Northern Times.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1859-01-01 00:00:00

CHAPTER FIRST.

THE ANGLO-SAXON PERIOD, AND THE STATE OF
VILLAINAGE.-RUSTIC SLAVES.-TIIE DIGNITY
OF LABOUR CONSIDERED.-REFLECTIONS ON

SLAVERY.

When I allude to such periods in English
History as the Roman Period, the Anglo-Saxon
Period, and the Norman Conquest, I presume my
readers to know to what I refer. I presume them
to know that England was conquered by Julius
Caesar about the year 45 8.C., and that it remained
under the Roman sway until about the, year 449
of our Era ; that a northern people, called the
Saxons, then invaded the country, dispersing the
native Britons, driving some into Wales and
Cornwall, and others into that part of France now
known as Brittany ; and that the duration of their
sway, which continued until it was overthrown by
William the Conqueror inlo6x&,—constitutes a very
important part of our .history, known as the
Anglo-Saxon Period. The conquest by William
and his Normans is entitled, as you know, the
Norman Conquest. This is the great event of our
history. From that period to the present, England
_has possessed a regular, and, for the most part, a
strong Government, and its political and social
condition has developed undisturbed by any
external interruption.

Of the Eoman Period it will be unnecessary to
say anything. The Britain% though they had
made some advances in civilisation, are too rude to
claim our attention, and too imperfectly described
to satisfy our curiosity. The Axiglo-Saxon Period
is better known. In it were laid the foundations of
many of our most valuable institutions, —.rudely
laid, it is true, amidst vast barbarism,—the mere
rudiments of our present civilisation, but still
important enough to claim for the period the
privilege of a distinct notice. It is of this period
I shall now write.

I cannot better point out to you the immense
distinction between those times and our own, than
by this one fact, that two-thirds of the nation were
in a state of abject slavery. The ranks of society
were at that time—First, the THANES, who were
the only nobility of the Saxons. These compre-
hended-all the considerable landholders of Eng-
land, from whom were chosen the chief officers,
whether civil or military, in times of war following
their kings to the field, and in times of peace living
on their estates, which they divided into in-lands
and out-lands, the former being under cultivation
by the hands of their slaves, the latter let to the
next in rank, the Ceorls, or yeomen, at a fixed
rent. These CEORLS formed the second' class. They
were, in general, husbandmen, but might pursue
any occupation, whether Law, the Church, Mili-
tary Adventure, or Trado ; and cases were not
wanting where they became Thanes. The class
next to these were the FREDAZINS or Freed-men,
Who hed been slaves, but who had purchased, or
in some way or other acquired, their freedom,
and who existed in a kind of middle condition
between slaves and yeomen, forming a considerable
Proportion of the inhabitants of towns and cities
during that period.
But the great mass of the population was com-
posed of slaves, with the exception of the clergy,
Who were in those days expert workmen in various
crafts. All the mechanics and all the labowers

