Page:The rise, progress, and phases of human slavery.djvu/59

 CHAPTER VIII.

EXPLOITATION-VALUE OF SLAVE AND FREE LABOUR.

Contrast of Plantation-Servants with British Workpeople—Affluence of former American Slaves—Misery of Free Labourers and Artisans—Value of Irish Peasants and English Workers—Free and Slave Children in America.

Look on the life of a modern negro-slave in America, and compare it with the life of a modern Irish or Scotch peasant, or even that of an English hand-loom weaver in the North or of an English labourer in the South and West. Compare, did we say? Alas! the two conditions will not bear a comparison. Contrast is the word we must use. To the damning disgrace of modern civilization be it said, we cannot compare the condition of our free workpeople in Europe with that of the negro-slaves of Louisiana,—we can only contrast them; and the contrast is so truly appalling that, in contemplating it, one cannot help trembling at the prospective destination of humanity.

Mr. Edward Smith says: "Many industrious slaves can thus" (by overwork) "obtain from 50 to 250 dollars per year, which they expend in luxuries of the table and in clothing fit for any European gentleman." This, be it observed, is over and above an abundant supply of all their ordinary wants by their masters. It includes neither food, drink, ordinary apparel, medicine, firing, nor house-*rents,—not even vegetables or poultry, for with these, it seems, the slaves are provided out of their own gardens and fowl-yards. It includes not one of those ordinary expenses which absorb the entire week's earnings of a modern "free-born Briton." The American slave's surplus earnings may be considered as so much pocket-money. He might save, or lay by at interest, the whole of his 250 dollars per annum towards the purchase of his liberty, if he liked to exchange his condition for that of an independent labourer. According to Mr. Smith, however, the negro knows better; for Mr. Smith tells us, "they" (the negroes) "do not usually care to save money where-*with to purchase their freedom, feeling that the protection of their masters is an advantage to them." If this protection be an advantage in America, where the wages of independent labour are still comparatively high, what would be the negro's feelings were it proposed to him to give up his master's protection in exchange for the independence of a Dorsetshire labourer or of a Yorkshire weaver? Ah! then, indeed, he would feel the difference between the two kinds of slavery; then he would know how to appreciate that condition of primitive slavery which Mr. Smith calls a upas-tree, and from which our saints of Exeter Hall so yearn to release him. "Very many slaves," again quoth Mr. Smith, "own horses kept for their own use; and others