The sun. [volume] (New York [N.Y.]) 1833-1916, 1914-02-15
Venetian trireme.

families Of pressed men. but 1t never
endeavored to enforce service in the
navy by turning women and children
on to the country roads to become va
grants and To die OF starvation, nor
yet 10y billeting soldiers on them. with
fun leave to beat and to rape as in
France. I would hesitate to commi,
myself to the proposition that the diff
ference was due To the higher level of
British humanity. 1t is sufficiently en-
planned by the difference in the sys-
TENS adopted by the two countries In
Great Britain the sailor was personally
Liable AMI could lie forced to serve
whenever he could be caught but he
was not under legal obligation to
come forward In France the law
bound the whole body to serve, and the
failure to report for service was an
offence. When the individual offender
could not be found he was struck at
through his family. The greater cruelty
Of the press in France was, in fact, the
direct--perhaps it was the intended
consequence of Colbert's we'll meant
organization. The burden was agra
waited by other causes II all the prom
Uses made to the French sailors had
been kept Les Classes would have
been less hateful to the maritime pop
ulation than they were. But they We're
not kept The financial embarrass-
ments Of the Government of King
Louis XIV, in the middle and later
years of ms reign, and those of his
successors at all times made ii impss-
sible for the Government of France to
keep its promises. The half pays. the
exemption from the 'taille," the hos
pitfalls, were never given. Colbert. when
reminded of them, answered with cal
lous impudence that the King had
never intended to keep his promises
Nor was that all. The men were not
even paid when actually in the Kings
service. or course 1t became hateful
Men not only fled from it but they did
their utmost to escape from the trade
which rendered them liable to so much
suffering.
We must not overlook the essential
fact that liability to be summoned into
the navy was quite another thing than
the burden Of conscripton as it Is en-
forced to-day. The conscript serves in
his youth for "A period limited by law.
The men of Les Glasses" were never
free so long as they could work. Then
the conscripts represent "A percentage
Glasses" We're called out in a body the
skilled men Of a whole trade We're swept
away. and 1t was paralyzed, When
peace returned the recovery was slow,
and 1t was long before regular work
was to he found. our national compla-
| cency prompts us to believe that the
maritime activity of France was ruined
| by the British navy. This is. however.
| little more than a deluson OF patriotic
vanity.
When the insulted (and intoxicated
actor told the people of Bristol that there
was no brick in their town which had
not been 'cemented with the blood ~ n
| niger he came as near Ia the truth
, as could be expected of an Infatuated
| rhetorician. Bristol had been a great
slave trading port. But q. i. Cooke was
uttering a charge which applied quite as
| much to many other ports as to Bristol
and ne need not have limited his deiin-
ton of the victim to nlggcrs. The slave
trade Is the oldest of all. 1t has gone On
by land and by sea, not only In ships on
the water but by caravans, or "cafilas"
'the "cofiies' of the west coast Of AZ
rlca). Slaves have been swept together
by mighty "razzias," carried out by As
syrians and Romans In the ancient world
and by the African slave hunters of our
own time. They have also been obtained
by the arts of the recruiting sergeant
The rascals who went by the name Of
Spirits" whose business II was to entrap
apprentices for American and West
Indian plantations In the seventeenth
century, had their predecessors from Of
old and their successors In the black
traders who filled up the Bristol or Liv-
"rpo"l slave ships On the Bonny River
The English country women of the reign
of King James l. who ran to the woods