to this clas. They were, in the most
complete sense of
r 4ene word, slaves. They were
belone.ed
the ProPel, a Master as Much as any of his
chattels.. ...40 laws of those times tell us that the
master rail the same right to his slaves.as to his
cats e. There is reason to believe, moreover,
'atop might be even substituted for cattle. "Let
every man," says a Saxon law, " know his own
team of men, of horses, and oxen."
-It has been customary, on occasions, with many
of the mechanic class, to be a little angry with the
introduction of machinery. A horse and. an ox
are machines, substituting manual labour as much
as a steam-engine, with this inconvenience, that
they are living machines, requiring to be fed with
or from what would feed men. Yet none of these,
I suspect, would- sigh for the " good old times,"
when even such living machines as the horse and
the ox being deficient, our ancestors were literally
harnessed to the plough ! Not that I feel, as
perhaps many of my readers may do at hearing
this, that they were degraded by this species of
labour, for I cannot conceive that any necessary
labour can degrade ; nor can I admit, in estimat-
ing the respectability of labour, that it ought' to
signify one jot whether a man more employs this
sense or that sense, this set of muscles or that.
I do not pity the Saxon peasant, therefore, in that,
for lack of cattle, being harnessed to the plough,
he was degraded, but because he was exposed to
an useless toil, which could have been done better
for him. The toil would have been honourable
had it been indispensable. It was dishonourable
on account of the lack of knowledge and enter-
prise which made it indispensable, and forced him
to an unnecessary drudgery, which prevented him
from applying his strength in some less onerous,
but more efficient, and therefore more honourable
way. Thus it is that the introduction of machi-
nery must be, in the long run, the means of
raising men from heavy and unnecessary drudgery;
and whatever inconvenience may for .the moMent
be caused through-its uses, arises simply from'the
want of capacity or feeling in society to provide
a remedy for the temporary evil as it springs up.
"It is no Utopian dream which . leads as to
im igine that machinery might eventually -become,
in a great degree, a substitute for li6our,—,and
that a time might at length arrive, execrable to
the labour-value tenets of our political economists,
but blessed in the opinion of every unprejudicial
politician, when a reasonable time set apart for
work would be sufficient to supply the- labourer
with plenty of all things, when spare hours would
be afforded for other purposes of life, and the
operative would have the opportunity of becoming
something more than a working man." (1)
Bat lugh our Anglo-Saxon , forefathers were
not degraded by being attached to the plough,
they were very shockingly degraded in being
subject, at the will of their masters, to brands and
blows. They might be whipped or branded—
they might be slain with impunity—by their
masters. They could, many of- them, be sold es
slaves,twith simply this restriction, that if a slave
Was a Christian, he was not to be sold to a Jew or
a Pagan' or if a native, he was not to be sold
'beyond the sea. They weo bequeathed by will,
• like any other property. An Archbishop, for
instance, leaves, as a legacy to an Abbey, some
land, ten' ()ken, and twelve men ! Wynifred, a
lady of property, bequeaths different slaves to
different persons. Thus to one, named. Eadgyfer,
she leaves Alsifiiger;the cook—no mean legacy, if
she were really a good cook • and Tell, the
daughter of Aydiner, doubtless the house•or dairy-
maid, and so on.
The rustic slaves, or, as they were termed,
" villiens," a word which has become a term of
reproach, but which then, simply indicated what is
now expressed by the word peasant, had this
advantage, 'that, like the Russian serfs of the
present day, they were annexed to 'the soil, and
could only be transferred together with it. (2) In
this respect, the most frightful feature of slavery,
that which dislocates the dearest ties of life, and
tears the wife or child from the husband or the
parent side, was happily absent.
There was another compensation, and a vast one,
but too much overlooked when We are passing
severe and, I fear, often pharisaical censures upon
the state of slavery, The compensation in
question was really a great one, and it would•be
well for the wisdom and charity of a nation, which
plumes itself upon being one of.'the wisest and
most charitable of modern nations, were it to
adopt this compensation on a more liberal scale
than it does. Though the Villien was a slave
fixed to the soil, and apparently the 'mere sport of
a capricious taak-master, he had rights, very great
rights—many or my readers may think very
enviable rights. 'For, as has been Justly observed,
although he was the property of fhe proprietor of
the soil, yet the owner was bound to support him
both in sicknesacnd health, or whenever he could
not by his labour support himself. The master or
owner of the soil, could no more get rid of the
serf, than the serf could leave the man or ; in fact,
the soil was as :much the Villein's, as the Villein'
was the property of the soil. It was so far his
property, inasmuch as' though he was bound to
occupy, cultivate,. and reap the land, yet for such
services the laud 'tete, bound, by its possessor, to
afford him, in sickness, in youth and old are, a
certain maintenance. This may be said to form
the one sweet •drop in the cup of slavery, the
cheering perspective-in the dreary course of abject
toil.
Most of you may have read of the condition of
the superanuated slave labourer, and all of you
must have looked upon the condition of the
superanuated free labourer : the comparison to
me, I must confess, :is not always in favour of the
latter. Nor can I tolerate any state, however free,
giving itself haughty airs, when it speaks of
slavery, as long as it continues to be inferior to
slavery in one respect,—as long as it does not
furnish, as its first duty, an ample and cheerful
provision for its superanuated children of toil.
Nevertheless servitude, under ifs best aspect, is a
wretched thing the moment the bondsman begins
to sigh for something beyond slavery. This, with
our Saxon ancestors we know, was often:the case.
In some Saxon ,dialogues, which have come down
to us, in which persons of different crafts are
supposed to be speaking., the ploughman speaks
thus :—" I labour much ; I go at daybreak, urging
the oxen to the field, and I yoke them to the
plough. It is not yet so stark winter that I dare
keep close at home for fear of my Lord; but the
oxen being yoked, and the share and the coulther
tethered on, I ought to plough every day an entire
field or more. I have a boy to threaten the oxen
with a goad, who is now hoarse through cold and
bawling. I ought to fill the banns of the oxen
also, and water them, and carry out their soil.
This is a great labour," he pathetically concludes,
"because I am not free."
Alas, poor Saxon ploughman ! it was indeed a
great labour the moment you began to feel you
were not free. Had you been free, yeti would no
have wished the stark winter to have rime thatt
you might rest lazily at home. He that is lazy
and inactive, lacks an element of vigour that will
be found in most men that are free, and all that
deserve to be so. Industry among free meu is an
obligation imposed by self respect. Save, there-
fore, the case of the sluggard, who is by nature a
bondsman, every freeman has a stimulus to
industry, unknown to the slave.

(1) Jenning's Social Delusions, 1856.
(2) The condition of the Russian serf is thus described
by a late writer. "A. Russian peasant," he says, " has
nothing that can stimulate him to the pursuit of
knowledp. He sees himself fixed to a particular spot
from which he can have no hope of removing ; and,
surrounded with beings, ignorant and brutish as
himself. His industry, if he has any, is strictly and
peimauently appropriated. If he has a wife and children,
these also_ are but, partially his own : his master may
command their services wherever and in whatever
manner he pleases. He is hardly permitted to stir from
his hut without his master's leave ; nor can he earn a
single morsel of bread without his permission. In a
word, a Russian peasant depends upon his master for
everything. He cannot, it is true, be sent out of the
world without the forms of law ; but by the negative
which every master possesses against the marriage of
his Pe6P-ba, he may be prevented from coming irito it."
The present Emperor Alexander, it is gratifying t 9 learn,
is about 9,rrangements to &Tent the serfs their
freedom.