pursuit of agriculture. In agriculture it can only be turned to profitable account under certain special conditions—in raising crops of a peculiar kind and upon soils of more than average fertility; while these by its thriftless methods it tends constantly to exhaust. The labour of the enslaved race is thus in practice confined to the production of a few leading staples; but, through the medium of foreign trade, these few commodities become the means of furnishing its masters with all the conveniences and comforts of life-the product of intelligence and skill in countries where labour is free. Further, it was seen that the defects of servile labour are best neutralized, and such advantages as it possesses best turned to account, where the scale of the operations is large,-a circumstance, which, by placing a premium on the employment of large capitals, has gradually led to the accumulation of the whole wealth of the country in the hands of a small number of persons. Four million slaves have thus come into the possession of masters less than one-tenth of their number, by whom they are held as chattel property; while the rest of the dominant race, more numerous than slaveholders and their slaves together, squat over the vast area which slave labour is too unskilful to cultivate, where by hunting and fishing, by plunder or by lawless adventure, they eke out a precarious livelihood. Three leading elements are thus presented by the economy of the slave states -a few planters cultivating the richest soils, a multitude of slaves toiling for their profit, the bulk of the white population 78 NO ELEMENT OF PROGRESS dispersed in a semi-savage condition over a vast territory. In course of time the system begins to bear its fruit. The more fertile soils of the country, tasked again and again to render the same products, at length become exhausted, and refuse any longer to yield up their riches to servile hands; but there are new soils within reach which the plough has not yet touched, regions of high fertility, pre-eminently fitted for the cultivation of slave products, bordering however on the tropics, and unfavourable to human life when engaged in severe toil. At this point a new phase of the system discloses itself. A division of labour takes place. A portion of the slaveholders with their slave bands move forward to occupy the new territory, while the remainder, holding to their old seats, become the breeders of slaves for those who have left them, and take, as their part, the repairing from their more healthy populations the waste of slave life produced by tropical toil. Thus, as the domain of slavery is extended, its organization becomes more complete, and the fate of the slave population more harsh and hopeless. Slavery in its simple and primitive form is developed into slavery supported by a slave trade--into slavery expansive, aggressive, destructive of human life, regardless of human ties, -into slavery in its most dangerous and most atrocious form; and for the system thus matured a secure basis is afforded by the principles of population. Such is an outline of the economy of society in the Slave States of North America, as I have ventured to describe it; and the condition of facts which it discloses goes far, as it seems to me, to establish the conclusion that it is a structure essentially different from any form of social life which has hitherto been known among progressive communities, and one which, if allowed to proceed in its normal development undisturbed by intervention from without, can only conduct to one issue-an organized barbarism of the most relentless and formidable kind. But it may be well to pursue this inquiry somewhat further. If the germs of a future civilization are contained in the social system which has been described, in what department of it are they to be found? Among the mean whites? Among the slaves? Among the slave masters? The mean whites, as has been shown, are the natural growth of the slave system; their existence and character flowing necessarily from two facts-the slaves, which render the capitalists independent of their services, and the wilderness, the * "The rich," said General Marion, and in these few words he sketched the whole working of slavery, "have no need of the poor, because they have their own slaves to do their work." IN SLAVE COMMUNITIES. 79 constant feature of slave countries, which enables them to exist without engaging in regular work. There is no capital to support them as hired labourers, and they have the means of subsisting, in a semi-savage condition, without it. Under these circumstances, by what steps are they to advance to an improvement of their condition? It will perhaps be thought that with a vast unappropriated territory around them the mean whites may be expected in time to become peasant proprietors, and to cultivate the districts which they now merely occupy. This is undoubtedly what would happen with an influx of Northern settlers. But the mean whites lack for such a lot two indispensable requisites, capital and industry. Had they the latter, they might perhaps in time acquire the former; but regular industry is only known to them as the vocation of slaves, and it is the one fate which above all others they desire to avoid. They will for a time, indeed, when pressed for food, their ordinary resources of hunting or plunder failing them, hire themselves out for occasional services; but, so soon as they have satisfied the immediate need, they hasten to escape from the degradation of industry, and are as eager as Indians to return to their wilds. Another means of redemption is sometimes imagined for the mean whites. It is thought that, with the progress of population in the Slave States, they will ultimately be forced into competition with the slaves, and that, this competition once effectually commenced, the whites once engaged in regular industry, the superiority of free to servile labour will become manifest, and will gradually lead to the displacement of the latter. In this way, it is anticipated, the problem of abolishing slavery, and that of elevating the white population, may in the natural course of events be effectually solved by the same process. Unfortunately this cheering view is entirely unsustained by any foundation of fact. Population in slave communities follows laws of growth of its own. It increases, it is true, but by dispersion, not by concentration, and consequently the pressure upon the poor white, which it is assumed will force him into competition with the slave, is never likely to be