The Bourbon news. [volume] (Paris, Ky.) 1895-19??, 1914-04-21
FIRST VIRGINIANS WERE
NOT BLUE 8lOODS,

iEuWdrQ AISWOrth Ross, professor of
sociology, University of Wisconsin,
in the Century Magazine)
Cain prompted the peopling of Vir-
glnla, and that colony received it's
share OF human chaff. The council of
Virginia early complained that at
hurteth to suffer parents to disburden
themselves of lascivious sonnes. mas
tiers OF bad sevants and wives of ill
husbands, and so clogge of the Eng
lsh or Irish laboring class sold him
self for term into the tobacco fields
IN order to come within reach of
reckoning opportunity; but we knew,
too, that the slums and alleys were
raked for material TO fattea the plan
tations. Hard-hearted men sold de-
pendent klnsfoik to serve i'll the colo
MES. Hidnappers struggled over boys
and girls gathered from the streets of
London and Bristol. About 1870. no
fewer than 10000 Parsons were 'spir
lied from England in one year. The
government was slow to strike at the
infamous traffic, for, as was urged in
Parliament, the plantations cannot
be maintained without a considerable
number of white servants -
Dr. Johnson deemed the Americans
a race Of cOnvicts," who Ought to
be content with anything we allow
them short of hanging" In the first
century OF the colonies, gallows' birds
were often given the option of servi-
tude in the plantations" Some pray
ed to be hanged instead In 1717 the
British Government entered on the
policy of general transportation and
thenceforth discharged certain classes
of felons upon the colonies until the
revolution made it necessary to shunt
the muddy stream to Botany Bay.
New England happily escaped these
SeVen-year passengers" because she
would pay little for them and because
she had no tobacco to serve as a
profitable return cargo 1t is estimat-
ed that between 1850 and ITO, 10000
British convicts were exported to
Maryland alone, SO that even the
schoolmasters there were mostly of
this stripe. The colonies bitterly re-
sented such cargoes, but their self
protective measures were regularly
by the home government.
American scholars are becoming to ac-
cept the British estimate that about
so 900 convicts were marketed on this
side.
1t is astonishing how quickly this
yellow streak" in the population fad
ed. No doubt the worst felons were
promptly hanged, so that those trans
ported were such as excited the COM
passion of the court in an age that
recognized nearly 800 capital offenses.
Then, too, the bulk We're probably the
or the victims of bad sur
roundings, rather than born malefac-
tors. Under the regenerative stimu-
lus OF opportunity, many persons re-
formed and become good citizens. A
like publication of sewage by free
land was later witnessed in Australia.
The incorrigible, when they did not
slip back to their Old haunts, forsook
the Underwater belt to Head half-saYage
lives in the wilderness. Here they
slew one another or were strung up
by regulators" so that they breed
their kind less freely than the honest.
Thus bad strains tended to run out,
and IN the making of our people the
criminals had no share corresponding
10 their original numbers. Blended
with the dregs from the rest of the
population, the convicts who were
lazy and shiftless rather than crimi- |
nal, became progenitors of the ''poor
whites" crackers" and "sandhillers"
hat still cumber the poorer lands of |
he Southern Appalachians.