At Least
Half Of The Vast Multitudes Of Uncivilized Peoples, On Whom Our
Gigantic Manufacturing System, Enormous Capital, And Intense
Competition force the produce of our looms and workshops, would
be not a whit worse off physically, and would certainly
Be
improved morally, if all the articles with which w e supply them
were double or treble their present prices. If at the same time
the difference of cost, or a large portion of it, could find its
way into the pockets of the manufacturing workmen, thousands
would be raised from want to comfort, from starvation to health,
and would be removed from one of the chief incentives to crime.
It is difficult for an Englishman to avoid contemplating with
pride our gigantic and ever-increasing manufactures and commerce,
and thinking everything good that renders their progress still
more rapid, either by lowering the price at which the articles
can be produced, or by discovering new markets to which they may
be sent. If, however, the question that is so frequently asked of
the votaries of the less popular sciences were put here - "Cui
bono?" - it would be found more difficult to answer than had been
imagined. The advantages, even to the few who reap them, would be
seen to be mostly physical, while the wide-spread moral and
intellectual evils resulting from unceasing labour, low wages,
crowded dwellings, and monotonous occupations, to perhaps as
large a number as those who gain any real advantage, might be
held to show a balance of evil so great, as to lead the greatest
admirers of our manufactures and commerce to doubt the
advisability of their further development. It will be said: "We
cannot stop it; capital must be employed; our population must be
kept at work; if we hesitate a moment, other nations now hard
pressing us will get ahead, and national ruin will follow." Some
of this is true, some fallacious. It is undoubtedly a difficult
problem which we have to solve; and I am inclined to think it is
this difficulty that makes men conclude that what seems a
necessary and unalterable state of things must be good-that its
benefits must he greater than its evils. This was the feeling of
the American advocates of slavery; they could not see an easy,
comfortable way out of it. In our own case, however, it is to be
hoped, that if a fair consideration of the matter in all its
hearings shows that a preponderance of evil arises from the
immensity of our manufactures and commerce-evil which must go on
increasing with their increase-there is enough both of political
wisdom and true philanthropy in Englishmen, to induce them to
turn their superabundant wealth into other channels. The fact
that has led to these remarks is surely a striking one: that in
one of the most remote corners of the earth savages can buy
clothing cheaper than the people of the country where it is made;
that the weaver's child should shiver in the wintry wind, unable
to purchase articles attainable by the wild natives of a tropical
climate, where clothing is mere ornament or luxury, should make
us pause ere we regard with unmixed admiration the system which
has led to such a result, and cause us to look with some
suspicion on the further extension of that system. It must be
remembered too that our commerce is not a purely natural growth.
It has been ever fostered by the legislature, and forced to an
unnatural luxuriance by the protection of our fleets and armies.
The wisdom and the justice of this policy have been already
doubted. So soon, therefore, as it is seen that the further
extension of our manufactures and commerce would be an evil, the
remedy is not far to seek.
After six weeks' confinement to the house I was at length well,
and could resume my daily walks in the forest. I did not,
however, find it so productive as when I had first arrived at
Dobbo. There was a damp stagnation about the paths, and insects
were very scarce. In some of my best collecting places I now
found a mass of rotting wood, mingled with young shoots, and
overgrown with climbers, yet I always managed to add something
daily to my extensive collections. I one day met with a curious
example of failure of instinct, which, by showing it to be
fallible, renders it very doubtful whether it is anything more
than hereditary habit, dependent on delicate modifications of
sensation. Some sailors cut down a good-sized tree, and, as is
always my practice, I visited it daily for some time in search of
insects. Among other beetles came swarms of the little
cylindrical woodborers (Platypus, Tesserocerus, &c.), and
commenced making holes in the bark. After a day or two I was
surprised to find hundreds of them sticking in the holes they had
bored, and on examination discovered that the milky sap of the
tree was of the nature of gutta-percha, hardening rapidly on
exposure to the air, and glueing the little animals in self-dug
graves. The habit of boring holes in trees in which to deposit
their eggs, was not accompanied by a sufficient instinctive
knowledge of which trees were suitable, and which destructive to
them. If, as is very probable, these trees have an attractive
odour to certain species of borers, it might very likely lead to
their becoming extinct; while other species, to whom the same
odour was disagreeable, and who therefore avoided the dangerous
trees, would survive, and would be credited by us with an
instinct, whereas they would really be guided by a simple
sensation.
Those curious little beetles, the Brenthidae, were very abundant
in Aru. The females have a pointed rostrum, with which they bore
deep holes in the bark of dead trees, often burying the rostrum
up to the eyes, and in these holes deposit their eggs. The males
are larger, and have the rostrum dilated at the end, and
sometimes terminating in a good-sized pair of jaws.
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