At all events, they --were
pressing
on their food-supply.
Marx - Capital-Volume-I
, on the High Price of Provisions.
By a Suffolk Gentleman.
?
Ipswich, 1795, p.
4.
Even the fanatical advocate of the system of large farms, the author of the --Inquiry into the Connexion between the Present Price of Provisions,?
London, 1773, p.
139, says: --I most lament the loss of our yeomanry, that set of men who really kept up the independence of this nation; and sorry I am to see their lands now in the hands of monopolising lords, tenanted out to small farmers, who hold their leases on such conditions as to be little better than vassals ready to attend a summons on every mischievous occasion.
?
12 On the private moral character of this bourgeois hero, among other things: --The large grant of lands in Ireland to Lady Orkney, in 1695, is a public instance of the king's affection, and the lady's influence. . . Lady Orkney's endearing offices are supposed to have been -- foeda labiorum ministeria. ? (In the Sloane Manuscript Collection, at the British Museum, No. 4224. The Manuscript is entitled: --The character and behaviour of King William, Sunderland, etc. , as represented in Original Letters to the Duke of Shrewsbury from Somers Halifax, Oxford, Secretary Vernon, etc. ? It is full of curiosa. )
13 --The illegal alienation of the Crown Estates, partly by sale and partly by gift, is a scandalous chapter in English history. . . a gigantic fraud on the nation. ? (F. W. Newman, --Lectures on Political Economy. ? London, 1851, pp. 129, 130. ) [For details as to how the present large landed proprietors of England came into their possessions see --Our Old Nobility. By Noblesse Oblige. ? London, 1879. -- F. E. ]
14 Read, e. g. , E. Burke's Pamphlet on the ducal house of Bedford, whose offshoot was Lord John Russell, the --tomtit of Liberalism. ?
15 --The farmers forbid cottagers to keep any living creatures besides themselves and children, under the pretence that if they keep any beasts or poultry, they will steal from the farmers' barns for their support; they also say, keep the cottagers poor and you will keep them industrious, &c. , but the real fact I believe, is that the farmers may have the whole right of common to themselves. ? (--A Political Inquiry into the Consequences of Enclosing Waste Lands. ? London, 1785, p. 75. )
16 Eden, l. c. , preface.
17 --Capital Farms. ? Two letters on the Flour Trade and the Dearness of Corn. By a person in business. London, 1767, pp. 19, 20.
18 --Merchant Farms. ? --An Enquiry into the Causes of the Present High Price of Provisions. ? London, 1767, p. 11. Note. -- This excellent work, that was published anonymously, is by the Rev. Nathaniel Forster.
19 Thomas Wright: --A Short Address to the Public on the Monopoly of Large Farms,? 1779, pp. 2, 3.
20 Rev. Addington: --Inquiry into the Reasons for or against Enclosing Open Fields,? London, 1772, pp. 37, 43 passim.
21 Dr. R. Price, l. c. , v. ii. , p. 155, Forster, Addington, Kent, Price, and James Anderson, should be read and compared with the miserable prattle of Sycophant MacCulloch in his catalogue: --The Literature of Political Economy,? London, 1845.
? ? 512 Chapter 27
22 Price, l. c. , p. 147.
23 Price, l. c. , p. 159. We are reminded of ancient Rome. --The rich had got possession of the greater part of the undivided land. They trusted in the conditions of the time, that these possessions would not be again taken from them, and bought, therefore, some of the pieces of land lying near theirs, and belonging to the poor, with the acquiescence of their owners, and took some by force, so that they now were cultivating widely extended domains, instead of isolated fields. Then they employed slaves in agriculture and cattle-breeding, because freemen would have been taken from labour for military service. The possession of slaves brought them great gain, inasmuch as these, on account of their immunity from military service, could freely multiply and have a multitude of children. Thus the powerful men drew all wealth to themselves, and all the land swarmed with slaves. The Italians, on the other hand, were always decreasing in number, destroyed as they were by poverty, taxes, and military service. Even when times of peace came, they were doomed to complete inactivity, because the rich were in possession of the soil, and used slaves instead of freemen in the tilling of it. ? (Appian: --Civil Wars,? I. 7. ) This passage refers to the time before the Licinian rogations. Military service, which hastened to so great an extent the ruin of the Roman plebeians, was also the chief means by which, as in a forcing-house, Charlemagne brought about the transformation of free German peasants into serfs and bondsmen.
24 --An Inquiry into the Connexion between the Present Price of Provisions, &c. ,? pp. 124, 129. To the like effect, but with an opposite tendency: --Working-men are driven from their cottages and forced into the towns to seek for employment; but then a larger surplus is obtained, and thus capital is augmented. ? (--The Perils of the Nation,? 2nd ed. London. , 1843, p. 14. )
25 l. c. , p. 132.
26 Steuart says: --If you compare the rent of these lands? (he erroneously includes in this economic category the tribute of the taskmen to the clanchief) --with the extent, it appears very small. If you compare it with the numbers fed upon the farm, you will find that an estate in the Highlands maintains, perhaps, ten times as many people as another of the same value in a good and fertile province. ? (l. c. , vol. i. , ch. xvi. , p. 104. )
27 James Anderson: --Observations on the Means of Exciting a Spirit of National Industry, &c. ,? Edinburgh, 1777.
28 In 1860 the people expropriated by force were exported to Canada under false pretences. Some fled to the mountains and neighbouring islands. They were followed by the police, came to blows with them and escaped.
