Rare Book Monthly
Slavery in the United States <br> Chapter 9
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We learn from the reports of parliamentary committees, and various other sources equally authentic, that the operatives, as they are somewhat affectedly called, in the English manufactories, know not what it is to eat meat; that though they labour, the parent male and female, as well as their little children, from morning till night, and sometimes far into the night, their wages are insufficient to procure for them the necessaries of life, and that a large portion is compelled to resort to relief from the parish.* (We have been informed by a gentleman, once an eminent manufacturer in England, that, on more than one occasion, operatives have entreated to be employed by him, merely at the price of their daily food.) We farther learn, that the children are enslaved, to all intents and purposes, by a system of incessant and unwholesome occupation the most rigid and severe; that they are brought up in utter ignorance; that their morals are entirely neglected, and that, their very nature becomes degraded, their health in a great degree destroyed, by being thus thrust out from all means of mental improvement and healthful relaxation. The Parliament of England has lately interfered in behalf of these unfortunate white slaves, and, by a series of regulations, attempted to place them on a footing which might leave no ground for envying the condition of the black slaves of the South; but no one can be ignorant of the futility of all attempts to restrain the cravings of interest and avarice, or to legislate for the domestic relations of social life. All these cravings operate with the master of the South to produce kind treatment to his slave, who, if he loses his health, not only becomes useless, but a burden; and who, if he dies, is a serious loss. The employer of operatives in an English manufactory will naturally have no other object than to get from them the greatest possible degree of labour at the least possible expense. If he loses his health, it is nothing to him; for he discharges the man, and gets another in his place. If the discharged labourer cannot maintain himself and family, he goes upon the parish; and if he dies, it is no loss to his employer. Every feeling of interest in the welfare of the two classes is therefore on the side of the slave. This feeling, aided by the impulses of the heart and the restraints of conscience, is alone capable of working a revolution in the private intercourse between the master and his family, the employer and the hireling. From all that can be learned, it appears that the legislative interference has produced no radical change: that neither the morals nor the condition of the operatives are improved; but that they still labour, without the adequate rewards of labour, and that a large portion of them is still compelled to resort to the parish, to eke out the scanty means of existence afforded by a life of incessant toil.
The father of a family goes forth by sunrise in the morning, accompanied by his children, to labour at their endless round in the manufactory, and returns in the evening, or late at night, not to enjoy, but to suffer, the fruits of his labour, in the midst of privations of every kind. His food is scanty and miserable, and for a part of this he pays by a degrading dependance on the parish, while his expectations of any future change for the better are as distant and hopeless as those of the hereditary bondman. Such a state must be fatal to his moral and domestic feelings ; and all accounts go to prove their gradual decay among these unfortunate people. The slave of the South is distinguished for the force of his attachments to his parents, his wife, and his children ; but the common working-classes of England are notorious for their total disregard of these sacred feelings. It is stated, in various reports of commissions appointed for the express purpose of investigating the condition and morals of that class of people, that an almost total disregard of the marriage bond prevails among them; that their connexions are for the most part without the sanction of the marriage tie, and broken as caprice or convenience may dictate; that a general licentiousness of intercourse prevails; and that children are only considered as desirable, inasmuch as their multiplication increases the claims of their parents on the parish. All those ties which constitute the cement of social relations are either unfelt, or hang so loosely as to be discarded at pleasure, and the number of illegitimate children is multiplying in a manner which no previous age has exhibited.
Such is a mere skeleton of the evidence adduced from public reports of committees, either of parliament, corporations, or societies, and supported by the testimony of magistrates, schoolmasters, and parish ministers. They may possibly be exaggerated, for such is commonly the case with those exhibitions of misery, ignorance, and crime, which are put forth to the world for the purpose of obtaining its agency in mitigating or removing them. But making all allowances, enough remains to show that, both as regards his morals and his means of happiness, the slave of the South is in a state to be envied by the philanthropic paupers of England, who, we perceive, have held meetings, expressing their deep indignation at the existence of slavery in the West Indies and the United States.
Nor are the other classes of labourers in Great Britain more to be envied by the Southern slave than the operatives in the manufactories. How many thousands of them pass their lives in the coal and tin mines, shut from the light of day, and the sprightly, wholesome air, exposed to those dreadful catastrophes which, at intervals, bury perhaps hundreds in the ruins of an explosion? Do these people pretend to sympathize with our negroes? Without multiplying examples, it is sufficient to state, what is openly asserted by English authorities, that throughout all the different classes of labour, the absence of what the slaves of the South, and their masters too, consider the ordinary and indispensable comforts of life, is a subject of universal notoriety.
Is it for such a country, and such a people, to boast of their freedom, simply because they may not be bought and sold? Does the miserable affectation of liberty, which the operatives in manufactories, and the labourers in mines, and everywhere else, suffer, give them any essential superiority over the well-fed, well-housed, and well-treated slave ? What are the privileges of one of these pauper labourers ? To work all day for a master he dare not disobey, and then beg of the parish a pittance to keep himself and family from starving. It is true, he can go elsewhere in search of another master; but, wherever he goes, unless perchance he seeks this country of " two-legged wolves," of " atheists and blasphemers," the same fate awaits him. To be transported to Botany Bay for shooting or snaring a hare or a partridge ; to pay taxes on the light of the sun, the air he breathes, the ground he treads, and the fire he burns ; to have no more influence in the choice of his rulers, or the making of laws, in fact, than the hereditary slave; to be obliged to work harder than the slave, without sharing any of his comforts, or being relieved from any of his burdens ; and finally, as is the case with millions of Irish labourers, to suffer and starve without any other than the forlorn hope of being liberated from his thraldom by Mr. O'Con-nell, in return for the " tribute" he pays him out of the superfluity of his wants, and the munificence of his penury. A reference to the condition of the lower classes of England and Ireland naturally leads to a suspicion, that the present outcry against slavery in that quarter partly originated from an apprehension that the hard-slaving and half-starved operatives and working-men of those philanthropic countries might, if they knew the real state of the case, flock hither in thousands, and sell themselves to the planters of the South, instead of being compelled, as they frequently are, to commit crimes, in order to entitle themselves to a refuge in the Paradise of Botany Bay.* (The criminal courts in England often present such examples.)
The condition of the peasantry of Germany has been much ameliorated by the regulations of Maria Theresa, Joseph the Second, and, most especially, by the gradual progress of more humane and enlarged views on the part of the landholders, without whose cordial co-operation all laws are nugatory. In the various states composing this great and powerful empire, there are, of course, sensible varieties in the condition of the peasantry and labouring classes, and to particularize them all would be tedious and unnecessary. We shall select those of the ancient kingdom of Hungary, where the rights of the peasantry rest on an ordinance of Maria Theresa, called " The Urbarium; or Contract between the Landlords and Peasants, as fixed by Law." The following items, selected from under the head " Of things forbidden to the Peasants, and of the punishments ensuing thereon" will give the reader a tolerable insight into the situation of that class of people.
