CHAPTER VII. FOREIGN IMPOSTURE IN COMMERCE. (continued.)

England is fond of calling Turkey her “ancient ally;” but that did not prevent her from aiding Russia in annihilating the Turkish fleet, at Navarino, an error which she is now expiating at Sabastopol. Neither has it prevented her from ruining Turkey by the same system of British free trade, which has ruined Portugal. Let us see what the authority already quoted says in this connection:

“Of all the countries of Europe, there is none possessed of natural advantages to enable it to compare with those constituting the Turkish Empire in Europe and Asia. Wool, silk, corn, oil, and tobacco, might, with proper cultivation, be produced in almost unlimited quantity, while Thessaly and Macedonia, long celebrated for the production of cotton, abound in lands uncultivated, from which it might be obtained in sufficient quantity to clothe a large portion of Europe. Iron ore also abounds, and in quality equal to any in the world, while in another part of the empire, ‘the hills seem a mass of carbonate of copper.’* Nature has done every thing for the people of that country, and yet of all those of Europe, the Turkish rayah approaches in condition nearest to a slave; and of all the governments of Europe, that of Portugal not even excepted, that of Turkey is the most a slave to the dictation, not only of nations, but even of bankers and traders. Why it is so, we may now inquire.

By the terms of the treaty with England, in 1675, the Turkish government bound itself, to charge no more than three per cent duty on imports, and as this could contribute little to the revenue, that required to be sought elsewhere. A poll-tax, house-tax, land-tax, and many other direct taxes, furnished a part of it, and the balance was obtained by an indirect tax in the form of export duties; and as the corn, tobacco, cotton, of its people were obliged to compete in the general markets of the world with the produce of other lands, it is clear that these duties constituted a further contribution from the cultivators of the empire, in aid of the various direct taxes that have been mentioned. So far as foreigners were interested, the system was one of perfect trade and direct taxation.

* Urquhart’s Resources of Turkey, p. 199.
Equivalent to light port charges, the anchorage being only sixteen cents per ship.

“For many years Turkey manufactured much of her cotton, and she exported cotton yarn. Such was the case as recently as 1798, as will be seen by the following very interesting account of one of the seats of manufacture.

“Ambelakia, by its activity, appears rather a borough of Holland, than a village of Turkey. This vil- lage spreads, by its industry, movement, and life, over the surrounding country, and gives birth to an immense commerce, which unites Germany to Greece by a thousand threads. Its population has trebled in fifteen years, and amounts at present (1798) to four thousand, who live in their manufactories, like swarms of bees in their hives. In this village are unknown vices and cares engendered by idleness; the hearts of the Ambelakiots are pure and their faces serene; the slavery which . blasts the plains watered by the Peneus, and stretching at their feet, has never ascended the sides of Pelion (Ossa;) and they govern themselves like their ancestors, by their protoyeros, (primates, elders,) and their own magistrates. Twice the Mussulmen of Lanissa attempted to scale their rocks, and twice they were repulsed by hands that dropped the shuttle to seize the musket.

“Every arm, even those of the children, is employed in the factories; while the men dye the cotton, the women prepare and spin it. There are twenty- four factories, in which yearly two thousand five hundred bales of cotton yarn, of one hundred cotton okes each, were dyed. This yarn found its way into Germany, and was disposed of at Buda, Vienna, Leipsic, Dresden, Anspach, and Bareuth. The Ambelakiot merchants had houses of their own in all these places. These houses belonged to distinct associations at Ambelakia. The competition thus established reduced very considerably the common profits; they proposed therefore to unite themselves under one central commercial administration. Twenty-five years ago this plan was suggested, and a year afterwards it was car- ried into execution. The lowest shares in this joint stock company were five thousand piasters, (between six and seven hundred pounds sterling,) and the highest were restricted to twenty thousand, that the capitalists might not swallow up all the profits. The workmen subscribed their little profits, and uniting in societies, purchased single shares, and besides their capital, their labor was reckoned in the general amount, they received their share of the. profits accordingly; and abundance was soon spread throughout the whole community. The dividends were at first restricted to ten per cent, and .the surplus profit was applied to the augmenting of the capital; which in two years was raised from six hundred thousand to one million piasters, (twenty thousand pounds.)