29 --In the Highlands of Scotland,? says Buchanan, the commentator on Adam Smith, 1814, --the ancient state of property is daily subverted. . . . The landlord, without regard to the hereditary tenant (a category used in error here), now offers his land to the highest bidder, who, if he is an improver, instantly adopts a new system of cultivation. The land, formerly overspread with small tenants or labourers, was peopled in proportion to its produce, but under the new system of improved cultivation and increased rents, the largest possible produce is obtained at the least possible expense: and the useless hands being, with this view, removed, the population is reduced, not to what the land will maintain, but to what it will employ. --The dispossessed tenants either seek a subsistence in the neighbouring towns,? &c. (David Buchanan: --Observations on, &c. , A. Smith's Wealth of Nations. ? Edinburgh, 1814, vol. iv. , p. 144. ) --The Scotch grandees dispossessed families as they would grub up coppice-wood, and they treated villages and their people as Indians harassed with wild beasts do, in their vengeance, a jungle with tigers. . . . Man is bartered for a fleece or a carcase of mutton, nay, held cheaper. . . . Why, how much worse is it than the intention of the Moguls, who, when they had broken into the northern provinces of China, proposed in council to exterminate the inhabitants, and convert the land into pasture. This proposal many Highland proprietors have effected in their own country
? ? 513 Chapter 27
against their own countrymen. ? (George Ensor: --An Inquiry Concerning the Population of Nations. ? Lond,. 1818, pp. 215, 216. )
30 When the present Duchess of Sutherland entertained Mrs. Beecher Stowe, authoress of --Uncle Tom's Cabin,? with great magnificence in London to show her sympathy for the Negro slaves of the American republic -- a sympathy that she prudently forgot, with her fellow-aristocrats, during the civil war, in which every --noble? English heart beat for the slave-owner -- I gave in the New York Tribune the facts about the Sutherland slaves. (Epitomised in part by Carey in --The Slave Trade. ? Philadelphia, 1853, pp. 203, 204. ) My article was reprinted in a Scotch newspaper, and led to a pretty polemic between the latter and the sycophants of the Sutherlands.
31 Interesting details on this fish trade will be found in Mr. David Urquhart's Portfolio, new series. -- Nassau W. Senior, in his posthumous work, already quoted, terms --the proceedings in Sutherlandshire one of the most beneficent clearings since the memory of man. ? (l. c. )
32 The deer-forests of Scotland contain not a single tree. The sheep are driven from, and then the deer driven to, the naked hills, and then it is called a deer-forest. Not even timber-planting and real forest culture.
33 Robert Somers: --Letters from the Highlands: or the Famine of 1847. ? London, 1848, pp. 12-28 passim. These letters originally appeared in The Times. The English economists of course explained the famine of the Gaels in 1847, by their over-population.
At all events, they --were pressing on their food-supply. ? The --clearing of estates,? or as it is called in Germany, --Bauernlegen,? occurred in Germany especially after the 30 years' war, and led to peasant-revolts as late as 1790 in Kursachsen. It obtained especially in East Germany. In most of the Prussian provinces, Frederick II. for the first time secured right of property for the peasants. After the conquest of Silesia he forced the landlords to rebuild the huts, barns, etc. , and to provide the peasants with cattle and implements. He wanted soldiers for his army and tax-payers for his treasury. For the rest, the pleasant life that the peasant led under Frederick's system of finance and hodge-podge rule of despotism, bureaucracy and feudalism, may be seen from the following quotation from his admirer, Mirabeau: --Le lin fait donc une des grandes richesses du cultivateur dans le Nord de l'Allemagne. Malheureusement pour l'espe`ce humaine, ce n'est qu'une ressource contre la mise`re et non un moyen de bien-e^tre. Les impo^ts directs, les corve? es, les servitudes de tout genre, e? crasent le cultivateur allemand, qui paie encore des impo^ts indirects dans tout ce qu'il ache`te. . . . et pour comble de ruine, il n'ose pas vendre ses productions ou` et comme il le veut; il n'ose pas acheter ce dont il a besoin aux marchands qui pourraient le lui livrer au meilleur prix. Toutes ces causes le ruinent insensiblement, et il se trouverait hors d'e? tat de payer les impo^ts directs a` l'e? che? ance sans la filerie; elle lui offre une ressource, en occupant utilement sa femme, ses enfants, ses servants, ses valets, et lui-me^me; mais quelle pe? nible vie, me^me aide? e de ce secours. En e? te? , il travaille comme un forc? at au labourage et a` la re? colte; il se couche a` 9 heures et se le`ve a` deux, pour suffire aux travaux; en hiver il devrait re? parer ses forces par un plus grand repos; mais il manquera de grains pour le pain et les semailles, s'il se de? fait des denre? es qu'il faudrait vendre pour payer les impo^ts. Il faut donc filer pour supple? er a` ce vide. . . . il faut y apporter la plus grande assiduite? . Aussi le paysan se couche-t-il en hiver a` minuit, une heure, et se le`ve a` cinq ou six; ou bien il se couche a` neuf, et se le`ve a` deux, et cela tous les jours de la vie si ce n'est le dimanche. Ces exce`s de veille et de travail usent la nature humaine, et de la` vient qu'hommes et femmes vieillissent beaucoup pluto^t dans les campagnes que dans les villes. ? [Flax represents one of the greatest sources of wealth for the peasant of North Germany. Unfortunately for the human race, this is only a resource against misery and not a means towards well-being. Direct taxes, forced labour service, obligations of all kinds crush the German peasant, especially as he still has to pay indirect taxes on everything he buys, . . . and to complete his ruin he dare not sell his produce where and as he wishes; he dare not buy what he needs from the merhcants who could sell it to him at a cheaper price. He is slowly ruined by all those factors, and when the dirct taxes fall due, he would find himself incapable of paying them
