Page:The rise, progress, and phases of human slavery.djvu/57

 and other laws as are absolutely necessary to the preservation of even the semblance of liberty, and which knowledge was almost as dead a letter to their masters as to themselves,—we cannot but rejoice, for their own sakes, that the slaves of antiquity chose to remain as they were. When men have but a choice of two evils, it is desirable they should choose the lesser. The slaves of antiquity had but a choice between direct slavery and the miseries of proletarianism: in our opinion, they chose the lesser of the two. Had they been wise enough to understand their true political and social rights, they might have escaped both. Christianity came to teach them; but man's perversity stepped in between them and the light of the Gospel. Even to this day, after eighteen centuries of gospel-propagandism, not one in a thousand of the slave-class—whether they be chattel-slaves or wages-slaves—whether they be proletarians or the property of their masters—understands his political and social rights. The consequence is, the two kinds of slavery prevail still all over the world; and, of the two, direct or chattel-slavery is now, as formerly, the lesser evil of the two. In no part of the East, that we know of, would an Oriental slave of modern times exchange conditions with one of our Wigan handloom weavers, nor with a Dorsetshire labourer.

But, to bring this question to a test that will make the difference at once obvious to every one, let us just compare the condition of a modern American slave (so-called) with that of "a free and independent labourer" in England. We choose these two countries because they are inhabited by the same Anglo-Saxon race; because they are at the head of modern civilization; and because, from the commercial intercourse between them, we know more of their positive and relative condition than of any other two known countries.

First, what was the actual condition of a modern chattel-slave, as he was to be found in any of the Southern States of the great American Union? We shall give it from the lips of an eye-witness—from one who has visited that country and judged for himself, in the year 1849—above all, from one who is a rank abolitionist, and so thorough going a hater of slavery, and of everything pertaining to it, that in the paragraph immediately preceding the one we are about to extract, he buoyantly exclaims, "When we remember the ardour and perseverance of the American character, and the intelligence of their leaders, we must believe that the day approaches when the axe shall be laid to the root of this fell upas-tree." The author of this sentiment is a Mr. Edward Smith, who was deputed, along with another gentlemen, by an influential body of capitalists in London to make a survey and inspection of the north-western part of Texas, with a view to some extensive plan of colonization projected by the parties. This Mr. Edward Smith has furnished his employers with a printed report of his travels through several States of the Union; and in that report he utters not a few jeremiads upon the curse of slavery, and not a few withering invectives against its aiders and abettors. If, therefore, any testimony in favour of slaves and slavery can be pronounced wholly unexceptionable, it is that of Mr. Edward