Various
Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 66, No. 408, January 1849
CIVIL REVOLUTION IN THE CANADAS – A REMEDY
To be British, or not to be, is now literally the question in all the North American colonies. Like England, when Mr Cobden and the potato blight produced, together, a panic which seemed to obliterate, for the time, all past arguments, and all future consequences – changing minds before deemed unchangeable, and raising to fame and greatness men and reasoning that the world was never previously able to see the force or the depth of – like England then, are the colonies now. They are in all the depths and mazes of a panic. One of the storms which occasionally break over the heads of all people is now raging over theirs. Nor is it surprising – with England's history for ten years before us – if there should be those among them who shrink from its drenchings or its shocks, or are incapable, in the midst of its wild commotions, of seeing sunshine in the distance. For our part, we are fond of that sturdy greatness which can put its shoulder to the blast, and say, "Blow on, great guns; we can stand your thunder."
Not that the panic in the colonies arises from the people's looking forward to having nothing to eat. They have plenty, thank God, and to spare. But they have nothing in their pockets; and, what is worse, they are afraid, if they go on much longer as they are now doing, they will soon be without pockets too. Factory cotton may be but fourpence a yard; but if they haven't the fourpence to pay for it, it might as well be as dear as diamonds, as far as they are concerned.
The policy of England, from the day that Lord Chatham said "that he would not allow the colonies to make a hob-nail for themselves," has been to convert them into marts for her manufactures – to make them useful and profitable to her, by causing them to consume those things which give her poor employment, her merchants and manufacturers profit, and her commercial navy all the incidental carrying trade. As a return for this, the colonies were directly and indirectly assured by England, that their produce should be protected in her markets – that, for all the profits England might make by manufacturing for the colonies, they should have a full return in the profits they should have by their produce being protected.
Meantime, the United States pursued an entirely different system. They, notwithstanding the interests of the great body of the southern states – whose interest, their principal product being cotton, was to buy what they wanted of manufactured goods in the lowest market, and to sell their cotton in the highest – rigidly adhered to the system of forming manufacturing interests of their own, and of fostering and encouraging them by every means in their power. While the colonies, therefore, bought, with the produce of their country, broad cloths, cottons, silks, blankets, scythes, hardware, and crockery, which were manufactured in England, they saw all the profits of their manufacture, their sale, and their carriage, go to another country, to be spent among another people. The Americans, on the other hand, who bought, with the produce of their lands, the manufactures of their own country, saw the profits upon these manufactures applied to building up factories, villages, and towns, which brought together a useful population; built churches, made roads, established places of learning and improvement; made better markets for some things which might have been sold otherwise, and made sale for many that could not otherwise have been sold at all, besides greatly enhancing the values of all adjacent property, and increasing the general wealth of the whole country. The advantages of the one system over the other, however, did not stop here. The necessities and the advantages of manufactures, which first dictated the making and improving of a common road, next conceived the benefit of a railroad and a canal, and the profits of manufacturing were straightway applied to their construction, and they were done. The farmer, therefore, imperceptibly to himself, was placed within a few hours of the best markets over the continent – found his produce carried to them for a trifle, in comparison to what it used to cost him – and found, withal, the process which made it so, bringing thousands upon thousands of people into the country, to develop its riches, to increase the price of its lands, and to contribute to its civilisation and conveniencies, from the establishment of a college down to the building of a blacksmith's shop. The colonial farmer, too, who bought the goods of an English or a Scotch manufacturer, contributed to send those manufacturers' children to school, to give them a profession, or to leave them a fortune. The American farmer, who bought his neighbours' manufactures, contributed to establish a school in his own neighbourhood, where his children could be educated; and to bring people together to support them, if they chose to study a profession or to enter into business.
To trace, within the limits of a whole magazine even, much less in the fragment of an article, the wealth and prosperity that have accrued to the States over the Colonies, by this system, would be impossible. We must content ourselves, for the present, with glancing at the accumulation of capital, and the extraordinary improvements in one State, as an example of what must have, and in truth what has, accrued to the rest, in a greater or less degree, in proportion as they have been engaged in manufacturing.