? ? 514 Chapter 27
without his spinning-wheel; it offers him a last resort, while providing useful occupation for his wife, his children, his maids, his farm-hands, and himself; but what a painful life he leads, even with this extra resource! In summer, he works like a convict with the plough and at harvest; he goes to bed at nine o'clock and rises at two to get through all his work; in winter he ought to be recovering his strength by sleeping longer; but he would run short of corn for his bread and next year's sowing if he got rid of the products that he needs to sell in order to pay the taxes. He therefore has to spin to fill up this gap . . . and indeed he must do so most assiduously. Thus the peasant goes to bed at midnight or one o'clock in winter, and gets up at five or six; or he gies to bed at nine and gets up at two, and this he does every day of his life except Sundays. These excessively short hours of sleep and long hours of work consume a person's strength and hence it happens that men and women age much more in the country than in the towns] (Mirabeau, l. c. , t. III. pp. 212 sqq. )
Note to the second edition. In April 1866, 18 years after the publication of the work of Robert Somers quoted above, Professor Leone Levi gave a lecture before the Society of Arts on the transformation of sheep-walks into deer-forest, in which he depicts the advance in the devastation of the Scottish Highlands. He says, with other things: --Depopulation and transformation into sheep-walks were the most convenient means for getting an income without expenditure. . . A deer-forest in place of a sheep- walk was a common change in the Highlands. The landowners turned out the sheep as they once turned out the men from their estates, and welcomed the new tenants -- the wild beasts and the feathered birds. . . . One can walk from the Earl of Dalhousie's estates in Forfarshire to John O'Groats, without ever leaving forest land. . . . In many of these woods the fox, the wild cat, the marten, the polecat, the weasel and the Alpine hare are common; whilst the rabbit, the squirrel and the rat have lately made their way into the country. Immense tracts of land, much of which is described in the statistical account of Scotland as having a pasturage in richness and extent of very superior description, are thus shut out from all cultivation and improvement, and are solely devoted to the sport of a few persons for a very brief period of the year. ? The London Economist of June 2, 1866, says, --Amongst the items of news in a Scotch paper of last week, we read. . . 'One of the finest sheep farms in Sutherlandshire, for which a rent of ? 1,200 a year was recently offered, on the expiry of the existing lease this year, is to be converted into a deer-forest. ' Here we see the modern instincts of feudalism . . . operating pretty much as they did when the Norman Conqueror. . . destroyed 36 villages to create the New Forest. . . . Two millions of acres. . . totally laid waste, embracing within their area some of the most fertile lands of Scotland. The natural grass of Glen Tilt was among the most nutritive in the county of Perth. The deer-forest of Ben Aulder was by far the best grazing ground in the wide district of Badenoch; a part of the Black Mount forest was the best pasture for black-faced sheep in Scotland. Some idea of the ground laid waste for purely sporting purposes in Scotland may be formed from the fact that it embraced an area larger than the whole county of Perth. The resources of the forest of Ben Aulder might give some idea of the loss sustained from the forced desolations. The ground would pasture 15,000 sheep, and as it was not more than one-thirtieth part of the old forest ground in Scotland . . . it might, &c. , . . . All that forest land is as totally unproductive. . . . It might thus as well have been submerged under the waters of the German Ocean. . . . Such extemporised wildernesses or deserts ought to be put down by the decided interference of the Legislature. ?
? ? Chapter 28: Bloody Legislation Against the Expropriated, from the End of the 15th
Century. Forcing Down of Wages by Acts of Parliament
The proletariat created by the breaking up of the bands of feudal retainers and by the forcible expropriation of the people from the soil, this --free? proletariat could not possibly be absorbed by the nascent manufactures as fast as it was thrown upon the world. On the other hand, these men, suddenly dragged from their wonted mode of life, could not as suddenly adapt themselves to the discipline of their new condition. They were turned en masse into beggars, robbers, vagabonds, partly from inclination, in most cases from stress of circumstances. Hence at the end of the 15th and during the whole of the 16th century, throughout Western Europe a bloody legislation against vagabondage. The fathers of the present working class were chastised for their enforced transformation into vagabonds and paupers. Legislation treated them as --voluntary? criminals, and assumed that it depended on their own good will to go on working under the old conditions that no longer existed.
