The Martyrdom of Man - Winwood Reade (golden son ebook txt) 📗
- Author: Winwood Reade
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thousands of secret societies abroad; it had missionaries in
the army, spies in foreign lands. It desired to create a
universal republic; it grew in power, in ambition, and in
bravado; it cast at the feet of the kings of Europe the head of
a king; it offered the friendship and aid of France to all
people who would rise against their tyrants. Thomas Paine, who
used to boast that he had created the American Revolution with
his pamphlet, “Common Sense,” now tried to create an English
Revolution with his “Rights of Man.” In the loyal towns his
effigy, with a rope round its neck, was flogged with a cart
whip, while the market-bell tolled, and the crowd sang the
national anthem, with three cheers after each verse. In other
towns, “No King! Liberty! Equality!” were scribbled on the
walls. The soldiers were everywhere tampered with, and the king
was mobbed. Pitt, the projector of Reform Bills, became a
tyrant. Burke, the champion of the American Revolution, became
a Tory.
It was not a time to speak of abolition, which was regarded as
a revolutionary measure. And such in reality it was, though
accidentally associated in England with religion and
philanthropy, on account of the character of its leaders.
It was pointed out that the atheist philosophers had all of them
begun by sympathising with the negroes; one of Thomas Paine’s first
productions was an article against slavery. The Committee was declared
to be a nest of Jacobins, their publications were denounced as poisonous.
There was a time when the king had whispered at a levee, “How go on
your black clients, Mr. Wilberforce?”
But now the philanthropist was in disgrace at court. At this
time poor Clarkson’s health gave way, and he was carried off
the field. And then from Paris there came terrible news; the
people were at last avenged. The long black night was followed
by a blood-red dawn. The nobles who had fled to foreign courts
had returned with foreign troops; the kings of Europe had
fallen on the new republic, the common enemy of all. The people
feared that the old tyranny was about to be replaced, and by a
foreign hand; they had now tasted liberty; they knew how sweet
it was; they had learnt the joy of eating all the corn that
they had sown; they had known what it was to have their own
firelocks and their own swords, and to feel that they, the poor
and hungry serfs, were the guardians of their native land. They
had learnt to kiss the tricolour; to say Vive la nation! to
look forward to a day when their boys, now growing up, might
harangue from the Tribune, or sit upon the Bench, or grasp the
field-marshal’s baton. And should all this be undone? Should
they be made to return to their boiled grass and their stinging
nettle soup? Should the days of privilege and oppression be
restored?
The nation arose and drove out the invaders. But
there had been a panic, and it bore its fruits. What the
Jacobins were to Pitt, the aristocrats were to Danton and
Robespierre. Hundreds of royalists were guillotined, but then,
thousands had plotted the overthrow of the Republic, thousands
had intrigued that France might be a conquered land. Such at
least was the popular belief; The massacres of September, the
execution of the king and queen, were the result of fear. After
which, it must be owned, there came a period when suspicion and
slaughter had become a habit; when blood was shed to the sound
of laughter; when heads, greeted with roars of recognition,
were popped out of the little national sash-window, and tumbled
into the sawdust, and then were displayed to the gallery in the
windows, and to the pit upon the square. The mere brute energy
which lay at the bottom of the social mass rose more and more
towards the top; and at length the leaders of the people were
hideous beings in red woollen caps, with scarcely an idea in
their heads or a feeling in their hearts; ardent lovers of
liberty, it is true, and zealots for the fatherland, scarcely
taking enough from the treasury to fill their bellies and to
clothe their backs (Marat, when killed, had elevenpence
halfpenny in his possession), but mere senseless fanatics, who
crushed that liberty which they tried to nurse; who governed
only by the guillotine, which they considered a sovereign
remedy for all political disorders; who killed all the great
men whom the Republic had produced, and were finally
guillotined themselves.
The death of Robespierre closed the Revolution; the last
mob-rising was extinguished by the artillery of Bonaparte.
The Jacobins fell into disrepute; there was a cry of “Down with the
Jacoquins!”; stones were hurled in through their windows; the orators
were hustled and beaten as they sallied forth, and the ladies who
knitted in the gallery were chastised in a manner scarcely suited for
adults. The age of revolutions for a time was past; Bonaparte became
Dictator; Thomas Paine took to drink; the English reign of terror
was dispelled; the abolitionists again raised their voices on
behalf of the negro, and in 18O7 the slave-trade was abolished.
