[By Lady Cook, nee Tennessee Claflin.]
This word slave, now a term of ignominy or reproach, is derived from the Slavonian slava, which meant glory or renown, and formed the termination of the most illustrious names in all the dialects of that tongue. But when the Slavi had been reduced to servitude by the Germans, their name became synonymous with their state, and our Teutonic ancestors bequeathed the word to us to indicate those in bondage. Thus Gibbon, in his " Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire," says of the Sclavs : " From the Euxine to the Adriatic, in the state of captives or subjects, or allies or enemies, of the Greek Empire, they overspread the land; and the national appellation of the slaves has been degraded by chance or malice from the signification of glory to that of servitude."
Few of the lower animals have had the art or the inclination to make slaves of others, but man's ingenuity was exercised in this manner ages before the dawn of history. The sacrificial stones and the contents of sepulchral tumuli tell their own tale as cogently as if written. His presumption claimed all animals for his use, and this was speedily followed by the subjugation of the weaker of his species. The classic rhapsodies on freedom, by Greeks and Romans, referred only to a privileged class. Those who were always ready to pour out their blood for their own liberty, felt no impropriety or remorse in visiting the venial offences of their slaves with cruel stripes or a more cruel death.
Even our own Magna Carta was extorted by freemen for freemen, and contained no provision for the numerous survile. From the time that man first appeared on this earth slavery has been the lot of the great bulk of humanity. The masses have lived and suffered, have toiled and served, as chattels and beasts of burden, to enhance the comfort and ease of a comparative few. All religions, with their superstitious influences so potent over the ignorant, have been the auxiliaries of the enslavers. And, from Genesis to Revelation, even our own sacred Book contains no disapprobation of the practice. On the contrary, it implicity upholds slavery, as it does the cognate custom of polygamy, and demands unqualified obedience from servants and wives.
John Stuart Mill, writing in 1869, said: "Less than forty years ago Englishmen might still hold human beings in bondage as saleable property; within the present century they might kidnap and carry them off, and work them literally to death." We have had abundant instances of men of honor and sincerity who kidnapped and smuggled with pious sentiments and devout aspirations. They relied on Scripture— the revealed will of God"—just as the opponents of divorce, of the "Deceased Wife's Sister's Bill," and of women's emancipation generally, rely still. Was not Canaan cursed by Noah for Ham's transgression? " A servant of servants shall he be unto his brethren." And so the Rev. John Newton, like Sir John Hawkins and so many other English worthies, preached on deck from the text, " Love one another," while the hold below was crowded to suffocation with stolen negroes, by whose capture and sale he was enriched. The consciences of such men were clear ; they were carrying out the will of Providence, like their imitators today. Was not the woman made for the man, and not the man for the women ? Was not her creation a divine afterthought, caused by pity for the lonelyness and his want of a suitable help ? And was not she also cursed by a higher than Noah," The desire shall be to thy husband, and he shall rule over thee"? And so our bishops, good men some of them, and most of them "liberally educated," have no compunction in hindering the freedom of women, being assured that they are thus fulfilling the will of God. But if a sparrow cannot fall to the ground without the will of our Heavenly Father would it not have been equally His will had the bishops the other day voted for the marriage with a deceased wife's sister, instead of defeating it?
It would be a profound mistake to imagine that the barbarisms which survives longest are less barbarisms than those which die early. All unnecessary interference with individual liberty is either a survival of barbarism or a reversion to it. Every adult should be free to eat, drink, work, and think in any manner that he desires and is able. To curtail or modify any of those by law or force is to render him more or less a slave, and to do so for the supposed benefit of others, or for the good of some special portion of the community, is the very essence of slavery. In the struggle for existence and supremacy, or even for a fad, we may see many reversions today to obsolete forms of bondage; all holding to retard progress by crippling individual energies and abilities, or by producing a spirit of subserviency. But the oldest and worst survival is the subordination of women. Comparing the past with the present. Mill says : " Human society of old was constituted on a very different principle. All were born to a fixed social position, and were mostly kept in it by law, or interdicted from any means by which they could emerge from it.......Manufacturers have stood in the pillory for presuming to carry on their business by new and improved methods ........At present, in the more improved countries, the disabilities of women are the only case, save one, in which laws and institutions take persons at their birth, and ordain that they shall never in all their lives be allowed to compete for certain things. The only exception is royalty.'' And yet there are some people who urge that women have no wrongs and no just cause of complaint ! They point to the majority of women, and say : " See how satisfied they are. They are not clamoring for a change." Even if this be true, it proves nothing except that slavery paralyses its victims. Barely in the world's history have the oppressed risen unless stimulated by outside sympathisers. And if slavery is not good per se, it is not good for women, whatever many of them may think or feel.
To those who dream that nothing can be more beautiful or more successful than our present marriage system, we commend the following passage on English wives by the author already quoted : " I am far from pretending that wives are in general no better treated than slaves; but no slave is a slave to the same lengths and in so full a sense of the word as a wife is. Hardly any slave, except one immediately attached to the Master's person, is a slave, at all hours and all minutes: in general, he has, like a soldier, his fixed task, and when it is done, or when he is off duty, he disposes, within certain limits, of his own time, and has a family life into which the master rarely intrudes....... But it cannot be so with the wife. Above all, a female slave has (in Christian countries) an admitted right, and is considered under a moral obligation to refuse to her master the last familiarity. Not so the wife; however brutal a tyrant she may unfortunately be chained to—though she may know that he hates her, though it may be his daily pleasure to torture her, and though she may feel it impossible not to loathe him—he can claim from her and enforce the lowest degradation of a human being, that of being made the instrument of an animal function contrary to her inclination."
Slavery, then, is not dead, and wives are the chief sufferers. In the face of this fact, whatever differences of opinion may exist on other matters in the minds of those who love their fellow-creatures, it must be the duty of all to resist every form of slavery, whether physical or spiritual, mental or social, and especially sex slavery, so that the day may not be distant when women may enter into equal and honorable competition with men in whatever is good or great. From that hour only the moral regeneration of mankind will seriously begin.
Kapunda Herald (SA : 1878 - 1951), Friday 20 November 1896
No comments:
Post a Comment