‘It supplied industrious Germany, not by the perfection of its jennies but by the industry of its spindle and distaff. It taught Montpellier the art of dyeing, not from experimental chairs, but because dying was with it a domestic and culinary operation, subject to daily observation in every kitchen; and by the simplicity and honesty, not the science of its system, it reads a lesson to commercial associations, and holds up an example unparalleled. In the commercial history of Europe, of a joint stock and labor company, ably and economically and successfully administered, in which the interests of industry and capital were long equally represented. Yet the system of administration, with which all this is connected, is common to the thousand hamlets of Thessaly, that have not emerged from their insignificance; but Ambelakia for twenty years was left alone.’*

*Beaujour’s Tableau de Commerce de la Greece, quoted by Urqu- hart. p. 47.

“At that time, however, England had invented machinery for spinning cotton, and, by prohibiting its export, had provided that all the cotton of the world should be brought to Manchester before it could be cheaply converted into cloth.

“The cotton manufactures at Ambelakia had their difficulties to encounter, but all those might have been overcome, had they not, says, Mr. Urquhart, been out- stripped by Manchester.’

” They were outstripped and twenty years afterward, not only had that place been deserted, but others in its neighborhood were reduced to complete desolation. Native manufactories for the production of cotton goods had, indeed, almost ceased to work. Of six hundred looms at Scutari in 1812, but forty remained in 1821, and of the two thousand weaving establishments at Tournovo in 1812 but two hundred remained in 1830.*

*Urquhart, p. 150.

“For a time, cotton went abroad to be returned in the form of a twist, thus making a voyage of thousands of miles in search of a spindle; but even this trade has in a great degree passed away. As a consequence of these things there has been a ruinous fall of wages, affecting all classes of laborers. ‘The profits’ says, Mr. Urquhart, “have been reduced to one half, and sometimes one third, by the introduction of English cottons, which, though, they have reduced the home price, and arrested the export of cotton-yarn from Turkey, have not yet supplanted the home manufacture in any visible degree; for until tranquility has allowed agriculture to revive, the people must go on working merely for bread, and reducing their price, in a struggle of hopeless competition. The industry, however, of the women and children is m6st remarkable; in every interval of labor, tending the cattle, carrying water, the spindle and distaff as in the days of Xerxes, is never out of their hands. The children are assiduously at work, from the moment their little fingers can turn the spindle. About Ambelakia, the former focus of the cotton-yarn trade, the peasantry has suffered dreadfully from this, though formerly the women could earn as much in doors, as their husbands in the field; at present (1831) their daily profit, does not exceed twenty paras, if realized for often they cannot dispose of their yarn when spun.

“Here a woman’s labor makes but two pence per day; while field labor, according to the season of the year, ranges from four to six pence, and at this rate, the pound of coarse cotton-yarn costs in spinning five pence, p 147.

“The labor of a woman is estimated at less than four cents per day, and ‘ the unremitting labor of a week, will command but twenty-five cents. The wages of men employed in gathering leaves and attending silk worms are stated at one piastre (five cents) per day, At Salonica, the shipping port of Thessaly they were ten cents. — Urquhart, 268.

“As a necessary consequence of this, population diminishes, and everywhere are seen the ruins of once prosperous villages. Agriculture declines from day to day. The once productive cotton-fields of Thessaly lie untilled, and even around Constantinople itself there are no cultivated lands to speak of within twenty miles, in some directions within fifty miles. The commonest necessaries of life come from distant parts; the corn for daily bread from Odessa; the cattle and sheep from beyond Adrianople, or from Asia Minor; the rice, of which vast consumption is made, from the neighborhood of Phillipopolis; the poultry chiefly from Bulgaria; the fruit and vegetables from Nicomedia and Macedonia. Thus a constant drain of money is occasioned without any visible return except to the treasury or from the property of Ulema: — Slack’s Travels in Turkey, Vol ii. p. 143.

“The silk that is made is badly prepared, because the distance of the artisan prevents the poor people from obtaining good machinery and as a consequence of this, the former direct trade with Persia has been superseded by an indirect one through England, to which the raw silk has now to be, sent. In every department of industry we see the same result. Birmingham has superseded Damascus, where blades are now no longer made.

“Not only is the foreigner free to introduce iis wares, but he may, on payment of a trifling duty of two per cent., carry them throughout the empire until finally disposed of. He travels by caravans and is lodged without expense. He brings his goods to be exchanged for money, or what else he needs, and the exchange effected, he disappears as suddenly as he came.

