Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Updated: May 2, 2025
Lucius Lucullus likewise when governor of Asia Minor had directly cancelled a portion of the arrears of interest which had swelled beyond measure, and had for the remaining portion assigned to the creditors a fourth part of the produce of the lands of their debtors, as well as a suitable proportion of the profits accruing to them from house-rents or slave-labour.
Under the unnatural disturbance of relations occasioned by the lamentable system of slave-labour, it would perhaps have been justifiable to impose a duty on transmarine corn for the protection of the Italian farmer; but the very opposite course seems to have been pursued, and with a view to favour the import of transmarine corn to Italy, a prohibitive system seems to have been applied in the provinces for though the Rhodians were allowed to export a quantity of corn from Sicily by way of special favour, the export of grain from the provinces must probably, as a rule, have been free only as regarded Italy, and the transmarine corn must thus have been monopolized for the benefit of the mother-country.
Thus it is abundantly clear that even in the time of Cicero there was a certain demand for free labour in the ordinary Italian oliveyard and vineyard, and that the necessary supply was forthcoming, though the permanent industrial basis was non-free, and the tendency was to use slave-labour more exclusively.
Historians have been fond of showing how the vitality of the whole system was impaired by wholesale slave-labour, by the false political economy which taxes all for the benefit of a few, by the debauching view of civil office which regards it as private perquisite and not as public trust, and worst of all, perhaps by the communistic practice of feeding an idle proletariat out of the imperial treasury.
Yet without undervaluing their daring, it must be recognised that they had a comparatively easy task in conquering the peoples of these tropical lands. In the greater islands of the West Indies they found a gentle and yielding people, who rapidly died out under the forced labour of the mines and plantations, and had to be replaced by negro slave-labour imported from Africa.
The order, abundance, and comfort about the place showed what industry and good management could effect in this country without slave-labour. But the surplus produce of such small plantations is very trifling. All we saw had been done since the disorders of 1835-6, during which John Trinidade was a great sufferer; he was obliged to fly, and the Mura Indians destroyed his house and plantations.
Further, Turgot might have asked with much profit to the cause of historic truth, and perhaps in more emancipated years he did ask, whether economic circumstances have not had more to do with the dissolution of slavery than Christian doctrines: whether the rise of rent from free tenants over the profits to be drawn from slave-labour by the landowner, has not been a more powerful stimulant to emancipation, than the moral maxim that we ought to love one another, or the Christian proposition that we are all equals before the divine throne and co-heirs of salvation: whether a steady and permanent fall in the price of slave-raised productions had not as much to do with the decay of slavery in Europe, as the love of God or the doctrine of human brotherhood.
Haj Ahmed, he Governor, but he gives me nothing to eat. I work for him six hours I work for others six hours. The people give me to eat, not Haj Ahmed." This is the character of slave-labour in Ghat. The masters have half of their labour for nothing, or because they are their slaves: with the rest of their labour they support themselves.
These slave-owners of whom I now speak deeply deplore the circumstances under which they are placed, and, while wanting the spirit of self-sacrifice, and the moral courage, which would lead them, by manumitting their slaves, to enter into a novel competition with slave-labour on other estates, do their best to ameliorate the condition in which the Africans are placed, encouraging them, by the sale of little articles of their own manufacture, to purchase their freedom, which is granted at a very reduced rate.
Space is limited: the upper extreme of cultivation on the southern side may be estimated at 1,000 feet. The crop exhausts the soil; the plant requires water, and it demands what it can rarely obtain in quantity manure. Again, machinery is expensive and adventure is small. Jamaica and her slave-labour soon reduced the mills from one hundred and fifty to three, and now five.
Word Of The Day
Others Looking