In England this legislation began under Henry VII.
Henry VIII. 1530: Beggars old and unable to work receive a beggar's licence. On the other hand, whipping and imprisonment for sturdy vagabonds. They are to be tied to the cart-tail and whipped until the blood streams from their bodies, then to swear an oath to go back to their birthplace or to where they have lived the last three years and to --put themselves to labour. ? What grim irony! In 27 Henry VIII. the former statute is repeated, but strengthened with new clauses. For the second arrest for vagabondage the whipping is to be repeated and half the ear sliced off; but for the third relapse the offender is to be executed as a hardened criminal and enemy of the common weal.
Edward VI. : A statute of the first year of his reign, 1547, ordains that if anyone refuses to work, he shall be condemned as a slave to the person who has denounced him as an idler. The master shall feed his slave on bread and water, weak broth and such refuse meat as he thinks fit. He has the right to force him to do any work, no matter how disgusting, with whip and chains. If the slave is absent a fortnight, he is condemned to slavery for life and is to be branded on forehead or back with the letter S; if he runs away thrice, he is to be executed as a felon. The master can sell him, bequeath him, let him out on hire as a slave, just as any other personal chattel or cattle. If the slaves attempt anything against the masters, they are also to be executed. Justices of the peace, on information, are to hunt the rascals down. If it happens that a vagabond has been idling about for three days, he is to be taken to his birthplace, branded with a red-hot iron with the letter V on the breast and be set to work, in chains, in the streets or at some other labour. If the vagabond gives a false birthplace, he is then to become the slave for life of this place, of its inhabitants, or its corporation, and to be branded with an S. All persons have the right to take away the children of the vagabonds and to keep them as apprentices, the young men until the 24th year, the girls until the 20th. If they run away, they are to become up to this age the slaves of their masters, who can put them in irons, whip them, &c. , if they like. Every master may put an iron ring round the neck,
? 516 Chapter 28
arms or legs of his slave, by which to know him more easily and to be more certain of him. 1 The last part of this statute provides, that certain poor people may be employed by a place or by persons, who are willing to give them food and drink and to find them work. This kind of parish slaves was kept up in England until far into the 19th century under the name of --roundsmen. ?
Elizabeth, 1572: Unlicensed beggars above 14 years of age are to be severely flogged and branded on the left ear unless some one will take them into service for two years; in case of a repetition of the offence, if they are over 18, they are to be executed, unless some one will take them into service for two years; but for the third offence they are to be executed without mercy as felons. Similar statutes: 18 Elizabeth, c. 13, and another of 1597. 2
James 1: Any one wandering about and begging is declared a rogue and a vagabond. Justices of the peace in petty sessions are authorised to have them publicly whipped and for the first offence to imprison them for 6 months, for the second for 2 years. Whilst in prison they are to be whipped as much and as often as the justices of the peace think fit. . . Incorrigible and dangerous rogues are to be branded with an R on the left shoulder and set to hard labour, and if they are caught begging again, to be executed without mercy. These statutes, legally binding until the beginning of the 18th century, were only repealed by 12 Anne, c. 23.
Similar laws in France, where by the middle of the 17th century a kingdom of vagabonds (truands) was established in Paris. Even at the beginning of Louis XVI. 's reign (Ordinance of July 13th, 1777) every man in good health from 16 to 60 years of age, if without means of subsistence and not practising a trade, is to be sent to the galleys. Of the same nature are the statute of Charles V. for the Netherlands (October, 1537), the first edict of the States and Towns of Holland (March 10, 1614), the --Plakaat? of the United Provinces (June 26, 1649), &c.
Thus were the agricultural people, first forcibly expropriated from the soil, driven from their homes, turned into vagabonds, and then whipped, branded, tortured by laws grotesquely terrible, into the discipline necessary for the wage system.
It is not enough that the conditions of labour are concentrated in a mass, in the shape of capital, at the one pole of society, while at the other are grouped masses of men, who have nothing to sell but their labour-power. Neither is it enough that they are compelled to sell it voluntarily. The advance of capitalist production develops a working class, which by education, tradition, habit, looks upon the conditions of that mode of production as self-evident laws of Nature. The organisation of the capitalist process of production, once fully developed, breaks down all resistance. The constant generation of a relative surplus-population keeps the law of supply and demand of labour, and therefore keeps wages, in a rut that corresponds with the wants of capital. The dull compulsion of economic relations completes the subjection of the labourer to the capitalist. Direct force, outside economic conditions, is of course still used, but only exceptionally. In the ordinary run of things, the labourer can be left to the --natural laws of production,? i. e. , to his dependence on capital, a dependence springing from, and guaranteed in perpetuity by, the conditions of production themselves. It is otherwise during the historic genesis of capitalist production. The bourgeoisie, at its rise, wants and uses the power of the state to --regulate? wages, i. e. , to force them within the limits suitable for surplus value making, to lengthen the working day and to keep the labourer himself in the normal degree of dependence. This is an essential element of the so-called primitive accumulation.