“‘It is impossible,’ says Mr. Urquhart ‘to witness the many tongued caravan in its resting place for the night, and see, unladen and piled up together, the bales from such distant places to glance over the very wrappers, and the strange marks and characters which they bear without being amazed at so eloquent a contradiction of our preconceived notions of indiscriminate despotism and universal insecurity of the East. But while we observe the avidity with which our goods are sought, the preference now transferred from Indian to Birmingham, Muslins from Golconda to Glasgow chintzes, from Damascus to Sheffield steel, from Cashmere shawls to English broadcloth; and while at the same time, the energies of the commercial spirit are brought thus substantially before us; it is indeed impossible not to regret that a gulf of separation should have so long divided” the East and West, and equally impossible not to indulge in’ the hope and anticipation of a vastly extended traffic with the East, and of all the blessings which follow fast and revelling in the wake of commerce.’ — p. 133.

” Among the ‘blessings’ of the system is the fact that local places of exchange no longer exist. The storekeeper who pays rent and taxes has found himself unable to compete with the pedlar who pays neither; and the consequence is that the poor cultivator finds it impossible to exchange his products small as they are, for the commodities he needs, except on the arrival of a caravan, and that has generally proved far more likely to absorb the little money in circulation, than any of the more bulky and less valuable products of the earth.’

“As usual in purely agricultural countries, the whole body of cultivators is hopelessly in debt, and the money lender fleeces all. If he aids the peasant before harvest, he must have an enormous interest, and be paid in produce, at a large discount, from the market price. The village committees are almost universally in debt, but to them, as the security is good, the banker charges only twenty per cent, per annum. Turkey is the very -paradise of middle men, a consequence of the absence of any mode of employment except in cultivation or in trade, and the moral effect of this may be seen in the following passage:— ”

“‘If you see,’says Urquhart ‘a Turk meditating in a corner, it is on some speculation, the purchase of a revenue farm, or the propriety of a loan at sixty per cent.; if you see pen or paper in his hand, it is making or checking an account; if there is a disturbance in the street, it is a disputed barter; whether in the streets or in-doors, whether in a coffee house, a seria, or a bazaar, whatever the rank, nation, language of the persons around you, traffic, barter, gain, are the prevailing impulses; grusch, para, florin, hia, asper, amid the Babel of tongues, are the universally intelligible sounds.”— p. 138.

“We have thus a whole people divided into two classes, the plunderers and the plundered; and the cause of this may be found in the fact that the owners and occupants of land have never been permitted to strengthen themselves by the formation of that natural alliance between the plough and the loom, the hammer and the harrow, so much admired by Adam Smith. The government is as weak as the people, for it is so entirely dependent on the bankers, that they may be regarded as the real owners of the land and the people, taxing them at discretion; and to them certainly inure all the profits of cultivation. As a consequence of this, the land is almost valueless. A recent traveller states that good land may be purchased, in the immediate vicinity of Smyrna, at six cents an acre, and at a little distance vast quantities may be had for nothing. Throughout the world the freedom of men has grown in the ratio of the increase in the value of land, and that has always grown in the ratio of the tendency to have the artisan take his place by the cultivator of the earth. Whatever tends to prevent this natural association, tends, therefore, to the debasement and enslavement of man.

The weakness of Turkey as regards foreign nations is great, and it increases every day. Not only ambassadors, but consuls, beard it in its own cities; and it is even now denied that she has any right to adopt a system of trade different from that under which she has become thus weakened.* Perfect freedom of commerce is declared to be ‘one of those immunities which we can resign on no account or pretext whatever, it is a golden privilege which we can never abandon. Internal trade scarcely exists, and, as a natural consequence, the foreign one is insignificant, the whole value of the exports being but about thirty-three millions of dollars, or less that two dollars per head.

