“The Debate about the Profitability of Slavery in French Political Economy during the 1820s (1989)”

By David M. Hart

[Created: May, 1989] [Revised: 25 October, 2024]

This is part of a collection of Papers by David M. Hart

Introduction

A Paper given at the History of Economic Thought Society of Australasia Biennial Conference, July 3-6 1989, Australian National University, Canberra.

The original MS Word file was corrupted and so the transfer to HTML produced several problems, such as the removal of italics and endnote numbers. Given time restrainsts, the paper is presented here as is.

Summary

An important discussion of the profitability of slave labour broke out during the 1820s as a response to the opinion of Jean-Baptiste Say in early editions of his TraitÉ d'Économie politique that slave labour, although completely immoral, was very profitable to the slave owners.  This view was disputed by Adam Hodgson on behalf of the "British Society for Mitigating and Gradually Abolishing the State of Slavery throughout the British Dominions" who maintained that slave labour was both an inefficient and immoral system of labour.  Henri Storch's work on the various forms of compulsory labour in Russia also added to the reworking of Say's attitude towards the viability of slave labour in later editions of the TraitÉ (e. g.  5th edition of 1826) and in his Cours complet (1828).  The debate reveals the difficulties faced by liberal political economists in determining the merits of free and coerced labour, the possibility of "progress" and the methods by which slavery could be abolished with minimal disruption.

Introduction: The Importance of Restoration Social, Political and Economic Thought

The following paper is an extract from a chapter on "The Economics and Class Structure of Slavery" from my dissertation "Property, Class and Industry: The Contribution of Charles Comte and Charles Dunoyer. to French Liberal Thought, 1800-1850. " My dissertation is an attempt to undo the neglect from which I think the social, economic and political thought of the Restoration period has suffered.  Only a small number of historians have recognised the contributions made to the development of social theory in general and liberal political economy in particular during the restoration of the Bourbon monarchy after the upheavals of the Revolution and Napoleon. This is surprising given the fact that it was a period of remarkable intellectual agitation when the achievements and failures of the French Revolution were beginning to be be assessed and the modern forms of conservative, liberal and socialist thought emerged.

Those historians who have written on Restoration liberal thought have tended to concentrate their attention on the leading political figures such as Madame de Staæl, Benjamin Constant and the early activity of Alexis de Tocqueville and Franìois Guizot.  Some attention has also been paid to the pioneering work of the historian Augustin Thierry.  However, historians have have yet to discover the economic and social dimension to French thought in the early 19th century.  Larry Siedentop has suggested that the reason for this neglect lies in the nature French liberalism itself which, he believes, developed in a completely different direction to British liberalism. In an important essay "The Two Liberal Traditions" Siedentop argues that what made French liberalism so different from its British counterpart was the economic and political collapse of the ancien rÉgime and the failure to find a stable alternative during the Revolution, Empire and Restoration.  Faced with these problems French social theorists concerned themselves with the problem of political legitimacy, the nature of class structure, exploitation and social change, the relationship between the mode of production and political values and institutions, and the use of class analysis in interpreting history.  Many of these important concepts were introduced by French liberals well before they came to be associated with socialist or Marxist modes of analysis.

One historian, Donald Kelley, has traced what he has called the "endless fascination with the 'social'" shown by many writers in this important period.  Kelley's particular concern is with historians and legal philosophers but it is perhaps more appropriate to apply this to political economists and liberals such as Jean-Baptiste Say, Charles Comte and Charles Dunoyer.

There is one charactersitic that only binds together ideological extremes but also seems essential to the "new history" that emerged in Restoration France.  This was the endless fascination with the "social" - with social questions and above all the Social Question.  Before the Revolution, the focus  was on political authority and political liberty; a generation later, interest had shifted markedly from such abstractions to more practical problems of society, especially property relations.  Revolutionary legislation and the Napoleonic Code were reversed or modified; the social engineering of Jacobins and Bonapartists alike were looked on with suspicion as a means of controlling or directing social change; and publicists in many ways turned their attentions from constitutions to institutions, from rulers to "the people. " In this apotheosis of the "social," historical scholarship tended to follow suit, and sometimes to take the lead.

Another historian who recognises the importance of the Restoration period to the development of social theory is Pierre Rosanvallon, in his book on Franìois Guizot.  He is drawn to the Restoration and July Monarchy because he believes it marked a rupture with the traditional manner of doing political and economic theory.

On peut parler en ce sens de "moment Guizot" pour qualifier en son originalitÉ la culture politique libÉrale des annÉes 1814-1848.  Le propre de Guizot est en effet d'avoir ÉtÉ en mÉme temps, parfois jusqu'ê la caricature, l'interprÅte avisÉ des aspirations de toute une gÉnÉration intellectuelle et l'expression d'une singularitÉ extrÉme.  A la fois totalement prÉsent et radicalement Étranger en quelque sorte ê la culture politique franìaise de cette pÉriode.  Totalement prÉsent en ce qu'il a parfaitement exprimÉ le sens du mouvement de rupture du libÉralisme du dÉbut du XIXe siÅcle avec toute la tradition du XVIIIe siÅcle.  Mais radicalement Étranger en ce qu'il a brutalement prÉcipitÉ cette diffÉrence jusqu'ê la dÉtacher de ses indispensables rÉfÉrences ê une tradition nationale, la rendant culturellement et pratiquement insupportable.  Guizot, peut-on dire, a mÅnÉ jusqu'ê son point limite la singularitÉ de la culture politique libÉrale des annÉes 1814-1848.  D'o¥ la fonction privilÉgiÉe d'analyseur de cette derniÅre que constitue son oeuvre.

Unfortunately Rosanvallon did not extend his analysis to include other liberals of this period who equally radically and fundamentally rethought their political theory, their theory of history and their political economy.

One who has suffered most from unjustified neglect is the economist Jean-Baptiste Say.  His contribution to both economic liberalism and social theory in the broader meaning of the term has still not yet been appreciated.  A comprehensive analysis of his life and thought is urgently needed because of the enormous influence he had on the development of French liberalism and classical economic thought during the Restoration. Say exerted enormous influence on the development of liberalism in the Restoration through the many editions of his TraitÉ d'Économie politique  and his lectures on political economy at the AthÉnÉe and the Conservatoire des Arts et MÉtiers.  An example of his influence was the shift in the liberalism of two radical journalists, Charles Comte and Charles Dunoyer.  Under Say's direction they reworked their political liberalism into a sophisticated social theory with a theory of class, property, economic evolution, and free labour.  Without Say's assistance it is unlikely that Comte and Dunoyer would have been able to move in the direction they did during the 1820s and 1830s.  It is also probable that without the stimulus of Say Comte and Dunoyer would not have approached the problem of slavery and slave labour as they did.

The Problem of Slavery in Restoration Liberal Thought

In the process of discussing the political and economic thought of two of the more important liberal thinkers of the Restoration, the journalists, academics and politicians Charles Comte and Charles Dunoyer, I came across an interesting debate about the profitability of slavery and other forms of coerced labour between the British abolitionist Adam Hodgson, Jean-Baptiste Say who was the leading French political economist in the first third of the 19th century, and Henri Storch, a Russian historian and political economist who. wrote in French.

Slavery was an important component in the development of Comte and Dunoyer's liberalism since they believed that a large part of the class structure and political values of the modern European world were the result of the institution of slavery in the ancient world.  For example, Comte believed that French property law had a fatal weakness at its very heart because it owed much to Roman law concepts of property and ownership.  It was inconceivable to him that a modern, industrial free market economy could use a legal system designed by and for slave owners.  A substantial part of his theoretical work was to provide a theory of property which was free of such burdens and thus more suitable for a free market, industrial society. It was in the course of developing a sound theory of legislation and property that Comte analysed slavery in the ancient world and its position in the colonies of the New World.

Slavery formed an important part in Dunoyer's theory of economic evolution.  Well before Marx formed his own theory of history, Dunoyer was arguing that societies evolved from one stage to another by changes in the mode of production.  Beginning with hunter-gatherer societies his schema included nomadism, settled agriculture, slavery, serfdom, the political privileges of mercantilism, and finally the ultimate stage of "industrialism. "The different modes of production in each stage of society's evolution also influenced that society's moral and political attitudes.  Both Comte and Dunoyer devoted considerable attention to the harmful political and moral consequences of the slave mode of production.  In particular they condemned it for retarding the development of the division of labour and for harboring great hostility to the classes involved in productive work, the class of "industrials" as they termed it.  Slavery was important to them because it typified the very opposite of what they were strugling for in the Restoration, labour which was free of the restrictions and burdens which had hampered economic development in the ancient and medieval world.

The period when Comte and Dunoyer were writing on slavery coincided with an important debate which was taking place within political economy over the profitability and economic efficiency of slave labour.  Their mentor, the economist Jean-Baptiste Say who had introduced Comte and Dunoyer to political economy in 1815 when their journal Le Censeur was closed down by the censors, was challenged in his view of the profitability of slave labour by a British abolitionist, Adam Hodgson.  Hodgson argued that Say's opinion that although totally immoral, slave labour was extremely profitable.  This view clashed with the political motives of the "London Society for Mitigating and Gradually Abolishing the State of Slavery" which used the double argument in its campaign against slavery that slave labour was both immoral and uneconomic.  Hodgson accused Say of making their task more difficult since someone with his authority in matters of economics was undermining half their case.  The evangelical middles classes in Britain were firmly in support of the abolitionist cause out of moral reasons but the more pragmatic political and bureaucratic classes needed economic reasons for supporting abolitionism.  Under the influence of Hodgson's criticism Say gradually changed his view of the profitability of slavery in subsequent editions of his TraitÉ d'Économie politique.

Another important influence on Say's thinking on the question of slave labour was the Russian historian and political economist Henri Storch.  Storch had written widely on Russian history and political economy and his works were published in French, thus introducing to a French speaking audience the peculiar problems of the Russian economy, in particular that of serf labour.  Storch's best known work was the Cours d'Éconmie politique first published in 1815 and republished and edited in a new edition by Say in 1825.  Storch's detailed analsysis of the varieties of coerced labour in Russia opened up a new dimension to the debate about slave labour. by showing that, although the institution of serfdom had many similarities to the economic effects of chattel slavery in the Caribbean, it also revealed a possible solution to the problem.  One of the forms serfdom took in Russia was known as the "esclave censitaire" in which, instead of working the lord's personal domain under his supervision like true slaves, the "esclaves censitaires" were free to work where they liked and at whatever occupation they liked on payment of a tax or "cens" to the lord.  Storch viewed the "esclave censitaire" as a halfway house between chattel slavery and free labour and suggested that the problem of the abolition of slavery could be overcome with the gradual transformation of chattel slaves into "escalves censitaires" before finally being completely liberated as free workers.

In the 5th edition of the TraitÉ (1826) and in his last major work on political economy, the Cours complet  (1828) Say responded to Hodgson and Storch's ideas by reformulating his own attitude towards the profitability of slave labour in particular and the slave system in the colonies in general.  He admitted for the first time that the claims for the profitability of slave plantations upon which he had based his earlier discussions were exaggerated.  However, the biggest shift in his thinking concerned the use he made of the profitability argument itself.  He was to virtually abandon any discussion about the profitability of slave labour vis-ê-vis free workers on individual plantations.

Without apparently wanting to grant victory to the arguments of Hodgson and Storch yet unable to continue to argue as he once did, Say was forced to shift his attack on slavery to another plane.  He now argued that what made slavery profitable was not the greater productivity, efficiency or profitability of slave labour but the protectionist system which shielded the slave plantations from competition.  The plantation owners, perhaps implicitly recognising that the higher costs of slave labour made them uncompetitive, sought tariffs, rights of exclusive sale in the metropole and other restrictions in order to avoid competition with plantations worked by free labour.  Say now argued that the way to defeat slavery was to remove all protective barriers and subsidies which benefited the slave plantations and allow free trade to operate.  One result would be to expose the economic inefficiency and higher costs of slave labour compared to free labourers.  Another result would be to force slave owners to abadon the use of slaves and replace them with freely paid wage labour.  A third result would be to reduce the prices paid for colonial goods such as sugar and tobacco for the consumers in Europe and thus increase the purchasing power of their domestic wages.

Say was now of the view that without the military and economic protection of the metropole the slave system could not last very long.  The general march of civilisation towards free trade, free wage labour and the industrial system made, he thought, discussion of the relative profitability of slave and free labour "superfluous".

In the following pages I would like to examine the stages of this intellectual debate  in more detail, beginning with the earlier editions of Say's TraitÉ , then the criticism of Adam Hodgson, Henri Storch's analysis of Russian serfdom, and finally the reformulations of Say's attitude to slavery in his later works.

Jean-Baptiste Say's Attitude to Slavery in the Fourth Edition of the TraitÉ d'Économie politique (1819)

As late as 1819, when the fourth edition of his TraitÉ  appeared, Say was arguing as he had in the earlier editions, that slave labour was considerably cheaper than free labour.  In a chapter on the economic consequences of colonies Say discusses the arguments  of Steuart, Adam Smith and Turgot all of whom believed free labour was cheaper and more productive than slave labour but he ultimately rejects their authority in favour of information he has about the price of slave labour in the Antilles. The information he has on the relative rates of free and slave labour is that the annual cost of upkeep of a black slave in the most humanely run plantations is 300 francs.  When this figure is added to the interest on the purchase pricea total figure of 500 francs per annum is reached.  On the other hand the cost of a free labourer in the Antilles is, according to Say (the source of this price information is not given), between 5 and 7 francs per day, although this can even be higher.  Say takes the middle figure of 6 to work his calculation and the number of working days in the year to be 300.  The total cost for a free labourer is 1,800 francs per annum, some 1,300 francs higher than the cost of a slave.  The exception to this rule is skilled labour such as clockmakers or tailors but for simple hand labour slavery is cheaper than free labour.  Say explains this phenomenon by the fact that black slaves can survive with only the clothes on their backs, the simplest of food and mean lodgings whereas free labourers need to earn enough to support their wives and children at a much higher standard of living.  Whatever the economic needs and desires of the black slaves may be it is the master who is able to enforce savings upon them and keep the cost of their labour to a bare minimum.  Thus plantations in Saint-Dominque are so profitable that they can repay their purchase price in 6 years whilst farms in Europe require 25 or 30 years in which to repay their purchase price.

Although, according to Say, slavery is enormously profitable for the plantation owners it is not because they are industrious or provide a service to the consumers in the metropole.  They are profitable because they are exploitative.  They exploit the black slaves by forcing them to work for little or no return.  They also exploit the consumers in Europe by their monopoly of the home market or high tariffs which artificially raise the price of their goods.