The state of Massachusetts, in point of soil, climate, and resources, has fewer, or, at all events, as few advantages as any other state in the American Union. With a few verdant valleys, and some highly productive land, it has much that is rocky and barren, and more that is marshy and useless. Yet this state, far below Upper Canada in natural advantages, has, intersecting it in different ways, five canals, their aggregate length being ninety-nine miles. It has, too, no fewer than eleven railroads winding through it and round it, constructed at an immense cost, and affording a profitable return to their proprietors. Now what is the cause of this extraordinary growth of capital, in a place where there was literally so little for it to grow upon? – and how came such immense facilities for public business to be employed, where nature has done so little to create business? The answer is obvious. Massachusetts has not prospered by its land, or natural resources – it has prospered by its manufactures; and its improvements, great and extraordinary though they be, are but the natural offspring of those manufactures. Its principal manufacturing town, Lowell, the largest such town in the United States, has grown from a few hundred inhabitants, that the land might have feebly supported, to some forty thousand, that manufactures have profitably employed. The necessities of these manufactures called for a canal and a railroad. The profits of the capital invested in them, and the labour they employed, soon constructed them. Salem, wholly by the profits of making cotton fabrics, has become a town of fifteen thousand inhabitants. Salem's manufacturing interests required a railroad to Boston, and Salem's manufacturers' and artisans' profits were able to construct it. Manchester and Lawrence owe their existence and prosperity, and the adjacent country owes the advantages they are to it, wholly to manufactories. They wanted, too, a railroad to connect them; and they were able to make, and have made one. Springfield, also in this State, and Worcester, Fallriver, Lynn, and Newburyport, and several other places of minor consequence, owe equally their existence and prosperity to the same cause. Nor is it to be wondered at that, in so short a period, such vast improvements should be made, when we consider the immense profits that have accrued upon the capital employed in these manufactories, and upon the labour engaged in them. There is a cotton factory in Salem which itself employs a capital of £200,000, giving work to five hundred and seventy-five operatives, – three-fourths of whom are girls, – whose average wages are three pounds twelve shillings sterling a month. Yet, a great proportion of these being very young, it necessarily follows that the wages of the grown up are reduced to make up the average of those of the weaker, and that in reality an industrious woman "can generally earn a dollar a day; and there are those who have been known, from one year's end to another, even to exceed this." Speaking of the character of this labour, and of its effect upon the States, Mr Webster, the highest authority upon this subject in America, thus truthfully and eloquently remarks —
"I have spoken of labour as one of the great elements of our society, the great substantial interest on which we all stand. Not feudal service, not predial toil, not the irksome drudgery by one race of mankind, subjected, on account of colour, to the control of another race of mankind; but labour, intelligent, manly, independent, thinking and acting for itself, earning its own wages, accumulating those wages into capital, becoming a part of society and of our social system, educating childhood, maintaining worship, claiming the right of the elective franchise, and helping to uphold the great fabric of the State. That is American labour, and I confess that all my sympathies are with it, and my voice, until I am dumb, will be for it."
Of the profits arising from the capital invested in these manufactures, they have varied in different years, but have, on the average, vastly exceeded those upon all similar investments in England, or in any part of Europe. The Newburyport Herald, a couple of years since, gave a statement of the profits arising from the Essex Steam Mill Company in that town, by which it appeared that forty-two and a half per cent upon the capital invested was paid to the stockholders, as the amount of profits for 1845. The Dedham Company, in the same state, also divided ten per cent for six months of the same year; the Norfolk Company, twelve per cent for the same period; and the Northern Company ten. All these companies were engaged in the manufacture of cotton goods – the most profitable, however, of all manufactures in the States.
But against this immense accumulation of capital in the States, against the vast incidental improvements and wealth to the country that have arisen from manufactures, what have the British colonies to show? What have the Canadas to arrest the eye of the traveller, and to prove to him that, though they have pursued the system which Lord Chatham chalked out for them, of not manufacturing a hob-nail for themselves – and which the policy of England has ever since prevented their doing – they have still wherewithal to attest that they have prospered; and that their labour has been equally rewarded by agriculture as by manufactures?