The class of wage labourers, which arose in the latter half of the 14th century, formed then and in the following century only a very small part of the population, well protected in its position by the independent peasant proprietary in the country and the guild-organisation in the town. In country and town master and workmen stood close together socially. The subordination of labour to capital was only formal - i. e. , the mode of production itself had as yet no specific capitalistic
?
12 On the private moral character of this bourgeois hero, among other things: --The large grant of lands in Ireland to Lady Orkney, in 1695, is a public instance of the king's affection, and the lady's influence. . . Lady Orkney's endearing offices are supposed to have been -- foeda labiorum ministeria. ? (In the Sloane Manuscript Collection, at the British Museum, No. 4224. The Manuscript is entitled: --The character and behaviour of King William, Sunderland, etc. , as represented in Original Letters to the Duke of Shrewsbury from Somers Halifax, Oxford, Secretary Vernon, etc. ? It is full of curiosa. )
13 --The illegal alienation of the Crown Estates, partly by sale and partly by gift, is a scandalous chapter in English history. . . a gigantic fraud on the nation. ? (F. W. Newman, --Lectures on Political Economy. ? London, 1851, pp. 129, 130. ) [For details as to how the present large landed proprietors of England came into their possessions see --Our Old Nobility. By Noblesse Oblige. ? London, 1879. -- F. E. ]
14 Read, e. g. , E. Burke's Pamphlet on the ducal house of Bedford, whose offshoot was Lord John Russell, the --tomtit of Liberalism. ?
15 --The farmers forbid cottagers to keep any living creatures besides themselves and children, under the pretence that if they keep any beasts or poultry, they will steal from the farmers' barns for their support; they also say, keep the cottagers poor and you will keep them industrious, &c. , but the real fact I believe, is that the farmers may have the whole right of common to themselves. ? (--A Political Inquiry into the Consequences of Enclosing Waste Lands. ? London, 1785, p. 75. )
16 Eden, l. c. , preface.
17 --Capital Farms. ? Two letters on the Flour Trade and the Dearness of Corn. By a person in business. London, 1767, pp. 19, 20.
18 --Merchant Farms. ? --An Enquiry into the Causes of the Present High Price of Provisions. ? London, 1767, p. 11. Note. -- This excellent work, that was published anonymously, is by the Rev. Nathaniel Forster.
19 Thomas Wright: --A Short Address to the Public on the Monopoly of Large Farms,? 1779, pp. 2, 3.
20 Rev. Addington: --Inquiry into the Reasons for or against Enclosing Open Fields,? London, 1772, pp. 37, 43 passim.
21 Dr. R. Price, l. c. , v. ii. , p. 155, Forster, Addington, Kent, Price, and James Anderson, should be read and compared with the miserable prattle of Sycophant MacCulloch in his catalogue: --The Literature of Political Economy,? London, 1845.
? ? 512 Chapter 27
22 Price, l. c. , p. 147.
23 Price, l. c. , p. 159. We are reminded of ancient Rome. --The rich had got possession of the greater part of the undivided land. They trusted in the conditions of the time, that these possessions would not be again taken from them, and bought, therefore, some of the pieces of land lying near theirs, and belonging to the poor, with the acquiescence of their owners, and took some by force, so that they now were cultivating widely extended domains, instead of isolated fields. Then they employed slaves in agriculture and cattle-breeding, because freemen would have been taken from labour for military service. The possession of slaves brought them great gain, inasmuch as these, on account of their immunity from military service, could freely multiply and have a multitude of children. Thus the powerful men drew all wealth to themselves, and all the land swarmed with slaves. The Italians, on the other hand, were always decreasing in number, destroyed as they were by poverty, taxes, and military service. Even when times of peace came, they were doomed to complete inactivity, because the rich were in possession of the soil, and used slaves instead of freemen in the tilling of it. ? (Appian: --Civil Wars,? I. 7. ) This passage refers to the time before the Licinian rogations. Military service, which hastened to so great an extent the ruin of the Roman plebeians, was also the chief means by which, as in a forcing-house, Charlemagne brought about the transformation of free German peasants into serfs and bondsmen.
24 --An Inquiry into the Connexion between the Present Price of Provisions, &c. ,? pp. 124, 129. To the like effect, but with an opposite tendency: --Working-men are driven from their cottages and forced into the towns to seek for employment; but then a larger surplus is obtained, and thus capital is augmented. ? (--The Perils of the Nation,? 2nd ed. London. , 1843, p. 14. )
25 l. c. , p. 132.
26 Steuart says: --If you compare the rent of these lands? (he erroneously includes in this economic category the tribute of the taskmen to the clanchief) --with the extent, it appears very small. If you compare it with the numbers fed upon the farm, you will find that an estate in the Highlands maintains, perhaps, ten times as many people as another of the same value in a good and fertile province. ? (l. c. , vol. i. , ch. xvi. , p. 104. )
27 James Anderson: --Observations on the Means of Exciting a Spirit of National Industry, &c. ,? Edinburgh, 1777.
28 In 1860 the people expropriated by force were exported to Canada under false pretences. Some fled to the mountains and neighbouring islands. They were followed by the police, came to blows with them and escaped.
