The Martyrdom of Man, Winwood Reade [best book club books TXT] 📗

societies in France; it corresponded with

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