Mais ces profits mÉmes que prouvent-ils? Que si le travail de l'esclave n'est pas cher, l'industrie du maötre l'est prodigieusement.  Le consommateur n'y gagne rien.  Les produits n'en sont pas ê meilleur marchÉ.  L'un des producteurs s'engraisse aux dÉpens de l'autre, violê tout; ou plutÖt ce n'est pas tout; il en rÉsulte un systÅme vicieux de production qui s'oppose aux plus beaux dÉvoloppemens de l'industrie.  Un esclave est un Étre dÉpravÉ, et son maötre ne l'est pas moins; ni l'un ni l'autre ne peuvent devenir complÉtement industrieux, et ils dÉpravent l'homme libre qui n'a point d'esclaves.  Le travail ne peut Étre en honneur dans les mÉmes lieux o¥ il est une flÉtrissure.  On ne peut maintenir que par des airs d'indolence et d'oisivetÉ, cette suprÉmatie forcÉe et contre nature, qui est le fondement de l'esclavage.  L'inactivitÉ de l'esprit est la consÉquence de celle du corps; le fouet ê la main, on est dispensÉ d'intelligence.

Unfortunately for Say's liberalism his assessment of the extraordinary profitability of slave labour led him into a contradiction.  On the one hand he was confident that further economic development in the Americas was unlikely "as long as they were infested with slavery".  The southern states may be able to grow cotton profitably  but they lacked the industrial spirit which a free work force would provide to process the raw cotton into high value added products, as was done in New York.  Thus he thought the slave states were economically "punished" for their immoral system of labour.

The contradition arose because he failed to realise that a system as profitable as he thought slavery to be could afford to send its products elsewhere to be processed.  By a division of labour the Southern States and the West Indies could specialise in the production of certain crops grown by slave labour and the industrial cities of the North or England could specialise in the sweatshops and factories which used poorly paid free labour.  Just how the plantation owners were "punished" by not having factories and the other aspects of industrial society in their midst is not made clear by Say.  The high profits Say thought they had from slave labour provided them with more than enough resources to preserve their way of life, as Hodgson noted in his critique of Say.

Another reason for the disagreement between Say and Hodgson and Storch is that there really are two different arguments being considered.  The first argument is whether or not the price of slave labour is higher or lower than the price of free wage labour.  In other words how much would it cost for a planter to hire a gang of slaves to do a particular job compared to hiring free labourers to do the same job.  The second argument concerns the overall economic efficiency of slavery as a labour system, how productive is slave labour in the long run, what incentives do slaves have to work well and efficiently, etc? There seems to be little understanding that there are two different arguments involved.

Adam Hodgson's Letter to Say on the Comparative Expense of Free and Slave Labour (1823)

Four years after the fourth edition of Say's TraitÉ  appeared Say's view of the enormous profitability of slavery was subjected to a searching criticism by Adam Hodgson, writing on behalf of the Liverpool branch of the Society for the Mitigation and Gradual Abolition of Slavery.

Adam Hodgson readily admitted the important contributions Say had made to the liberal cause but regretted Say's belief that slave labour was profitable.  This belief, Hodgson remarked, made the activities of the Society that much harder since one of the Society's main strategies was the campaign to show plantation owners that it was in their best economic interests to abandon slave labour and gradually adopt free wage labour.  That one of the leading liberal political economists took the opposite view was a handicap.  Hodgson began his letter with the following  remarks:

It is with  much concern that I observe, in your excellent and popular work on Political Economy, the sentiments you express on the subject of the comparative expense of free and slave labour.  Accustomed to respect you highly, as an enlightened advocate of liberal principles, and to admire the philanthropic spirit which pervades your writings, I cannot but regret deeply, that opinions so much calculated to perpetuate slavery should have the sanction of your authority; and that, while you denounce the slave-system as unjustifiable, you admit that in a pecuniary point of view it may be the most profitable.

The key calculation in any assessment of the profitability of slave labour was the relationship between the annual expenditure needed to maintain the slave and the "annual sum which, in the average term of the productive years of a slave's life, will liquidate the cost of purchase or rearing, and support in old age, if he attain it, with interest. . . "A similar calculation was possible for free labour "since the wages paid to free labourers of every kind, must be such as to enable them, one with another, to bring up a family, and continue the race. "

Hodgson rejected Say's main arguments about the profitablity of slavery.  The first argument Say used was that the high price of free labour in the Antilles could be universalised into an economic principle concerning the relationship between free and slave labour.  The second was that the reluctance of the slave owners to free their slaves was proof of the profitability of the slave-system.  Hodgson rejected the first argument with the claim that while in some places free labour might be more expensive than slave labour (in the case of the Antilles there were few free workers, labour was considered to be degrading) the general principle to be kept in mind was:

not, whether at a given time and place, free or slave labour is the highest, but whether both are not higher than labour would be if all the community were free, and the principle of population were allowed to produce its natural effect on the price of labour, by  maintaining the supply and competition of free labourers.

The second argument was rejected on the grounds that prejudice and passion blinded the planter's conception of their own true interest.  Hodgson was convinced that once the planters began to view their property in a truly commercial light rather than as a way of life they would gradually recognise that their true interests would be best served by freeing their slaves and re-employing them as wage labourers.

To support his claim of the unprofitability of slave labour Hodgson draws upon Adam Smith, David Hume, Henri Storch, Brougham, and various memoirs written by slave owners and travellers.  In his "Letter to Say" Hodgson developed a series of economic, historical and political argumets to support his case that in fact slave labour was vastly inferior to free wage labour in terms of its cost to the plantation owners and general levels of productivity.

One of the main economic arguments he used depends upon the incentives and disincentives slaves faced to work productively.  Citing the experience of a Joshua Steele of Barbados Hodgson argues that in the cultivation of food crops the slaves have little incentive to be productive.  They perform their work negligently and  steal whatever they can get away with which results in an overall rate of productivity which Steele estimates to be about one third the rate of free labourers.  Other accounts written by slave owners themselves or observers come to similar conclusions.  Another commentator Hodgson uses is Dr Beattie, who notes that in the West Indies the same amount of work can be done by half the number of paid free labourers than slaves.  In the French colonies an observer (Coulomb) states that slaves can only do one third to one half of the work done by what he admits are reluctant French soldiers and not freely paid wage labourers.  These very rough proportions of half to a third are shared by other commentators Hodgson cites in his letter.

The argument about the economic incentives faced by slave and free labourers is probably the most important argument used by the abolitionists and Hodgson does endeavour to base his case on directly reported experience and concrete examples rather than on pure theory.  Another version of the argument from economic incentives comes from a comparison of the price of sugar and other products produced on plantations which use either slave or free labour.  Hodgson draws upon two examples to make his point: Dr Beattie claims that the price of products grown in Cochin China by free labour are lower than the price of the same goods grown by slave labour in the West Indies; Botham claims that in the Dutch East Indies sugar is produced by free labour (what he calls the "East India mode") more cheaply than in the British colonies.  The weakness of this way of arguing is that no attempt is made to separate the various factors which may influence the price in very different localities such as differences in soil fertility, differences in plant types and so.  Hodgson attributes the lower price of the goods in Cochin China and the Dutch East Indies soley to the fact that "free" labour is used.  This is understandable given the political purposes of his task which is to present free labour in the best possible light in order to persuade the slave owners in the Caribbean that it is their economic interests to give up slavery and use free wage labour in its place. .

Hodgson concludes this part of his case by quoting with approval Henri Storch's view that slaves are virtual unthinking "machines" which require constant supervision to do even the most menial task.  Adam Smith also uses a argument about the cost of supervision which proved popular among later political economists.  The incompetence of the slaves requires overseers and managers who in their turn can deliberately exploit the owner or raise costs through their indiffernce.  The result in Smith's view is that a special fund is required to pay for the slaves' incompetence and the indifference or criminal exploitation by the overseers.  This is a cost which he and Hodgson believed was absent when free wage labourers were employed.  In the absence of economic incentives to work more productively and with some intelligence the slave owner must resort to expensive forms of supervision.  Lord Brougham concurs in this view and adds that slaves without economic incentives to work need the threat of violence or punishment, or as Brougham put it "the perpetual terror of the lash".  

Some slave owners and plantation managers had realised this fact and had introduced experiments in order to provide the slaves with some economic incentive to be more productive.  Joshua Steele had tried paying his slaves for the work they did in an attempt to mimick the incentive effects of free labour.  Steele reported that after four years of trying such an experiment his economic return was increased threefold.  Costs of supervision dropped and the care and diligence of the slaves in their work increased.  Steele's experiment was very important to the cause of the British abolitionists and they used it repeatedly to drive home the point to slave owners that it was in their economic interests to abandon or at least reform the system of slave labour.  In later editions of his TraitÉ Say disputed the success of  Steel's experiment and its usefulness as a model for other slave owners.  Nevertheless Steele provided an example of what an enlightened slave owner might do to increase the productivity of his slaves.  Brougham suggested that it might proove to be a way in which slavery could gradually be done away with.  In the transition period before the complete abolition of slavery slaves might pay a tax or tribute to their master for the right to work on their own account or at market wage rates in his fields.  This was also the view of Henri Storch whose work on the Russian serfs provided another example of such a halfway house between slavery and free labour.  Hodgson concluded that the transition to free labour might be made via a two stage reform: the first introducing piece work to increase the productivity of slave labour; the second a susytem of profit sharing with the master via some kind of tax or tribute on their work.

Hodgson used another tack in making his case, this time in asking what might happen if slavery was more profitable and productive than free labour.  The example of the United States of America was instructive in this regard.  With two clearly delineated zones in which slavery and free labour operated the comparative effects of the two systems of labour could be observed.  Hodgson compared the price of land in salve and non-slave regions, with the assumption that if slave labour was more productive the price of land where slaves were used would be higher than land where free labour was used.  The state of Maryland provided the best example with one region permitting slavery and another not.  He found no difference in land prices in Maryland or in a comparison between prices in the states of Virginia (slave) and Pensylvannia (free).

America also provided advocates of free labour with the example of a rapidly industrialising North using free wage labour and welcoming innovation and entrepreneurial activity and a South which changed very little and which was forced to seek new land as old land was exhausted by the method of cultivation.  Many commentators viewed the difference bewteen the North and the South as copnclusive proof that the future lay with industrialism based upon free wage labour and not agriculture based upon slaves.  Hodgson beleived that the days of the South and slavery were numbered for a number of reasons.  The South could not compete economically, its real labour costs were high, the workers had no incentive to be productive, innovation was not encouraged and the slave owners lacked an entrepreneurial attitude to prodcution.  There was also a political reason for the ultimate failure of the slave South.  Nothing, Hodgson thought, could resist the spread of "republicanism" by which he meant the values of 1776 and 1789 - respect for the moral and legal equality of the individual, private property, the free market, and democracy.  Even if slavery was not doomed for economic reasons it would soon be swept aside by the political imperative of republicanism which was even at that time spreading to Latin America with its waves of wars of liberation.

Another consequence he thought would be that where the two systems of labour existed side-by-side the cheaper form of labour would gradually replace the more expensive.  Hodgson once again drew upon the work of Storch who argued that in Russia serf and free labour often competed against each other with the result that free labour often held its own in competition with serfs and in many cases was preferred because of the greater skill level of free workers.  The historical experience of Europe could also provide interesting insights into this issue of competition between free and unfree labour.  Abolitionists could argue that the transition from sefdom to free labour over the past century of so showed that serfdom could not compete with the greater productivity of free labour.  If serfdom had been more productive, the argument went, it was unlikely that it would be abandoned for the lesser econmic benefits of free labour.  Brougham and the French economist and historian Ganilh argued that the example of the European emancipation of the serfs (a process which had gathered pace in the last decades of the 18th century and was still not finished) was conclusive proof that all forms of coerced labour were on the retreat and that free labour was on the rise. Hodgson could cite two examples of the complete or partial emancipation of forced labour leading, not to less productive plantations (if slavery was more productive than free labour), but the very opposite: the case of an enlightened noble in Poland described by Coxe and Steele's experiment in Barbados.

Before concluding his case against slave labour Hodgson had to explain why slavery had persisted for so long and appeared, at least, to be profitable.  The best known example of a slave society which existed for centuries was the Roman empire.  Although it eventually grew "decadent" and declined the fact that slavery existed for so long needed to be explained.  Hodgson does not devote much attention to the case of ancient Roman slavery except to say that it ruined the small private farmer and prospered only as long as fresh sources of cheap slaves were available from the regular wars against non-Roman societies.  When the source of cheap slaves dried up it was not long before the pernicious economic effects of slavery were felt.  If the success of Roman slavery depended upon constant wars of conquest the appanent success of slavery in the modern world owed much to the protective system of tariffs and exclusive trading zones.  High cost slave labour, Hodgson argued, could only survive because it had a guaranteed market in the metropole where the high costs of production could be passed on to the consumer.  Since the consumers of sugar, tobacco, indigo and cotton could not buy from alternative sources they had to buy from the protected slave plantations.  This system could not survive if a policy of free trade put an end to tariffs and exclusive trading zones.  Interestingly, it was latter argument which Say was to adopt in his reformulation of the critique of slave labour in the Cours complet of 1828.

Overall Hodgson was convinced that the examples and arguments he had presented refuted Say's argument of the high profitability of slave labour on the Caribbean plantations.  now surely he must agree that not only was slavery immoral but also uneconomic.  He concluded by summarising his case:

If then, it has appeared that we should be naturally led to infer, from the very constitution of human nature, that slave labour is more expensive than the labour of free men; if it has appeared that such has been the opinion of the most eminent philosophers and enlightened travellers in different ages and countries; if it has appeared that in a state where slavery is allowed, land is most valuable in those districts where the slave system prevails the least, notwithstanding great disadvantages of locality; and that in adjoining states, with precisely the same soil and climate, in the one of which slavery is allowed, and in the other prohibited, land is most valuable in that state in which it is proscribed; if it has appeared that slave labour has never been able to maintain its ground in competition with free labour, except where monopoly has secured high profits, or protecting duties afforded artificial support; if it has appeared that, in every quarter of the globe, in proportion as the planter rendered attention to economy more indispensable, the harsher features of the slave-system have disappeared, and the condition of the slave has been gradually assimilated to that of the free labourer; and if it has been found, by experience, to substitute the alacrity of voluntary labour, for the reluctance of compulsory toil; and that emancipation has rendered the estates on which it has taken place, greatly and rapidly more productive - I need not, I think, adduce additional proofs of the truth of the general proposition, that slave labour is more expensive than the labour of free men.

Say's Response to Hodgson

Say responded to Hodgson's argument in a letter to the author, dated Paris 25 March 1823, which was published in the second edition which also appeared in 1823.   Say states that Hodgson's letter had been passed on to him by the Baron de Staæl, one of the leading figures in the Society for Christian Morality, the major abolitionist group in France.  In the letter Saysaid he agreed with Hodgson on all the main issues and acknowledged that  "You have collected, in a small space, an accumulation of facts and arguments which it appears to me impossible to refute. Say explained their difference of opinion on the fact that Hodgson most probably had read only the earlier editions of Say's TraitÉ.  In the later editions Say altered his views concerning the profitability of slave labour "so as to arrive nearly at the same conclusion as you. "He expanded his remarks on slavery in a work he was currently preparing  ("I approach still nearer to your sentiments in the works I am preparing. ").  Say is probably referring to the 5th edition of the TraitÉ or perhaps even the lectures he gave at the Conservatoire des Arts et MÉtiers which later became the Cours complet.

