a nuisance," and rejoiced at the gradual disappearance of the native population, finding "in the abstraction of the Celtic race at the rate of a quarter of a million a year, a surer remedy for the inveterate Irish disease than any human wit could ever have imagined."

That "disease" is simply the absence of all demand for labor, resulting from the unhappy determination of the people of England to destroy the power of association throughout the world. The nation which begins by exporting raw products must end by exporting men; as is shown by the fact that in the decade ending in 1851, the population of Ireland had decreased but little less than two millions. To what causes is this to be attributed? Not to any deficiency of land, for nearly one-third, including millions of acres of the richest soils remain in a state of nature. Not to any inferiority of the soil, which is confessedly among the richest in the empire. Not to a deficiency of mineral wealth, for coal, iron, and other metals abound. Not to any deficiency of physical qualities in the Irishman, it being an established fact that he is capable of performing more labor than the Englishman, the Frenchman, or the Belgian. Not to any deficiency of intellectual ability, Ireland having given to England her most distinguished soldiers and statesmen, and having throughout the world furnished evidence that the Irishman is capable of the highest intellectual attainments. In spite of all these advantages, he is, at home, a slave to the severest taskmasters, and in a condition of poverty such as exhibits itself in no other part of the civilized world. No choice being left him but between expatriation and starvation, he abandons the home of his fathers to seek elsewhere that subsistence which Ireland can no longer afford him. The state of things there existing is often charged to the account of the potato, which, as Mr. McCulloch informs his readers, has lowered the standard of living, and tended to the multiplication of population. "The peasantry of Ireland," he says, "live in miserable mud cabins, without either a window or a chimney, or any thing that can be called furniture;" hence it is, as he says, they work for low wages. We have here effect substituted for cause. The absence of demand for labor causes wages to be so low, that the laborer can obtain nothing but mud cabins and potatoes; and this is caused by that trading centralization which looks to destroying the power of association and preventing that diversity of employment to which, alone, can we look for maintenance of the powers of the land, or for advance in wealth, civilization and power.

It is singular that modern political economy should have so entirely overlooked the great fact, that man is a mere borrower from the earth, and that when he does not pay his debts, she does as do all other creditors, expelling him from his holding. England makes of her soil a reservoir for the refuse yielded by the raw commodities of almost half the world, thus obtaining manure that has been valued at $500,000,000, or five times more than the value of the cotton crop of America; yet so important is that commodity that she imports in a single year more than 200,000 tons of guano, at a cost of more than $10,000,000. Nevertheless, her writers teach other nations, that the true way to become rich is to exhaust their land by exporting its products in their rudest state; and then, when Irishmen follow the soil that has been sent to England, the world is assured that "the unexampled misery of the Irish people is owing to the excessive augmentation of their numbers;" and that "nothing can be more futile than to expect any real or lasting amendment in their situation until an effectual check has been given to the progress of population." "How," asks the Times, "are they to be fed and employed ?" "That," as it continues, "is the question which still baffles an age that can transmit a message round the world in a moment of time, and point out the locality of a planet never yet seen."

It is, nevertheless, a question readily answered. Let them have commerce, let them be emancipated from the dominion of trade, and they will find at once a demand for their powers, whether mental or physical. What Ireland needs is, that societary motion and that power of combination which result from diversity of employments. Let her have them, and she will cease to export food, while her people perish of famine. Give her them, and her land, ceasing to be impoverished by the exportation of its most valuable elements, will both "feed and employ her people;" and the doctrine of over-population will then cease to find support in the harrowing details of Irish history. In none other can there be found such proof conclusive of the fact, that the raising of raw produce for the supply of foreign markets is an employ. ment fit only for the slave and the barbarian.

CHAPTER XIII.

OF CHANGES OF MATTER IN PLACE CONTINUED.

1. Local action, and local combination, conspicuous throughout the history of Hindostan Their disappearance under the British rule.

2. Commerce sacrificed at the shrine of trade. Annihilation of Indian manufactures. Its ruinous effects.

3. Waste of capital, and destruction of the power of accumulation.

24. Diminution in the security of person and property correspondent with the extension of British rule, and with the growing centralization.

25. Trivial value of private rights in the land of India. India a paying country under its native princes. Its steady deterioration under the system which looks to increasing the necessity for the trader and transporter's services.

86. Review of the phenomena observed in the four great communities, above referred to. Differing in all other respects, they are alike in the fact, that they have been deprived of all power to diversify their employments, and have thus been forced to increase their dependence on the transporter and the trader.

87. Destructive effects of a growing necessity for the services of the trader. British policy looks solely to the increase of trade. Constant waste of capital in all the countries subject to the system

28. Origin of the idea of over-population

§ 1. IN no part of the world has there been seen a greater tendency to voluntary association than once existed in Hindostan. In none did the smaller communities exercise to a greater extent the power of self-government. Each village had its distinct organization, under which the natives lived from the earliest times down to a recent date. Revolutions might occur and dynasties might succeed each other, but so long as his own little society remained undisturbed the simple Hindoo gave himself no concern about what might happen in the distant capital.