From one end of the provinces to the other, in every colony Britain has in America, there are no evidences of prosperity approaching, much less equalling that of Massachusetts; there is nothing, in truth, wherewith to institute a comparison between them. Beyond the towns which are supported by the trade incident to selling England's goods, there are none to be found in British America. Beyond the little villages throughout the provinces, that owe their existence to the necessity for agencies to collect the profits of the whole products of the country, and to send them to other lands to be spent, there is no appearance of labour employed in business, or capital reproducing capital. Probably one of the best cultivated and most productive districts in Upper Canada, is the Gore. It is situated at the head of Lake Ontario; has the beautiful little city of Hamilton for its capital; is composed of very fair land, and is settled by a population distinguished for their industry, and for the great comfort and independence it has brought them. Upon entering this district by the high road from Toronto, or in passing in a steamer up the north shore of Lake Ontario, the traveller is struck with the appearance of a little village called Oakville. It is situated on the bank of the lake, has its neat white churches, and its little picturesque cottages, looking out upon the broad lake. A stranger at a distance, from its situation and appearance, would imagine it one of those villages that spring up so magically in America, – full of activity, energy, and prosperity. He visits it, and to his surprise he finds, that though it bears all the evidences of having been built in a hurry, it bears also all the tokens of rapid decay – its shops being for the most part unoccupied, its houses untenanted, and its streets without people. And what may be the reason, in a district so prosperous as the Gore, and surrounded by a country teeming with grain, and with still many unused resources, that this village has so palpably disappointed the expectations if its founder? It is this, – Oakville was projected and built with a view to the largest prosperity of the country; and with facilities and necessities for a trade equal to the cultivation of every lot of land in the adjacent country that could support a family, and to the manufacturing into staves and boards, and square timber, of every tree in the surrounding woods. But the policy of England has rendered it unprofitable to get out the timber; and free trade has taken away the inducement to enter into Canadian farming. The consequence is that the shops, which were built to do an anticipated trade in Oakville, are now unrequired; and the people, who built houses for the accommodation of those who were to be engaged in the expected business, have their houses upon their hands. Nor can any one well acquainted with Upper Canada fail to recognise in Oakville a faithful picture of many, if not most, of the towns and villages in the province.
But let us now reverse the picture, and suppose that Oakville, instead of looking forward to rising, and being supported by the trade incident to selling England's goods, and the draining of the country's resources to pay for them, had looked forward to prosperity by manufacturing and selling goods of its own. Let us suppose that its founder – who, fifteen years ago, spent some £20,000 in adapting its harbour for ships, that never had occasion to come; and in building storehouses, for which there has never been use – had spent the same money in establishing one of these factories which first formed the nucleus of Lowell or Salem in Massachusetts. Is it not reasonable to infer, that in the same country, and among a people having the same necessities, the same results would have accrued in the Canadas which have accrued in the States? That the profits of fifteen years' manufacturing would have surrounded Oakville with mansions, proving the success of enterprise; and filled its streets with houses, showing that labour had prospered, and the country had its benefits? Would not its capitalists, instead of empty houses and ruined hopes, have now the proceeds of well-invested capital, or see them reproducing wealth in railroads, or public improvements?
But let us suppose, further, that the whole province of Upper Canada had invested in manufactures, from time to time, for fifty years, the whole profits that England and other countries have made by the sale of all the goods to it that it has consumed, and that this capital had been augmenting and reproducing itself during this period – what would be the probable result? It is impossible to calculate it. It can only be measured by the towns that have sprung up, by the railroads and canals that have been made, and by the vast capital that has been accumulated in the same period by Massachusetts, and the other manufacturing states of America.
It is not, therefore, to institutions or to laws, to peculiarities of race or of situation, that we ascribe the present undeniable prosperity of the States, or, at all events, of those states which have manufactured, over the Canadas. It is to the system the one adopted, of manufacturing what they required, and thus securing to their country the benefit of the population it required to do so, the profits of the labour employed in it, and the incidental improvements it occasioned. It is the system the other followed, or which was chalked out for them, of spending all they could make in the purchase of goods manufactured in England, the profits of which all went there to be spent. The States, by the one system, have made the most of their country's resources and its labour; the Canadas, by the other, have made the least. The States have cities, and railroads, and canals, and elegant mansions, to show for their labour of fifty years; the Canadas have built elegant mansions, too, by their labour, and have bought fine countryseats, and have contributed to make railroads, but they are unfortunately all in England and Scotland. What holds good of a family, sometimes holds good of a people. There is as much often accumulated by saving as by making. Probably the making little, and saving it, will end better than making much and saving little. The States might have made but little on their produce at first – probably less, for many years, than the Canadas; but their system inevitably tended to saving for the country all they did make; whereas the Canadian system, whatever the provinces made, much or little, as inevitably tended to the country's losing it: and the consequences are, the vast difference in the growth of capital in the one country over the other.