As of March 1823 when he responded to Hodgson's criticisms his view of slavery was that it is

incompatible with productive industry, in a state of society moderately advanced.  It is already verging towards its termination among all people of European origin; and as the restlessness and intellignece of Europe will ultimately pervade the globe, we may affirm that slavery will one day be extinguished everywhere.

Say's Changing Attitude towards the Profitability of Slavery

Between the publication of the fourth edition of Say's TraitÉ  and his reading of Hodgson's pamphlet Say had come to question the profitablitiy of slavery.  There are indications of his change of heart published in the early 1820s: his often savage and unfriendly comments in his edition of Storch's Cours d'Économie politique,  his use of Storch's arguments on the efficiency of serf labour in Russia, and the remarks in his supposedly popular and "practical" Cours complet de l'Économie politique pratiqueThese brief remarks in conjuction with Say's reply to Hodgson's letter  provide the main source of information on Say's thinking in the early and mid-1820s.

Say's edition of Storch's  Cours d'Économie politique.  (1823)

In the same year as Say responded to Hodgson's letter challenging his view of the profitability of slave labour he also had to come to terms with a leading Russian economist's analysis of the economics of serfdom and slavery in Eastern Europe.  Henri Storchwas a member of the St.  Petersburg Academy of Sciences and a pioneer in the collection of economic statistics.  He was a fairly orthodox member of the Smithian school of political economy and had the dubious pleasure of teaching the grand dukes (one was to become the Tsar) the principles of political economy.  His lectures to the dukes were published in 1815 as the Cours d'Économie politique and contain much of interest on the economics of serdom and slavery in Russia and Eastern Europe.  Jean-Baptiste Say was interested enough to edit a second French publication, with extensive notes and comments by him, in 1823.  Say was not shy to criticise Storch quite severely who was stung into publishing a fifth and supplementary volume to his (unauthorised) French edition in order to respond to his editor's critical remarks.

There is much of interest in Storch's work but what concerns us here are his detailed discussions of forced labour.  As an acute observer of economic and social conditions in Russia Storch was well placed to present to the French-speaking world detailed information about the situation of slaves and serfs in Russia.  Sometime before he had published a monumental work on economic statistics called Tableau historique et statistique de l'empire de Russie ê la fin du dix-huitiÅme siÅcle , 8 volumes (1797-1803), the success of which got him appointed head of the statistical section of the St.  Petersburg Academy of Sciences, but it was the French edition of the Cours which made the situation of the Russian slaves and serfs available to a broader reading public.  Say had nothing but praise for Storch's analysis of forced labour.  Describing him as a "publiciste ÉclairÉ" and a "vÉritable philanthrope" Say concluded with the highest praise an empirical political economist could bestow on another, that "sur tout ce qu'il dit de l'esclavage. . . (i)l parle de ce qu'il a vu. " In Storch's conclusion to volume 3 Say found a summary of the nature of slavery which he thought to be the best he had ever seen.  In a discussion of the ways in which the state could hinder the development of industry and individual prosperity by favouring one class over another Storch turned to a special case of class privilege, that of slavery:

Dans l'autres âtats, les lois tolÅrent la servitude, c'est-ê-dire excluent la classe la plus nombreuse d'habitans de cette protection dont les autres citoyens jouissent: les membres de cette classe se trouvent exposÉs, non pas ê la vÉritÉ, comme les sauvages, ê la rapacitÉ de tous ceux avec lesquels ils vivent, mais aux violences de leurs maötres; et la crainte seule de ces violences suffit pour Étouffer en eux l'envie de travailler et le dÉsir d'accumuler, mÉme quand ils ont le loisir et les moyens de se livre ê un travail profitable pour eux.

Storch's understanding of slave labour was a complex one.  He viewed it firstly in historical terms, much like Comte and Dunoyer did, as an important part of the gradual evolution of societies in which chattel slavery played a vital role, to feudal societies in which slavery was moderated in various ways, to the present, in which societies at different levels of development coexisted with different degrees of forced labour.  Since he passionately believed in the idea of progress, the highest stage of human historical development was where individual liberty was fully realised and this meant of course a society in which slave labour in any form played no part.  The particular historical moment in which he was writing was a crucial one because Europe had paved the way for the liberation of all mankind with the success of the French revolution.  The ideas of English and French liberty were now impossible to contain geographically and it would not be long before the remnants of slavery disappeared in Eastern Europe and Russia.  Part of the intention of his Cours  was to prepare the grand dukes for this eventuality which Storch thought would occur sometime during their lifetime.  Storch's confident prediction was that within one hundred years all vestiges of slavery in the European dominated world would have disappeared.

A second way in Storch viewed slavery was in sociological terms, as a form of class exploitation, which the above quotation so admired by Say clearly shows.  He believed that slavery had a dire effect on population growth and perpetuated an unequal division of property ownership. Storch argued that in both the ancient world and the modern slave colonies population growth was hindered by the existence of slavery which thus created a need for continual injections of new slaves to maintain the labour supply.  In comparison with free societies "jamais une population composÉe d'esclaves n'augmente dans la mÉme proportion qu'une autre composÉe d'hommes libres. "This was also true he thought for European societies in which serfdom still existed.  Using his favorite examples of the liberation of the serfs in the Danish king's domains in Holstein and the activities of the reform-minded Polish Count Zamoiski he compared the rate of population growth before and after the liberation of the serfs and found that population growth took off only after liberation.  In a poetic analogy Storch compared the growth in population of the freed serfs to the spurt in growth of a tree after pruning:

C'est surtout dans les premiers temps aprÅs l'abolition de l'esclavage que la population des affranchis prends les accroissemens les plus rapides, comme un jeune arbre pousse plus vigoureusement, lorsqu'on Élargue les branches de ceux qui environnent et qui l'Étouffent.

Another sociological consequence of slavery was the lack of development of a middle class or "tiers-État. " This had the consequence of preventing the formation of a class of prosperous consumers who could create the demand required for industrialisation to occur.  Furthermore the absence of a middle class meant that the spread of "enlightenment" did not occur, the middle class, Storch believed, being the mechanism by which "enlightenment" was transmitted.  Storch shared Say's view of the importance of the middle class to the industrial economy and quoted him with approval.

C'est dans cette classe mitoyenne, loin des soucis et des plaisirs de la grandeur, loin des angoisses de la misÅre; c'est dans la classe o¥ se rencontre les fortunes honnÉtes, les loisirs mÉlÉs ê l'habitude du travail, les libres communcations de l'amitiÉ, le go₧t de la lecture et des voyages: c'est dans cette classe, dis-je, que naissent les lumiÅres, et c'est de lê qu'elles se rÉpandent chez les grands et chez le peuple; car les grands et le peuple n'ont pas le temps de mÉditer; ils n'adoptent les vÉritÉs que lorsque elles leur parviennent sous la forme d'axiomes et qu'elles n'ont plus besoin de preuves.

The reason a middle class did not develop in slave socities was because the recruiting mechanism was absent.  In free societies the middle class is recruited out of the more ambitious or hardworking lower class.  The existing middle class acts as both a teacher and a model to which the lower class can aspire.  In a slave society there is no way in which ambitious or hardworking slaves can leave their legally determined class position and "rise" into the class above.  Also if a slave society does have a middle class it is likely to be very rudimentary and weak, thus not strong enough to transform society as Storch and Say would like.  In fact in slave societies the social forces act in the opposite way, instead of influencing both "les grands" and "le peuple" with their industrious habits and their enlightenment the middle class is attracted upwards to the nobility (or slave owners).  Storch described this phenomenon as a "mania" for the trappings of the aristocracy which existed to the detriment of industry and enlightenment in slave societies and in Europe of the ancien rÉgime. Instead of growing as it should and influencing society the middle class tries to steer their children into careers which will enoble them and divert their wealth which should be invested in industrial enterprises into investments in land and buildings in an attempt to ape the behaviour of the aristocracy.

Dans les pays o¥ l'esclavage subsiste, tous les gens libres, tous ceux qui par les affranchissemens sortent de cet État avilissant, tournent leurs vues vers la nobless et font l'impossible pour Étre agrÉgÉs ê ce corps honorable, de peur d'Étre confondus avec le peuple.  S'ils n'y rÉunissent pas eux-mÉmes, ils ne manquent guÅre de placer leurs enfants dans une carriÅre qui peut les conduire ê ce but dÉsirÉ.  Ainsi dans ce pays le tier-État ne s'accroöt que trÅs-lentement; et il n'obtient presque jamais la considÉration dont il jouit en d'autres pays; ce que cet État gagne d'un cÖtÉ par les affranchissemens et par les Étrangers qui viennent s'Établir dans le pays, de l'autre il le perd par les individus qui s'ÉlÅvent ê la classe supÉrieure.  Ainsi il ne se recrute que faiblement et par les citoyens les moins riches et les moins civilisÉs, tandis que toutes les richesses qui s'accumulent dans son sein et toutes les lumiÅres qui s'y dÉveloppent le quittent pour se fixer dans un autre ordre de la sociÉtÉ.

A further consequence of the lack of a middle class in slave societies was the domination of the "civil functions " of the state by the aristocracy who were hostile to industry and who very much favoured the military.  It was dangerous Storch believed to allow the military-minded aristocracy to monopolise the positions in law, politics, internal adminstration of the state, science, and the arts.  Only a strong middle class which believed in the usefulness of what Storch called "la division du travail immatÉriel" and devoted themselves to it as a lifetime career, could fulfil these tasks adequately.

The third dimension to slavery was a moral one, dealing with the corruption of morals, of both the slave owner and the slave.  This is an aspect which Say did not pick up to the same extent as Charles Comte and Charles Dunoyer, who made it a central concern of their analyses of slavery in their respective TraitÉ de  lÉgislation and L'Industrie et la Morale.  Thus it is more likely that Comte and Dunoyer were influenced by Storch rather than by Say in the matter of the moral corruption of slavery on both the slave and the slave-owner.  This moral problem of slavery was the topic of the third part of Storch's chapter on the influence of slavery on "civilisation. "Storch begins by making the point that without any security with which to enjoy their liberty or any property they might acquire slaves naturally become "paresseux, insouciant, voleur, disspiateur, ivrogne"Behind this shiftless exterior lies a deeply felt hatred towards the master, "un coeur ulcÉrÉ de l'injustice de sa situation", which leads the slave when circumstances permit to rebellion, revenge and violence  The social consequences of slavery also impinge upon the family and public security.  Like individual slaves, slave families cannot enjoy the security necessary to bring up children and to plan for the future.  It is in the family that the slave's hatred for the master is strengthened  and it is this underlying hatred which places the public security in jeopardy.

Le rapport entre le maötre et l'esclave entretient nÉcessairement une dÉfiance mutuelle entre ces deux classes d'habitans.  L'intÉrÉt du maötre est toujours en conflit avec celui de l'esclave.  Le maötre ne pas se cacher qu'il dispose de l'esclave comme d'un instrument qui doit lui Étre utile prÉfÉrablement ê soi-mÉme; l'esclavage ne peut pas manquer de sentir l'injustice d'un pareil rapport; et consÉquement l'un se dÉfie de l'autre.  Il en rÉsulte que les familles ne vivient jamais dans un entiÉre sÉcuritÉ, et que l'État lui-mÉme est souvent exposÉ ê des commotions qui menacent de le bouleverser.

The feelings of hostility between master and slave mean that the master, being so outnumbered by his slaves lives a state of fear of an uprising.  Ancient authors such as Aristotle recommended that slave owners try to forstall disturbances by breaking down communication between their slaves.  This could be achieved by purchasing slaves from a variety of sources in order to make sure that the slaves had as little as possible in common between themselves.  Nevertheless slaveowners often talked of being murdered by their slaves and Storch quotes Catherine II from her Instruction pour le code des lois on the need to understand the underlying social and economic causes of serf revolts since it was impossible to prevent them through legislation alone.  Historically there had been many examples of isolated outbreaks of disgrunted slaves and serfs ranging from Spartacus to Pougatchef to Santo Domingo.  Storch implies that unless the situation of the slaves are improved through amelioration schemes or abolition itself the state will always face the prospect of recurring rebellion on the part of the slave population.

The fourth level of his analysis is economic and it is the aspect of slavery in which Say was most interested as it was most directly relevant to his debates with Hodgson on the profitability of slave labour.  Storch's contribution was unusual in that he stressed the modifications and amelioratons which slave labour had undergone in different parts of the world.  Not all slaves were treated like the chattel slaves of antiquity or the Caribbean.  He thought it was a mistake to base any economic analysis of slave labour on only these two extreme forms, without taking into account the more moderate slave systems of the Middle Ages and the eastern parts of Europe.  Even within the Caribbean system of slavery there were important distinctions to be made between the relatively "unproductive" domestic slaves waiting at table for the master's personal benefit and the "productive" slaves who toiled in the fields growing sugar for the export market.

L'esclavage est susceptible de beaucoup de modifications et de tempÉramens, suivant les restrictions que les lois et les moeurs apportent ê ce genre de propriÉtÉ.  Il y avait bien la diffÉrence dans l'État d'un esclave ê AthÅnes et ê LacÉdÉmone: il y en a bien plus encore dans celui d'un esclave russe et d'un nÅgre vendu dans les colonies.  Toutefois, quelles que soient les limites du droit du propriÉtÉ que l'homme a sur l'homme, partout o¥ ce droit subsiste il y de esclavage.

As an expert on economic conditions in Russia Storch was in a position of authority to discuss the variation in slavery which existed there, in particular the modification of slavery which allowed the individual serf to work for himself, free of direct supervision by the master in return for a payment known as the "obroc," and the special class of serfs known as the "peasants of the royal domain" or "crown peasants. " In both these cases Storch believed the Russian experience showed both the complexity of the nature of slave labour and a means of gradually abolishing its stricter forms in the Caribbean by following the Russian example of obroc or the institution of crown peasants.  It will become clear that his scheme for improving the condition of the black slaves is similar to the experiments of "humane" slave owners which were much admired by Clarkson, Hodgson and other abolitionists and rejected by Say as not suited to the tropics.

In a "Note" in the fourth volume of his Cours Storch gave a detailed description of the class system in Russia in which he described the different types of servitude. Of the three kinds of productive labouring classes two were coerced, the serfs and the slaves, and a third group was free.  The "free class (which) engaged in industrial work" included those nobles who worked their land for the purposes of agriculture, mining, forestry, fishing or manufacturing; "merchants of the three guilds" who engaged in commerce; the bourgeois or free artisans who lived in towns (numbering 3,000,000 according to the census of 1782); and free agricultural workers.  Included in the latter category were military colonists and the new class of "free cultivators" created by Tsar Alexander in 1803 who numbered only about 13,000 in 1810 and were bought from their masters.