greater than at the present moment. In fact it has now in many districts reached the starvation point, but without producing any of the effects which are anticipated from it. But, again, the free labour of the South possesses none of that superiority to slave labour, which is characteristic of free labour when reared in free communities. This is a distinction which in economic 80 FREE LABOUR THE BEST PRODUCTIVE AGENT. reasonings on slavery is frequently overlooked,* but which it is all-important to bear in mind. The free labourer reared in free communities, energetic, intelligent, animated by the impulse of acquiring property, and trained to habits of thrift, is the best productive agent in the world, and, when brought into competition with the slave, will, except under very exceptional circumstances (such as existed when the continent was first settled), prove more than a match for him. But the free labourer of the South, blighted physically and morally by the presence of slavery, and trained in habits more suited to savage than to industrial life, easily succumbs in the competition. In fact the experiment is being constantly tried in the Southern States, and always with the same result. On the relative merits of slave and free labour-such free labour as the Slave States can produce-there is but one opinion among the planters. It is universally agreed that the labour of the mean whitest is more inefficient, more unreliable, more unmanageable than even the crude efforts of the slaves. If slavery in the South is to be displaced by free industry, it can never be through the competition of such free industry as this. * Thus a writer in the Saturday Review (Nov. 2, 1861), in noticing a work of Mr. Olmsted's, reasons as follows:- "It would be hasty to infer, as a great many philanthropists have done, that free labour would answer better than slave labour in the South. The Southern planters are keen enough speculators to have discovered the fact if it were true. In reality the experiment has been tried and resulted in favour of slave labour." The experiment no doubt has been tried, and with the result alleged; but how far the experiment, as it has been conducted, is conclusive, the reader will be enabled to judge when he reads the following passage from Mr. Olmsted, in a review of one of whose works the above argument occurred:-" The labourer, who in New York gave a certain amount of labour for his wages in a day, soon finds in Virginia that the ordinary measure of labour is smaller than in New York: a 'day's work' or a month's does not mean the same that it did in New York. He naturally adapts his wares to the market. . . . The labourer, finding that the capitalists of Virginia are accustomed to pay for a poor article at a high price, prefers to furnish them the poor article at their usual price, rather than a better article, unless at a more than correspondingly better price. Now let the white labourer come here from the North or from Europe-his nature demands a social life-shall he associate with the poor, slavish, degraded negro, with whom labour and punishment are almost synonymous? or shall he be the friend and companion of the white man? . . . Associating with either or both, is it not inevitable that he will be rapidly demoralized--that he will soon learn to hate labour, give as little of it for his hire as he can, become base, cowardly, faithless,-'worse than a nigger' ?" The case is simple. The moral atmosphere generated by slavery in the South corrupts the free labourer, whether native or imported: thus corrupted, he fails in competition with the slave; but does it follow from this that, if slavery no longer existed, free labour would be less efficient in the South than slave labour is at present? For that is the point. † And it may be added, of such free labourers as will consent to the degradation of living in a slave community. SPARSENESS OF POPULATION. 81 It does not appear, therefore, in what manner habits of regular industry can ever be acquired by the mass of the population of the Southern States while under a slave régime. The demoralization produced by the presence of a degraded class renders the white man at once an unwilling and an inefficient labourer; and the external incidents of slavery afford him the means of existing without engaging in regular toil. The question has, in truth, passed beyond the region of speculation. For two hundred years it has been submitted to the proof; and the mean whites are as far now from having made any progress in habits of regular industry as they were at the commencement of the period. The result, then, at which we arrive is, that regular industry is not to be expected from the mass of the free people of the Southern States while slavery continues. Let us for a moment reflect upon some of the consequences involved in this single fact. And, first, it is evident that under these conditions population in the Slave States must ever remain sparse; for density of population is the result of concentrated wealth, and concentrated wealth flows from the steady pursuit of systematic industry. What are the facts? Over the whole area of the Slave States the average density of population does not exceed 11.29 persons to the square mile. It is true a large portion of the region included in this average has but recently been acquired, and cannot be considered as having yet received its full complement of inhabitants. Let us, then, confine our observations to the older states. If population be capable of becoming dense under slave institutions, it should have realized this condition in Virginia. This state has been for two hundred and fifty years the seat of the Anglo-Saxon race, and the chosen field of its industry: it abounds in natural advantages; its climate is remarkably salubrious. What, then, is the result of the experiment in Virginia? It appears from the census of 1850, that, after an industrial career of two hundred and fifty years, this country contained an average of 23 persons to thesquare mile! This, however, does not adequately represent the case; for of these 23 persons one-third on an average were slaves. Deducting these, the density of population in Virginia-of population among whom knowledge is not considered contraband, of population who are capable of mixing together as fellow-citizen (which is the point essential to bur argument) -the density of this population is represented by the proportion of 15 persons to the square mile! Compare this with the progress of population in an area of the Free States naturally |