"Let any man of candour declare, whether the state of servitude and bondage, in which the poor are held both in France and England, does not merit the name of slavery, and justify the assertion of its universal existence at present, as well as the opinion of its having existed from the remotest antiquity, and that it ever must exist in the world--that it is a genus of the state of man, of which the different kinds of servitude are distinct species--that, as it is impossible totally to eradicate it, or put a stop even to the sale and purchase of the Negroes in Africa which is only one branch of the commerce of the human species, so the modification of the kind of servitude in usage in any country is not rashly to be attempted, nor, in any case, to be undertaken by persons not intimately acquainted with it in all its circumstances."
— Francklyn, Gilbert (fl. 1780-1792)
Place of Publication
London
Publisher
J. Walter, C. Stalker, and W. Richardson
Date
1789
Metaphor
"Let any man of candour declare, whether the state of servitude and bondage, in which the poor are held both in France and England, does not merit the name of slavery, and justify the assertion of its universal existence at present, as well as the opinion of its having existed from the remotest antiquity, and that it ever must exist in the world--that it is a genus of the state of man, of which the different kinds of servitude are distinct species--that, as it is impossible totally to eradicate it, or put a stop even to the sale and purchase of the Negroes in Africa which is only one branch of the commerce of the human species, so the modification of the kind of servitude in usage in any country is not rashly to be attempted, nor, in any case, to be undertaken by persons not intimately acquainted with it in all its circumstances."
Metaphor in Context
[...] With respect to the other species of poor people, such as have a place of abode, and are aged and infirm, we need no other proof of their distress and misery, than the testimony of every English traveller who has ever passed through the country, who will tell you, that, wherever he has stopped to change horses, numbers of poor unhappy people crowded round his post-chaise, soliciting the boon of a single liard. Ignorant of the state of the poor in other parts of Europe, I can only hope it is not more deplorable than in those I am acquainted with. Let any man of candour declare, whether the state of servitude and bondage, in which the poor are held both in France and England, does not merit the name of slavery, and justify the assertion of its universal existence at present, as well as the opinion of its having existed from the remotest antiquity, and that it ever must exist in the world--that it is a genus of the state of man, of which the different kinds of servitude are distinct species--that, as it is impossible totally to eradicate it, or put a stop even to the sale and purchase of the Negroes in Africa which is only one branch of the commerce of the human species, so the modification of the kind of servitude in usage in any country is not rashly to be attempted, nor, in any case, to be undertaken by persons not intimately acquainted with it in all its circumstances. Can any gentlemen in England, if they possessed the power, presume themselves competent to frame laws for the enfranchisement of all the serfs in Russia or Poland? Can any man believe, that, if those people were at this moment set free from all controul of their lords, and deprived of their cottages, and their present method of subsisting themselves, they would not be driven to pillage and devastation for their support? That such would be the consequence of giving a nominal freedom to the Negroes in the West Indies is most certain. They must, in such case, be compelled to work, by laws far more severe than the present, and those laws must be much more rigorously executed than what they are now governed by. Neither could such severity be disapproved of by the people of any nation, who, however free their poor are, oblige them to work. The difficulty the poor find of subsisting themselves throughout Europe, even in Great Britain and Ireland, where liberty is so popular a theme, is evident, from the frequent emigrations we hear of. In what does their superior happiness consist?--In the power of abandoning their native country, and changing their masters.--Be it so. I do not mean to enter into a comparison between the different degrees of servitude. Let it be believed, that the Negroes, in that particular, experience an harder lot than Europeans. It in no degree invalidates the argument, that such a desire of change, such frequent emigrations of the poor of Europe, is very far from being a proof of a superior degree of happiness.
(pp. 203-5)
(pp. 203-5)
Categories
Provenance
Reading Peter Dorsey's Common Bondage: Slavery as Metaphor in Revolutionary America (Knoxville: U. of Tennessee Press, 2009), 33.
Citation
Only 1 entry in ESTC (1789).
Gilbert Francklyn, An Answer to the Rev. Mr. Clarkson's Essay on the Slavery and Commerce of the Human Species, Particularly the African; In a Series of Letters, From a Gentleman in Jamaica, To His Friend in London (London: J. Walter, C. Stalker, and W. Richardson, 1789). <Link to Google Books>
Gilbert Francklyn, An Answer to the Rev. Mr. Clarkson's Essay on the Slavery and Commerce of the Human Species, Particularly the African; In a Series of Letters, From a Gentleman in Jamaica, To His Friend in London (London: J. Walter, C. Stalker, and W. Richardson, 1789). <Link to Google Books>
Date of Entry
03/07/2013