Under the class of serfs Storch included all "crown peasants" who numbered some 4,675,000 males in 1782.  The crown peasants could be divided into two groups, a small group of peasants used in the crown's mines and factories and a much larger group of peasants tied to the glebe.  The crown peasants tied to the glebe provided Storch with the example of a halfway house between slavery and free labour.  They were allowed to pay a tax or "cens" (or obroc) to the crown which was determined by the fertility of the soil and to which Storch likened to a form of land rent.  Like the other peasants the crown peasants were also obliged to pay the capitation tax and serve in the military, however, and this is what interested Storch, they were allowed to keep whatever surplus they produced after having paid their taxes and they enjoyed the protection of the law.  Crown peasants had the right to leave their village upon receiving a passport which was valid for one, two or three years and, with the permission of the commune in which they lived, could move to a free town and engage in free labour there.  Although they enjoyed some freedoms and perhaps could be classified as a free labourer Storch preferred to classify the crown peasants as a kind of serf since the crown could still force them to work in the mines or the government factories, rent them out to others, or even sell them.  Storch quite correctly says these powers over their future meant they continued to behave more like slaves than free labourers

The third class were the slaves proper who were the peasants owned by individual members of the nobility and they numbered some 6,678,000 in the 1782 census.  In law their situation appeared to be worse than it actually was in practice, according to Storch, since a combination of a softening in attitudes and the economic self-interest of the masters meant they were better treated than previously.  Slaves owned by nobles could be rented out to others, forced to labour in the master's own fields, workshops or house, or they could be charged the obroc with the right to work elsewhere.  In the latter case, the economics of their situation was similar to the more fortunate crown peasants.

Any assessment of the economic efficiency of slave labour had to include all aspects of the slave system not just those slaves working in the fields.  The use of domestic slaves by the plantation owner was just as much a part of the slave system as those of prime working age whose labour was usually compared to that of free wage labourers.  Storch considered slaves as just a part of the master's total wealth which could be used for consumption or for productive purposes.  Those slaves used for domestic purposes, as cooks and valets and housekeepers Storch believed were part of the master's expenditure on consumption (fonds de consommation). The other slaves who worked to produce saleable crops were part of the master's capital stock.  Both types of slaves had to be assessed for their economic productivity in order to assess the overall efficiency of the slave system.

As one might expect Storch takes a dim view of the usefulness of the domestic or as he calls them the "unproductive" domestic slave.  Whereas a wealthy merchant or capitalist might have two or three domestic servants in Europe, in the colonies the slave owner indulged in half a dozen, the upkeep of which sorely taxed the overall productivity of the plantation.  But whereas the industrial capitalist or merchant had acquired his wealth through hard work, economising and the careful supervision of his assets and could thus keep his indulgence in servants to a rational limit, the plantation owner did not have these industrious habits and was thus in a very weak position when tempted by the luxury of plentiful slave servants.

C'est dÉjê un vice de l'esclavage et une vice trÅs grave, qu'il entraöne infailliblement au luxe des services improductifs.  Dans les pays o¥ l'esclavage subsiste, la classe des domestiques est infiniment plus nombreuse que le besoin ne l'exige: les maisons des riches fourmillent de fainÉans; ce qui est ailleurs la fonction d'un seul homme devient la tëche de cinq, de dix esclaves; des bras vigoreux qui, dans un autre ordre de choses, seraient productifs, sont condamnÉs ê l'inaction, et consomment au lieu de produire.  On entretient des esclaves pour la commoditÉ; on en entretient pour l'amusement; on en entretient pour le faste.  Tel maötre a sa troupe de comÉdiens, de musiciens, de bouffons, comme il a sa meute.  C'est ainsi que l'esclavage conduit ê la consommation la plus mal entendue, et cette observation s'est confirmÉe partout o¥ l'esclavage a subsistÉ, dans l'ancienne Rome comme en Perse, chez les EuropÉens dans les Indes comme chez nous en Russie.

The unproductive use of potentially productive domestic servants, Storch concluded, had a deleterious effect on the overall productivity and efficiency of slave labour.

Storch however was more interested in the use of slaves as a capital asset which could be used to bring in revenue to the owner.  He dsitinguished between three ways in which slave labour could be used: firstly, he could employ them himself on his plantation; secondly, he could rent them out to other plantation owners; and thirdly, he could "les louer ê eux-mÉmes" by charging them a "cens" or tax for the privilege of working for themselves.  The first two methods of disposing of slaves as a capital asset involved supervised and forced labour or "corvÉes" whereas the latter method had more in common with free labour that was taxed rather than supervised.  The third form of slave labour was common in Russia, where the cens or tax was called "obroc," and Storch considered this to be the least oppressive system for the slaves and the most productive and economically efficient form of slavery.

When considered as a form of fixed capital, a kind of "human machine," which could earn a rent it became possible to compare the returns of slave labour with more traditional income earning capital assets.  For example, the annual rent from slave labour (irrespective of which of the three different ways a slave could be used) had to cover the interest on the purchase price or the amount spent to raise and train a slave to work; the cost of daily maintenance; the cost of capital depreciation over the slave's working life; the cost of life insurance premiums; and the costs of supervising the slave while he worked. The rent earned by the slave's labour must be sufficient to cover these capital costs otherwise the slave owner is faced with a capital loss rather than a profit.  Each slave owner must be able to calculate these amounts and compare them with the market price for the labour, which is determined purely by the forces of supply and demand for labour in each locality. .  In Storch's view the answer to the question of which form of labour was the most profitable, free or slave labour, could only be found by comparing the rent earned by a slave with the wages of a free worker.

Soit que le maötre loue ses esclaves ê d'autres personnes, soit qu'il les emploie lui-mÉme, toujours le loyer doit Étre mis en ligne de compte lorsqu'on veut calculer les frais de leur travail.  Or comme le loyer correspond au salaire de l'ouvrier libre, il est nÉcessaire de les comparer entre eux; car c'est de cette comparaison que rÉsulte la solution du problÅme important, lequel de ces travaux revient plus cher, celui de l'esclave ou celui de l'ouvrier libre.

Storch's comparison of the costs of free and slave labour revealed that in some areas slave labour was cheaper than free labour, in some cases the costs were the same (for example the cost of paying for food or raising a family), but that in most areas the reverse held true.  What made the difference between the two forms of labour were the economic incentives which existed to encourage efficient, productive and intelligent work.  Basically the costs of maintaining a slave in good health were higher than the equivalent costs of maintaining a free labourer.  This was because the free labourer looked after himself and his family directly and had an obvious incentive to do this an economically and efficiently as possible.  Slaves on the other hand were more likely to be poorly supervised and looked after either because the master was distracted by his sumptuous existence or because he had delegated this responsability to a negligent overseer.  A second incentive which made slave labour less useful than free labour was the attitude of the slaves to their work.  Slaves were more likely than free labourers to steal, to waste or dammage materials and to be generally less than economical in their activity.  Since the slave had no direct incentive to work well (other than to avoid punishment) he naturally did not.  Storch cites an example from antiquity in order to demonstrate that complaints about the negligence and untrustworthiness of slaves is as ancient as slavery itself.  Columella's complaints apparently sounded much like the grumblings of modern slave owners whom Storch personally had heard.

J'ai entendu mille fois les mÉmes complaintes de la bouche des propriÉtaires Livoniens, comme on les entend rÉpÉter aux Antilles, en Hongrie et dans l'intÉrieur de la Russie.

This unproductive attitude raised the level of rent which was required for the slave owner to break even on his investment.  Slave labour was less productive because slaves both produced less in terms of quantity and what they did produce was of lower quality than free labourers.  Storch described slave workers as "une mauvaise machine" which was stubborn and very difficult to operate. Greater skill or dexterity was not rewarded, slaves felt no shame in doing a job poorly, they had no feeling of security that what extra they might be able to produce they would be allowed to keep, and the threat of physical punishment made them even less likely to cooperate.  Perhaps the most damning criticism of the productivity of slavery Storch was able to come up with was the absence of incentives to innnovate.  Under the threat of force and with the insecurity of property they felt, slaves had no reason to think about how they might improve their work practices or to think up new methods of doing things.  It is for this reason, the lack of incentives in slave labour, that Storch believed the economy of the ancient world had stagnated and was unable to begin the proces of industrialisation.

Pourquoi inventerait-il de nouveau moyens de faire plus ou de daire mieux? Pour perfectionner il faut penser; et penser est une peine qu'on ne se donne pas sans motif.  L'homme dÉgradÉ au point de n'Étre qu'un animal de service, ne s'ÉlÅve jamais au-dessus d'une aveugle routine, et les gÉnÉrations se succÅdent sans aucun progrÅs.  La force peut venir ê bout de faire travailler les hommes, mais elle ne les rendra jamais inventifs.

Say, in one of his many critical notes to Storch's work, agreed with his assessment about the lack of industrial progress in the ancient world but attributed it reasons other than purely the existence of slave labour.  Say believed the single most important handicap for industrial development in the ancient world was the prevalence of warfare.  Like Benjamin Constant, Say argued that the political and economic structure of the ancient world was militaristic in nature.  Military service was the most highly respected occupation and the accumulation of capital was made almost impossible with the constant "wars of extermination" which were undertaken.

Leur politique les constituait en État de guerre avec tous leurs voisins, et par consÉquent faisait du service militaire le premier des devoirs; or rien n'est plus contraire aux travaux d'une industrie un peu perfectionÉe, tavaux qui exigent des hommes tout entiers.  Leurs guerres Étaient exterminatrices: les bien et les personnes des vaincus devenaient la proie des vainqueurs; les biens mobiliers surtout Étaient dÉtruits ou emportÉs par les spoliateurs; or ce sont principalement ceux quie composent les capitaux et les produits de l'industrie.

On the demand side the forces acting to set the level of rent for slaves or wages for free labourers should have been the same but Storch believes that this was not so.  The free worker has to sell his labour whereas the slave owner is not forced to rent out his slaves for hire.  They could instead work on the owner's plantation.  In addition, whereas anyone with sufficient funds could hire a free labourer, not just anyone could hire a slave gang.  In many slave societies there were restrictions on who was entitled to use slave labour, usually reserved for a particular and rather small class of individuals.  Thus Storch concluded that slave owners exercised a kind of monopoly over the supply of labour which inevitably raised its price in comparison to free labour.  The only exception to this rule were societies in which a sufficiently large number of free labourers existed side-by-side with slaves to compete with them and thus drive the price of labour down to a common level.  This latter situation certainly did not exist in the Caribbean colonies (from which most of the English abolitionists and Say also got their historical examples) where the dominant form of labour was slave labour but it did exist in the interior of Russia.  In the provincial capitals of the Russian Empire the competition between slave and free labour was intense, unlike in the hinterland where slave labour had a virtual monopoly and where the cost of labour was much higher than in the towns.  Storch cites the example, perhaps from personal experience, of the reluctance of rural slaves who came to work as labourers or domestics in St.  Petersburg to accept the lower rates of pay brought about by the competition of crown serfs and free labourers. The cheaper cost of labour in the cities meant that that is where industrialists preferred to set up new factories rather than in the countryside (as in England).

Not only is industry hit hard by the existence of slave labour but also capital accumulation is hindered.  This was a topic close to Storch's heart and a source of conflict with Say.  One of Storch's main concerns was to discuss the problem of "national income", what was it composed of and how could it be maximised.  His dispute with Say led him to publish a supplementary volume to the second French edition of the Cours, entitled ConsidÉrations sur la nature du revenu national (1824), which dealt with this thorny issue.  The difficulty with slave labour was that it did not encourage the slaves to contribute to the accumulation of "national income. " They had no interest or incentive to accumulate anything and what little they did have was held very insecurely since their master or his overseers could take it with impunity.  This was another "cost" of the slave system when compared with the free labour system.  Storch asks how slaves could contribute to the important task of adding to the national wealth:

RÉduits pour la plupart ê leur entretien indispensible, comment les esclaves pourraient-ils contribuer ê l'accroissement du capital national? Et si l'humanitÉ de leurs maötres leur laisse la possibilitÉ de gagner un superflu, cette faveur prÉcaire, subordonnÉe au caractÅre d'un individu, ne leur inspire point cette confiance qui porte les vues sur l'avenir, qui montre dans des Économies journaliÅres la base d'un bien-Étre futur, et qui fait Étendre sur la prostÉritÉ des projets de fortune.  Ils sentent exposÉs ê l'extorsion, si ce n'est de la part du maötre, ce sera de la part des fermiers, des intendans et de tous les subalternes en autoritÉ, plus avides et plus redoutables que le maötre.  Il n'y a donc point de lendemain pour la plupart des esclaves.  Les jouissances qui se rÉalisent ê l'instant peuvent seules les tenter.  Ils seront ivrognes, paresseux, dissolus, sans compter les autres vices qui rÉsultent de leur situation.  Ceux qui ont un peu de prÉvoyance, enfouissent leurs petits trÉsors.  La triste sentiment de l'insÉcuritÉ, insÉparable de leur État, nourrit donc en eux tous les fauts destructifs de l'industrie, toutes les habitudes les plus funestes ê la sociÉtÉ, sans compensation et sans remÅde.  Ce n'est pas ici une vaine thÉorie: c'est le rÉsultat des faits dans tous les temps et dans tous les lieux.

By "national income" Storch did not mean the wealth of a few enormously wealthy individuals or the well-being of a particular class within the national economy.  He was concerned with the problem of trying to assign a value to every component of the economy from landowners and slaveowners down to serfs, slaves and hand workers.  It was a mistake he thought to view the ancient Romans as a wealthy nation since only a very small group of land and slave owners controlled most of society's wealth whilst the vast bulk of the population, the "nation", was in dire poverty.  Storch considered this to be another severe criticism of the slave system that it perpetuated such an unequal share of wealth.

. . . il (l'esclavage) est le plus grand obstacle ê la richesse que les peuples puissent rencontrer.  Quand je parle ici de richesse, j'entends la richesse nationale, non pas celles de quelques individus.  Tout pays ê esclaves compte quelque grands propriÉtaires immensÉment riches sur des milliers d'habitans pauvres; mais cette Énorme inÉgalitÉ des fortunes est un autre mal politique, et il acuse plutÖt l'esclavage qu'il ne le justifie.

The innovation Storch brought to the debate on the economics of slavery was the discussion of what he called the "esclaves censitaires" or slaves who engage in freely paid work with the permission of their masters, on payment of a fee or "cens. "In addition to establishing a fixed fee or tax for the right of the slave to work independently of the master, the slave owner could also allow the slave to use part of his land, or he might provide the slave with some capital to begin a small business in manufacturing or commerce.  In the latter cases there would also be a charge for rent or interest in addition to the fee or tax paid by the slave to his master.  Storch was interested in this more moderate form of slavery partly because of its widespread use in Russia, partly because he considered it to be an efficient way of ameliorating the worst economic consequences of forced labour and partly because he thought it could be the best method of gradually abolishing slavery throughout the Western world.