* The recent proceedings in regard to the Turkish loan, are strikingly illustrative of the exhausting efforts of a system that looks wholly to tho exports of the raw produce of the earth, and thus tends to the ruin of the soil and its owner. Urquhart, p. 257

The total exports from Great Britain in the last year amounted to but two millions two hundred and twenty-one thousand pounds, or eleven million dollars, much of which was simply en route for Persia; and this constitutes the great trade which has been built up at so much cost to the people of Turkey, and that is to be maintained as ‘ a golden privilege,’ not to be abandoned! Not discouraged by the result of past efforts, the same author looks forward anxiously for the time when there shall be in Turkey no employment in manufactures of any kind, and when the people stall be exclusively employed in agriculture; and the time cannot, he thinks, be far distant, as ‘a few pence more or less in the price of a commodity will make the difference of purchasing or manufacturing at home.’*

“Throughout the book, he shows that the rudeness of the machinery of cultivation is in direct ratio of the distance of the cultivator from the market; and yet he would desire that all the produce of the country should go to a distant market to be exchanged, although the whole import of iron at the present moment for the supply of a population of almost twenty millions of people, possessing iron ore, fuel, and unemployed labor in unlimited quantity, is but twenty-five hundred pounds sterling per annum, or about a penny’s worth for every thirty persons! Need we wonder at the character of the machinery, the poverty and slavery of the people, the trivial amount of commerce, or at the weakness of the government whose whole system looks at the exhaustion of the land, and to the exclu sion of that great middle class of working men, to whom the agriculturalist has every where been indebted for his freedom?

* Urquhart, p. 202.

“The facts thus far given, have been taken, as the reader will have observed, from Mr. Urquhart’s work; and as that gentleman is a warm admirer of the system denounced by Adam Smith, he cannot be suspected of any exaggeration when presenting any of its unfavorable results. Later travellers exhibit the nation as passing steadily on towards ruin, and the people towards a state of slavery the most complete — the necessary consequence of a policy that excludes the mechanic, and prevents the formation of a town population. Among the latest of these travellers is Mr. Mac Farlane.* At the date of whose visit, the silk manufacture had entirely disappeared, and even the filatures for preparing the raw silk were closed, weavers having become ploughmen, and women, and children having been totally deprived of employment. The cultivator of silk had become entirely dependent on foreign markets, in which there existed no demand for the products of their land and labor. England was then passing through one of her periodical crises, and it had been deemed necessary to put down the prices of all agricultural’ products, with a view to stop importation. On one occasion, during Mr. Mao Farlane’s travels, there was a report that silk had risen in England, and it produced a momentary stir and animation, that he says, ‘flattered his national vanity to think that an electric touch parting from London, the mighty heart of commerce, should be felt in a few days at a place like Biljek.’ Such is commercial centralization! It renders the agriculturalists of the world mere slaves, dependent for food and clothing upon the will of a few people, proprietors of a small amount of machinery, at ‘ the mighty heart of commerce.’ At one moment speculation is rife, and silk goes up in price, and then every effort is made to induce large shipments of the raw produce of the world. At the next, money is said to be scarce, and the shippers are ruined, as was, to a great extent, experienced by those who exported corn from this country in 1847.

* ” Turkey and its Destiny,” by C. Mao Farlane, Esq., 1850.

“At the date of the traveller’s first visit to Broussa, the villages were numerous, and the silk manufacture was prosperous. At the second, the silk works were stopped, and their owners bankrupt, the villages even gradually disappearing, and in the town itself scarcely a chimney was left, while the country around presented to view nothing but poverty and wretchedness. Every where, throughout the empire, the roads are bad, and becoming worse, and the condition of the cultivator deteriorates; for if he has a surplus to sell, most of its value at market is absorbed by the cost of transportation, and if his crop is short, prices rise so high, that he cannot purchase. Famines are therefore frequent, and child-murder prevails throughout all classes of society. Population, therefore, diminishes, and the best lands are abandoned, ‘nine-tenths’ of them remaining untilled;* the natural consequence of which is, that malaria prevails in many of those parts of the country that once were most productive, and pestilence comes in aid of famine for the extermination of the unfortunate people. Native mechanics are nowhere to be found, there being no demand for them, and the plough, the wine-press, and the oil-mill are equally rude and barbarous. The product of labor is, consequently, most diminutive, and its wages two-pence a day, with a little food. The interest of money varies from twenty-five to fifty per cent, per annum, and this rate is frequently paid for in the loan of bad seed that yields but little to land or labor.

* Mac Farlane, Vol. i. p. 46.

