Page:The rise, progress, and phases of human slavery.djvu/75

 martyrs of the faith had to achieve before those great principles, which all true Christians and democrats now hold sacred, could ever obtain recognition in the world.

A third difficulty, as formidable as either of the others, although of a negative kind, also obstructed the early Christians. It was the absence of a numerous poverty-stricken, destitute class, corresponding with our modern proletarians, and having, like them, no guarantee for regular subsistence from day to day. Had such a class as this been in existence in St. Paul's time, his missionary labours amongst the Gentiles would have been immeasurably lighter and more successful. The millions would have been everywhere, as it were, predisposed for the new doctrine. Life being a burden to such people, they would have flung themselves with enthusiasm into the movement. But all history goes to show that hardly any such class existed till a century or two later. Speaking on this subject, an eminent French writer (M. de Cassagnac) observes:—"We have no certain means of determining up to what period of history pure slavery continued, i.e., slavery without any enfranchisements or manumissions."

Although we find early mention made of freedmen in the Bible and in the "Odyssey," yet it is certain that in the primitive times of slavery there were no beggars. One is, in effect, a beggar only though lack of other means of subsistence. Now, a slave is not a beggar, he being found and provided for by his master. There were no beggars in our colonies during the early period of their settlement; and there are but few still, notwithstanding the people of colour have been set free. Blackstone judiciously observes, in his "Commentaries on the Laws of England" (without being apparently aware of the value and importance of the fact in a moral and social point of view), "that the vast numbers of destitute poor which had already, in his time, overspread England—and for whose subsistence the government had found it necessary to make some provision, ever since the reign of Henry IV., by an eleemosynary contribution levied with the regularity and permanence of an ordinary tax—arose chiefly from the manumission or setting free of large bodies of serfs during the middle ages, who were suddenly and without forethought thrown upon society." The monasteries, with their magnificent hospitals and well-organised system of charity, supported these poor outcasts as well as might be for a considerable period. But at length came the Reformation, which, pitilessly closing the monasteries, changed the workpeople into paupers, and the destitute poor into robbers. Following up this argument, M. de Cassagnac, after showing why there are fewer destitute poor in France than in England, concludes thus:—"But whether we regard France, England, or any other country,—whether we consult ancient history or modern history,—we shall find it everywhere and at all times to hold good, as a general rule, that the emancipation of slaves is the first and universal cause of pauperism and mendicity all the world over." Our pseudo-*philanthropists and saints of Exeter Hall—our abolitionists and humanity-mongers, who sentimentalize so blandly and edifyingly upon the evils of negro-slavery, will not, mayhap, be much gratified