Northern Times.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1859-03-07 00:00:00

WORKING

THE E•.._

CLASSES

AttENDING COMBINATMNS A/411
: 'CO:SITINUtD.

ta'apfer Second continued from Saturday )
Having thus endeAVOUred Yet explain a few of
the 'evils Which spring out of 'unions and eonfed-
*eratod bodies, according to the principles en which
many of them are still based, I would now seek to
offer a hiht or two on 'the good that may be made
to arise out of these by making them. subservient
It) Military purposes.
It must be well 'known to every one that the
demand for labour in no branch of industry is
Uniforu • that it varies with the seasons and
mercantile vicissitudes. It is for these periods of
depresiion that 'the Working Classes ought to be
Provided. If we take an, average of ryears, it is
highly probali?e that the wages of workmen—l do
not mean to -say in all, 'but in most ...ranches of
industry—a'a adequate to their maintenance. The
great misfmtune is, however, that -no provision is
made for 'years of slackness. It has been, and is
still too soften the case, that the -high wages of
goDd years are often spent by ?the workman in
greater ,•,adulgenee, without regard to the priva-
tions 4. -which he will be Pl... Necked in. bad years.
Yet tnese bad years are efineiitahle occurrence.
Ily the institution of Saviergsßanks and Friendly
Soeitties, future provision is made for • want,
infrNaity, old age, and death ; but these periods
are not more certain tkan t'neit a period of great
ietAAmercial and manufacturing industry will be
tbliowecl by one of etirrespondine• depression.
Why, then, 'ought nit% .preeatvtion to be made for
Mhe former as well as elle !latter? With very few
c61,-;ceptions, however, it is.niqoribus that scarcely
of the Work* Classes make any provision
'or years of scarcity of' employment.
have i'.een suggested by different
writers ten meet se great defect in the economy
of those whose histrjpY I am *ow recording.
One of them is, at,eachworkman should learn
several trades, solthat if'one fail, he can turn to
another. I do nist wish-to be understood to say
that this can betensilydotic in many trades, but
still it can be done in some. Such an arrangement
would encourage enterprise, and enterpaise is the
first step to indtastrial progress.' The whole human
race, says a ht ,e writer' on Political Economy, is
full of latent desires ; they are called into activity
and exertion by enterprising men, who epen new
sources for supplyince theta. Such is the constitu-
tion of our nure, .supplying -thorn.
every new effort in this
shape is the . stimulating and creating cause of
another eiffort. /Every Troduction that ttimuldtes
the desire ofracqziisition raises the indastrial
vies olothers'to. the. creation of some epticaleizt

xpectier

Various

w_
ill purchase it.
When we look around. u 4 in the markets of the
-world, we find them here and there with their
various :distinctive characters as if they were so
many natural productions, indicative of different
climes and -soils. In Manchester, for instance, mfe
have cottons ; in-Sheffield, cutlery ; in Binning-
ham, steam-engines in Lyons, silk ; in Berlin,
ornantentraliron. And if we examine the germs of,
these greatschools of lthour we will find that they
have hadttheir-first vitality from the enterprise Of.
individuals who have opened new sources Of indus-
trial enterprise, and, have supplied' desires which
never sleep. though their external development in
the shape of demand has not appeared until the
method sir supply has-come into existence.
What, ;then, is to kinder this enterprise from
being still continued'? What is to prevent men
who carnet gain for !themselves a sufficient reward
for their' labour in • one particular occupation, •or
who are thrown into idleness for want of .eimploy-
meat—what is to prevent them, I ask, from em-
ploying- their energies in some new pursuit
Nothing ! I repeat, • nothing ; because it has been
done by others, and can still be done. I will
instance a few examples.
lu•Spa, a watering place in Germany, an enter-
prising, forking man stained wood of a pleasing
slate,cellour, and converted it into small articles ,of
tiny •cabinet work. ;`The demand for this class -of
productions grew current and prolific among the
visitors' to the place, and they are now a staple
manufacture. In eeme portions of the Swiss
valleysilagain, where the severe frost excludes all
agricultural operations.for a great portion of the
year, the-knife is in ceaseless operation construct-
ing small articles of woodwork, which are sold to
the visitors in summer ; gyhilst in other parts of the
same country the peasantry pursue the more skilled
and productive craft of-watch-making. Some few-
years ago the peasantry in the Black Forest found a
pursuit m.cutting the savory portions of the horn
of the NLag into representations of sylvan life.
These productions, in. ecnsequence of their ingen-
uity, fund a market in• Frankfort ; and they arc
at the t present day dispersed, as personal
ornaxnents,,eil over Europe. The Laurence-Kirk
snuff iXes,, -at one time se celebrated and peculiar,
were the Irra of the handicraft ingenuity of one
man, who, ;with his assistant workmen, supplied a
ablemarket. Amindividual impulse, as I
said before,

