Page:The rise, progress, and phases of human slavery.djvu/111

 per annum by the labour of their leisure hours—that is to say, exclusive of the maintenance provided for them by their masters in exchange for their regular work. Take the mean—100 dollars. This, at 4s. 2d. per dollar, is just £20 16s. 8d. If he saves or spends 150 dollars, it is upwards of £30. Here, then, we find a nigger-bondsman so far superior in condition to the free-born Englishman, that he can actually afford to throw away upon luxuries (by the earnings of his leisure hours) one-third more than, or even double, the entire sum that a Wiltshire labourer is paid for the whole of his time, though he drudge all the year round, and is never sick a single day. If facts like these do not make the blood of Englishmen rush to their cheeks, and the very cravenest of them take the field for their social rights, they are past redemption.

Sir Robert Peel calls all this "civilization;" and the House of Commons cried, "Hear, hear," and cheered and supported him, when he declared that the remedy for such a state of things lay not within the compass of legislation; that Parliament depended, itself, upon the people, and not the people on Parliament; and that the only and proper remedy for the distressed classes was for them "to take their affairs into their own hands"! Well, in the foregoing paragraph from the Devizes newspaper, we see them essay to take their affairs into their own hands; and we see also, that no sooner do they attempt to do so—no sooner do they proceed to act upon Sir Robert's advice—than soldiers and police are brought down upon them, and warrants issued for their apprehension. If this be not the perfection of human slavery, as well as the perfection of inhumanity and injustice, we really know not what is.

But is it true that no Parliamentary cure is findable for the disease?—that the evil is one beyond the reach of legislative control?—that, after all, the boasted "omnipotence of Parliament" (which, Blackstone tells us, can do anything and everything not naturally impossible)—is it true that this boasted omnipotence cannot secure for an Englishman the food he has raised, the bread he has earned—nay, doubly, trebly, quintuply, decuply earned? Is this true? No, no; a thousand times no! What Parliament has done, it can undo; what Parliament ought to do, and can do, it ought to be made to do, or else to abdicate. There is not a member in either House of Parliament that does not know, as well as we know, that our land and money laws are at the bottom of all the distress in the country, and that the repeal of bad laws, and the enactment of good ones, are all that is wanted to make England a paradise. There is not a member in either House that does not know that all the slavery in the world, or that has ever been in the world, is, or has been, the work of landlords and money-lords; and that, consequently, the only true and proper way to put an end to slavery is to make laws to deprive landlords and money-lords of the power to enslave and rob their fellow-creatures. If it be said, this cannot be done without interfering with the rights of private property, we answer emphatically that it is laws against robbery, and not against property, that are wanted. We assert emphatically (because we know we can