The two points of most importance are those of the hind’s being compelled to have a character from the last master, and of being at his mercy, to turn him not only out of employ, but out of house and home. I think little of their having no wheaten flour. Many a hardy race of peasants, and even farmers, both in Scotland and England, in mountain districts, never see any thing in the shape of bread but oat-cake. In Lancashire, Yorkshire, Cumberland, and the Peak of Derbyshire, there are thousands that would not thank you for wheaten bread. The girdle-cakes, as they call them, which the wives of the hinds make, of mixed barley and pea meal, I frequently ate of and enjoyed. They are about an inch thick, and eight or ten inches in diameter, and taste perceptibly of the pea. These, and milk, are a simple, but not a despicable food; but the fact, that these poor people must bring a character from the last master before they can be employed again, is one which may seem at first sight a reasonable demand, but is in fact the binding link of a most subtle and consummate slavery. I have seen the effect of this system in the Derbyshire and Nottinghamshire collieries. There, amongst the master colliers, a combination was entered into, and for aught I know still exists, to regulate the price of coal, and the quantity each master should relatively get. This rule, that no man should be employed except he brought a character from his last master, was adopted; and what was the consequence? That every man was the bounden slave of him in whose employment he was; and that soon the price of coals was raised to three times their actual value, and the labour of the men restricted to about three half-days, or a day and a half, per week.
Let any one imagine a body of men bound by one common interest, holding in their possession all the population of several counties, and subjecting their men to this rule. Can there be a more positive despotism? The hind is at the mercy of the caprice, the anger, or the cupidity of the man in whose hand he is; and if he dismiss him, as I said in the early part of this paper, where is he to go? As Cobbett justly remarks, he has No Home; and nothing but utter and irretrievable ruin is before him. Such a condition is unfit for any Englishman; such power as that of the master no man ought to hold. A condition like this must generate a slavish character. Can that noble independence of feeling belong to a hind, which is the boast of the humblest Englishman, while he holds employment, home, character, everything at the utter mercy of another? I have now laid before the reader the combined evidence of my own observation and that of a great observer of the working classes, both in town and country, in the north and the south, and I leave it to the judgment of any man whether such a system is good or bad: but I cannot help picturing to myself what would be the consequence of the spread of this system of large farm and bondage all over England. Let us suppose, as we must in that case, almost all our working population cooped up in large towns in shops and factories, and all the country thrown into large farms to provide them with corn—what an England would it then be! The poetry and the picturesque of rural life would be annihilated; the delicious cottages and gardens, the open common, and the shouting of children would vanish; the scores of sweet old-fashioned hamlets, where an humble sociality and primitive simplicity yet remain, would no more be found; all those charms and amenities of country life, which have inspired poets and patriots with strains and with deeds that have crowned England with half her glory, would have perished; all that series of gradations of rank and character, from the plough-boy and the milk-maid, the free labourer, the yeoman, the small farmer, the substantial farmer, up to the gentleman, would have gone too;
And a bold peasantry, its country’s pride,
would be replaced by a race of stupid and sequacious slaves, tilling the solitary lands of vast landholders, who must become selfish and hardened in their natures, from the want of all those claims upon their better sympathies which the more varied state of society at present presents. The question, therefore, does not merely involve the comforts of the hind, but the welfare and character of the country at large; and I think no man who desires England not merely to maintain its noble reputation, but to advance in social wisdom and benevolence, can wish for the wider spread, or even the continuance of the Bondage System. I think all must unite with me in saying, let the very name perish from the plains of England, where it sounds like a Siberian word.[4] Let labour be free; and this Truck System of the agriculturists be abolished, not by Act of Parliament, but by public principle and sound policy. It is a system which wrongs all parties. It wrongs the hind, for it robs his children of comfort and knowledge; it wrongs the farmer, for what he saves in labour he pays in rent, while he gains only the character of a taskmaster; and it wrongs the landholder, for it puts his petty pecuniary interest into the balance against his honour and integrity; and causes him to be regarded as a tyrant, in hearts where he might be honoured as a natural protector, and revered as a father.
[4] Since the publication of the former edition of this work, I understand the name has been changed; that, in May 1839, it was agreed to call the Bondagers Woman’s-workers; a clumsy appellation, and which does not at all do away with anything more in the system than its name.