Storch had four reasons why the "esclave censitaire" was a better and more efficient worker than the chattel slave.  Firstly, the slave's labour is not as closely supervised and thus the slave's attitudes and behaviour more closely approach that of a free labourer or "du moins lui en laisse l'illusion" of being a free labourer.  Secondly, the esclave censitaire is able to engage in free labour, that is he is able to choose his work and to carry it out according to his own interests.  With the incentive of self interest now operating the slave can work hard and be inventive.  Thirdly, now that the slave is in control of his work he has the incentive and the means to economise or cut costs and thus improve the efficiency of labour.  Fourthly, in societies where there are few free labourers, such as Russia or the Caribbean colonies, the censitaire system provides an important source of labour for manufacturing or commercial enterprises which could not be done by chattel slaves.  One of the assumptions behind Storch's advocacy of the censitaire slave system is that the rights and obligations of both parties must be recognised in law in order to protect the property produced by the slave from arbitrary seizure by the master.  With some guarantee of security for the slave's property enough incentives are in place for the slave to begin the slow economic process of self-improvement.

Autant l'ouvrier libre est au-dessus du serf, autant celui-ci se trouve au-dessus de l'esclave, mÉme censitaire.  Comme ses obligations sont stipulÉes par la loi, et qu'il a la propriÉtÉ lÉgale de tout ce qu'il acquiert, naturellement il s'efforce d'amÉliorer son sort: il est en gÉnÉral plus laborieux, plus inventif, plus Économe.  D'un autre cÖtÉ, sa condition l'attache ê la glÅbe, et c'est en quoi elle est contraire au dÉveloppement de ses facultÉs: elle entrave la division du travail et consÉquemment les progrÅs de l'industrie.  Dans la situation des serfs censitaires, ces observations sont moins sensibles que dans celle des serfs ê corvÉes.

The situation of these kind of slaves in Russia was often better than that of many crown serfs which lead some commentators to argue that perhaps it was better to be a slave than to be a serf.  Storch explained this anomalous situation in terms of the economic incentives created by the various types of coerced labour which existed in Russia.  Although nominally slaves of large landed proprietors many "esclaves censitaires" lived a reasonably prosperous life in towns and villages pursuing their own trades.  This arrangement was very good for the slave owner who benefitted considerably from the "taxes" being paid by the slaves as a result of their relative economic freedom.  By managing his slave's payments carefully he could maximise his return.  On the other hand the crown owned millions of serfs who were theoreticaly better off than many other serfs in Russia.  However, Storch argued, they were exploited in a quite arbitrary way by petty government officials.  Since the crown could not personally manage his slaves as many landowners could and did the crown serfs were illegally at the mercy of the government officials put in charge of their welfare.

Les paysans des grands propriÉtaires sont souvent traitÉs avec beaucoup de mÉnagement; ceux de la couronne se voient quelquefois exposÉs aux chicanes et aux extorsions des officiers subalternes du gouvernement; les uns ont un protecteur puissant intÉressÉ ê les dÉfendre; les autres sont vexÉs par ceux mÉmes qui ont l'obligation de les proteger.

But in those parts of Russia where the law protected the property rights of the censitaire slaves and where the depradations of government officials could be kept to a minimum Storch believed the economic benefits of liberty, even within the institution of slavery, were to be seen.  

Turning to the situation in other parts of Europe Storch was convinced of the superiority of free labour over slave labour.  Russia was not a special case even though its variety of forms of slavery and coerced labour was greater than in any other country.  Storch assembled a large number of examples of reforms which moderated the institution of slavery or serfdom and thus led to improvements in agricultural output as a result.  He discusses the case of Count Bernstorf who freed his peasants and witnessed an improvement in agricultural output; William Coxe discusses Count Zamoiski in Poland who did the same and saw a tripling of output; the example of the royal domain in Denmark, when in 1765 in Holstein the royal lands were sold off, some to freed peasants.

After having etablished to his satisfaction the inefficiency of slave labour in agriculture Storch then turned to show how much more inefficient slave labour was in the area of manufactures.  Basically Storch accused slavery of preventing the proper development of the division of labour which was so necessary, as Smith and Say argued, for the emergence of manufacturing.  Some slave owners may introduce a rudimentary division of labour on the plantation and the result, Storch believed, might be a "feeble" increase in productivity.  However this was impossible to achieve in industry because, unlike agriculture which to some extent was a result of the work of nature, industry was almost entirely the result of human ingenuity.  Any improvements in industrial production had to come from the application of human intelligence and hard work, which Storch thought was entirely lacking in slave systems.

Mais si le travail agricole ne se perfectionne que faiblement sous le rÉgime de la contrainte, celui des manufactures ne fait presque point de progrÅs sous un tel rÉgime.  Le produit de l'agriculture est en grande partie l'ouvrage de la nature; lors mÉme que l'ouvrier s'acquitte mal de sa besogne, la nature fait toujours son devoir, et quelque imparfait que soit le procÉdÉ du cultivateur, le produit ne s'en ressent que par rapport ê la quantitÉ; ê l'Égard de la qualitÉ il est ê peu prÅs toujours la mÉme.  Les produits des manufactures, au contraire, sont presque entiÅrement l'ouvrage de l'homme, et consÉquemment ils ne peuvent se perfectionner que par le zÅle, l'activitÉ et les efforts des hommes.  Or la contrainte ne produit jamais ces effets: si elle parvient ê faire travailler les hommes, c'est tout ce qu'elle peut; mais elle ne rend jamais inventifs, zÉlÉs, intelligens.  Ainsi dans les manufactures la supÉrioritÉ de l'ouvrier libre sur l'esclave est bien encore plus sensibles que dans la culture des terres.

Proof of this claim was provided by comparing the sophistication of the modern economy with that of slave societies, in particular the economies of the ancient world.  This of course is an unfair comparison since the absence of various consumer goods such as clocks, glasses, paper and books or the high price of woven fabrics is not due to the existence of slavery as Storch argued.  Yet it is important to his attack on slavery to maintain that the ancient Roman economy was backward or underdevelopped precisely because the existence of slavery prevented the division of labour from going past a certain primitive level and prevented the formation of a prosperous middle class to buy the goods made in the factories. Storch dismissed the supposed wealth of the ancient world by claiming that a comfortably well-off inhabitant of a European town in the 1820s was much better off than most in the ancient world bar the richest of the aristocrats.  Whereas the wealth of modern Europe was the result of trade and industry, the narrowly based wealth of the Roman empire was less the result of industry than the product of war and the pillaging that war made possible.  Not only was industry beyond the reach of the Romans but also the benefits of commerce for much the same reasons.  Like Comte, Dunoyer, Say and Constant the ancient world was condemned for stifling economic development for the benefit of a small minority of aristocratic slave owners:

De mÉme que l'esclavage arrÉta les progrÅs des manufactures chez les Romains, il fut encore nuisible au commerce, qu'il retint chez eux dans un État d'enfance.  La boussole, les postes, les lettres de change, les papiers de crÅdit, les banques, les assurances, en un mot, tous les perfectionnemens du commerce leur Étaient inconnus et ne furent inventÉs que lorsque la destruction totale de l'esclavage avait fait naötre un tier-État et que des hommes libres se vouaient ê l'exercice du commerce.  Les Romains Étaient riches; mais cette richesse Était le partage d'un petit nombre de citoyens; tout le reste croupissait dans la misÅre la plus profonde, qui n'Était que faiblement soulagÉe part les largesses du trÉsor public.  Encore cette richesse n'Était-elle point le fruit d'industrie, mais celui du pillage que Rome exerìait sur les peuples vaincus.  Si la guerre n'avait pas ÉtÉ pour les Romains un moyen d'acquÉrir, ils seraient toujours restÉs pauvres, comme dans les premiers temps de la rÉpublique, ê moins qu'ils n'eussent aboli l'esclavage et exercÉ les arts industriels comme font les peuples modernes.

Storch's philosophy of history placed great importance on the relationship between the decline of slavery and the rise of economic activity.  In the feudal period the reasons for poor economic activity was similar to the problems faced by the ancient Romans.  It was not until the "affranchissement des esclaves" as he termed it that the economic situation of the average person began to improve.  Storch based his view on the work of Robertson, in particular his History of Charles the Fifth and quoted him at some length.  Robertsons views on the incentives of free labour and the rise of a middle class were very close to Storch's views on the problem of slave labour in the colonies and serfdom in Russia. The great takeoff in European economic development did not occur until the complete abolition of serfdom and slavery.  Storch described this as a "grande et bienfaisante rÉvolution", as the "dawn" of all the great inventions and economic developments which have made life easier and more tolerable for all.  The destructive effects of slavery were no longer widespread but limited to only a few places such as the colonies in America and Eastern Europe.  Like Say Storch was optimistic for the future since he believed that the proximity of free societies would gradually undermine the stability of the few remaining slave societies.  Already he thought slavery was less harsh and slaves in some societies had some although certainly inadequate legal protection from the arbitrary actions of their masters.  But the greatest threat to slave societies was the much greater productive power of free labour in free socities.  In comparing the relative economic strength of a selection of free and slave societies Storch came to the not surprising conlcusion that compared to the United States and Ireland (a curious choice) the economies of Russia, Poland, Hungary and Denmark had made feeble progress in industrial development.  In all the economic categories he chose Storch found the slave/serf societies wanting, in population growth, level of exports, and per capita wealth. He was particularly scathing about the lack of progress in Russia in spite of nearly 150 years of state support and assistance.  He found the level of the division of labour, investment in tools and equipment, and the quality of manufactured goods quite inadequate and he laid the blame at the feet of the slave system.  Storch had a high opinion of the  potential of the Russian people and predicted great things for the Russian economiy if slavery could be finally abolished.

La division de travail est incompatible avec l'esclavage; et sans elle point ou peu d'Échanges, point de perfectionnement dans les travaux indusriels, point de machines et d'outils ingÉnieux, et par consÉquent point de manufactures, point de commerce.  Voilê la principale cause qui arrÉte en Russie l'essor de l'industrie.

The solution to the problem of slavery Storch believed could be found in the study of European history over the previous two or three centuries.  Europe, according to the philosophy of history developed by Robertson and Smith, had evolved from a slave society into one based upon serfdom, and from their into a relatively free society in which labour was freely paid for.  As discussed above Storch believed that the "revolution" which had liberated the "tiers-État" in Europe could be repeated elsewhere, in Russia or in the Caribbean, without bloodshed.  He called his chapter on the end of slavery "Comment l'esclavage s'abolit insensiblement dans l'Europe occidentale"and the key word in the title is "insensiblement. " By this he meant the abolition of slavery and serfdom without too much disruption to life, liberty and property.  It was possible he thought to persuade the more open-minded slave owners that it was in their interest to introduce free labour for the greater productivity this would create.  However this would be possible only if those slave owners were also convinced that abolition would take place in such a way that their situation and their fortune were left intact and their personal security was not harmed.  It was in order to persuade the open-minded slave owner (and one must include the two crown princes to whom Storch was teaching economics, with their vast land holdings which included serfs and slaves, in this group) that Storch used his historical example of the peaceful transition to free labour which he observed in western European history since the middle ages.

Before the abolition of slavery had been possible in western Europe four separate forces had to come together: the Christian religion, the example of enlightened monarchs, the collapse of the feudal system, and the economic interests of the landowners.  Unlike Say, Storch believed that there was a contradiction between the principles of Christian morality and the ownership of slaves which became increasingly obvious as time passed.  However he realised that Christian morality was often overridden  by what he termed "les considÉrations d'intÉrÉt et les maximes d'une fausse politique. "In spite of this Christians provided many examples of manumission which contributed to the gradual undermining of slavery.

Concerning the actions of the monarchs, Storch took the position of the "thÅse royale," that some monarchs saw the liberation of serfs as a means of weakening the power of the landed nobility.  Anything which weakened their power contributed to building up the power of the crown.  The example Storch gives of this struggle between the crown and the nobility which worked to the advantage of the serfs was the ordonnances of Louis X and his brother Philippe which freed the serfs on the royal domains and which influenced some other nobles to do likewise on their land.  There were also a couple of English statutes in the reigns of Henry XVIII and Elisabeth which created precendents in the liberation of slaves.

The liberation of serfs and slaves was not very common during the feudal period but a most important development was the creation of the city republics in Italy which created a totally different legal system in which widespread slavery played no part.  This perception of the freedom of the renaissance city state is part of the liberal view of history developed by Thierry and others.

Le gouvernement rÉpublicain qui s'Était Établi dans les grandes villes d'Italie, y avait rÉpandu des principes d'administration fort diffÉrens de ceux du systÅme fÉodal; ces principes, fortifiÉs par les idÉes d'ÉgalitÉ que les progrÅs du commerce y avaient rendues familiÅres, concoururent ê y introduire l'usage d'affranchir les esclaves cultivateurs.

The fourth factor which led to the aboliton of slavery and serfdom in western Europe was the growing realisation on the part of the landowners that slave labour was not as productive as free labour.  For the same reasons that Storch has developed at length in his Cours d'Économie politique the landowners realised the inconvenience of forced labour and went along with the other three factors mentioned above to complete what Storch called:

. . .  cette grande rÉvolution, la plus importante qui se soit faite dans toute le cours des siÅcles, celle qui donne un caractÅre particulier ê la civilisation de l'Europe, et d'o¥ datent les progrÅs Étonnans que cette partie du monde a faits dans tous ce qui ennoblit l'existence de l'homme et dans tout ce qui la rend agrÉable.

Since "this great revolution" was restricted to the western part of Europe for the historical reasons given by Storch considerable work need to be done to extend the revolution to the Americas and to eastern Europe.  Storch is supremely confident that this will inevitably happen as individual liberty becomes entrenched in European and North American society and exerts its inexorable and irresistable influence on neighbouring and less economically developed societies.

. . .  les causes qui ont accÉlÉrÉ l'extension de la libertÉ individuelle dans l'Europe occidentale ne manqueront pas de produire tÖt ou tard le mÉme effet dans les pays o¥ l'esclavage subsiste encore.  Ces liens que la barbarie des siÅcles passÉs a formÉs, le progrÅs naturel de la prospÉritÉ les dissout peu ê peu; et la marche de la libertÉ, pour Étre lente, n'en est moins pas s₧re.