29 --In the Highlands of Scotland,? says Buchanan, the commentator on Adam Smith, 1814, --the ancient state of property is daily subverted. . . . The landlord, without regard to the hereditary tenant (a category used in error here), now offers his land to the highest bidder, who, if he is an improver, instantly adopts a new system of cultivation. The land, formerly overspread with small tenants or labourers, was peopled in proportion to its produce, but under the new system of improved cultivation and increased rents, the largest possible produce is obtained at the least possible expense: and the useless hands being, with this view, removed, the population is reduced, not to what the land will maintain, but to what it will employ. --The dispossessed tenants either seek a subsistence in the neighbouring towns,? &c. (David Buchanan: --Observations on, &c. , A. Smith's Wealth of Nations. ? Edinburgh, 1814, vol. iv. , p. 144. ) --The Scotch grandees dispossessed families as they would grub up coppice-wood, and they treated villages and their people as Indians harassed with wild beasts do, in their vengeance, a jungle with tigers. . . . Man is bartered for a fleece or a carcase of mutton, nay, held cheaper. . . . Why, how much worse is it than the intention of the Moguls, who, when they had broken into the northern provinces of China, proposed in council to exterminate the inhabitants, and convert the land into pasture. This proposal many Highland proprietors have effected in their own country
? ? 513 Chapter 27
against their own countrymen. ? (George Ensor: --An Inquiry Concerning the Population of Nations. ? Lond,. 1818, pp. 215, 216. )
30 When the present Duchess of Sutherland entertained Mrs. Beecher Stowe, authoress of --Uncle Tom's Cabin,? with great magnificence in London to show her sympathy for the Negro slaves of the American republic -- a sympathy that she prudently forgot, with her fellow-aristocrats, during the civil war, in which every --noble? English heart beat for the slave-owner -- I gave in the New York Tribune the facts about the Sutherland slaves. (Epitomised in part by Carey in --The Slave Trade. ? Philadelphia, 1853, pp. 203, 204. ) My article was reprinted in a Scotch newspaper, and led to a pretty polemic between the latter and the sycophants of the Sutherlands.
31 Interesting details on this fish trade will be found in Mr. David Urquhart's Portfolio, new series. -- Nassau W. Senior, in his posthumous work, already quoted, terms --the proceedings in Sutherlandshire one of the most beneficent clearings since the memory of man. ? (l. c. )
32 The deer-forests of Scotland contain not a single tree. The sheep are driven from, and then the deer driven to, the naked hills, and then it is called a deer-forest. Not even timber-planting and real forest culture.
33 Robert Somers: --Letters from the Highlands: or the Famine of 1847. ? London, 1848, pp. 12-28 passim. These letters originally appeared in The Times. The English economists of course explained the famine of the Gaels in 1847, by their over-population.
At all events, they --were pressing on their food-supply. ? The --clearing of estates,? or as it is called in Germany, --Bauernlegen,? occurred in Germany especially after the 30 years' war, and led to peasant-revolts as late as 1790 in Kursachsen. It obtained especially in East Germany. In most of the Prussian provinces, Frederick II. for the first time secured right of property for the peasants. After the conquest of Silesia he forced the landlords to rebuild the huts, barns, etc. , and to provide the peasants with cattle and implements. He wanted soldiers for his army and tax-payers for his treasury. For the rest, the pleasant life that the peasant led under Frederick's system of finance and hodge-podge rule of despotism, bureaucracy and feudalism, may be seen from the following quotation from his admirer, Mirabeau: --Le lin fait donc une des grandes richesses du cultivateur dans le Nord de l'Allemagne. Malheureusement pour l'espe`ce humaine, ce n'est qu'une ressource contre la mise`re et non un moyen de bien-e^tre. Les impo^ts directs, les corve? es, les servitudes de tout genre, e? crasent le cultivateur allemand, qui paie encore des impo^ts indirects dans tout ce qu'il ache`te. . . . et pour comble de ruine, il n'ose pas vendre ses productions ou` et comme il le veut; il n'ose pas acheter ce dont il a besoin aux marchands qui pourraient le lui livrer au meilleur prix. Toutes ces causes le ruinent insensiblement, et il se trouverait hors d'e? tat de payer les impo^ts directs a` l'e? che? ance sans la filerie; elle lui offre une ressource, en occupant utilement sa femme, ses enfants, ses servants, ses valets, et lui-me^me; mais quelle pe? nible vie, me^me aide? e de ce secours. En e? te? , il travaille comme un forc? at au labourage et a` la re? colte; il se couche a` 9 heures et se le`ve a` deux, pour suffire aux travaux; en hiver il devrait re? parer ses forces par un plus grand repos; mais il manquera de grains pour le pain et les semailles, s'il se de? fait des denre? es qu'il faudrait vendre pour payer les impo^ts. Il faut donc filer pour supple? er a` ce vide. . . . il faut y apporter la plus grande assiduite? . Aussi le paysan se couche-t-il en hiver a` minuit, une heure, et se le`ve a` cinq ou six; ou bien il se couche a` neuf, et se le`ve a` deux, et cela tous les jours de la vie si ce n'est le dimanche. Ces exce`s de veille et de travail usent la nature humaine, et de la` vient qu'hommes et femmes vieillissent beaucoup pluto^t dans les campagnes que dans les villes. ? [Flax represents one of the greatest sources of wealth for the peasant of North Germany. Unfortunately for the human race, this is only a resource against misery and not a means towards well-being. Direct taxes, forced labour service, obligations of all kinds crush the German peasant, especially as he still has to pay indirect taxes on everything he buys, . . . and to complete his ruin he dare not sell his produce where and as he wishes; he dare not buy what he needs from the merhcants who could sell it to him at a cheaper price. He is slowly ruined by all those factors, and when the dirct taxes fall due, he would find himself incapable of paying them