The arguments, however, in favour of England's manufacturing for the colonies, were not without their speciousness, and, as applied to other countries, were not without their truth. These were, that England could manufacture cheaper for the colonies than they could manufacture for themselves; and, moreover, that the labour the colonies might apply to manufacturing, could be more profitably employed in raising produce. But these arguments, as far as the Canadas and all America are concerned, are fallacious. In a country where the largest possible reward for labour bears frequently no sort of proportion to the advantages gained by individuals and the whole commonwealth, by the mere fact of that labour's being employed in it, the question changes from what the people save upon a yard of calico, to what the country loses by towns not being built, by railroads not being made, and by improvements not taking place that always follow manufactures. It may be true, that where the greatest possible reward for labour is the only object sought for or attainable, that a people should find out, and engage in what pays them best: but where the congregation of a hundred people in one place raises the value of property there ten thousand fold – and such has often been the case in the States – and every farmer adjacent not only gains a market by them, but has his roads improved, his lands increased in value, double, and triple, and ten times; and has a thousand conveniences and benefits supplied him by them, that he never otherwise could have had – then the question arises with him, Which benefited him most? – the hundred people's manufacturing, and spreading the profits of their labour around them, or the buying a few yards of cloth a few shillings cheaper, and keeping the hundred people away? For every penny that the whole people of the United States have lost, by buying their own goods, they have made pounds by making them. And the profits of a mechanic's own labour sink into utter insignificance, in comparison to the wealth he often acquires by a single lot of land, upon which he settles down with others, and which makes him rich by also enriching all around him. To measure, indeed, the advantages that manufactures have given to America, by the mere profits of the actual labour employed in them, would be but like valuing an oak at the price of one of its acorns. Men may compute the probable profits of labour employed in manufacturing, by computing the cost of raw material with the expense of manufacturing it, and what it sold for. But the enormous wealth that has accrued to America, – by the increase of population incident to manufacturing, by the development of its resources, and the gigantic improvements that have followed it – would be utterly out of the reach of all human industry to compute.
But in striking out the system England did for her colonies, she should, at least have considered whether the benefits she intended to confer would be really used as benefits; whether the system of protection to colonial produce was not, in fact, something like that of indulgent parents giving to their sons pocket-money in addition to sufficient salaries – which same pocket-money does not generally add to the morals or property of the recipients. And, in truth, this was in effect the character of England's colonial protective system. But it went a little farther than the wisdom displayed by anxious parents; for, with the gifts, it took good care to furnish temptations to spend them – a piece of amiable generosity that we would acquit even all indulgent mothers of. However, this was – whatever England meant, or expected, to the contrary – practically the effect of the system. When money was sent out to buy produce or timber, it was always sure to be accompanied by a proportionate stock of broad cloths and silks, challis and shawls. Those who could have done very well with Canadian gray, were induced to buy broad cloths, and often found but these in the market; for England bought the country's crop, and England's merchants knew full well what the farmers could afford to pay for. Women wore silk dresses and satin bonnets, who might have looked charming enough, before their friends at meeting, in Hoyle's prints, or before all reasonable beaus at home, in good, honest, home-made flannel. Brandy and water, too, was too often substituted for wholesome cider, and fashionable tailors for industrious women. The sliding-scale of expenditure always went up and down to suit the times. A good year was marked by an increase of finery and extravagance; a bad one by debts and law-suits, depressions and complaints – the country gaining nothing, from year to year, for its labour or its resources. And what is now the consequence? The system which occasioned the evil is now done away, but the evil and its results remain. The farmer, unknowing the cause at first of the declension in his income, went into debt, thinking, as had often been the case before, that a good year would follow a bad one; and that he would be able to retrieve by it. But the next year came, and it was worse than the former. He could not pay his debts, and he was obliged to mortgage his property, or sell his stock, to do so. He could no longer get credit from the shopkeeper, and he was unable to purchase with cash the quantity or the quality of goods he bought before. The shopkeeper, in his turn depending upon the custom of the farmer for the sale of his goods, and depending upon receiving his accounts from him to meet his own, found both fail him together; was obliged to curtail his business to a miserable remnant; or to shut up his shop, or to wait for the sheriff to do it for him. Hence the altered appearance of every part of Canada, both town and country. Hence the whole streets in Montreal with hardly a single shop open. Hence those sorry emblems of poverty and retrogression – empty houses with broken windows, and streets without people, which may be seen in almost every village in the provinces.
Now, for the system which has produced this state of things, who is to blame? Clearly and unmistakeably, England. If the colonies, as is now palpable to all America, have worked but with one arm towards prosperity, while the States have worked with two, it was England's manufacturing interests that tied the colonies' arm. The colonies were, in this respect, wholly in the hands of England. She not only established a system for them, by which the proceeds of every acre of land they cleared, and every tree they hewed, went to give work to her poor, and wealth to her rich, but she reserved the right of thinking for them as well. Without her, they must have naturally adopted the course taken by the rest of America. She legislated for them; they believed her wise, and followed her dictates without thought or apprehension. They are injured; and she is to blame.