consltit

-nee communicated, has the faculty
of gathering, as it proceeds. No sooner was
the Teputation of the -Laurence-Kirk snuff-
boxes established, than there sprang up a man
in Mauchline, a town in Ayrshire, full of activity
and enterprize.who adopted_ them. He improved
the colouring process, which communicates to the
wood used in the construction of the boxes, a
beautiful soft enamel. Shortly afterwards it was
suggested to.him by one of his customers that he
shohld extend the range of his produce beyond
snuff-boxes. •The hint was accordingly adopted,
and now not only Mauchline, ltut Cumnock, gives
forth a variety of beautiful specimens of wood-
work. In Earlstcn, a village in Berwickshire,
two females, a fctw years ago., set one or two
looms a:going,: for the fabrication of ginghams,
an a,rtwle
.never before worn in that
district. Immediately afterwards " Earlston
Ginghame" were ticketed in almost every draper's
shop in Edinburgh, .and probably in other places ;
and these two girls—the Misses Whale —became
the heads Hof a factory which still gives -employ-
ment to a large, number of the inhabitants of the

village.
In all great marts, in fact, whether of the
higher productions of human intellect,-or of simple
merchandise, ,we find: that, instead of the field
being narrowed, enterprise begets enterprise, and
emulation rouses emulation, so that inferior pro-
ducers-in a great multitude are richer ,than the
sole individuals Who had occupied the field.
"It is diftcult," remarks a profound writer
on political economy, " to. estimate the hlessings
shed around Lim by• the znan who first plants
the seeds of iidustry amco;g an indolent p=eople,
by some new eiterprise to ;which their faculties,
thcir tastes, and subsequently their wants ,adopt
the nselves. " .

If we look on the one hard to all that human
114.t.1'e has accomylished, let ~us sometimes also
refle on all that has been unvcomphshed ; and
in minions of humu,n beings idly succeeding eaoh
other for centuries, estimate ti,he quantity of,
creotiwp faculty that has been dead for want of
861244. In this surrey of shadowy probabilities,
let us opunt the houses unbuilt, ;the railways
undrealint of, the Pictures that ha tie never been
,painted, the great Poems that have never
;been written by mute inglorious Xilton's, the
;nobler sympathies asta impulses .of high
tjat have beep "
dead a..*
aesert of Africa. Compare the multitui lthe salt
es ,
who
have !lived on, since the creation of the world in
loarSariim and indolence, wits those who have
Lased iWe high- Acuities of ow. nature, ake we
have :the proportion of ,the wo4 undone to that
which has been done,

(1) The following is a passage from mit of the officialdocuments of the Glasgow cotton spinners produced at
'their trial : --." 'Moved at the general meeting, by Willie
Johnstone, and unanimously carried, the name of every
sob at present- working, and the districts they last
wrought in, should be enrolled in a book; and at the
end of the strike, unless a change in the list t.,es .t,
place,--
the.), be printed, But at all events, the names of all
who remain nobs at the end of the strike shall be printed,
and sot to all the spinning districts in Scotland, Eng-
lankaui Ireland; that they remain nobs for ever ; and
,a persecuting commilike be aPPOI.OOI (9 perfectig Mon to
ihe utgiosVo

YOUNG AMERICA ON
SLAVERY.

Aft reac;ing Thos. Colley Grattan's " CiriliseteAmerica.")

[Continued from Friday's .21ortheest Times.]
Having replied to Audi's phillipic, I resume my
argument by asserting that the African has done
nothing to make his equality with the Anglo-
Saxon race!

What, nothing? No arts, no sciences, no mem-
factures, no agricultural improvements, no ping
for literature, nothing for religion ? No, not
anything, and this, too, in a continent more thickly
populated than .America, or England, or --Irance!
The Asiatic shows works of utility ; the Ihropean
is always inventing ; the Am'erican's energy never
ceases; even the wretched Australian transfixes
game with a Boomerang. But whit has the
African done ? In Africa, you rutty say, they
have no opportunity. But no such excuse will
apply to America. In our Northern States the
census of
.1860 will show the Tree black popula-
tion to be some:5,000,000 Many €' these negroes

have been erlircated in northern.schools, some in
northern cotiteges. They have mixed with the
whites, art-Vbenefited by their 'civilization, yet
what have tley accomptighea

Sydney 'Smith's strictrres 'ft. American boolzA
would artily to the kfricans—where are *hoax'
historkvrts, their poets, itheirteratorsi their artitts ?
What wens have thertompll-,ed that should illace
them gr., a level with dae Aitecrican or the Eng4"lsh-

Therelnay be a ftv.inAtarees, but they.arevery

and in such. ease

energy, or gentils, or
vigoarr,energly arises from 'the' white
blooa ;hi their vi ins. FPrederiek DoTagits is a

kntw it is a -Cffieuttrinatter to convince against
Ytt no one ouT,Y,It 1U judge

Battle convictions

itherit reflection. "Tv7.43 generations :}.have _pre-
jufliced Englishmen :'ccg•dinst Americans. I am in
hopes that the-lisinwome will not think so badly
Of-us. If the ..inglisit,people will think as well of
the Americas as oche abolitionist-64de of the
Afiicans I shell'be-stithfied.