To support his optimistic perception of the future Storch gives a long list of reforms of labour practices in Europe and America since the end of the eighteenth century.  Slavery had been practically abolished in most of the provinces of the Austrian monarchy, the royal domains of Holstein and Denmark, Swedish Pomerania, the Prussian states, and the Grand Duchy of Warsaw.  Slavery had been limited and manumission made easier in Hungary, Denmark, and Russia.  The slave trade had been prohibited or restricted by the Spanish, Danish, Swedish, American, and British governments.  Storch was impresssed that so much progress had been made in such a short time and confidently predicted that by the end of the nineteenth century slavery will have diappeared entirely from the continent of Europe and the societies settled by Europeans. Furthermore, in the societies just mentioned the process of abolition had not caused serious disruption to the social fabrique but had in fact led to all the salutary results of liberty: increase in population, industry, wealth and individual well-being.  Storch concluded his lecture on slavery to the grand dukes by saying

Ce tÉmoignage rendu par l'expÉrience de nos jours et dans un si grand nombre de pays, en faveur de la cause de l'humanitÉ et de la justice, devrait suffire pour rassurer les propriÉtaires, et pour calmer leurs alarmes.  Nulle part l'ordre public n'a ÉtÉ troublÉ, mÉme par l'abolition prompte et gÉnÉrale de la servitude; nulle part les propriÉtaires n'ont ÉtÉ lÉsÉs dans leurs intÉrÉts pÉcuniaires; au contraire leurs revenus se sont accrus; ils se voient dÉbarrassÉs de tous les soins et dÉsagrÉmens qui sont insÉparables de la rÉgie des esclave, et de maötres craints ils sont devenus des seigneurs respectÉs.

Jean-Baptiste Say's Comments on Slavery in the 5th edition of the TraitÉ (1826).

Say rewrote the section dealing with the profitability of slave labour and expanded it in size by some 100% (4 to 8 pages).  His rewriting reveals how much of the arguments of Storch and Hodgson he had accepted and how much he had rejected .  Interestingly, he continues to concentrate on the narrower argument about the level of payments for free and slave labour (using the example of the Antilles with the total cost of 500 francs as the annual cost to the owner of keeping a slave) rather than the systemic approach of Storch.  But his reading of the literature of the "Society for Mitigating and Gradually Abolishing the State of Slavery" had led to doubts about the overall profitability of slave plantations.  Whereas earlier he had confidently asserted that plantations in Saint-Domingue were so profitable that they repaid their cost price within six years he now argued that "(c)'est ainsi probablement que les profits d'une sucrerie Étaient tellement exagÉrÉs. "

 But where the greatest change in Say's thought occured was to dismiss the argument about the profitability of slave labour as the most important factor working to protect or weaken the slave system in the colonies.  Other external economic and moral factors intruded to undermine the viability of slavery.  As he put it "tout est changÉ"and to discuss the morality and economic efficiency of slave labour in the colonies was less relevant than he had thought in his earlier editions of the TraitÉ.  He still condemned the morality of owning slaves, the way in which slavery depraved both the owner and the slave, and corrupted the virtues of "vÉritable industrie" (viz.  intelligence, activity and economy) but he now introduced a new economic argument which he now believed was even more compelling - that the French slave colonies could not compete economically with other sugar producers.  Say now beleived that if it were not for the protection offered by the almost exclusive monopoly the French sugar producers enjoyed in the metropolitan market, slavery would collapse.  regardless of the comparative profitability of slave labour compared to free labour.

. . . le fait est que l'on ne peut plus, ê la Martinique et ê la Guadeloupe, soutenir la concurrence de plusieurs autres pays, qui peuvent approvisionner l'Europe de sucre ê beaucoup meilleur marchÉ.  Ce n'est qu'ê la faveur des droits Åtablis en France sur les sucres ÉtrangÅres, droits qui Équivalent ê une prohibition, que ces deux öles peuvent y vendre leurs sucres, qui, au prix o¥ ils leur reviennent, ne pourraient se vendre nulle autre part.  Et malgrÉ le monopole du marchÉ de la France que cette prohibition leur assure au grand dÉtriment des Franìais, les colons de la Martinique et de la Guadeloupe ne peuvent soutenir leurs Établissements: ils sollicitent chaque jour de nouvelles faveurs de la mÉtropole; et ces faveurs ne les empÉchent pas de s'endetter chaque jour davantage, c'est-ê-dire de se ruiner.

Say did not discuss an obvious counter-argument to his change of emphasis in discussing the slave question.  Even if the accounts of the profitability of slave labour were exaggerated the profits might be high enough to enable the plantation owners to mount a formidable political campaign within metropolitan France to maintain the extensive system of tariff protection which alone made slave-produced sugar competetive with other suppliers.

Say also scoffed at the experiments made by "humanitarian" planters, such as Steele and Nottingham and touted by the "Society for Mitigating and Gradually Abolishing the State of Slavery" (as in Hodgson's Letter to Say), to improve the profitability of slavery by introducing some form of wage labour.  Say argued that Steele's experiments were short-lived and not universally adopted.  and that the British slave colonies also faced formidable economic competition.  Like their French couterparts, the British plantation owners also needed tariff protection to survive.  Their behaviour in Parliament to maintain this protection was proof to Say of the economic vulnerability of slave-produced colonial products.

The argument used by Hodgson and Storch of the gradual evolution in Europe away from serf labour towards paid free labour was rejected by Say because he thought the European experience was not applicable in the tropics.  The climate was too harsh and the cultivation of sugar too back-breaking to enable free European labour to flourish.  Black workers on the other hand were not ambitious enough and had too few "needs" to be satisfied to make freely paid labour viable.  The example of free black labour in Haiti suggested to Say that there were serious problems to be faced by emancipation.  Labour continued to be forced in Haiti even after abolition, with blacks required by law to have supervision by a master and severe penalties for poor work imposed.  The result was that the production of sugar in Haiti cost more than in neighbouring islands, the proof of which was the extensive smuggling that went own because of the disparities in prices for these commodities.

Ultimately, Say reverts to moral and political arguments with which to condemn slavery, thus side-stepping to some extent the debate begun by Hodgson.  He thought it was more important to discuss another question "pour quel prix on peut le (un homme) faire travailler sans blesser la justice et l'humanitÉ. "He accused his opponents of being "faibles calculateurs" for placing so much emphasis on force rather than on the issue of equity.  Say uses the liberal distinction between the two different methods of acquiring wealth (by force or by trade) to make his rather general point.  He likens the slave owners to a band of Bedouin robbers who seize a caravan of goods with little cost to themselves.  The opposite of this system of exploitation based on force is, of course, industry.

Il n'y a de maniÅre durable et s₧re de produire que celle qui est lÉgitime, et il n'y a de maniÅre lÉgitime que celle o¥ les avantages de l'un ne sont point acquis aux dÉpends de l'autre.  Cette maniÅre de prospÉrer et la seule qui n'ait point de fëcheux rÉsultats ê craindre; et les ÉvÉnemens arrivÉs me donneraient trop d'avantages, si je voulais mettre en parallÅle le dÉclin et les dÉsastres des pays dont l'industrie se fonde sur l'esclavage, avec la prospÉritÉ de ceux o¥ rÅgnent des principes plus libÉraux; principes qui gagnent journellement du terrain, et qui couvriront bientÖt de nations florissantes le Nouveau-Monde, pour l'instruction de l'Ancien,

Say's Comments on Slavery in the Cours complet d'Économie politique pratique. (1828).

Say presented his most extensive comments on the problem of slave labour in a series of chapters on serfdom, slavery and the colonies in his book based on lectures at the AthÉnÉe in Paris.  What had been a few off-the-cuff remarks in the early editions of theTraitÉ  had been reworked after his confrontation with Adam Hodgson and Henri Storch into a more extensive analysis of the problem of coerced labour in the Cours complet  Say summed up three hundred years of European colonial expansion in the following manner:

On a vu, dans les trois derniers siÅcles, des EuropÉens se disant chrÅtiens et civilisÉs, renouveler, et mÉme d'une maniÅre plus criante, le systÅme des paòns et des barbares qui cultivaient leurs terres par des esclaves et ê coups de fouet.  Les conquÉrans qui envahirent les öles de golfe mexicain, ne pouvant soumettre les indigÅnes, les exterminÅrent, et allÅrent aux cÖtes d'Afrique enlever de force des nÅgres qui ne leur avaient jamais fait de mal, pour cultiver des öles qu'ils n'occupaient que par le droit du plus fort, et qu'ils avaient rendues dÉsertes.  Il en est rÉsultÉ un systÅme de culture qu'il convient d'apprÉcier dans un cours d'Économie politique.

Before turning to the specific problem of the comparative profitability of slave labour Say sought to reveal the economic assumptions behind the existence of the slave colonies.  In his view, slave colonies were only established because of the false mercantilist belief that each nation had to produce all its basic commodities from within its own territory.  Hence each major nation had to seize territory in the tropics in order to produce their own supplies of sugar, tea, coffee and other "colonial wares. " Given this perceived necessity slave labour only resulted because of the difficulty of acquiring domestic or free labour in the new colonies.  Since Say also believed in a theory of economic progress, he thought that the present stage of economic development no longer needed to rely on each nation having their own source of supply of colonial products.  With a world market in existence and with producers anxious to supply that market exclusive protected economic zones were no longer needed.  The most pressing economic question of the modern era was how to acquire goods and services at the lowest cost, irrespective of their origin whether or not the goods came from a "domestic" or a "foreign" source.  In the case of sugar, the economic question is reduced to the problem of whether or not sugar grown in a dependent colony was cheaper or more expensive than sugar acquired by trade with foreign sources of supply "irrespective of the means by which they are acquired. "By the latter qualification Say meant not that liberal political economists were not interested in the kind of labour used in production or whether coercion was also present, but merely that the consumer could not tell from the price alone how a commodity was produced.  The consumer was blind to the intricacies of production and was concerned solely with "economising" in their purchcases.  To enable consumers to make this important choice all prices for commodities must be free market prices.  Thus all forms of subsidies and tariff protection must be eliminated and in the case of sugar, especially the protected market the colonial sugar producers had in the metropolitan market.  The existence of protection for French colonial sugar was virtually an open admission that colonial sugar was more expensive than other foreign sources and hence uncompetitive.  As with all producers who were protected by tariffs and exclusive trading zones, the producers of sugar did not have to personally bear the costs of their uncompetitiveness.  This was passed onto the French consumers who were deprived of the opportunity of buying their sugar from cheaper alternative sources.

On a, par cette politique, encouragÉ une production dÉsavantageuse, une production qui donne de la perte; et pour que les auteurs de cette perte, c'est-ê-dire, les colons, ne la supportassent pas, on l'a fait supporter aux consommateurs franìais.  La consommation actuelle du sucre en France est ÉvaluÉe ê cinq cent mille quintaux mÉtriques; or, si nous achetions cette quantitÉ dans l'Inde ou ailleurs, ê 50 francs meilleur marchÉ, par quintal mÉtrique, il est Évident que, mÉme en payant les mÉmes droits d'entrÉe, le quintal mÉtrique nous reviendrait ê 50 francs de moins: ce qui nous procurerait une Épargne annuelle de 25 millions, que nous pourrions consacrer ê d'autres achats, ê d'autres jouissances, sans que le commerce franìais gagnët moins, sans que le trÉsor public diminuer ses recettes.  Il est mÉme probable que le commerce et le trÉsor recevraient davantage; car une diminution d'un quart, sur le prix de cette denrÉe, en augmenterait considerablement la consommation.

Not only were domestic consumers forced to pay more than they needed to but the entire system of slavery was made profitable, irrespective of whether or not slave labour in competition with free wage labour was more profitable.  Say was suggesting that the key to the profitability and hence continuing existence of slavery was the presence of tariffs and protected trading zones, not whether individual plantations using slave labour was more profitable than competing plantations which used wage incentives By arguing in this way Say was trying to change the focus of the debate about the profitability of slave labour from the level of the plantation to the level of international trade, colonial and tariff policy.  In addition to the costs born by the French consumer there were other costs as well which acted to further subsidise colonial slave labour.  These included the costs (born by the French taxpayer) of maintaining garrisons and a naval presence in the colonies, the cost of wars fought over colonial territory, and a moral or psychological cost of maintaining a horrendously inhumane system of labour.  A related problem was that of military conscription, something Say adamantly opposed, being used to defend a repugnant economic system.

Although Say preferred to argue against slavery on a more general economic level than Hodgson and Storch he does nevertheless turn to the problem raised by them concerning the micro-economic reasons for the high cost of slave-produced products, an important element of which was the profitability of slave labour.  He argued that it was a combination of several factors which made slave-produced sugar uncompetitive.  It was partly a result of the mode of production itself (the sole reason given by Hodgson), the lack of entrepreneurial and managerial talent of the plantation owners (an argument used by Storch), as well as the specific climatic and geographical problems of the Caribbean.

The costs inherent in slavery as a mode of production had increased with the ending or at least the tightening of the slave trade.  Instead of being able to buy young adult slaves at a relatively cheap price, plantation owners now had to breed their own slaves, with the increased costs this involved, or buy new slaves at a much higher price, due to the increased risks of the slave trade.  The increased costs of breeding one's own slaves included the cost of raising unproductive children to a working age, caring for them in sickness and old age.  As Fogel and Engerman, in their controversial study on slavery in the Southern United States, showed these costs can represent a sizable proportion of the wages of a free man when averaged out over a life time.  As Say put it "Tous ces frais reprÉsentent le salaire que l'on paie ê un ouvrier libre, et doivent reprÉsenter un salaire ÉlevÉ. "

Apart from the high capital and maintenance costs of slave labourers there is also the problem of incentive, an issue which Hodgson made much of in his critique of Say.  Say himself spends little time discussing this issue which all political economists seemed to agree upon, viz.  that slaves had little interest in doing much work or in doing it well, that slaves in fact tried to hide their true capacity to work in order to minimise their labour, that slaves, since they had nor personal interest in what they were doing required expensive supervision and the constant threat of physical force (le fouet).

The next factor which increased the cost of slave-produced sugar was attributable to the inefficiencies of the slave owners themselves rather than to the workers.  Plantation owners were unlike other managers of factories of farms in that an integral part of their business was their sumptuous and aristocratic way of life which raised costs enormously.  Say used language similar to that used in the eighteenth century debate about luxury in order to condemn the inefficiencies of slave production.  Plantation owners surrounded themselves with luxury and pampered themselves with sensuous delights partly to satisfy their personal tastes but also as a mechanism of social control.  The high living of the master was necessary to keep the slaves' respect and to foster fear of the master.  Just as important to the plantation's functioning were the "unproductive" domestic slaves who waited on the master and his family.  Any assessment of the operating costs of slave labour must, Say believed, include the costs of maintaining these "unproductive: domestic slave servants.  This is an argument which appears to come from Storch.

But Say is not content to just list the micro economic arguments against slavery.  As a supporter of the "industrial system" Say criticises the system of slave labour for corrupting both the slave and the slave owner and thereby making neither "industrious".  A fully industrial economic system could not emerge whilst pockets of corruption existed and Say took as his authority on the corrupting effects of slavery the work on legislation by his son-in-law Charles Comte  Surrounded by luxury and disdainful of industrious labour the plantation owners are not like any other manager of an industrial enterprise.  Their absolute control over their workforce makes them dispense with any need to rationalise or improve their agricultural or management methods.