But when Lord Chatham laid the foundation of the system by which the colonies have been, in effect, prevented manufacturing for themselves, he established mutuality of interests between them and the mother country. If he would have England's poor employed, and England's capitalists enriched by making goods for the colonies, he would have the colonies profit equally by protection in the English markets. The partnership, for such it really was, gave to each country its own particular share of benefits; and the system was such, too, that the more the profits of the one rose, though by its own individual efforts, the more it was able to benefit the other. For the more people engaged in Canadian farming, the more land that became cleared, and the more timber that was got out, the more English manufactures were consumed. But we have shown, by comparison, with the States, the disastrous effect of this system upon the prosperity of the colonies. We have shown, too, from its own character, that it never was, and never could have been, of any substantial benefit to them; that it made them extravagant, without leaving them capital; that it made them to all intents and purposes poorer, whilst it was expected to make them richer. And who was this system expressly and avowedly intended to benefit? Who were, in all seasons, and at all times, whether good or bad for the colonies, the only benefiters by it? It was the manufacturers of England. For if the colonies could buy but prints and cottons, they bought of these all they could pay for, and these manufacturers had all the profit. If they could buy broad cloths and silks, they purchased as much as their crops were worth, and often were induced to draw upon the future, English manufacturers and merchants getting all the benefit. But after these manufacturers had thus bled the colonies of all their vitality, in the shape of capital, for upwards of half a century – after the colonies' right arm had been tied up so long, for their express benefit, that it became impotent from want of exercise, these same manufacturers turned round and told their colonial partners – "We have now made all we can out of you or, if we have not, we think we can make a little more by free trade than we can by keeping our honest engagements with you. We are sorry you have acquired a lamer arm in our service. It is a pity. It can't be helped now. Good-bye." Yes, it was these manufacturers, who so long bled the colonies, that turned round to strike them in the end the blow that should finish them. It was their selfish agitation for years; it was their constant sounding into the ears of England one unvarying theme; it was their disregard of all interests, of all duties, and of all obligations to all men, in one deadly, unwavering struggle for the attainment of one object, and for one class, that cost the colonies their solemnly pledged protection – that cost them, we may add, their respect for the honour and the justice of England.
But we have now, after a digression which has been somewhat of the longest, come to the point of our argument, and that is this: – Upon a question so vitally affecting the interests of the colonies, upon a question that might cost them the institutions of England; upon a question where all truth and justice demanded that they should have been in a situation to protect themselves against manufacturing selfishness, does it not occur to the reader, that the colonies should have had a representation where it was decided? The measures that exasperated the old colonies to rebellion, shrink into utter insignificance, as far as injury or effect are concerned, in comparison to this one. Here are three millions of people, the main profits of whose labour for upwards of fifty years have gone to enrich a certain class of people in England. And here they are now, sacrificed to the selfishness of that very class, without having the opportunity of saying a word for themselves. If the legislation of England, for ten years past, has been pregnant with vaster consequences to her than the legislation of a century, it has hardly affected her so deeply as it has affected her North American colonies. If her landowners see ruin, in it – if her agricultural labourers see in it the means of depriving them of bread – still her other classes see, or think they see, advantages in it to counteract the evils, and prosperity to balance the injury. But in England all have been heard – all have contended, where giant intellect sways as well as mighty interests; where mind has its influences as well as matter. But in the colonies, where every interest and every class saw, in imperial legislation, injustice and ruin, neither their intellect nor their interests availed them anything. They were literally placed in the legislative boat of England: they found that they must either sink or float in it; that legislation happened to sink them; and though they saw themselves going down, and might, with their friends, have pulled themselves ashore, they were not allowed an oar to do so – they were not in a situation to make an effort to save themselves.
In the face of these deeply important considerations, can it be fairly said that the colonies have no interest in imperial legislation, and that there are no interests for imperial legislation to guard in the colonies? Palpably to all the world, the States have been making gigantic strides in prosperity, while the colonies have been standing still. Yet in the British House of Commons, whenever the question of the colonies has been mooted, has it not been with the view to consider how the colonies could be made to consume more English manufactures, rather than how they should prosper by manufactures of their own? Who has urged the question there, that instead of England's perpetually sending out goods, and draining the colonies of all the fruits of their labour, England should send out people to make goods, who in making them would make the country? Yet this is the root of the depression and the poverty of the Canadas. And who with this vast country's resources before him – with its ways and means of making millions independent, and with the vast facilities for the investment of capital it afforded and affords – can say that no interests could spring up in it of consequence to the legislation of England?