The Mahometan conquest left these simple institutions untouched. Each Hindoo village had its distinct municipality; and over a certain number of villages was a hereditary chief and accountant, both possessing great local authority, and certain territorial estates. The Mahometans early saw the policy of not disturbing an institution so complete; and they availed themselves of the local influence of these officers to reconcile their subjects to their rule.

Local action and combination everywhere exhibit themselves throughout the history of India. Rulers being numerous, taxation was heavy; but, the taxes being locally expended, nothing went from off the land. Manufactures, too, were widely spread, employing the labor not required in agriculture. On the coast of Coromandel and in the province

of Bengal, sixty years since, it would have been difficult to find a village in which every man, woman, and child, was not employed in making a piece of cloth. Its progress included no less than a description of the lives of half the people of Hindostan. Bengal was celebrated for fine muslins, and the Coromandel Coast for chintzes and calicoes, while Western India produced coarse goods of every kind. Though over-taxed, and often plundered by invading armies, the country continued both rich and prosperous.

The battle of Plassey having established British power in India centralization thenceforward grew rapidly, and the country became filled with adventurers, men whose sole object was the accumulation of fortune by any means, however foul; as is well known to all familiar with the indignant denunciations of Burke.* England was thus enriched as India became impoverished.

Step by step the British power was extended, and everywhere was adopted the Hindoo principle that the sovereign, as proprietor of the soil, was entitled to half of the gross produce. The land tax, now called rent, had formerly been limited to a thirteenth, then raised to a sixth; but in the reign of Akbar (sixteenth century) it was fixed at one-third, numerous other taxes having been then abolished. With the decline of the empire, the local sovereigns had not only increased it, but had revived taxes that had been discontinued, while instituting others, all of which were now continued under the British rule. Further, having a monopoly of trade, the company could dictate the prices of all that it sold, as well as of all that it bought, another most oppressive tax imposed for the benefit of absentee landlords.†

"The country was laid waste with fire and sword; and that land distinguished above most others by the cheerful face of fraternal government and protected labor, the chosen seat of cultivation and plenty, is now almost throughout a dreary desert covered with rushes and briers, and with jungles full of wild beasts." "That universal, systematic breach of treaties, which had made British faith proverbial in the East!"-Speech on Fox's East India Bill.

"The misgovernment of the English was carried to a point such as seemed hardly compatible with the existence of society. They forced the natives to buy dear and sell cheap. They insulted with impunity the tribunals, the police, and the fiscal authorities of the country. Enormous fortunes were thus rapidly accumulated at Calcutta, while 30,000,000 of human beings were reduced to the extremity of wretchedness. They had been accustomed to live under tyranny, but never under tyranny like this." "Under their old masters, they had at least one resource; when the evil became

Exhaustion being the natural consequence of centralization, the ability to pay taxes diminished, and a sort of landed aristocracy, responsible to the government for their payment, was now created in the Zemindars. From mere officers of the crown these become now great landed proprietors, masters of a host of poor tenants, who hold their land at will and are liable to torture if they fail to pay. Thus do we find the middleman system of Ireland and of the Western Indies, transplanted to those of the East.

The Zemindars, however, unable to collect the taxes, were in their turn sold out and ruined. That system having failed, it was next determined to arrest the extension of the permanent settlement, and arrange with each little ryot, or cultivator, to the entire exclusion of the village authorities. How this has operated is thus described by Mr. Fullerton, a member of the Madras Council:

'Imagine the revenue leviable through the agency of one hundred thousand revenue officers, collected or remitted at their discretion, according to the occupant's means of paying, whether from the produce of his land or his separate property; and in order to encourage every man to act as a spy on his neighbor, and report his means of paying, that he may save himself from all extra demand; imagine all the cultivators of a village liable at all times to a separate demand, in order to make up the failure of one or more individuals of the parish. Imagine collectors to every county, acting under the orders of a board, on the avowed principle of destroying all competition for labor by a general equalization of assessment, seizing and sending back all runaways to each other. Lastly, imagine the collector the sole magistrate or justice of peace of the county, through the medium of whom alone any complaint of personal grievance suffered by the subject can reach the superior court. Imagine, at the same time, every subordinate officer employed in the collection of the land revenue to be a police officer, vested with the power to fine, confine, put in the stocks, and flog any inhabitant within his range, on any charge, without oath of the accuser or sworn recorded evidence of the case."

insupportable, the people rose and pulled down the goverment. But the English government was not to be shaken off. That govern. ment, oppressive as the most oppressive form of barbarian despotism, was strong with all the strength of civilization. It resembled the government of evil genii rather than the government of human tyrants."-Macaulay.