Covenons-en: il rÉsulte de tout cela un systÅme de corruption vicieux, et qui s'oppose aux plus beaux dÉveloppemens de l'industrie.  Un esclave est un Étre dÉpravÉ, et son maötre ne l'est pas moins; ni l'un ni l'autre ne peuvent devenir complÅtement industrieux, et ils dÉpravent l'homme libre qui n'a point d'escalvage.  Le travail ne peut Étre en honneur dans les mÉmes lieux o¥ il est une flÉtrissure.  L'inactivitÉ de l'esprit est chez les maötres la consÉquence de celle du corps; le fouet ê la main, on est dispensÉ d'intelligence.

Furthermore there was another problem which the system of colonial tariffs and exclusive trading zones posed for France.  Later Marxists would term this problem "unequal development" but for Say and Comte (whose argument in the TraitÉ de lÉgislation provided Say with this line of argument) it meant that the benefits of the exclusive trading arrangement were very much one-sided.  The industrially backward colonies were trading with a dynamic and industrially developing metropole whose middles classes were becoming prosperous enough to purchase increasing amounts of the colonies' produce (once considered luxury items which only the aristocracy could afford).  On the other hand the metropole had a monopoly on the sale of manufactured goods in the colonies yet this meant little since those who made up the bulk of the population were kept in a state of enforced poverty and were thus unable to purchase the metropole's industrial products in any quantity.  This argument no doubt was influenced by Storch's views about the inability of the slaves to contribute to "national income".  The slave colonies thus were a double burden on the metropole: the consumers paid in higher than necessary sugar prices and workers and manufacturers who hoped to sell to the colonial market were disappointed with poor sales.  In addition, taxpayers in the metropole paid for the defense and security of the plantation owners.  Comte's conclusion concerning the anti-industrial nature of slavery in the colonies was that:

Les öles ê sucre sont bornÉes, et ils ne dÉpends pas des possesseurs d'en Étendre les bornes: l'esclavage rÉduit les facultÉs des maötres et des esclaves dans les limites les plus Étroites, surtout dans ce qui est relatif ê l'industrie; loin d'avoir de nouveaux capitaux, les colons sont en gÉnÉral accablÉs de dettes; les terres exploitÉes par des esclaves, et sous la direction de propriÉtaires qui manquent de capitaux, deviennent de moins en moins productives.  Ainsi, tandis que d'un cÖtÉ les richesses et la population se multiplient en Europe, que les produits manufacturÉs sont offerts en plus grande abondance, ê plus bas prix, et que la demande que nous fesons des denrÉes Équinoxiales s'accroit, leur production reste concentrÉe dans le mÉme espace et devient de plus en plus chÅre.

If slave labour and the plantation system are as inefficient and depraved as Say would like to believe he is faced with the difficulty of explaining the impression that many commentators had of the immense wealth of the colonies in general and the immense wealth of some plantation owners in particular.  Those commentators who were impressed with the enormous wealth of the Caribbean colonies Say dismissed as "les demi-savans, les observateurs superficiels" because, as so often is the case in political economy, they forget to distinguish between what FrÉdÉric Bastiat liked to call "the seen and the unseen. " In this case, what is seen is the apparent wealth of the colonies based as it is on slave labour.  But what is not seen, or what is not so apparent at first sight, is  two things.  Firstly, the even greater wealth the colonies might have had if they had had a more productive and industrious labour and management system.  With the colonies advantageous climate and geographic situation the wealth they could have produced would have far outstripped the level it had actually reached under slavery.  Secondly, what is not seen is that much of the colonies' wealth has been at the expense of the European consumer who has paid dearly for heavily protected colonial goods.  What might appear to a "superficial observer" as newly created wealth appears to Say as a transfer of wealth from consumers to slave owners.

Je ne pense point que ce qu'on se plaöt ê appeler la prospÉritÉ des colonies du golfe mexicain, soit le rÉsultat de la maniÅre donts elles Étaient, et dont quelques-unes sont encore exploitÉes.  Je croirais ê leur prospÉritÉ, si, abandonnÉes ê leurs propres moyens, sans le secours et les dÉpenses des gouvernemens europÉens, sans les capitaux qu'y apportent journellement les spÉculateurs de leurs mÉtropoles, et sans le monopole que leur assurent les droits qu'on asseoit sur les produits semblables aux leurs, j'avais vu leurs produits et leurs population doubler tous les vingt ans, ainsi qu'on l'a vu dans les colonies devenues indÉpendantes.  Mais telle quelle, cette prospÉritÉ a ÉtÉ beaucoup moins grande qu'elle n'aurait d₧ l'Étre dans les circonstances extraordinairement favorables o¥ se sont trouvÉes les colonies des EuropÉens.

What one concludes from this view of the colonies' prosperity is that it is largely due to the economic progress made in Europe since the seventeenth century which made it possible for consumers to afford artificially highly priced colonial goods which Say described as "ê un taux vÉritablement usuraire. "Without the prosperity of the European metropole the plantation owners would not have been able to sell their goods at all.  Thus the prosperity of the colonies is a story of missed opportunities and exploitation of the domestic consumer.

C'Était donc le consommateur franìais qui payait la prospÉritÉ de l'agriculture des Antilles; et les frais de culture auraient ÉtÉ encore plus considÉrables, qu'au moyen de la faveur des circonstances et d'un monopole accordÉ par la France aux dÉpens de la France, les colonies non-seulement pouvaient prospÉrÉ bien davantage, si en mÉme temps leur systÅme de culture et leur rÉgime avaient ÉtÉ meilleurs et les colons plus industrieux.

It was apparent from the indebtedness of many plantations that they were not as profitable as many thought.  Taking financial details from Charles Comte's book TraitÉ de lÉgislation Say points to the increasing indebtedness of plantations in Jamaica between 1760 and 1780 as evidence of a lack of profitability.  However what the planters may have lacked in economic power they more than up in their ability to use all the political means at their disposal to maintain their privileged position.  The planters were aided in this by the government and the bureaucracy which enjoyed the positions of power made available to them in the colonial administration.  Say was not being cynical when he noted that as the economic reasons in favour of the colonial system disappeared a threatened political class found other arguments (which Say called "des motifs secrets") to support the status quo.

Des motifs secrets, des motifs avouÉs, ont dÉterminÉ les puissances d'Europe ê tenir leurs colonies dans l'asservissement.  L'asservissement donne lieu ê la nomination de beaucoup de fonctionnaires dans l'adminstration civile, judiciaire et religieuse, de la colonie.  Un grand nombre de personnes cherchent ê faire leur chemin dans la carriÅre des places o¥ il suffit de la faveur pour parvenir, tandis que dans les carriÅres industrielles les succÅs ne sont le prix que d'intellignece et d'une activitÉ soutenue.  Ceux qui donnent les places et ceux qui les postulent, sont donc Également intÉressÉs ê maintenir un ordre de choses qui convient ê leurs intÉrÉts; ils se servent de leur esprit, quand ils en ont, pour le dÉfendre par les raisons plausibles et qui semblent triomphantes ê un public peu versÉ dans l'Économie sociale.  Ils sÉduisent par lê des personnes dÉsintÉressÉes et mÉmes plusieurs de celles qui trouveraient un avantage positif ê rÉclamer un systÅme plus raisonnable.  Un gouvernement qui chÉrit son autoritÉ plus que le public, penche en faveur d'un systÅme qui provoque un plus grand dÉveloppement de pouvoir militaire et maritime.

Say also added to his criticism of the various schemes for improving the productivity of the slaves by paying them some kind of a wage for their work.  Hodgson and Clarkson referred with some enthusiasm to the experiments made by Steele in Barbados and Nottingham in Tortola of paying their slaves rather than supervising their work with overseers and Storch had described in considerable detail the system of obroc in Russia whereby a considerable number of serfs and slaves paid a form of tax to their master rather than work under his direct supervision.  Concerning the former experiments in the Caribbean, Say was not convinced of the viability of these experiments and discusses other writers who have cast doubt on the success of Steele's changes to the running of his plantation.  In a lengthy footnote Say discusses Clarkson's remark that Steele died in 1791 "covered in glory and benedictions" for his work.  Yet Say finds another traveller, M'Queen, who states that Steele died in a state of bankruptcy and that his estate had to be sold to pay off his debts.  M'Queen also said that Nottingham's estate was in financial trouble  Far from being a possible way of ameliorating and thus providing a mechanism for gradually abolishing slave labour as the British abolitionists hoped, Say regarded these experimetns by enlightened slave owners as isoltated and inconclusive events which offered little long-term soltution to the problem of slavery.  The anti-industrial aspects of slave labour could not be eliminated or mitigated by experiments like Steele and Nottingham's and Say concluded that it was not surprising that the practice of paying slaves had not spread to other plantations since the two best examples of it appeared to have ended in failure.

Concerning  Storch's rather similar arguments about the Russian experience of the "esclaves censitaires" who were obligated to their master but able to act to some extent like free labourers Say is less forthcoming.  Although he edited Storch's Cours  in which this idea is presented he did not append any disparaging or critical footnotes as he did on many other occasions when he disagreed with Storch.  Thus one might conclude that Say was persuaded by Storch.  However from Say's total rejection of the similar schemes discussed by Hodgson it would seem that he should also reject Storch's proposals to find a suitable end to slave labour.  From other remarks he made in the Cours complet Say seems to believe that the Russian experience is not applicable to the Caribbean and the Americas.  It is not clear whether he believes this is due to the inability of the black slaves to work independently of supervision in "free" occupations, the less flexible attitude of the colonial plantation owners, or the complete unviability of any occupation in the colonies in the absence of tariff protection and other privileges granted by the metropole.  Say's lack of an adequate response to Storch on this question is somewhat puzzling given the overall favourable response of Say to Storch's work on coerced labour.  Say seemed to be much more impressed by Storch's assessment of the anti-industrial nature of coerced labour and the imposibility of the formation of a middle class in a society dominated by slavery than his idea of a half-way house between chattle slavery and free labour as a means of peacefully ending slavery in the colonies.

Say concluded his analysis of slavery on an optimistic note.  He believed that it was possible for Europeans to avoid the costly and shameful mistakes of the past in their dealings with non-european people.  The example which inspired him with hope for the future was the way in which European settlers in Pennsylvania were able to live peacefully with the native inhabitants rather than exterminating or enslaving them as had been the practice in Central America and the Caribbean.  The Penn experiment provided Say with a model (no doubt one based to some extent on wishful thinking) to juxtapose to that of the slave societies of both the New and the Old Worlds:

. . . les descendans de Penn et les imitateurs de ses principes, ont fondÉ des nations qui croissent rapidement en prospÉritÉ, et qui couviront bientÖt le Nouveau-Monde pour l'example et l'instruction de l'Ancien.

Say was impressed with the way in which Pennsylvania had been settled by buying land from the original inhabitants, a process of land acquisition which Say described as "plus noble et plus glorieuse que celles qu'on ne doit qu'ê la conquÉte. " Say rather naively believed that the United States government also followed the example of Penn in its dealings with the Indians.  He was aware that the Indians sometimes dealt with the government from a position of weakness and their inexperience often led them to make bad deals, resulting in the sale of land at too cheap a price.  However he was confident of the good wishes and moral behaviour of the United States government (often idealised by the radical Restoration liberals as a model government) and that moral or peaceful economic forces could be used to "civilise" the Indians rather than the use of brute force.

Son (Penn's) example est encore suivi par le gouvernement des âtats-Uni qui n'attaque jamais les nations indiennes pacifiques; qui leur achÅte leur territoire et le revend ensuite en dÉtail aux personnes qui veulent s'y Établir.  Quand les peuplades indiennes ne veulent pas vendre leur territoire, il ne tarde pas ê se trouver enclavÉ dans les territoires cultivÉes; leurs habitants dÅslors, ne pouvant plus chasser au loin dans le vague des forÉts, deviennent par force cultivateurs ê l'imitation de leurs voisins, et finissent par adopter les lois de l'État qui les entoure, ou bien ils dÉclinent tou-ê-fait.

Say optimistically believed that the defenders of slavery had lost the moral argument and were close to losing the political arguments as well.  Not only had the defense of slave labour become "honteux" but with the treaties to outlaw the slave trade and the support of the British Navy a major political blow had been made against the slave-system.  The nations which persited in defending slavery Say dismissed as without influence and increasingly ostracised by their more enlightened and "virtuous" neighbour.  Furthermore, a more damaging political reason to be confident of the eventual downfall of slavery was the existence of freed blacks in neighbouring countries.  Of particular importance was the existence of free black citizens in the United States as a model and source of inspiration for black slaves in other parts of the Caribbean and the Americas.  As was the "republicanism" of the American revolution and system of government.

Having lost the moral and being close to losing the political battles Say thought it was only a matter of time before slavery as an institution collapsed.  As metropolitan France became more enlightened and found slavery increasingly unacceptable the desire to support the colonies economically and militarily would diminish.  Without this political and military support the slave colonies would collapse.  He concluded that the general march of civilisation rendered the debate about the profitability of slavery compared to free labour "superfluous" and thus he felt no need to argue at any length against his critics.

Conclusion

In this paper I have discussed the problem of the economic viability of slavery in the debate bweteen the British abolitionist Adam Hodgson, the French liberal political economist Jean-Baptiste Say and the Russian historian and political historian Henri Storch, which took place between 1823 and 1828.  In this debate the economic viability of the slave system, the comparative costs of free and coerced labour, and the means by which free labour and the industrial market economy would eventually replace all forms of coerced labour as the wave of "republicanism" swept the world were discussed in some detail.  It is an interesting and instructive example of the richness of Restoration social and economic thought which as a whole as not received the attention it derserves from historians of economic and political thought.

Endnotes

The importance of the Restoration for political and sociological theory has been recognised by Marxists for some time.  A recent Marxist assessment has been made by, GÜran Therborn, Science, Class and Society: On the Formation of Sociology and Historical Materialism (London: Verso, 1980).  Other historians who have recognised the importance of the Retoration include Shirley M.  Gruner, Economic Matrerialism and Social Moralism: A Study in the History of Ideaqs in France from the latter Part of the 18th Century to the Middle of the 19th Century (The Hague, 1973) and Robert  Warren Brown, The Generation of 1820 during ther Bourbon Restoration in France: A Biographical and Intellectual Portrait of the First Wave, 1814-1824 (Ann Arbor, Michigan: University Microfilms International, 1979).

Larry Siedentop, "The Two Liberal Traditions," The Idea of Freedom: Essays in Honour of Isaiah Berlin, ed.  Alan Ryan (Oxford University Press, 1979).

Donald R.  Kelley, Historians and the Law in Postrevolutionary France (Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1984), p.  25.

Pierre Rosanvallon, Le moment Guizot (Paris: Gallimard, 1985), p. 29.

An intitial step in assessing Say's important contribution to early nineteenth century liberal thought has been taken by Evert Schoorl of the Institute of Law at the University of Amsterdam.  Evert Schoorl, Jean-Baptiste Say (Dissertation, Amsterdam, 1980); "Jean-Baptiste Say and the New World," Paper given at the American History of Economics Conference, Michigan State University, 1981; "Say, Everett and Malthusianism," Paper given at the UNESCO Malthus Conference, Paris, 1980.

