Macon beacon. [volume] (Macon, Miss.) 1859-1995, 1879-09-13
English Agricultural Laborers as Slaves

Ii we set aside names, and look M
the things as they are in. themselves,
we shall find close approximation and
a substantial resemblance between the
condition Of English agricultural labor
ers and that OF serfs or slaves. In or
ganized communities the possession OF
property is almost essential to the exer-
else OF freedom, and in all stages of
civilization the possession OF home is
quite essential to the education of hu-
manity. But our land system has made
the agricultural laborer almost entirely
propertyless, and of all people upon
earth-from the most barbarous to the
most civilized-the most homeless. AS
to property, he possesses no more of all
that this world is capable of supplying
to man than q very scanty store OF
poor clothing and very few pieces OF
rjckety furniture. Gould slave DOS
sess less? As to what stands for his
home, it is tenement often unit for
human habitation; from which, such as
1t is, he may at any moment be elected
at will, even through the exercise of
the merest caprice, of his employer, and
for the improvement of which often
very much needed--he has not the
means, or, should he have the means, is
precluded from the motive for using
them because, under existing circum-
stances, he would only be improving
another mans property II this can be-
called home, it can only be in the
sensein which the tenement occupied
by slave may be regarded as home
to him. There is something exclusive
and sacred in the idea of home, be.
cause without it the true life of the
family is impossible. II there are such
things as natural rights, the home is as
much the right of the family as life is
of the individual And how can that
be \ home, especially among the poorer
classes, which does not belong to the
family, but to another, who. at til
prompting OF his supposed interest, OF
of any kind of impulse on which he
may choose to act, may expel the family
from it? The most potent and the
most abiding of all educating Influences
is the ever-present desire to secure
home, and to make it in all respects as
good dwelling place as possible for the
family. That man should impose
on himself hard work and hard saving,
in order to spend for this purpose, is an
exhibition of morality and religion in
their most genuine. form. To have a
home which is no home; which cannot
be regarded with these feelings; which
kills these motives; which. cannot he
employed for these purposes; which de-
prives a man of this training; which
interdicts the education nature intended
for him, is to be in q position which
although it is what English law has
created for millions of Britons on Brit
ish soil-has upon its face something of
the badge of slavery, not little of its
character, and great deal of its effects
And, again, the breaking up of these
homes, such as they are, and the com
pulsory seclusion of their remaining
members in the poor-house, when the
mans ife-work ON other peoples land
is done, is not unlike the provision a
community might make for those who,
in their working days, had been the
piuNCo Va ohO pubhOs AhO o"Oicuhcoo vi
the home, and its absolute necessity for
anything at all worthy of the name of
human life, is consistently to the last
entirely ignored, and the only point con-
sidered is, How shall those who can no
longer labor be kept alive at as little
cost as possible? Shocking as this is,
still it is quite unavoidable under our
land system. And no one is to blame
for it but those who, being able to
understand how it was brought about,
and how other countries have been
saved from it, not only make no effort to
remove impolitic and even inhuman re-
strictions, but would, perhaps, strenu
ously resist any efforts which had that
object. precisely this moral element
in the question which makes its discus
sion so difficult. To the minds OF some
this is what invests it with high po.
litical and human interest, while others
can only see in it q proposal for disar-
ranging the existing social order.-F
b. Zincke, IN Fort,sightly Reuietc.