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without his spinning-wheel; it offers him a last resort, while providing useful occupation for his wife, his children, his maids, his farm-hands, and himself; but what a painful life he leads, even with this extra resource! In summer, he works like a convict with the plough and at harvest; he goes to bed at nine o'clock and rises at two to get through all his work; in winter he ought to be recovering his strength by sleeping longer; but he would run short of corn for his bread and next year's sowing if he got rid of the products that he needs to sell in order to pay the taxes. He therefore has to spin to fill up this gap . . . and indeed he must do so most assiduously. Thus the peasant goes to bed at midnight or one o'clock in winter, and gets up at five or six; or he gies to bed at nine and gets up at two, and this he does every day of his life except Sundays. These excessively short hours of sleep and long hours of work consume a person's strength and hence it happens that men and women age much more in the country than in the towns] (Mirabeau, l. c. , t. III. pp. 212 sqq. )
Note to the second edition. In April 1866, 18 years after the publication of the work of Robert Somers quoted above, Professor Leone Levi gave a lecture before the Society of Arts on the transformation of sheep-walks into deer-forest, in which he depicts the advance in the devastation of the Scottish Highlands. He says, with other things: --Depopulation and transformation into sheep-walks were the most convenient means for getting an income without expenditure. . . A deer-forest in place of a sheep- walk was a common change in the Highlands. The landowners turned out the sheep as they once turned out the men from their estates, and welcomed the new tenants -- the wild beasts and the feathered birds. . . . One can walk from the Earl of Dalhousie's estates in Forfarshire to John O'Groats, without ever leaving forest land. . . . In many of these woods the fox, the wild cat, the marten, the polecat, the weasel and the Alpine hare are common; whilst the rabbit, the squirrel and the rat have lately made their way into the country. Immense tracts of land, much of which is described in the statistical account of Scotland as having a pasturage in richness and extent of very superior description, are thus shut out from all cultivation and improvement, and are solely devoted to the sport of a few persons for a very brief period of the year. ? The London Economist of June 2, 1866, says, --Amongst the items of news in a Scotch paper of last week, we read. . . 'One of the finest sheep farms in Sutherlandshire, for which a rent of ? 1,200 a year was recently offered, on the expiry of the existing lease this year, is to be converted into a deer-forest. ' Here we see the modern instincts of feudalism . . . operating pretty much as they did when the Norman Conqueror. . . destroyed 36 villages to create the New Forest. . . . Two millions of acres. . . totally laid waste, embracing within their area some of the most fertile lands of Scotland. The natural grass of Glen Tilt was among the most nutritive in the county of Perth. The deer-forest of Ben Aulder was by far the best grazing ground in the wide district of Badenoch; a part of the Black Mount forest was the best pasture for black-faced sheep in Scotland. Some idea of the ground laid waste for purely sporting purposes in Scotland may be formed from the fact that it embraced an area larger than the whole county of Perth. The resources of the forest of Ben Aulder might give some idea of the loss sustained from the forced desolations. The ground would pasture 15,000 sheep, and as it was not more than one-thirtieth part of the old forest ground in Scotland . . . it might, &c. , . . . All that forest land is as totally unproductive. . . . It might thus as well have been submerged under the waters of the German Ocean. . . . Such extemporised wildernesses or deserts ought to be put down by the decided interference of the Legislature. ?
? ? Chapter 28: Bloody Legislation Against the Expropriated, from the End of the 15th
Century. Forcing Down of Wages by Acts of Parliament
The proletariat created by the breaking up of the bands of feudal retainers and by the forcible expropriation of the people from the soil, this --free? proletariat could not possibly be absorbed by the nascent manufactures as fast as it was thrown upon the world. On the other hand, these men, suddenly dragged from their wonted mode of life, could not as suddenly adapt themselves to the discipline of their new condition. They were turned en masse into beggars, robbers, vagabonds, partly from inclination, in most cases from stress of circumstances. Hence at the end of the 15th and during the whole of the 16th century, throughout Western Europe a bloody legislation against vagabondage. The fathers of the present working class were chastised for their enforced transformation into vagabonds and paupers. Legislation treated them as --voluntary? criminals, and assumed that it depended on their own good will to go on working under the old conditions that no longer existed.
In England this legislation began under Henry VII.
