The Malay archipelago : the land of the orang-utan ... - Wallace Online

—364 THE aiALAY ARCHIPELAGO. [chap.pride onr giarantic and ever-increasing manufactures and commerce,and thinking everything good that renders their progressstill more rapid, either by lowering the price at which thearticles can he produced, or by discovering new markets towhich they may be sent. If, however, the question that is sofrequently asked of the votaries of the less popular scienceswere put here " Chd bono?"—it would be found moi'e difficultto answer than had been imagined. The advantages, even tothe few who reap them, would be seen to be mostly physical,while the widespread moral and intellectual evils resultingfrom unceasing labour, low wages, crowded dwellings, andmonotonous occupations, to perhaps as large a number as thosewho gain any real advantage, might be held to show a balanceof evil so great, as to lead the greatest admirers of our manufacturesand commerce to doubt the advisability of their furtherdevelopment. It will be said ": We cannot stop it ; capitalmust be employed ; our population must be kept at woi'k ; ifwe hesitate a moment, other nations now hard pressing us willget ahead, and national ruin will follow." Some of this is true,some fallacious. It is undoubtedly a difficult problem which wehave to solve ; and I am inclined to think it is this difficultythat makes men conclude that what seems a necessary and unalterablestate of things must be good—that its benefits mustbe greater than its evils. This was the feeling of the Americanadvocates of slavery ; they could not see an easy, comfortableway out of it. In our own case, however, it is to be hoped, thatif a fair consideration of the matter in all its bearings shows thata preponderance of evil arises from the immensitj' of our manufacturesand commerce—evil which must go on increasing withtheir increase—there i.-; enough both of political wisdom andtrue philanthropy in Englishmen, to induce them to tui'n theirsuperabundant wealth into other channels. The fact that hasled to these remarks is surely a striking one : that in one of themost remote corners of the earth savages can buy clothingcheaper than the people of the country where it is made ; thatthe weaver's child should shiver in the wintry wind, unable topurchase articles attainable by the wild natives of a tropicalclimate, where clothing is mere ornament or luxury, shouldmake us pause ere Ave regard with unmixed admiration thesystem which has led to such a result, and cause us to look "withome suspicion on the further extension of that system. Itmust be remembered too that our commerce is not a purelynatural growth. It has been ever fostered by the legislature,and forced to an unnatural luxuriance by the protection of ourfleets and armies. The wisdom and the justice of this policyhave been already doubted. So soon, therefore, as it is seenthat the further extension of our manufactures and commercewould be an evil, the remedy is not far to seek.After six weeks' confinement to the house I was at length