“With the decline of population, and the disappearance of all the local places of exchange, the pressure of the conscription becomes from year to year more severe, and droves of men may be seen ‘chained like wild beasts — free Osmanlees driven along the road like slaves to a market’ — free men, separated from wives and children, who are left to perish of starvation amid the richest lands, that remain untilled because of the separation of the artisan, from the producer of food, silk, and cotton. Internal commerce is trifling in amount, and the power to pay for foreign merchandise has almost passed away. Land is nearly valueless; and in this we find the most convincing proof of the daily increasing tendency towards slavery, man having always become enslaved as land has lost its value. ” In the great valley of Buyuk-dere, once known as the fair land, a property of twenty miles in circumference had, shortly before his visit, been purchased for less than one thousand pounds, or four thousand eight hundred dollars,.* In another part of the country, one of twelve miles in circumference had been purchased for a considerably smaller sum. The slave trade, black and white, had never been more active; and this was a necessary consequence of the value of labor and land.

* Mac Farlane, p. 296
Ibid. Vol. i. p. 37.

“In this country, negro men are well fed, clothed, and are gradually advancing towards freedom. Population, therefore increases, although more slowly than would be the case were they enabled to combine their efforts for the improvement of their condition. In the West Indies, Portugal, and Turkey, being neither well-fed, clothed, nor lodged, their condition declines; and as they can neither be bought nor sold, they are allowed to die off, and the population diminishes as the tendency towards the subjugation of the laborer becomes more and more complete. Which of these conditions tends most to favor advance in civilization the reader may decide.”

Such is Mr. Carey’s account of what British free trade has done for Turkey. It was written before the present war with Russia on the one hand, and Turkey and her allies on the other, had commenced., It throws some light ou the motives of England in engaging in the war. She was unwilling to have Turkey freed from British free trade. The czar called Turkey a ” sick man,” and wished to take charge of the invalid; but England wished to retain the privilege of doctoring him with a little more free trade. In endeavoring to accomplish this object, England has incurred the deepest and most indelible disgrace. Never was there exhibited such imbecility and folly, as that which the aristocratic officers of the English army at Sebastopol have shown. The rank and file, by their bull-dog courage alone, saved the English army thus far from utter annihilation. Whether that alone will ultimately save it remains to be seen.

The hypocritical pretences under which England has entered upon the war, have been exposed by a member of parliament in his place. In a British paper, just received, we find the following article:

“Mr. Cobden has been asking some questions in the British parliament, which are found rather hard to answer. He said, ‘Before considering other questions in relation to the war, it was necessary to ask what was its object, respecting which he could never get any intelligible notion. Some suppose it was to open the Black Sea, or the Danube, to merchant vessels, whereas both were open. Others imagined that we had a treaty with the Sultan binding us to defend him and his dominions. But Lord Aberdeen has declared that no such treaty existed before the war. There was, indeed, a strong feeling out of doors that Russia had oppressed certain nationalities, and he assumed that the statesman’s ground of war was to defend the Turkish empire against the encroachments of Russia, and to keep the states of Europe within their present limits. But were not the other nations of Europe as much interested as we in this object, and in withstanding a deluge of barbarism? And had we not accomplished the object when Russia renounced all intention of invading Turkey, and as acknowledged by Lord J. Russell, made proposals of peace on the basis of the four points? Austria and Prussia, it was said, had agreed to these terms, and they were more interested in the quarrel than we; why, then, should we not entertain them? We were not to be Don Quixottes, to fight the battles of the world. The destruction of Sebastopol would not prevent its re-construction or the fortification of some other port in the Black Sea. Nor would it secure Turkey, which could be safe only when its internal condition was improved, and its administration reformed, and its resources developed; whereas war demoralized the Turks — whom, since our arrival, we had humiliated and degraded. The country had been misled into a belief that the Mahommedan population of Turkey, which was perishing, was incapable of regeneration, which was a delusion. Instead, then, of continuing war, — having accomplished its original object, as declared in the Qneen’s speech — why not take even chance of the result of accepting the proposals of peace, especially if, as Mr. Layard had predicted, the war was only beginning?”

In these remarks of Mr. Cobden, the real cause of the war leaks out, probably without any intention on his part. He says that ” Turkey could be safe only when its internal condition was improved, its administration reformed, and its resources developed!’ — in other words, when it should rid itself of the incubus of British free trade. If England had not destroyed the manufactures of Turkey, Turkey would not have become a sick man, Russia would not have invaded her territory, western diplomacy would not have paralyzed her means of resistance, and England and France would not have engaged in a war under false pretenses, disgraceful alike in its motives and its conduct.

We now pass to another exhibition of the blessings of British free trade.

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