Henry VIII. 1530: Beggars old and unable to work receive a beggar's licence. On the other hand, whipping and imprisonment for sturdy vagabonds. They are to be tied to the cart-tail and whipped until the blood streams from their bodies, then to swear an oath to go back to their birthplace or to where they have lived the last three years and to --put themselves to labour. ? What grim irony! In 27 Henry VIII. the former statute is repeated, but strengthened with new clauses. For the second arrest for vagabondage the whipping is to be repeated and half the ear sliced off; but for the third relapse the offender is to be executed as a hardened criminal and enemy of the common weal.
Edward VI. : A statute of the first year of his reign, 1547, ordains that if anyone refuses to work, he shall be condemned as a slave to the person who has denounced him as an idler. The master shall feed his slave on bread and water, weak broth and such refuse meat as he thinks fit. He has the right to force him to do any work, no matter how disgusting, with whip and chains. If the slave is absent a fortnight, he is condemned to slavery for life and is to be branded on forehead or back with the letter S; if he runs away thrice, he is to be executed as a felon. The master can sell him, bequeath him, let him out on hire as a slave, just as any other personal chattel or cattle. If the slaves attempt anything against the masters, they are also to be executed. Justices of the peace, on information, are to hunt the rascals down. If it happens that a vagabond has been idling about for three days, he is to be taken to his birthplace, branded with a red-hot iron with the letter V on the breast and be set to work, in chains, in the streets or at some other labour. If the vagabond gives a false birthplace, he is then to become the slave for life of this place, of its inhabitants, or its corporation, and to be branded with an S. All persons have the right to take away the children of the vagabonds and to keep them as apprentices, the young men until the 24th year, the girls until the 20th. If they run away, they are to become up to this age the slaves of their masters, who can put them in irons, whip them, &c. , if they like. Every master may put an iron ring round the neck,
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arms or legs of his slave, by which to know him more easily and to be more certain of him. 1 The last part of this statute provides, that certain poor people may be employed by a place or by persons, who are willing to give them food and drink and to find them work. This kind of parish slaves was kept up in England until far into the 19th century under the name of --roundsmen. ?
Elizabeth, 1572: Unlicensed beggars above 14 years of age are to be severely flogged and branded on the left ear unless some one will take them into service for two years; in case of a repetition of the offence, if they are over 18, they are to be executed, unless some one will take them into service for two years; but for the third offence they are to be executed without mercy as felons. Similar statutes: 18 Elizabeth, c. 13, and another of 1597. 2
James 1: Any one wandering about and begging is declared a rogue and a vagabond. Justices of the peace in petty sessions are authorised to have them publicly whipped and for the first offence to imprison them for 6 months, for the second for 2 years. Whilst in prison they are to be whipped as much and as often as the justices of the peace think fit. . . Incorrigible and dangerous rogues are to be branded with an R on the left shoulder and set to hard labour, and if they are caught begging again, to be executed without mercy. These statutes, legally binding until the beginning of the 18th century, were only repealed by 12 Anne, c. 23.
Similar laws in France, where by the middle of the 17th century a kingdom of vagabonds (truands) was established in Paris. Even at the beginning of Louis XVI. 's reign (Ordinance of July 13th, 1777) every man in good health from 16 to 60 years of age, if without means of subsistence and not practising a trade, is to be sent to the galleys. Of the same nature are the statute of Charles V. for the Netherlands (October, 1537), the first edict of the States and Towns of Holland (March 10, 1614), the --Plakaat? of the United Provinces (June 26, 1649), &c.
Thus were the agricultural people, first forcibly expropriated from the soil, driven from their homes, turned into vagabonds, and then whipped, branded, tortured by laws grotesquely terrible, into the discipline necessary for the wage system.
It is not enough that the conditions of labour are concentrated in a mass, in the shape of capital, at the one pole of society, while at the other are grouped masses of men, who have nothing to sell but their labour-power. Neither is it enough that they are compelled to sell it voluntarily. The advance of capitalist production develops a working class, which by education, tradition, habit, looks upon the conditions of that mode of production as self-evident laws of Nature. The organisation of the capitalist process of production, once fully developed, breaks down all resistance. The constant generation of a relative surplus-population keeps the law of supply and demand of labour, and therefore keeps wages, in a rut that corresponds with the wants of capital. The dull compulsion of economic relations completes the subjection of the labourer to the capitalist. Direct force, outside economic conditions, is of course still used, but only exceptionally. In the ordinary run of things, the labourer can be left to the --natural laws of production,? i. e. , to his dependence on capital, a dependence springing from, and guaranteed in perpetuity by, the conditions of production themselves. It is otherwise during the historic genesis of capitalist production. The bourgeoisie, at its rise, wants and uses the power of the state to --regulate? wages, i. e. , to force them within the limits suitable for surplus value making, to lengthen the working day and to keep the labourer himself in the normal degree of dependence. This is an essential element of the so-called primitive accumulation.
The class of wage labourers, which arose in the latter half of the 14th century, formed then and in the following century only a very small part of the population, well protected in its position by the independent peasant proprietary in the country and the guild-organisation in the town. In country and town master and workmen stood close together socially. The subordination of labour to capital was only formal - i. e. , the mode of production itself had as yet no specific capitalistic
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