they are being enriched. Her interests are always, and necessarily so,
opposed to those of the rest of the world. She _must_ look at every
thing with the eyes of the mere trader who wishes to buy cheaply and
sell dearly, living at the cost of the producer and the consumer. The
former desires good prices for his sugar, and yet so anxious was she
to obtain cheap sugar that she forgot her engagements with the poor
emancipated negroes of Jamaica. The former desire's good prices for
his corn, but so anxious was she to have cheap corn, that she forgot
having deprived the people of Ireland of all employment but in
agriculture, and at once adopted measures whose action is now
expelling the whole nation from the scenes of their youth, and
separating husbands and wives, mothers and children. She has placed
herself in a false position, and cannot now _afford_ to reflect upon
the operation of cheap sugar and cheap corn, cheap cotton and cheap
tobacco, upon the people who produce them; and therefore it is that
the situation of Ireland and India, and of the poor people Of Jamaica,
is so much shut out from discussion. Such being the case with those
who should give tone to public opinion, how can we look for sound or
correct feeling among the poor occupants of "the sweater's den,"[132]
or among the 20,000 tailors of London, seeking for work and unable to
find it? Or, how look for it among the poor shopkeepers, compelled in
self-defence to adulterate almost every thing they sell, when they see
the great cotton manufacturer using annually hundreds of barrels of
flour to enable him to impose worthless cloth upon the poor Hindoo,
and thus annihilate his foreign competitor? Or, how expect to find it
among the poor operatives of Lancashire, at one moment working full
time, at another but three days in a week, and at a third totally
deprived of employment, because goods can no longer be smuggled into
foreign countries to leave a profit? With them, the question of food
or no food is dependent altogether upon the size of the cotton crop.