This account of the Bondage System in the first edition, excited, as was to be expected, a strong feeling in the public mind, both in the north and the south. In the south great surprise, for it was a system totally unknown to nine-tenths of readers; in the north great indignation on the part of the supporters of the system. I have received many conflicting statements from the Bondage district,—some thanking me for having made public so accurate a description of an objectionable system; others vindicating the system, and applauding it. I need not here notice those communications which accorded with my own personal observations and inquiries; but as my object is simply truth, I am more desirous to give a counter-statement, so that all readers may draw their own inferences. The most able, and in itself most interesting, defence of the system, I received from the lady of John Grey, Esq. of Dilstone House, Northumberland. Mr. Grey is well known as an active magistrate, an eminent agriculturist and promoter of the interests of the agricultural class; and Mrs. Grey is evidently a lady of a vigorous intellect and a noble nature. She is a native of Northumberland, proud of her county, and thoroughly persuaded of the excellence of its agricultural system. I regret that my space will not permit me to give more than a very summary notice of her vindication, nor more than a mere reference to the documents by Mr. Grey, Mr. Gilly of Norham, the author of the “Life of Felix Neff,” and Mr. Blackden of Ford Castle, which, however, may be found in Mr. Frederick Hill’s works on National Education, under the head of “Northern District.”
Mrs. Grey denies that Cobbett, though a graphic writer, is an accurate one. She denies that a character is required with a hind from his last master, but merely a certificate called “The Lines,” stating that he is free from his former service. She asserts that all hinds have gardens; and that Bondagers make good domestic servants, and wives. She reports that Mr. Grey only remembers two instances of his hinds receiving parochial relief, and adds that she never saw two instances of their own hinds being intoxicated.
But her description of the cottages of hinds and their way of life, is perfectly Arcadian. “In a glance at cottage life in Northumberland, such as 20 years of intimate observation has shewn it to me, let me introduce you into one of the ‘miserable holes’ where, according to Cobbett, this ‘slave population’ are ‘squeezed up.’ Observe, if you please, its furniture. There are a couple of neatly painted or fir-wood press-beds; a dresser and shelves, on which are ranged a goodly display of well-hoarded delf, or of modern blue-and-white Staffordshire ware. There is also a press or cupboard, in which are kept the nicer articles of food, and below which are drawers for the clothes of the family. A clock, in a handsome oaken case, ticks, not behind the door, but in some conspicuous situation; and, in many families, is added a mahogany half-chest of drawers for the female finery. I admit that the houses are generally too small, and the want of a back-door and a commodious second apartment, are great evils; but this is the landlord’s blame; and my object is only to shew that the hind, though esteemed by you ‘many degrees worse than a negro,’ has yet the means of making these insufficient abodes look most respectable and comfortable. The press-beds form a partition, behind which is a small space containing in one part a bed for the Bondager, and in another, a little dairy and pantry containing stores of meat, flour, etc. This space ought to be larger, and to form a second respectable apartment, but, such as it is, it is well filled with the necessaries of life, which is no small matter to the inhabitant. We might censure, too, the matted ceiling, were not the eye immediately attracted from it by the plentiful store of bacon which hangs below it, together with hanging shelves containing a supply of cheeses, pot-herbs, etc., and in other parts bunches of yarn ready for making into stockings or blankets. Then, as to clothing, the men on Sundays are both respectably and handsomely dressed, and the women,—yes, these very ‘slaves’, the Bondagers, may be seen with their light print or Merino gowns, their winter’s plaid, and their summer’s Thibet, or spun silk shawls; their Tuscan or Dunstable bonnets; and their open-work cotton stockings, or smart boots. A tawdry figure is a rare sight; the generality are comfortably and neatly attired, and their dress good in quality.
“When the ‘slave-gangs’ are at work in the fields under their ‘driver’ in winter, they are certainly a motley and uncouth group; many of them having on their fathers’ great coats, and others long woollen dresses, reaching to their ankles, above their other clothes, to defend them from the cold. But in summer, the jaunty air of their short white, or light cotton jackets, an article of dress which has somewhat the appearance of the waist of a lady’s riding-habit, with its open collar displaying a gay handkerchief beneath, with their pink or blue gingham petticoats, give them quite a picturesque appearance.