One can lrardly keep his patience in looking
the Parliamentary debates, sigh-reading the
'arguments ,S;:* 'Lorefalmerston. Laid Brougham
,seid last •N reek 'that he had devoted some
.Sixty years 'to 'the- subject, but, nobwithstanding
F. experience; he 'failed to reply to; the eloquent
•speech of :ord Maimesbury, who're he justified
himself in -giving,up the right of search.

'Lord Clureuclarr"believed the American Govern-
ment was' t' illy‘as'desirous as they were themselves
loneStlyttoTufdown the traffic." ',Lord Shaftes-
bury andiktford.cannot much larger mislead the
•Englistypeople 'on this question.
'How often' I 'have listened and mad the thrilling
scenes- portraye& by the Anti-Slavery Statesman,
on' the' "horrors of the Middle ' Passage !" How
little their audiences reflected - one moment's
thought would hare told them that, if the British
Squadron which costs some 1:,000,000
,every
-year—(a sum equal to the amount received from
duties on education by taxing newspapers!)
had 'been remowed, the tra&e would have
'been carried on in emigrant ships of
suitable :tonnage, properly manned and well
provided with provisions, 'instead of the
miserable' one rice craft, where the slaves were all
covered sand -smothered the .rnament a cruiser
came-In sight. _ _

For half. the .deaths of late years on the African
and tvro-thirds the' misery you

,voyage

thank ,the British -.Sqxadron on the
coast, Fhich 'England to her cost, (as found like
her West 'lndian Emancipation Loan, and the
reginrentsplaced there to keep down the negroes)
has -proved not,only a grave to • her capital, but a
cemetery to her soldiers and sailors. !
Who ywas it said that two governors were always
required at `Sierra Leone ; one was going out alive
while the other,was coming home dead ? America
must have eighty guns on the coat by the arbi-
tration treaty. Already ywe have expended
$800,660 a-yeaefor seventeen years, or $13,600,000 !
For what ? To keep down . the slave trade, and
oblige England's slave guardians'. The money
would have been better invested, if spent in educat-
ing some of the three millions out of the five
millions of children in England and Wales, which
the returns show receive no education whatever,
for certainly she has not stopped the slave trade.
The year of theftreaty some '30,000 negroes were
expelled from Africa per annum ; in 1843, 55,000.
In 1846 it rose t 076,000, and in :1847 to 84,000 !
and this in spite of the twenty millions spent by
England and America, since 1842, in trying to
check it. The taxpayers should inquire into it,
and ask the Anti-slavery lords if it is not about
time for them to -acknowledge ,the error of their
ways and means'? All this time slavery has
been carried on in •all quarters, under a change of

name.

Out of the 28,777'Chinese imported, 4,124 have
perished, and few of!the remainder will ever reach
again their native land'. The record is chilling,
for the mortality is terrible.
While Lord Palmerston has closed the Portu-
guese and Brazilian slave markets,---ruined the
West Indies, and created a national .feeling of
dislike against Amerieans,---the Cubap slave trade
has flourished, in spite of the Spanish treaty--
and poor Jamaica has been allowed to perish under
Exeter-hall philanthropy, while Cuba and Porto
Rico have flourished under the guano stimulation
of England's purchases of slave-grown sugar—a
direct premium on slavery.
Are the Abolitionists really in earnest ? If so,
why not let charity begin at home, why not
reduce theory to practice ? Why not like Mrs.
Dombey make an effort. • Let me take up one or
two more of their inconsisteeies.
When a British cruiser, after smothering half

the slaves overtakes the slaver on the coast, do
ycu not think it would be a good time to take the
poor middle passage creatures, who are alive,
bactk to their dear fathers and dear mothers
—their dear friends in Africa? Most certainly
you de,. But are they carried back we ask ? No,
on the ,contrary are they not packed off to the
West Indies, where they have the honour of

serving some 28 years as apprentiees

azd who

pocketi the money ? Does not the master get
forty years Zustead of twenty-eight out of
them by over work ? Have any ever
returned to theiruative land ? None from England!
bit America, much-abuied America, takes a
slaver, and selects her finest war -ship to convey
the slaves back to Africa,

It was only the other day that the Niagara war--
frigate landed the slaves 031 board the Echo on the
Negro Coast ; and I am glad 4o see the universal
cry of shame, both south as well as north, at the
slip-shod laws of Georgia regarding the slaves