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Why didn't they fight as our forefathers did when they threw off the yoke of England's laws?" inquires a bright-eyed lad who has just risen from the reading of a history of our Revolution. The slaves were not reduced to their present servile condition in large bodies. When our ancestors settled this country they felt the need of more laborers than they could hire.
It is the custom to speak of this class of men as if they were peculiar to France, and to say that their existence there is one of the many reasons why that country can never long enjoy a period of constitutional liberty. This is not just to France. The French are a great people, who have their faults, but who are in no sense more servile than are Americans, or Englishmen, or Germans.
If we talk of common sense, we are twitted with vulgar prejudice, and asked how we distinguish the one from the other; but common and received opinion is indeed 'a compost heap' of crude notions, got together by the pride and passions of individuals, and reason is itself the thrall or manumitted slave of the same lordly and besotted masters, dragging its servile chain, or committing all sorts of Saturnalian licenses, the moment it feels itself freed from it.
But the honest man takes quite seriously what are only servile phrases in the mouth of a Camphausen or a Hansemann. The bourgeois gentry will laugh at this simplicity. They know that the mob is bold and aggressive in revolutions. Consequently, the bourgeois gentry try as far as possible to transform the absolute monarchy into a middle-class monarchy by amicable means.
The news sent her heart sinking in short throbs down to a delicious rest; but Countess Ammiani disdained to be servile to the pleasure, even as she had strengthened herself to endure the shocks of pain. It was a conquered heart that she and every Venetian and Lombard mother had to carry; one that played its tune according to its nature, shaping no action, sporting no mask.
Add, that all the creatures of this new Power, who in the loss of public freedom had gained private fortunes, preferred a servile condition, safe and possessed, to the revival of ancient liberty with personal peril.
I must ask the reader to follow all these references to his future wife; they are essential to the comprehension of Burns's character and fate. In June, we find him back at Mauchline, a famous man. There, the Armour family greeted him with a "mean, servile compliance," which increased his former disgust.
Pile them here on the table at my feet. Dogs, what do you fear?-death. The first who refuses dies." Mute and servile as a repentant Legion to a Caesar's order, the knaves piled their weapons. "Unbar the door, you two. You, orator Cutts, go in front; light a candle open the street-door. So-so-so. Who will treat me with a parting cup to your healths? Thank you, sir.
Being thus upon the eve of a decisive battle, Germanicus thought it behooved him to learn the sentiments of the soldiers, and deliberated with himself how to get at the truth; "the reports of the tribunes and centurions were oftener agreeable than true; the freedmen had servile spirits; friends were apt to flatter; if an assembly were called, there, too, the counsel proposed by a few was carried by the clamorous plaudits of the rest.
"No man," he said, "shall convince me that I am improperly governed, while I feel the contrary." Women then, even the cleverest and most liberal, bowed to the decrees of custom with a submission as servile as that of the Hindu to the laws of caste. Like the latter, they were contented with their lot and had no desire to change it.
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