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She seemed to go farther: she issued a decree prohibiting the enslavement of serfs. But, unfortunately, the palace-intrigues, and the correspondence with the philosophers, and the destruction of Polish nationality left her no time to see the edict carried out. But Europe applauded, and the serfs waited. Two years after this came a deed which put an end to all this uncertainty.
*Speranski, for instance, when Governor of the province of Penza, brought to justice, among others, a proprietor who had caused one of his serfs to be flogged to death, and a lady who had murdered a serf boy by pricking him with a pen-knife because he had neglected to take proper care of a tame rabbit committed to his charge! Korff, "Zhizn Speranskago," II., p. 127, note.
There was, therefore, no market on the scale contemplated by Roger of Wendover, hardly, indeed, a town through which Godgifu could have ridden; and a mere toll would have been a matter of small moment when the people were all serfs.
It is true that some of the house serfs did say among themselves that: "One can see that he is not one of us," but to his face they almost flattered him.
In short, they tried to do right and to be fair to their neighbours without being exactly unfair to their own interests. It was not an ideal world in which they found themselves. The greater part of the people were serfs or "villains," farm-hands who were as much a part of the soil upon which they lived as the cows and sheep whose stables they shared.
Their wealth is the least they can surrender; they must also carry off with them the swarms that are besetting the castle, subscribe a surrender of their pretended immunities, and live under us as serfs and vassals; too happy if, in the new world that is about to begin, we leave them the breath of their nostrils.
"Hungry serfs are easy to govern; they have no time to cry for rights when they are crying for bread." "If the gentlemen are going to talk of politics," said the hostess, rising from her seat, "it is time for ladies to retire. Come, ladies, our cavaliers will join us when coffee is served." The gentlemen rose, and not until the last lady had passed from the room did they resume their seats.
These codes were of the utmost importance. The simplicity and elegance of their form commended them not only to France, but to the greater part of continental Europe. Moreover, they preserved the most valuable social conquests of the Revolution, such as civil equality, religious toleration, equality of inheritance, emancipation of serfs, freedom of land, legal arrest, and trial by jury.
Captain, did you say? Who made him captain over us? Has he not, in fact, usurped that title, which by right belongs to me? What? Is it for this that we stake our lives that we endure all the splenetic caprices of fortunes that we may in the end congratulate ourselves upon being the serfs of a slave? Serfs! When we might be princes? By heaven! Razmann, I could never brook it.
"Such was therefore the condition of the colony at the time that it fell into the possession of the English the Hottentots serfs to the land, and treated as the beasts of the field; the slave-trader supplying slaves; and continual war carried on between the boors and the Caffres." "I trust that our government soon put an end to such barbarous iniquities."
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