Consider how, during the last half century, the people have been brought together in the great manufacturing districts of England and Scotland. So rapid has been the progress of manufacturing industry during that period, that it has altogether out-stripped the powers of population in the districts where it was going forward, and occasioned a prodigious influx of persons from different and distant quarters, who have migrated from their paternal homes, and settled in the manufacturing districts, never to return.4 Authentic evidence proves, that not less than two millions of persons have, in this way, been transferred to the manufacturing counties of the north of England within the last forty years, chiefly from the agricultural counties of the south of that kingdom, or from Ireland. Not less than three hundred and fifty thousand persons have, during the same period, migrated into the two manufacturing counties of Lanark and Renfrew alone, in Scotland, chiefly from the Scotch Highlands, or north of Ireland. No such astonishing migration of the human species in so short a time, and to settle on so small a space, is on record in the whole annals of the world. It is unnecessary to say that the increase is to be ascribed chiefly, if not entirely, to immigration; for it is well known that such is the unhealthiness of manufacturing towns, especially to young children, that, so far from being able to add to their numbers, they are hardly ever able, without extraneous addition, to maintain them.

Various causes have combined to produce demoralization among the vast crowd, thus suddenly attracted, by the alluring prospect of high wages and steady employment, from the rural to the manufacturing districts. In the first place, they acquired wealth before they had learned how to use it, and that is, perhaps, the most general cause of the rapid degeneracy of mankind. High wages flowed in upon them before they had acquired the artificial wants in the gratification of which they could be innocently spent. Thence the general recourse to the grosser and sensual enjoyments, which are powerful alike on the savage and the sage. Men who, in the wilds of Ireland or the mountains of Scotland, were making three or four shillings a-week, or in Sussex ten, suddenly found themselves, as cotton-spinners, iron-moulders, colliers, or mechanics, in possession of from twenty to thirty shillings. Meanwhile, their habits and inclinations had undergone scarce any alteration; they had no taste for comfort in dress, lodging, or furniture; and as to laying by money, the thing, of course, was not for a moment thought of. Thus, this vast addition to their incomes was spent almost exclusively on eating and drinking. The extent to which gross sensual enjoyment was thus spread among these first settlers in the regions of commercial opulence, is incredible. It is an ascertained fact, that above a million a-year is annually spent in Glasgow on ardent spirits;5 and it has recently been asserted by a respectable and intelligent operative in Manchester, that, in that city, 750,000 more is annually spent on beer and spirits, than on the purchase of provisions. Is it surprising that a large part of the progeny of a generation which has embraced such habits, should be sunk in sensuality and profligacy, and afford a never-failing supply for the prisons and transport ships? It is the counterpart of the sudden corruption which invariably overtakes northern conquerors, when they settle in the regions of southern opulence.

Another powerful cause which promotes the corruption of men, when thus suddenly congregated together from different quarters in the manufacturing districts, is, that the restraints of character, relationship, and vicinity are, in a great measure, lost in the crowd. Every body knows what powerful influence public opinion, or the opinion of their relations, friends, and acquaintances, exercises on all men in their native seats, or when living for any length of time in one situation. It forms, in fact, next to religion, the most powerful restraint on vice, and excitement to virtue, that exists in the world. But when several hundred thousand of the working classes are suddenly huddled together in densely peopled localities, this invaluable check is wholly lost. Nay, what is worse, it is rolled over to the other side; and forms an additional incentive to licentiousness. The poor in these situations have no neighbours who care for them, or even know their names; but they are surrounded by multitudes who are willing to accompany them in the career of sensuality. They are unknown alike to each other, and to any persons of respectability or property in their vicinity. Philanthropy seeks in vain for virtue amidst thousands and tens of thousands of unknown names; charity itself is repelled by the hopelessness of all attempts to relieve the stupendous mass of destitution which follows in the train of such enormous accumulation of numbers. Every individual or voluntary effort is overlooked amidst the prodigious multitude, as it was in the Moscow campaign of Napoleon. Thus the most powerful restraints on human conduct—character, relations, neighbourhood—are lost upon mankind at the very time when their salutary influence is most required to enable them to withstand the increasing temptations arising from density of numbers and a vast increase of wages. Multitudes remove responsibility without weakening passion. Isolation ensures concealment without adding to resolution. This is the true cause of the more rapid deterioration of the character of the poor than the rich, when placed in such dense localities. The latter have a neighbourhood to watch them, because their station renders them conspicuous—the former have none. Witness the rapid and general corruption of the higher ranks, when they get away from such restraint, amidst the profligacy of New South Wales.

In the foremost rank of the causes which demoralize the urban and mining population, we must place the frequency of those strikes which unhappily have now become so common as to be of more frequent occurrence than a wet season, even in our humid climate. During the last twenty years there have been six great strikes: viz. in 1826, 1828, 1834, 1837, 1842, and 1844. All of these have kept multitudes of the labouring poor idle for months together. Incalculable is the demoralization thus produced upon the great mass of the working classes. We speak not of the actual increase of commitments during the continuance of a great strike, though that increase is so considerable that it in general augments them in a single year from thirty to fifty per cent.6 We allude to the far more general and lasting causes of demoralization which arise from the arraying of one portion of the community in fierce hostility against another, the wretchedness which is spread among multitudes by months of compulsory idleness, and the not less ruinous effect of depriving them of occupation during such protracted periods. When we recollect that such is the vehemence of party feeling produced by these disastrous combinations, that it so far obliterates all sense of right and wrong as generally to make their members countenance contumely and insult, sometimes even robbery, fire-raising, and murder, committed on innocent persons who are only striving to earn an honest livelihood for themselves by hard labour, but in opposition to the strike; and that it induces twenty and thirty thousand persons to yield implicit obedience to the commands of an unknown committee, who have power to force them to do what the Sultan Mahmoud, or the Committee of Public Safety, never ventured to attempt—to abstain from labour, and endure want and starvation for months together, for an object of which they often in secret disapprove—it may be conceived how wide-spread and fatal is the confusion of moral principle, and habits of idleness and insubordination thus produced. Their effects invariably appear for a course of years afterwards, in the increased roll of criminal commitments, and the number of young persons of both sexes, who, loosened by these protracted periods of idleness, never afterwards regain habits of regularity and industry. Nor is the evil lessened by the blind infatuation with which it is uniformly regarded by the other classes of the community, and the obstinate resistance they make to all measures calculated to arrest the violence of these combinations, in consequence of the expense with which they would probably be attended—a supineness which, by leaving the coast constantly clear to the terrors of such associations, and promising impunity to their crimes, operates as a continual bounty on their recurrence.

Страница 3 из 70

Назад 1 2 3 4…70 Далее