Charles Comte, TraitÉ de la propriÉtÉ (Paris: Chamerot and Ducollet, 1834), 2 vols.  Vol.  1, p.  3.

The earliest complete formulation of Dunoyer's theory of history appears in Charles Dunoyer, L'Industrie et la morale considÉrÉes dans leurs rapporta avec la libertÉ (Paris: A.  Sautelet, 1825).

Comte's analysis of slavery appeared in Book 5 of TraitÉ de lÉgislation, ou exposition des lois gÉnÉrales suivant lesquelles les peuples prospÅrent, dÉpÉrissent ou restent stationnaire , 4 vols (Paris: A.  Sautelet, 1827).  Dunoyer dealt with the problems of free and unfree labour throughout his magnum opus, De la libertÉ du travail, ou simple exposÉ des conditions dans lesquelles les force humaines s'exercent avec le plus de puissance (Paris: Guillaumin, 1845).

Jean-Baptiste Say, TraitÉ d'Économie politique (Paris: Deterville, 1819, 4th edition), Livre 1, chapitre 19, pp.  298-302.  

The figures Say use are a purchase price of 2,000 francs and an interest rate of 10%, thus giving an interest cost of 200 francs per annum.

Say, TraitÉ  4th edition, pp.  301-2.

Say, TraitÉ, 4th edtion, p.  302.

Adam Hodgson, A Letter to M.  Jean-Baptiste Say on the Comparative Expense of Slave  and Free Labour (Liverpool: James Smith and London: Hatchard and Son, 1823, second edition).  The pamphlet was written as a letter addressed to William Roscoe, President, and to other members of the Liverpool branch of the Society for the Mitigation and Gradual Abolition of Slavery.

Hodgson, p. 1.

Hodgson, p.  2.

Hodgson, p.  2.

Hodgson, p.  26.

Hodgson, p.  22.

Hodgson, pp.  35 ff.

Hodgson, pp.  37-8.

Hodgson, pp.  25-6.

Letter from J. B.  Say to the Author, Paris, 25th March, 1823 in Hodgson, pp.  59-60.

Hodgson, p.  60.

Hodgson, p.  60.

Most probably his edition of Storch and his  Cour complet .

Hodgson, p.  60.

Henri Storch, Cours d'Économie politique, ou exposition des principes qui dÉterminet la prospÉritÉ des nations.  Ouvrage qui a servi  ê l'instruction de LL.   AA.  II.  les grand -ducs Nicolas et Michel, by Henri Storch with explicatory and critical notes by Jean-Baptiste Say (Paris: J-P.  Aillaud, 1823).

Jean-Baptiste Say, Cours complet d'½conomie politique pratique; ouvrage destinÉ  ê mettre sous les yeux des hommes d'État, des propriÉtaires fonciers et les capitalistes, des savans, des agriculteurs, des maufacturieurs, des nÉgocians, et en gÉnÉral de tous les citoyens, l'Économie des sociÉtÉs, (Paris: Rapilly, 1828).

STORCH, Henri-FrÉdÉric (1766-1835), a Russian economist noted for his work on the economics of unfree labour, particularly that of serfdom.   Born on 15 February 1766 in Riga and died on 13 November 1935 in Saint Petersburg.  Storch studied at the universities of Jena and Heidelberg before returning to Russia where he taught belles-lettres from 1787 in Saint Petersburg and exercised various positions in education and government administration. In 1790 he worked for the office of Count Berborodko, the minister for foreign affairs.  In 1796 he was elected a corresponding member of the Saint Petersburg Academy of sciences after the publication of the first volume of Tableau historique et statistique de l'empire de Russie.   In 1799 he was appointed tutor to the daughters of Tsar Paul I and shortly afterwards Storch was made a councilor of the court and an hereditary noble.   He bcame a state councillor in 1804 and head of the Academy's statistical section.  He was also appointed to teach political economy by Alexander I to the grand dukes Nicholas and Michael.  In 1828 he was promoted to the rank of private councillor and appointed vice-president of the Academy of Sciences, offices which he held until his death.  His major theoretical work was the Cours d'Économie politique which was based upon the lectures he gave to the grand dukes.  Blanqui described Storch's economic theories as eclectic but considered his empirical work of great value.  In terms of school affiliation he followed closely the writings of Say and Smith.  The main issues which occupied him include the distinction between free and unfree labour, the contribution which unfree serf labour made to the national wealth of the Russian empire, the importance of moral (or rather "human") capital to national wealth, comparative banking, and the greater wealth producing capacity of industry and commerce compared to agriculture.  Perhaps his greatest contributions to economics were his analysis of serf labour in Eastern Europe and his theory of "nonmaterial production", the latter influencing Dunoyer who used it in his De la libertÉ du travail.  The debate between Storch and Say on the issue of immaterial production was conducted in Say's footnotes to the second edition of the Cours and in  Storch's response ConsidÉrations sur la nature du revenu national (1824).  His major writiings include: Gemèlde von St.  Petersburg (Riga: 1793); Statische åbersicht der Statthalterschaften des russischen Reiches (St. Petersburg,1795); Tableau historique et statistique de l'empire de Russie ê la fin du dix-huitiÅme siÅcle (Riga and Leipzig, 1797-1803.  French translation 1801 2 vols); Cours d'Économie politique, ou exposition des principes qui d Éterminent la prospÉritÉ des nations 6 vols (St.  Petersbourg: A.  Pluchart et comp. , 1815) based upon the course he gave to the grand dukes Nicholas and Michael; unauthorized second edition of Cours d' Économie politique 4 vols.  (Paris, 1823) edited by Jean-Baptiste Say with extensive notes and critical commentaries; ConsidÉration sur la nature du revenu national (Paris, 1824) 5th volume of the Cours and a repudiation of Say's unauthorized edition; Zur Kritik des Begriffs Nationaleinkommens (St.  Petersburg, 1827); Esquisses, scÅnes et observations recueillies pendant son voyage en France Heidelberg, 1790); Principes gÉnÉraux de belles-lettres (Saint-Petersberg); numerous articles in the MÉmoires of the Saint Petersburg academy of sciences.  Source: article by J. L.  in Nouveau Dictionnaire d'âconomie Politique vol 2, pp.  925-26.

Henri FrÉdÉric Storch, Cours d'Économie politique, ou exposition des principes qui dÉterminent la prospÉritÉ des nations.  Ouvrage qui a servi ê l'instruction de LL.  AA.  II.  les grands-ducs Nicolas et Michel, ed.  J. -B.  Say (Paris: J. -P.  Aillaud, 1923), 4 vols.  Storch's sometimes angry response to Say's editorial comments was published as a fifth volume, ConsidÉrations sur la nature du revenu national (1824).

Storch, Tableau historique et statistique de l'empire de Russie ê la fin du dix-huitiÅme siÅcle (1797-1803), 8 vols. (Riga and Leipzig), two volumes of which were translated into French in 1801.

Storch, Cours, vol.  3, Chapter 9 "Influence de l'esclavage sur la civilisation," Say's footnote on pp.  439-90.

Storch, Cours, tome 3, pp.  504-5.

Most of his remarks on the sociological effects of slavery can be found in a chapter called "Influence de l'esclavage sur la civilisation" in Cours, vol.  3, chapter 9, pp.  439-66.  Storch deals with population on pages 439-50 and with the middle class on pages 450-7.

Storch, Cours, vol.  3, p.  444.

Storch, Cours, vol.  3, p.  448.

Storch, Cours, vol.  3, p.  448.

Jean-Baptiste Say quoted by Storch but not given a reference, Cours, vol.  3, p.  451.

Storch, Cours, vol.  3, p.  454 on the "manie nobilitaire. "

Storch, Cours, vol.  3, pp.  452-3.

Once again Storch quotes Robertson's History of Charles V on the danger of the feudalisation of the state, Cours, vol.  3, pp.  454-5.

"Influence de l'esclavage sur la civilisation" in Cours, vol.  3, chapter 9, pp.  457-66.

Storch, Cours, vol.  3, p.  457.

Storch, Cours, vol.  3, pp.  458-9.

Storch, Cours, vol.  3, pp.  462-3, footnote a).

Storch, Cours, tome 3, chapter 8 "Continuation: De l'esclave ê corvÉes," p.  141.

Storch, Note XIX, "Sur la condition des serfs et des esclaves en Russie," Cours, vol.  4, pp.  248-58.

Storch, Cours, tome 3, p.  141.

Storch, Cours, tome 3, pp.  141-2.

Storch, Cours, tome 3, p.  142.

Storch, Cours, tome 3, pp.  143-4.

Storch, Cours, tome 3, p. 144.

Storch, Cours, tome 3, p.  146, footnote.

Storch, Cours, tome 3, pp.  150, 156.

Storch, Cours, tome 3, pp.  153-4.

Say's note in Storch, Cours, tome 3, pp.  154-5.

Storch, Cours, tome 3, pp.  147-8, footnote.

Storch, Cours, tome 3, pp.  155-6.

Storch, Cours, vol.  3, p.  185.

Storch, Cours, vol.  3, book 8, chapter 10, "Des esclaves censitaires et des serfs," pp.  163-69.

Storch, Cours, vol.  3, p.  164.

Storch, Cours, Vol.  3, p.  166.

Storch, Cours, vol.  3, pp.  166-7.

Apart from his own research and experience Storch relied upon the work of a M.  Jacob who won a prize from the Economic Society of Saint Petersburg (no date given) on the following question: DÉterminer d'aprÅs un calcul exact du temps, de la qualitÉ et du prix du travail, laquelle des deux maniÅres de cultiver les terres est plus profitable pour le propriÉtaire, celle qui se fait par des escalves, ou celle qui emploie des ouvriers libres? Storch believed this work proved definitively that forced labour of various kinds was less productive than free labour. Another source was the work of Young who was invited in 1807 by the Moscow government (at the request of the Tsar) to write a report on Russian agriculture for the minister of the interior.  See the footnote on pp.  174-5 of Cours, vol.  3.

Storch cites Landliches Denkmal dem Grafen von Bernstorf von seinen Bauern errichtet (Kopenhagen, 1734), Cours, vol.  3, p.  173.

Travels through Poland, Russia, etc by William Coxe, cited by Storch, Cours, vol.  3, p.  173.

Storch cites Thearup, Statistik der Dan.  Monarch, in Cours, vol.  3, p.  174.

Storch, Cours, vol.  3, p.  176.

Storch, Cours, vol.  3, pp.  178-9.

Storch, Cours, vol.  3, pp.  178-9.

See the lengthy quote from Robertson in Storch, Cours, vol 3, pp.  179-80.

Storch, Cours, vol.  3, pp.  182-3.

Storch, Cours, vol.  3, p 184.

Storch, Cours, vol.  3, book 2, chapter 10, "Comment l'esclavage s'abolit insensiblement dans l'Europe occidentale," pp.  466-80.

Storch Cours, vol.  3, p.  466.

Storch, Cours, vol.  3, p.  472.

Storch, Cours, vol.  3, p.  477.

Storch, Cours, vol.  3, p.  478.

Storch, Cours, vol.  3, p.  479.

Storch, Cours, vol.  3, pp.  479-80.  Storch repeated his prediction in the detailed appendix "Sur les progrÅs de la libertÉ individuelle en Europe et dans les colonies europÉennes depuis le milieu du dix-huitiÅme siÅcle, Note XXIV, Cours, vol.  4, pp.  288-96.  After discussing the legal reforms in Denmark, Austria, Prussia, Germany, Sweden, the Grand Duchy of Warsaw, Russia, the United States of America, the Danish, English, Spanish and French colonies he concluded the Note with "C'est ainsi que l'empire de l'humanitÉ et de la justice s'Étend d'annÉe en annÉe.  Quand on rÉflÉchit que les progrÅs de la libertÉ personelle que nous venons d'ÉnumÉrer ne datent que de cinquante ans tout au plus, n'est-il pas permis d'espÉrer qu'un espace de temps double de celui-ci suffira pour faire diaparaötre l'esclavage et la servitude, non-seulement en Europe, mais dans toutes les contrÉes du monde que peut influencer sa lÉgislation et sa civilisation," p.  296.

Storch, Cours, vol.  3, p.  480.

Jean-Baptiste Say, TraitÉ d'Économie politique, ou simple exposition de la maniÅre dont se forment, se distribuent et se consomment les richesses; CinquiÅme Edition, augmentÉ d'un volume, et ê laquelle se trouvent joints un âpitome des principes fondamenteaux de l'Économie politique, et un index raisonnÉ des matiÅres (Paris: Rapilly, 1826), p. 359.

Say, TraitÉ 5th edtion, p.  360.

Say, TraitÉ, 5th edition, pp. 360-1.

Say, TraitÉ, 5th edition, p, 362.

Say, TraitÉ, 5th ed. , p.  363.

Say, TraitÉ, 5th ed. ,pp.  363-4.

Jean-Baptiste Say, Cours complet d'Économie politique pratique; ouvrage destinÉ ê mettre sous les yeux des hommes d'État, des propriÉtaires fonciers et des capitalistes, des savans, des agriculteurs, des manufacturiers, des nÉgocians, et en gÉnÉral de tous les citoyens, l'Économie des sociÉtÉs (Paris: Rapilly, 1828).  Vol.  2, part 2, chapter 3, "Du servage de la glÅbe," chapter 6 "De la culture du sucre et de l'esclavage des nÅgres" and vol.  3, part 4, chapter 22 "Des colonies sous le rapport de l'Économie des nations" and chapter 23 "RÉsultats de la politique coloniale des EuropÉens. "

Say, Cours complet, tome 2, p. 89.

Say, Cours complet, tome 2, p.  90.

Say, Cours complet, tome 2, pp.  91-2.

"C'est mÉme une question de droit public que de dÉterminer si la conscription militaire de tous les citoyens d'un certain ëge, et qui pourrait Étre justifiable par la nÉcessitÉ de dÉfendre son pays contre une invasion ÉtrangÅre, l'est Également lorsqu'il s'agit d'aller en AmÉrique pour soutenir de force un rÉgime contre nature" in Say, Cours complet, tome 2, p.  93, footnote.

Say, Cours complet, p.  94.

Say, Cours complet, tome 2, pp.  94-5.

Say, Cours complet, tome 2, pp.  95-6.

Charles Comte, TraitÉ de lÉgislation, tome 4, p.  432; quoted in Say, Cours complet, tome 3, p. 431.

Say, Cours complet, tome 2, pp.  96-7.

Say, Cours complet, tome 2, p.  97.

Say, Cours complet, tome 2, p.  98.

Say, Cours complet, tome 2, p. 99.  See also the discussion of the supposed prosperity of the American colonies in tome 3, pp.  419-25.

Say, Cours complet, tome 3, pp.  426-7.

Say, Cours complet, tome 2, pp. 103-4.

Say, Cours complet, tome 2, p.  101.

Say, Cours complet, tome 3, chapter 22 "Des colonies sous le rapport de l'Économie politique," p.  412.

Say, Cours complet, tome 3, pp.  412-3.