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Updated: May 16, 2025
One hundred years ago half the inhabitants of Prussia were practically in the toils of serfdom. It was only by an edict of 1807, to take effect in 1810, that personal serfdom with its consequences, especially the oppressive obligation of menial service, was abolished in the Prussian monarchy. Caste extended actually to land.
He despised the nobility, and believed the mass of the nobility to be secretly in favor of serfdom, and only concealing their views from cowardice.
The chattel form of bondage, however, had quite generally given place to serfdom; and even serfdom was disappearing in many districts by reason of the growth of towns and the increase of rural population to the point at which abundant labor could be had at wages little above the cost of sustaining life.
Moving up from slavery through all the various forms of serfdom attachment to the soil, confinement to a given trade, exclusion from citizenship, payment in kind, on to full economic freedom, men have shown definite reactions at each step. Women respond to the same stimuli. The free man is a better worker than slave or serf. So is the free woman.
Serfdom could hardly be seriously considered by the citizens of a new and sparsely settled country such as the South then was. Finally the conversion of slaves into freemen by a sweeping emancipation was a project which met little endorsement except among those who ignored the racial and cultural complications.
If we were as free from family love as is the wolf I mentioned, we would be able to live our lives more completely, and, on the other hand, we would die in greater numbers. The love of man and woman for each other and their children lifts humanity out of its serfdom, but it also places limitations. You ought to know more about that than I, however," he laughed. "I merely theorize."
Slave prices in the former would have fallen to such levels that masters would have eventually resorted to manumission in self-defence, while in the latter all existing checks to the inflation of prices would have been removed and all the evils consequent upon the capitalization of labor intensified. Another conceivable plan would have been to replace slavery at large by serfdom.
Aiding or thwarting it, coloring and changing it, were a thousand influences, side-currents from other religions and philosophies, social changes, Roman law and tradition, the new life of the barbarians; old ingrained habits of blood and brain; the constant push of primal instincts hunger and sex; tides of war and trade and industry; slavery and serfdom; strong human personalities, swaying a little the tide that bore them; all the myriad forces that are always at work in history.
Since his apprentice days, he had been accustomed to regard Sort as a pitiful survival from the past, a species properly belonging to the days of serfdom. "You'll go to the dogs!" Sort had said. And all Marie Melsen's covert allusions had meant the same thing. But what then? Perhaps he had already gone to the dogs! Suppose there was no other escape than this!
It was in a degree, at least, the influence of Stephen Grellet and William Allen, men deeply imbued with the spirit of Woolman, and upon whom it might almost be said his mantle had fallen, that drew the attention of Alexander I. of Russia to the importance of taking measures for the abolition of serfdom, an object the accomplishment of which the wars during his reign prevented, but which, left as a legacy of duty, has been peaceably effected by his namesake, Alexander II. In the history of emancipation in our own country evidences of the same original impulse of humanity are not wanting.
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