“White slaves, they were to be sure,” admitted Max, in a slightly sarcastic tone, “but I can’t see that it’s any less cruel and wicked to enslave white men than darkies.”
“But those were very early times, when men were little better than savages.”
“Alfred the Great among the rest?”
“Assuredly Alfred the Great was no savage,” returned Albert, slightly nettled, “but then he was far ahead of his time, and I must still insist that you go very far back to fasten the reproach of slave-holding upon Great Britain.”
The two fathers had paused in their discourse to listen to the talk of the lads, and they seemed to have forgotten the presence of their elders.
“Well, then, to come down to a later day,” said Max, “don’t you remember the statute made by Edward the Sixth, that if anybody lived idly for three days, or was a runaway, he should be taken before two justices of the peace, branded with a V with a hot iron on the breast, and given as a slave to the one who brought him for two years; and if during that time he absented himself for fourteen days he was to be branded again with a hot iron, on the cheek, with the letter S, and to be his master’s slave forever! The master might put a ring of iron round his neck, leg, or arm, too, feed him poorly, and beat, chain, or otherwise abuse him.
“That white slavery in England was worse than ever negro slavery was in the United States of America.”
“Well, they who practiced it were the ancestors of Americans as truly as of those of the present race of Englishmen, that have to bear the reproach of the slavery of the very early times you first spoke of,” retorted Albert.
“Maybe so,” said Max; “and I suppose they—the Americans—inherited their ancestors’ wicked propensities (same as the Englishmen), which may account for their becoming slaveholders.”
“Well,” Albert said, “you can’t deny that England has always been a foe to the slave trade, and—”