That traffic, however, was only abolished so far as English
vessels and English markets were concerned, and Government now
commenced a long series of negotiations with foreign powers. In
course of time the other nations prohibited the slave-trade,
and conceded to Great Britain the police control of the Guinea
coast, and the right of search. A squadron of gunboats hovered
round the mouths of rivers, or sent up boating expeditions, or
cruised to and fro a little way out at sea, with a man always
at the mast-head with a spy glass in his hand, scanning the
horizon for a sail. When a sail was sighted, the gunboat got up
steam, bore down upon the vessel, ordered her to heave to, sent
men on board, and overhauled her papers. If they were not
in order, or if slaves were on board, or even if the vessel was
fitted up in such a way as to have the appearance of a slaver,
she was taken as a prize; the sailors were landed at the first
convenient spot; the slaver was sold, and the money thereby
obtained, with a bounty on each captured slave, was divided
among the officers and crew. The slaves were discharged at
Sierra Leone, where they formed themselves into various
townships according to their nationalities, spoke their own
language, elected their own chiefs, and governed themselves
privately by their own laws, opinion acting as the only method
of coercion — a fact deserving to be noted by those who study
savage man. However, this was only for a time. All these
imported negroes were educated by the missionaries, and they
now support their own church; the native languages and
distinctions of nationality are gradually dying out; the
descendants of naked slaves are many of them clergymen,
artisans, shopkeepers, and merchants; they call themselves
Englishmen, and such they feel themselves to be. However
ludicrous it may seem to hear a negro boasting about Lord
Nelson and Waterloo, and declaring that he must go home to
England for his health, it shows that he possesses a kind of
emulation, which, with proper guidance, will make him a true
citizen of his adopted country, and leave him nothing of the
African except his skin.
But the slave-trade was not extinguished by the “sentimental
squadron.” The slavers could make a profit if they lost four
cargoes in every five; they could easily afford to use decoys.
While the gunboat was giving chase to some old tub with fifty
diseased and used-up slaves on board, a clipper with several
hundreds in her holds would dash out from her hiding-place
among the mangroves and scud across the open sea to Cuba and
Brazil.
It was impossible to blockade a continent; but it was easy to
inspect estates. The negroes were purchased as plantation
hands; a contraband labourer was not a thing to be concealed.
There were laws in Cuba and Brazil against negro importation,
but these existed only for the benefit of the officials. The
bribery practice was put an end to in Brazil about 1852; that
great market was for ever closed. Slavers were ruined; African
chiefs became destitute of rum and this branch of commerce
began to look forlorn. Yet still Cuba cried, “More! Give me
more!”; still the profits were so large that the squadron was
defeated and the man-supply obtained. Half a million of money a
year, and no small amount of men, did that one island cost
Great Britain. Yet still it might be hoped that even Cuba would
he filled full in time; that the public opinion of Europe would
act upon Madrid; that in time it would imitate Brazil. But in
1861 there happened an event which made the Cubans turn their
back on Spain, and look with longing eyes the other way; and a
beautiful vision uprose before their minds. They dreamt of a
New Empire to which Cuba would belong, and to which slavery in
a state of medieval beauty would be restored. It was only a
dream; it was quickly dispelled; they awoke to find Liberty
standing at their doors; and there now she stands waiting for
her time to come.
When Great Britain was teasing the colonies into resistance, it
was often predicted that they would not unite. There was little
community of feeling between the old Dutch families of New
York, the Quakers of Pennsylvania, the yeomen of New England,
who were descended from Roundheads, and the country gentlemen
of Virginia, who were descended from Cavaliers. But when the
king closed Boston Port, and the vessels mouldered in the
docks, and the shops were closed, and the children of fishermen
and sailors began to cry for bread, the colonies did unite with
one heart and one hand to feed the hunger of the noble town;
and then to besiege it for its own sake, and to drive the red
coats back into their ships. Yet when the war was over, and the
squirrel guns had again been hung upon the wall, and the fire
of the conflict had died out, the old jealousy reappeared. A
loose-jointed league was tried and came to nought. The nation
existed; the nation was in debt; union could not be dispensed
with. But each colony approached this Union as a free and
sovereign state. If one colony had chosen to remain apart, the
others would not have interfered; if one colony after entering
the Union had chosen to withdraw, its right to do so would not
have been denied. In European countries, republican or royal,
the source of authority is the nation; all powers not formally
transferred reside with the Assembly or the Crown. In America,
however; it was precisely the reverse; all powers not delivered
to the central government were retained by the contracting
states.
At the time of the Revolution, negro slavery existed in the
colonies without exception. But it did not enter the economy of
Northern life. Slavery will only pay when labour can be
employed in gangs beneath an overseer, and where work can be
found for a large number of men without cessation throughout
the year. In the culture of rice, sugar, cotton, and tobacco,
these conditions exist; but in corn-growing lands labour is
scanty and dispersed, except at certain seasons of the year.
Slaves in the North were not employed as field hands, but only
as domestic servants in the houses of the rich. They could
therefore be easily dispensed with; and it was proposed by the
Northern delegates, when the Constitution was being prepared,
that the African slave-trade should at once be abolished, and
that certain measures should be taken, with a view
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