Page:The rise, progress, and phases of human slavery.djvu/60

 own land." We should like to know how many operative cordwainers or journeymen tailors in London keep horses for their own use, and how many of them own lands purchased with the proceeds of their overwork? We should like to know, too, how many of their masters can afford to keep horses for their own use? We apply this query to the tailors and shoemakers of London, because no other two trades are subject to less variation than these, and because the wages paid in them are higher in London than anywhere else in the United Kingdom. Is there a journeyman tailor or shoemaker in London that can afford to buy and keep a horse out of his wages? We believe not one. And if it cannot be done with London wages, certainly nowhere else can it be done in England, Ireland, or Scotland. As to an English field-labourer, or an artisan in one of our manufacturing towns, keeping a horse or owning land, the idea is absolutely ludicrous. Indeed, we are living in times when very few of their masters, much less themselves, can afford to indulge in such luxuries. For though we have many of that class who, having become millionaires and country squires, can keep carriages as well as horses, yet the majority, if the truth were known, are nearer the Gazette than they are to that easy condition in which men can afford to keep horses for their recreation and amusement. The case of the stewardess whom Mr. Smith met on board the boat in which he descended the Mississippi presents a startling contrast to the ordinary condition of industrious females in England. The stewardess had, it seems, with her own surplus earnings purchased her freedom at from 1,000 to 1,500 dollars; 1,500 dollars, at 4s. 2d. the dollar, is just £312 10s. of our money. Where is the woman engaged in any branch of industry in England that could show £312 10s., or a tithe of that sum, as the result of a few years' saving of wages? If there be such cases they are not one in ten thousand. According to the commissioner of the Morning Chronicle, to whose valuable revelations we referred in the preceding chapter, "there are now in London some 28,577 needlewomen whose earnings average but 4-1/2d. per day. There are as many more whose earnings hardly exceed 3s. a week all the year round. Contrast (for we dare not say compare) the condition of these unfortunate beings with that of the black female slave who, besides living well, could save 1,500 dollars in a few years wherewith to purchase her independence! Yet there are hypocrites amongst us—hypocrites to be met with in shoals upon our platforms and in our pulpits—who would wring tears of pity from us for the poor negro slave, while not an atom of sensibility have they for their own white slaves whose condition is infinitely more to be commiserated.

But, after all, the real test is this:—What is a negro-slave's value in the eye of his master, and what is the British or Irish slave's value in the eye of his master or employer? A sorry, good-for-nothing slave indeed must he or she be whom an American planter could not find a market for! From 800 to 1,200 dollars was a common price for a good stout negro in New Orleans. In the case of the stewardess spoken of by Mr. Smith, we find that her master